LIRRARY or 
 
 •No Date 
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 PROFESSOR 
 
 PAUL BIGELOW SCHAEFFER 
 
 1893-1967 
 
 i 
 
<S^L 
 
PETER THE GREAT 
 
Inilorm with " PIITLR THE OREAT." 
 
 ^ he Romance of an empress. 
 
 CAl JiERJMi J I OJ- RC:>S/A. 
 
 By K. Waliszewski. 
 With Portrait. lamo. Cloth, $a.oo. 
 
 " Of Catherine's marvelous career we have in this volume a 
 sympathetic, learned, and picturesque narrative. No royal ca- 
 reer, not even some of the Koinan or papal ones, has belter 
 shi)wn us how truth can be stranger than fiction."— AVj« }'vri 
 Times. 
 
 " A most wonderful history, charmingly told, with new mate- 
 ri.ll to sustain it,.and a breadth and tempciancc and considera- 
 tion that Ko far to soften one's estimate of one of tlie most 
 extraordin.iry women ol history." — Ntw Yok Commtrcial 
 A linertisi'r. 
 
 "A romance in which fiction finds no place: a charming 
 narrative wherein the author le.irlcssly presents the results of 
 what has been obviously a thorough and impartial investigation." 
 —Philntidpkia Press. 
 
 " The book makes the best of reading, because it is written 
 without fear or favor. . . . The volume is exceedingly suggest- 
 ive, and pives to the general reader a plain, blunt, strong, and 
 healthy view of one of the greatest women of whom history bears 
 retord." — .\>7i' )'o>k HeraUi. 
 
 D. APl'LETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
w^ 
 
 /lilt ,1 // /;y /y . /Si . Vitf/^i/ . yYllfV/M : 
 
PETER THE GREAT 
 
 BY K. WALISZEWSKI 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF AN EMPRESS, 
 
 ETC. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 
 BY LADY MARY LOYD 
 
 WITH A PORTRAIT 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 U. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 1897 
 
Authorized Edition. 
 
W(7 
 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 ' Measure thy powers on thine undertaking— and not the undertaking 
 by thy powers.' 
 
 This bold advice, the dictum of a poet and fellow-countiy- 
 man of my own, has been the almost indispensable inspira- 
 tion of this historical work of mine. The figure which forms 
 its subject — towering above the history, bound up, to this 
 very hour, with the existence, of the Russian nation — is not 
 one to be lightly approached. 
 
 Therefore it is that I have come to him so late, that I 
 have worked backwards, up the course of the years, from the 
 great Inheritress to the creator of her inheritance. 
 
 Have I dared, then, at last, to exchange glances with that 
 great bronze giant, who, so the poets say, ' steps down, on 
 twilight nights, from his granite pedestal, hard by the Neva 
 river-bank, and rides through the sleeping city' — triumphant 
 even in death ? Have 1 indeed — oh, mighty ghost ! who, 
 for well-nigh two hundred years, like some terrible and 
 familiar demon, hauntest the places thou didst know in 
 life, — have I, in good truth, happened on the magic formula 
 which brings back speech to phantoms, and builds life up 
 around them, out of the dust of bygone days? 
 
 I have lived those dead hours over again, in fancy. I have 
 seen the faces, I have felt the warmth, of the beings and 
 the things that filled them. I have laid my finger on the 
 miracle of that legendary reign — the realisation of the fabled 
 grain of wheat w'aich sprouts and straightway grows into a 
 
vi PETER THE GREAT 
 
 plant on the palm of the Hindu Yoghi's hand. And I have 
 had speech with the Man of Miracles himself, — the one 
 unique man, perhaps, in the history of the human race. 
 Napoleon is the greatest of Frenchmen, or the greatest of 
 Italians, according to the fancy of his historian. He is not 
 France nor Italy incarnate. Peter is Russia — her flesh and 
 blood, her temperament and genius, her virtues and her 
 vices. With his various aptitudes, his multiplicity of effort, 
 his tumultuous passions, he rises up before us, a collective 
 being. This makes his greatness. This raises him far 
 above the pale shadows which our feeble historical evoca- 
 tion strives to snatch out of oblivion. There is no need 
 to call his figure up. He stands before us, surviving his 
 own existence, perpetuating himself — a continual actual 
 fact. 
 
 The face of the world he seems to have called out of chaos 
 may have modified, but the principle of its existence is 
 unchanged. The immeasurable force is there, ^vhich, these 
 three centuries past, has defied all calculation, which has 
 transformed Ivan's wretched patrimony, — a sparsely inha- 
 bited patch of wild steppe land, — into the inheritance of 
 Alexander and of Nicholas — into an empire exceeding in 
 size and population every other known sovereignty in 
 Europe, Asia, and Africa — surpassing those of Alexander the 
 Great, or Ancient Rome, the realm of the Khaliphs, and even 
 the present British Empire, with all its colonies — an area of 
 some eight and a half millions of square miles, a population of 
 one hundred and twenty million souls! Once upon a time 
 that force was called ' Peter the Great.' The name is changed 
 now. The characteristics arc unchanged. It is still the 
 soul of a great jjcople — and the soul, too, of a great man, in 
 whom the thoughts and wills of millions of human beings 
 appear incarnate. That force is centred in him, and he in 
 it. I have tried, in these pages of mine, to make it throb. 
 
 Not, be sure, by mere dint of my imagination. Everything 
 that could be drawn from documentary evidence — the only 
 pass-key which can re-open the doors each passing hour 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 closes upon us — I have used. I hope 1 have been exact. 
 I know I have been sincere ; I may have roused surprise, 
 disappointment, even anger. I would urge my Russian 
 readers to weigh their impressions carefully. Courage to 
 acknowledge what one is, and even what one has been, is a 
 very necessary quality. For Russia, this courage is a very 
 eas}'' one. 
 
 I would pray my Russian readers too, and all others, not 
 to misunderstand the nature of the object I have set before 
 me. When Poushkin was collecting materials for his 
 biography of the national hero, he spoke of raising a monu- 
 ment — acre perennius, which was to be too firmly set to be 
 removed by human hand, and dragged from square to 
 square. Some national grudge, it would appear, existed — 
 some doubt was felt, as to the unchangeable stability of 
 Falconnet's masterpiece. The poet's ambition, his care for 
 his subject's reputation, common to most of my forerunners, 
 not in Russia only, have never affected me. Peter — without 
 any help of mine — already has the monument which, as I 
 fain would think, befits him best. Not Poushkin's, nor yet 
 the work of the French sculptor's chisel. The monument of 
 which I speak was begun by his own rugged hands. His suc- 
 cessors will labour on it, yet, for many a year. The last stone 
 set, and that a mighty one, is the Trans-Siberian railway. 
 
 I\Iy object, as I say, has been very different. The eyes of 
 the whole modern world have long been fixed — some in 
 sympathy, others, again, dark with suspicion and hostility — 
 on the mighty sea of physical and moral energy which 
 surged up suddenly between Old Europe, wearied out with 
 eager life, and Ancient Asia, wearied, too, with the stillness 
 and stagnation of hers. Will the common destinies of the 
 two Continents sink in that huge abyss? Or will its waters 
 prove another Fountain of Jouvence? The whole world 
 hangs over the chasm, on either side, waiting in anxious 
 apprehension, peering into the depths, striving to fathom 
 them. My part is simply to offer certain information to this 
 universal curiosity and dread. 
 
viii PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Behold! This may be the appointed hour! The dawn 
 of an unknown day whitens the sky. A mist, where phan- 
 tom figures seem to float, rises over the broad river. 
 Hark! Was it a horse's hoof that rang on the silent 
 
 stones? . . . 
 
 K. W. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I— HIS EDUCATION 
 
 BOOK I — FROM ASIA TO EUROPE 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE KREML, AND THE GERMAN FAUBOURG, . , 3 
 
 II. THE TSAREVNA SOPHIA, . . . . .21 
 
 III. THE MONASTERY OF THE TROITSA, . . •43 
 
 BOOK II — THE LESSONS OF THE CIVILISED WORLD 
 
 I. ON CAMPAIGN — A WARLIKE APPRENTICESHIP THE 
 
 CREATION OF THE NAVY — THE CAPTURE OF AZOF, 53 
 
 II. THE JOURNEY GERMANY HOLLAND — ENGLAND THE 
 
 RETURN, . , . , . '74 
 
 PART 11— THE MAN 
 
 BOOK I — BODY AND MIND 
 
 I. PHYSICAL PORTRAIT— CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS, . . I03 
 
 II. INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES, . .128 
 
 in. IDEAS, PRINCIPLES, AND SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT, . 167 
 
 IV. PRIVATE LIFE, . . . . . . 187 
 
X PETER THE GREAT 
 
 BOOK II— THE tsar's ASSOCIATES 
 
 CHAT. 
 
 I. COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES, 
 
 II. THE FEMININE ELEMENT, 
 
 III. CATHERINE, ..... 
 
 FACE 
 20I 
 
 263 
 
 PART III— ///5 JVORK 
 
 LOOK I— EXTERNAL STRUGGLE — WAK AND DIPLOMACY 
 
 I. FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 170O-1709, 
 II. FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN, 
 III. THE APOGEE — FRANCE, 
 
 PAGE 
 • 358 
 
 BOOK II — THE INTERNAL STRUGGLE — THE REFORMS 
 
 I. THE NEW REGIME — THE END OF THE STRELTSV 
 ST. PETERSBURG, .... 
 
 II. MORALS — HABITS AND CUSTOMS, 
 
 III. THE ECCLESIASTICAL REFORMS AND THE SUPPRESSION 
 
 OF THE P.\TRIARCHATE, 
 
 IV. THE SOCIAL REFOR.M — THE TABLE OF RANKS, . 
 V. PETER'S ECONOMIC WORK, 
 
 VI, THE POLITICAL WORK OF PETER THE GREAT, . 
 VII. IIIE ARMY AND THE NAVY, . . , 
 
 VIII. THE OPPOSITION — THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS, 
 
 IX. pe;ter the great's last will — conclusion, 
 
 392 
 413 
 
 441 
 452 
 
 462 
 
 478 
 
 498 
 508 
 
 544 
 
PART I 
 HIS EDUCATION 
 
BOOK I— FROM ASIA TO EUROPE 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE KREML,^ AND THE GERMAN FAUBOURG 
 
 I. The marriage of Tsar Alexis — The choice of the bride — The crown to the 
 fairest — The dormitory in the Kreml — Nathalia Naryshkin — The birth of 
 Peter — His paternity contested — The struggle between the Naryshkin 
 and the Miloslavski — Exile. 
 
 II. The Kreml : Crypt, Seraglio, and Gaol — Ten centuries of history — Russia 
 of Moscow, and Russia of Kief — The Norman Conquest — Vanished glories 
 — The sons of Ruiik — Jaroslav the Great, and Henry the First of France 
 — The Mongol invasion — Utter downfall — Recovery — Muscovite Hege- 
 mony under a Mongol protectorate — Emancipation — Ivan the Great — 
 Dawn of a new culture — European influences — Poles, Germans, English, 
 and Dutchmen. 
 
 III. The German Faubourg — Europe and Asia — A Muscovite Ghetto — The wck 
 of civilisation — Exp:tnsion — Thither Peter will go. 
 
 IV. Times of trial — The last attempt at an Asiatic res^iiue — Deaths of Alexis 
 and Feodor — An elected Tsar— The rSle of the Patriarchs — The victory 
 of the Naryshkin — Peter proclaimed — A short-lived triumph — The 
 revenge of the Miloslavski. 
 
 Peter Aleksi£ievitch was born on the 30th of May 
 1672 — the year 7180, according to the calendar then used 
 in his country. 
 
 Two years and a half before his birth, the ancient Kreml 
 of Moscow had beheld a strange sight. Dozens of young 
 girls, chosen amongst the loveliest discoverable, drawn from 
 the most distant provinces, from every rank and station, — 
 gentle and simple, from castle and from hut, and even from 
 religious houses, had entered the Tsar's palace, on a day 
 
 * The name is thus spelt and pronounced in Russian. Kremlin is a spurious 
 form, of Polish origin. 
 
4 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 appointed by himself. There, crowded haphazard into the 
 six rooms appointed to their use, they had led the usual life 
 of Muscovite wives and maidens of that age — the cloistered 
 existence, idle and monotonous, of Eastern women, scarce 
 broken by some slight manual task, scarce brightened, here 
 and there, by an occasional song. Thus, all day long they 
 dreamt, and pined, and sighed, and yawned over oft-repeated 
 tales and legends, bristling with wonderful absurdities. But 
 w hen night fell, ah ! then all the hours of weariness, and 
 disgust, and impatient longing, were forgotten ; and each 
 young creature, her every sense on the alert, felt her soul 
 leap and tremble with the sudden palpitation of a tre- 
 mendous chance, in the feverish but short-lived sensation, 
 nightly recurring, of an exquisite terror, and anxiety, and 
 hope. Masculine forms loomed on the threshold of the 
 suite of rooms, which were converted into dormitories when 
 darkness fell. Two men passed between the narrow beds, 
 leisurely examining the lovely sleepers, exchanging signifi- 
 cant words and gestures. And one of these was the Tsar 
 Alexis Mihailovitch — the Tsar himself — i?i propria persona, 
 accompanied by his doctor, and seeking, amongst those 
 unknown beauties, his chosen wife, — 'the woman,' as the 
 time-honoured formula has it, ' worthy to be the Sovereign's 
 delight,' the woman whom, though she were the daughter of 
 the meanest of his serfs, he might, on the morrow, make a 
 Grand Duchess first, and then Tsarina of all the Russias. 
 
 The custom, two centuries old already, had been borrowed 
 from the Byzantines, partly for high political reasons, a 
 little too, out of sheer necessity. Ivan Vassilcvitch ('the 
 Great,' 143 5- 1505), had vainly sought a wife for his son 
 among the princesses of foreign houses. The King of 
 Denmark, the Margrave of Brandcnbiurg, had alike rebuffed 
 him scornfully. And he would have no more alliances with 
 his neighbours and rivals, the Russian Dukes. So he caused 
 fifteen hundred maidens to be gathered together at Moscow 
 — the Grand Ducal coronet should be bestowed on the fairest, 
 at all events, if not on the most nobly born. A century later, 
 the Tsar Michael Fcodorovitch, who attempted matrimony 
 with a foreign princess, met with no better success. The 
 Danish King even went so far as to refuse to receive the 
 Russian Envoys.^ From that time out, the custom had been 
 
 ^ Zabielin, Domestic History of the Tsixrinas (Moscow, 1872), p. 245. 
 
THE KREML, AND THE GERMAN FAUBOURG 5 
 
 definitely established. Certain ladies and gentlemen of the 
 Court were deputed to examine the young girls who came to 
 Moscow, in answer to the Impeiial call. Tiieir inspection, 
 minute and severe, extended to the most intimate details. 
 Thus, by a process of selection, only the daintiest morsels 
 were actually presented to the Tsar.^ 
 
 But occasionally, as in 1670, this custom became a mere 
 formalit}'. The dreams of the fair sleepers were doomed, 
 this time, to disappointment ; their nocturnal wiles were 
 to be displayed in vain. The Sovereign's choice had been 
 fixed before their arrival in the city. The Tsar Alexis 
 Mihailovitch was thirty-eight years of age when his first 
 wife — a Miloslavski, who had borne him five sons and eight 
 daughters — died, in the year 1667. Of these sons, three 
 were already dead ; the survivors, Feodor and Ivan, were 
 both sickly ; and the Tsar's evident duty was to consider 
 the question of remarriage. He considered it seriously, when 
 his eye fell, one day, in the house of Artamon Siergueievitch 
 Matvieief, on a beautiful brunette, whom he took, at first, for 
 the daughter of his favourite counsellor. Nathalia Kirillovna 
 Naryshkin was only his ward, confided by her father, an 
 obscure and needy country gentleman, to the care of the 
 rich and powerful boj'ard. The fair Nathalia could never 
 have burst on her Sovereign's dazzled eyes in any true 
 Muscovite house, where local custom was held in due respect. 
 The young girl must have remained invisible, behind the 
 impenetrable portals of the tcreni. But the Matvieief house- 
 hold was emancipated from the ordinary rule. Artamon 
 had married a foreigner — a Hamilton. The tempest of 
 revolution which had overwhelmed the great Jacobite fami- 
 lies, had cast up some branches of them, even upon the 
 inhospitable shores of that distant and barbarous empire. 
 Alexis welcomed the strangers, and Matvieief actually owed 
 a portion of his master's favour to his alliance with one 
 of them. His marriage had also given him a certain culture. 
 He read much ; he had a library, a museum, a small chemical 
 laboratory. Nathalia had her place at her adopted parents' 
 table — sometimes even amongst their guests. Alexis began 
 by saying he would undertake to find the girl a husband 
 'who would ask for no fortune with her.' Then, suddenly, 
 he made up his mind and spoke out. Artamon Siergu6- 
 
 ' Zatjielin, Domestic History of the Tsarifias (Moscow, 1872), p. 222, 
 
6 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 i^vitch was more alarmed than pleased. His position as 
 imperial favourite had already procured him numerous 
 enemies. Sprung from a somewhat obscure family, he had 
 pushed himself into the foremost rank, he was at the head 
 of various departments ; he managed Foreign Affairs, the 
 Mint, he was Court Minister, Commander of the Strcltsy, 
 Governor of Little Russia, of Kasan and of Astrakan. He 
 begged, at all events, to be shielded by appearances. Nathalia 
 had to show herself in the dormitory at the Kreml. All the 
 rites were scrupulously observed. The uncle of one fair 
 aspirant actually had to face the justice of the Tsar for 
 having used fraudulent manceuvres in his niece's favour, and 
 was put to the question, ordinary and extraordinary, by the 
 knout, by the strappado, and by fire. The marriage was 
 solemnised on 22nd January 1671, and on 30th May (12th 
 June) 1672, Nathalia Kirillovna bore a son. 
 
 On that very day, Louis XIV. supplied Boileau with tlie 
 subject of a famous epistle, as he watched his army, led by 
 Cond(S and Turcnne, pass over the Rhine. On that very 
 day, too, at the opposite end of Europe, the Turkish army 
 passed the Dniester, to clasp hands across space with that 
 of the Grand JMonarque, and take the Empire in the rear. 
 Neither of these events awoke much interest at Moscow, 
 where all were rejoicing over the birth of the Tsarevitch. 
 Life there was too circumscribed and obscure to be much 
 affected by the great currents of European politics. Obscure 
 and doubtful, too, to this very hour, is the birthplace of the 
 greatest man Russia ever produced. Was it the Moscow 
 Kreml? the neighbouring country house of Kolomenskoie, 
 dubbed the Russian BethleJiem} Or was it Ismailovo? No 
 absolute certainty exists. The dispute is carried further 
 still. Peter bore no resemblance, physical or moral, to his 
 elder brothers and sisters, — puny and feeble all of them, like 
 Feodor and Ivan, all, even the fair Sophia herself, bearing a 
 taint in their blood. And could Ale.xis, worn out by illness, 
 foredoomed to an early death, have bestowed, on any son of 
 his, that giant stature, those iron muscles, that full life? 
 Who tlien ? Was it the German surgeon, who replaced the 
 daughter Nathalia really brought into the world, by his 
 own son ? Was it the courtier, Tihone Nikititch Streshnief, 
 a man of humble birth, lately brought into prominence by 
 the marriage of the Tsar Michael Romanof with the fair 
 
THE KREML, AND TIIK GERMAN FAUBOURG 7 
 
 Eudoxia ? Once upon a time, Peter, heated with wine, sought 
 (so at least the story goes) to peer into this shadow. ' That 
 fellow,' he cried, pointing to one of the company, Ivan 
 Mussin-Pushkin, ' knows, at all events, that he is my father's 
 son ! Whose son am I ? Yours, Tihon Streshniet ? Obey 
 me, speak, and fear nothing ! Speak ! or I '11 have you 
 strangled ! ' 
 
 ' Bai'iiishka, mercy ! ' comes the answer, ' I know not 
 what to say. ... I was not the only one ! ' ^ 
 
 But every kind of story has been told ! 
 
 The death of Alexis (1674) marks the beginning of a 
 troubled period, out of which Peter's despotic power rises, 
 storm-laden and blood-stained, like the times which gave it 
 birth. 
 
 This period makes its definite mark on the destiny of the 
 future Reformer. From its very outset, he becomes the hero 
 of a drama, the naturally indicated chief of an opposition 
 party. Beside the yet warm corpse of their common 
 Master, the two families, called out of their obscurity by 
 the Tsar's two marriages, engage in desperate struggle. 
 
 The Naryshkins of a later generation have claimed a 
 relatively illustrious origin, in connection with a Czech 
 family, the Narisci, which once reigned at Egra. But the 
 Tartar Narish, noted by the historian Mliller as one of the 
 familiars of the Ktiiaz Ivan Vassilevitch (1463), would 
 appear a more authentic ancestor. 
 
 The Miloslavski were the Muscovite branch of the Korsak, 
 an ancient Lithuanian family, settled in Poland. Deprived 
 by the new comers of their rank and influence, they felt 
 themselves alike injured and humiliated. Nathalia's father, 
 Kiril Poluiektovitch, had risen, in a few years, to be one of 
 the richest men in the country, Court Councillor {ciuiiuiyi 
 dvoriani)i) and Grand Officer of the Crown {okolnits/iyt). 
 The bells that tolled for the funeral of Alexis rang out the 
 iiour of vengeance on his rival's ears. ' Miloslavski against 
 Naryshkin ! ' For the next thirteen years that war-cry 
 was to rule the fate of Russia, casting it into the blood- 
 stained struggle between the two parties fighting for power. 
 
 ' Vockcrodt, Correspoudence (]-)ul)lished by Herrmann, Lcipsic, 1872), p. loS. 
 Solovief, //«/. (^/i^Vii/rt (Moscow, 1864-1S7S), vol. xv. pp. 126-135. Sieniiovski, 
 Slut/y of the Stale Police in Russia (Slovo i Dielo) (St. Petersburg, 1SS5), p. 139. 
 Dol^oruukof, Mcmoires (Geneva, 1S67), vol. i. p. 102. 
 2 
 
rr.TER THE GREAT 
 
 Matvicicf, Natlialin's adoptive fatlicr, beaten in his first 
 skirinisii, heads the list of victims, lie was imprisoned, 
 tortured, exiled to I'ustoziersk in Siberia, where he almost 
 died of huntrer.^ For a moment, there was some question of 
 immurinp^ Nathalia in a cloister ; but the mother and son 
 were finally sent to PreobrajenskoTe, a villat^c near Moscow, 
 where Alexis had built him a house. Thus Peter left the 
 Kreml, never to return, save for a very short space of time, 
 durin^; which he was to endure the most cruel trials, the 
 most odious outrages, to watch the murder of his own 
 kinsfolk, to see the Sovereign's authority cast down into the 
 lowest depths, to witness his own downfall. Then it was 
 that he vowed relentless hatred to the gloomy palace. Even 
 as Conqueror and all-powerful Master, he pointedly turned 
 liis back upon it. That rupture was the symbol of his life 
 and of its work. 
 
 II 
 
 The Kreml of the present day — a crowded and haphazard 
 collection of incongruous buildings, utterly devoid, for the 
 most part, of style or character — conveys but a faint con- 
 ception of the palace of Ale.xis Mihailovitch, as it appeared 
 at the end of the seventeenth century. The fires of 1701 
 and 1737, and the reconstruction which took place in 1752,^ 
 have left the barest traces of the curious Italian Renaissance, 
 introduced, at the close of the fifteenth century, by the 
 daughter of a Paleologus, educated at Rome.^ Some 
 vestiges still exist of the struggle of the genius of Fioravante, 
 of Solaro, of Alevise, with Byzantine tradition ; a few 
 churches, a few fragments of palaces, and the outer walls — 
 more like those of a fortified camp than of a royal residence, 
 with their far-stretching low ramparts, and their brick towers 
 showing in slim outline, here and there, like warriors on the 
 watch. Without these walls, on the Red Square, the only 
 edifice which powerfully conjures up the vanished past is 
 the Church of Vassili the Blessed. Within them, doubtless, 
 there was the same architectural confusion, — the same violent 
 
 ' See //ts/fliy of his CaMivity, puhlislicd at Moscow, 1785, by NoviUofl" 
 ' Zaiiielin, Domrslic Ilislory of the Tsan (Moscow, 1895). pp. llO-IlS. 
 Oiis'rinlof, Ifistory of Peler I. (St. Peters) nirtr, iSsS), vol. iv. p. 33. 
 ' 1'. ricrliiig, La Ktisiie et U Si. Su-^'e (r.iris, 1896), p. 107. 
 
THE KREML, AND THE GERMAN FAUBOURG 9 
 
 juxtaposition of the German gothic style with those of India, 
 of Byzantium, and of Italy, — the same tangle of edifices, 
 packed one within the other like a Chinese puzzle, — the same 
 strange, wild orgy of decoration, of form, of colour — a delirium 
 and fever, a veritable surfeit of plastic fancy. Small rooms, 
 surbased vaulted roofs, gloomy corridors, lamps twinkling 
 out of the darkness, on the walls the lurid glow of mingled 
 ochres and vermilions, iron bars to every window, armed 
 men at every door; a swarming population of monks and 
 warriors everywhere. The palace rubbed shoulders with 
 the church and the monastery, and was scarcely distinguish- 
 able from them. The Sovereign, on his throfie, was like the 
 neighbouring relic of some Saint, within its shrine. From 
 one end to the other of that strange accumulation of build- 
 ings, sacred and secular dwellings, cathedrals and convents 
 by the score, confused noises, — dulled and stifled by massive 
 walls, thick oriental hangings, and the heavy air imprisoned 
 within them, — rose and fell, their echoes intermingling in a 
 vague harmony of sound. From within the churches 
 sounded the voices of chanting priests ; from the terem 
 came the singing of the women — now and again a sharper 
 note would echo from some corner of the palace, scene 
 of a secret orgy, and then a shriller cry, the plaint of 
 some tortured prisoner in his dungeon. But, for the most 
 part, silence reigned ; men whispered under their breath ; 
 they stepped carefully, feeling their way. Each one watched 
 his neighbour, and his neighbour him. It was a crypt, a 
 seraglio, a gaol, in one. 
 
 This being so, the Kreml was more than the mere 
 residence of the Tsar. All Russia was here concentrated 
 and summed up, — a strange Russia, ten centuries old, and 
 yet an infant ; a long historic past behind her, yet standing, 
 apparently, on the threshold of her history. This Russia, 
 severed from her European neighbours, who know her not, 
 yet has European blood of the purest in her veins, her annals 
 teem with European traditions, alliances, relationships, ay, 
 and with traces of a common fate, in good fortune and ill, 
 in \'ictory and disaster. 
 
 Between the ninth and tenth centuries, when the earliest 
 French Kings, Charles le Gros and Louis le Beguc, are 
 struggling painfully to defend their treasures from Norman 
 robbers, other Sea Kings land on the Baltic shore. Yonder 
 
lo rr.TKR THE GREAT 
 
 the Norman, Ilrolf, wrests the coa'^t country, called after his 
 race, from Charles the Simple. J Fere, on the micjhty plain 
 that stretches from the l^altic to the Black Sea, among the 
 scanty Finnish or Slavonic population which alone disturbs 
 the solitude, the Norman Rurik and his followers found 
 their ICmpire.^ 
 
 A century and a half later, at the three farthest corners of 
 Europe, three heroic leaders affirm the supremacy of the 
 same race, covering it with the common glory of their 
 conquests. In Italy, Robert Guiscard founds the House 
 of Hautevillc. William the Conqueror seats himself in 
 England. Jaroslav reigns in Russia. 
 
 But this Russia is not the Russia of Moscow. Moscow 
 does not exist, as yet. Jaroslav's capital is at Kief, a very 
 different place, far nearer to the Western world. Rurik's 
 descendants, dwelling there, keep up close relations with 
 Greece, with Italy, with Poland, with Germany. B\zantium 
 sends them monks, and learned men, and stately prelates. 
 Italy and Germany give them architects, artificers, merchants, 
 and the elements of Roman law. Towards the year looo, 
 Vladimar, the ' Red Sun' of the Rhapsodes, commands his 
 lords to send their children to the schools he has established 
 near the churches ; he makes roads, and deposits test weights 
 and measures in the churches. His son Jaroslav (1015- 
 1054) coins mone\\ builds palaces, adorns the open spaces 
 of his capital with Greek and Latin sculpture, and draws up 
 a code of laws. The five pictures preserved in the Vatican, 
 under the name of the Capponi Collection, are an authentic 
 proof, and a most curious specimen, of Russian art as it 
 flourished at Kief in the twelfth century.- The execution 
 is masterly, in no way inferior to the best work of the early 
 Italians, such as Andrea Rico di Candia. And these are 
 not the only signs of culture at Kief In 1 170, at Smolensk, 
 we find the Kniaz, Roman Rostislavitch, busied with learned 
 
 ■■ This conquest, altliough disputed by Sl.ivopliil historians, would seem to be 
 an undoubleci fact. See Soloviof s refutation of Ilovai^ki's opinion (Co/fected 
 IVorks on Politics (Bezobrazof, 1879), vol. vii.), and the .Studies of Father 
 Martynof (h'evue Jes Queslions Historiijues, July 1S75. PQlyhiblion, 1S75). 
 Solovicf at all events makes the admission — a consolintj one to the noti<in;il 
 vanity — that the Slav tribes submitted voluntarily to a foreign A'liias, whom they 
 calle'i to rule over them. 
 
 - This colic tion was presented by Peter the Great to Count Capivni, in 
 acknowledgment of his share in obtaining the signa ure of a commercial treaty 
 with Genoa. 
 
THE KREML, AND THE GERMAN FAUBOURG ii 
 
 subjects. He collects libraries, founds schools and seminaries, 
 where the classical languages are taught. From one end to 
 the other of the huge Empire just beginning to take shape, 
 between the Don and the Carpathians, the Volga and the 
 Dvina, a busy trade is already carried on with Europe — 
 western, southern, and northern, Novgorod commands the 
 commerce of the Baltic. At Kief a motley crowd of 
 merchants — Norman, Slav, Hungarian, Venetian, Genoese, 
 German, Arab, and Jew — fill the streets, and deal in every 
 kind of product. In 1028 there were a dozen markets in 
 the city. And these Dukes of Kief have no need to seek 
 their wives within their subjects' tercms. Jaroslav espouses 
 a Swede, Ingegard, the daughter of King Olaf. He marries 
 his sister to King Casimir of Poland ; one of his sons, 
 Vsievolod, to the daughter of the Emperor Constantino 
 Monomachus of Byzantium ; anotlier, Viatcheslaf, to a 
 Countess of Stade ; a third, Igor, to Kunigunde, Countess of 
 Orlamiinde. His eldest daughter, Elizabeth, weds King 
 Harold of Norway ; the third, Anastasia, King Andreas i. of 
 Hungary. Three Bishops, Gautier de Meaux, Gosselin de 
 Chalignac, and Roger de Chalons, come to Kief, in 1048, to 
 ask the hand of the second daughter, Anne, for Henry i. of 
 France. 
 
 Before the middle of the thirteenth century all this crumbles 
 and disappears, leaving no trace behind. The Empire had 
 not as yet really found its feet : it was not founded upon 
 the rock, firm to withstand any violent shock. Dukes of 
 Kief, of Novgorod, of Smolensk, though they were, these 
 Rurikovitch, in spite of their union of warlike instinct witli 
 very remarkable organising powers, bore about with them 
 the brand of their origin — a ferment of disorder and violence, 
 from which nothing but the action of time, bringing with 
 it long established submission to the customs of civilised 
 societies, and the laws of a strongly organised State, could 
 have delivered them. Time played them false. The blow 
 came in 1224, when Baty, with his Mongol hordes, appeared 
 upon the scene. At that moment, after some attempt, early 
 in the twelfth century, at concentration, under Vladimir Mono- 
 machus, sixty petty princes were quarrelling over scraps 
 of power and rags of sovereignty between the Volga and the 
 lUig. Baty and Mangu, a grandson of Gcngis Khan, forced 
 them into reconciliation. 
 
12 PETER THE CKKAT 
 
 Centuries of endeavour and of civilisincj eflTort were thus 
 to disappear into the dust raised by the hoofs of a hundred 
 thousand horses. Of ancient Russia, Europeanised, indeed, 
 by its conquerors, but in no sense denationalised, — thanks 
 to the rapid absorption of the scanty Norman element — not 
 a trace remained. In the following century, between 13 19 
 and 1340, Kief and the neij^hbourini^ countries fell into the 
 hands of the future Kini^s of Poland, still Dukes of Lithuania. 
 
 After the reij^n of Giedymine, JagcUon, annexing all the 
 fragments of the ephemeral sovereignty of Monomachus — 
 Red Russia, White Russia, Black Russia, Little Russia — to 
 the new Polish-Lithuanian Lmpirc, wielded the sceptre of 
 'all the Russias,' — as the time-honoured formula now runs. 
 And the countries he annexed were little more than deserts. 
 At this moment the history of the Rurikovitch sovereignty 
 seems utterly closed. 
 
 But it springs up afresh, eastward of the huge space 
 marked out by I'ate as the dwelling-place of an innumer- 
 able population, and the scene of an immeasurable develop- 
 ment. In the upper basin of the \'olga, on the banks of the 
 Mosk\a, in the midst of a sparse Finnish population, a poor 
 village, overlooked by a strong fortified castle, had, since the 
 twelfth century, been the home and appanage of one of the 
 descendants of Rurik. Destro}-ed, more than once, in the 
 course of incessant warfare with its Rurikovitch neighbours, 
 swept by the wave of invading Mongols, this village raised 
 its head again and again, increased in size, and, in the begin- 
 ning of the fourteenth century, already formed the nucleus 
 of a fresh agglomeration of Norman, Slav, and Finnish 
 elements. Taking docile submission to the yoke of the 
 Asiatic conquerors for his rule, the Kniaz of Moscow ended 
 by making that yoke serve as an organising instrument, 
 useful alike for internal government, and external expan- 
 sion. Humbly, patiently, adroitly, he undertook the duties 
 of an intermediary — welcomed by one side for his usefulness, 
 endured by the other as a necessity — between the conquerors 
 and the C()n<iucred ; stoo[)ing to play the part of tax-collector 
 for the common master, of police agent, of executioner, if 
 need be. Extending and strengthening, by slow degrees, 
 the su])eriority thus dearly bought, the wily Kniaz succeeded 
 each other, until the day should come — long waited, carefully 
 prepared — when one should be strong enough to break the 
 
THE KREML, AND THE GERMAN FAUBOURG 13 
 
 infamous compact, which had served him and his forebears 
 as a tool for their own emancipation. 
 
 Thus well-nigh two centuries passed. Two centuries, in 
 the course of which the neighbourini:^ Kfiiaa—o^ Pcrciaslavl, 
 Riazan, Vladimir, Ouglitch, Halitch, Rostov, Jaroslavl, 
 Souzdal — became one by one, little by little, first of all 
 vassals, and finally mere chief subjects, bayards, of the Kiiiac 
 of Moscow, whose power swelled visibly, while the Mongol 
 Hegemony, worn out and broken up by internal discord, 
 steadily declined. At last, somewhere about 1480, the 
 period of probation drew to a close, and astounded Europe 
 suddenly became aware that, between herself and Asia, 
 there lay a new Empire, whose chief had formally declared 
 its independence, having driven the Golden Horde beyond 
 the newly traced frontiers of the immense territory under 
 his rule, wedded at Rome, with a Greek Princess from Con- 
 stantinople, and taken the double-headed eagle for his 
 emblem. His name was Ivan, known by his subjects as 
 ' Ivan the Great.' 
 
 But this new sovereignty was not that of Kief, and, but 
 for the dynastic origin of its Head, it would seem to have 
 nought in common with that which constituted the power 
 and glory of Jaroslav and Vladimir. The Grand Duke of 
 Moscow might indeed dub himself Sovereign of 'all the 
 Russias,' but the provinces he thus claimed, and called his 
 own, were not in his keeping. They belonged to Poland. 
 Tile country he actually held was quite independent, so far 
 as three-fourths of it were concerned, of that conquered by 
 the ancient Normans, and, ever)-thing, or almost ever)'thing, 
 both in his Empire and his Capital, was of newer origin, and 
 essentially different in character. Europe, so to speak, had 
 no place there. 
 
 The flood, receding from this soil, had left behind it, like 
 a heavy clay deposit, all its more stable elements — form of 
 government, customs, habits of thought. No germ of culture 
 remained, and for the best of reasons. Save for the traditions 
 of the Rw.antine-Russian Church, preserved bv Greek monks 
 and nuns, the state and the society which had struggled 
 into organised existence, under the tutelage of the successors 
 of Baty, were essentially Asiatic, and genuinely barbarous. 
 State and society alike, during their long separation from 
 lunope, had known nothing of the great school in which the 
 
14 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 intellectual and mciral unity of the West was shaped ; of the 
 feudal system, the Crusades, chivalry, the study of Roman 
 Law, out of which the modern spirit has risen, stepping 
 backwards from its first sprinc^s ; of the great struggle 
 between the religious and the temporal powers, in which the 
 spirit of freedom took its birth. \Vhen the Metropolitan of 
 Moscow (only recently — 1325 or 1381 — called into existence) 
 refused the amalgamation with Rome, decided at the Council 
 of Florence, and accepted by the Metropolitan of Kief, the 
 city, voluntarily and deliberately, broke with the Western 
 World. The obscure and remote Eastern schism, condemned 
 by the Pope, withdrew itself beyond the pale of Christianity. 
 When men had grown weary of disputing over it, they were 
 to cast it into oblivion. 
 
 But culture began to sprout afresh, pushing up slowly, 
 through the thick crust of Asiatic mire. It came as best it 
 could —from Europe always — and first of all from Poland, 
 through the great Lithuanian lords, who had been Russians 
 before they were Poles. Before the insurgent Kurbski, 
 Ivan the Great's whilom helper, took refuge with his neigh- 
 bours, he kept up close correspondence with the Czartoryski, 
 Russian and orthodox still, to the backbone. Ivan himself, 
 returning victorious from Poland, brought back, as booty 
 and symbolic troph\', the first printing press ever seen in 
 Moscow, The conquest of Novgorod (1475) had served to 
 bring the new P^mpire into contact with the Hanse towns. 
 In 1553 the English discovered the mouth of the Dvina. 
 Next came the foundation of the town of Archangel, and 
 the beginning of commerce in the Northern seas. Then 
 fresh invasion — and the struggle for existence began once 
 more. This time, hajjpily, the invading wave came from a 
 different quarter. It rolled back from Europe, passing away 
 more rapidly than the last, and leaving something more than 
 mere mud behind it. The Polish armies brought the whole 
 paraphernalia of Rome in their train. Jesuits and Sons of 
 St. JJcrnard — Catholic propaganda, and the learning of the 
 schools. After the Jesuits — learned, fluent, shrewd — come the 
 mock Tsars, likewise of Polish origin, subtle and elef,'ant. 
 The Court of Dimitri and Marina Mniszech is modelled on 
 that of Sigismund, who had formed his after the counsel of 
 his wife, Bone Sforza, whose Polish orchestra mingles its 
 secular strains with the rites of the Orthodox Church! At the 
 
THE KREML, AND THE GERMAN FAUBOURG 15 
 
 very moment of the definite triumph of the national cause, 
 Western and Polisli influences are affirmed, even in the very 
 victories and re-establishment of the Muscovite element in 
 Poland, and in the West. When the armies of Tsar 
 Alexis entered Kief, they found no sign, doubtless, of what 
 the Mongol conquerors had found there — no trace of former 
 splendours. Yet they found something better than the emjni- 
 ness and void at Moscow. Some schools of Polish origin, a 
 printing press too, ready to replace that of Ivan (promptly 
 anathematised and long since destroyed), and a Greco-Latin 
 Ecclesiastical Academy. A modest capital of civilisation, 
 easy of assimilation, stood ready to their hand. 
 
 Ill 
 
 From this time forward Moscow had power to turn her back 
 on Asia, and re-enter Europe, without crossing the frontier. 
 That Peter, driven out of the Kreml, and into the street, as 
 it were, by the rival faction, felt no desire to return to his 
 ancestral dwelling, must be written down to the fact th.at he 
 had found another and a more attractive home in its close 
 vicinity. When Ivan annexed Novgorod, — that stronghold 
 of republicanism and insubordination, — he resolved to break 
 its turbulent spirit by changing its population. Ten thousand 
 families had thus to be removed. Russia owns the secret of 
 these successful administrative coups d'etat, whereby whole 
 masses of humanity are set in physical motion. The exiled 
 Novgorodians departed to Moscow, where room was made 
 for them, by sending an equal number of faithful and docile 
 Moscovians — their very docility their punishment — to Nov- 
 gorod. These new arrivals included certain Hanseatic 
 merchants, who formed the first nucleus of the foreign 
 colony on the banks of the Moskva. But it soon became 
 evident, to Russian eyes, that these foreigners profaned the 
 place. Local patriotism found its interest, even at that date, 
 in claiming that Moscow was a holy city, and then, as now, 
 the whole of Muscovy joined in this beatification. Bej'ond 
 the gates of the old caj^ital, towards the north-western corner 
 of the modern city, in the quarter lying between Basmannaia 
 Street and Pokrovskaia Street, where, at the present day, 
 most of the Protestant and Catholic churches stand, there 
 
l6 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 arose, — on the banks of the laouza, a scanty afniiciit of the 
 Moskva, — a kind of Ghetto, specially assigned to the Nictnts)\ 
 those who did not speak the tontjjiie of the country, and who, 
 in conse(]ucncc, were nicttioi, dumb. The Hansc merchants 
 prospered little here, but, in the sixteenth century, Tsar 
 Vassili lodged his bodj-guard of Poles, Lithuanians, and 
 Germans in the quarter. Vassili's successors brought in not 
 foreign soldiers only — they sent abroad for artisans and 
 artists, and, before long, for schoolmasters. An engraving 
 in Adelung's curious book depicts the primitive appearance 
 of the suburb, where the immigrants were crowded together, 
 shut up and hemmed in, by severe and successive edicts. It 
 was still a mere village of wooden houses, roughly built with 
 unbarked tree-trunks, — huge kitchen gardens surrounding 
 each dwelling. But a rapid change was working both in the 
 appearance of the place, and in the nature of its inhabitants. 
 Under Tsar Alexis, the only German quality about the 
 Nicviictskaia Sloboda was the name, or sobriquet, of Nicniicts^ 
 which had clung to the suburb — a relic of the German origin 
 of its original inhabitants. English and Scotchmen now 
 held the foremost place, and among them — thanks to the 
 proscriptions of Lord Protector Cromwell, there were many 
 noble names — Drummonds, Hamiltons, Dalziels, Crawfurds, 
 Grahams, Leslies, and, at a later period, Gordons. No 
 Frenchmen as yet. They were coldly looked on, as Catholics, 
 and, yet more, as Jansenists. The Jacobites were the only 
 exceptions to this rule, — their proscribed condition being 
 taken to vouch for their fidelity. 
 
 Later on, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was to 
 earn the same confidence for the subjects of the Most 
 Christian King. The Jacobites lived somewhat apart. They 
 were no traders, nor in any way industrious. Yet they 
 were a powerful factor in the budding prosperity of the 
 Sloboda. Their education and demeanour inspired the 
 Muscovites with a sense of respect. The German troopers 
 of the first period had taught the natives nothing, save the 
 manners of Wallenstcin's camp. In the professional class, 
 soon to be added to this ari.stocratic one — merchants, tcaciiers, 
 physicians, apothecaries, traders, artists — the dominant ele- 
 ment was Dutch ; but the quality of the German contingent, 
 mingled with it, improved. Both nationalities brought with 
 them, and exenifilified, the special \iitues of their race ; — a 
 
THE KREML, AND THE GERMAN FAUBOURG 17 
 
 spirit of enterprise, perseverance, piety, family affection, a 
 common aspiration towards an ideal of order, of domestic 
 peace, and fruitful toil. The Dutch had a Calvinist, the 
 Germans, two Lutheran pastors ; but, face to face with 
 the barbarians, religious dissension appears to have died 
 away. Liberty reigned in the Sloboda, save in the case of 
 the Catholics, who were forbidden to have a priest. Schools 
 became numerous. Patrick Gordon, a Scotchman, followed 
 the proceedings of the London Royal Society. English 
 ladies sent for bales of novels and poetry by British writers. 
 Pleasure was moderate and decent in its course. At 
 German gatherings, the dance known as ^ Grossvatertanz' 
 was considered the wildest form of entertainment. There 
 was a theatre, frequented by Tsar Alexis, where he saw a 
 performance of Orphee. 
 
 Politics played a considerable part in the life of the 
 colony. The members of the Diplomatic Corps, who all 
 resided in it, the English, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish 
 residents, represented the interests, or stirred the passions, 
 of the various Protestant powers. The Dutch resident, Van 
 Keller — rich, cultivated, cautious, and adroit — held .quite a 
 special position, before which the Muscovites themselves 
 respectfully bowed. He sent a weekly messenger to the 
 Hague, and the Western news he thus received made the 
 Sloboda quiver to the echo of those great events which were 
 then working out the political fate of the European world.^ 
 The German traveller, Tanner,^ who visited the colony in 
 1678, carried away a most pleasing impression, confirmed 
 and justified by an engraving dated early in the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 This shows us the suburb utterly transformed. Comfort- 
 able-looking brick houses, approached through flowery 
 gardens, straight alleys planted with trees, fountains in the 
 squares. The contrast with Russian towns of the period, 
 Moscow not excepted, is very striking. It was not to escape 
 the eye of Peter the Great. 
 
 In spite of Polish influence, in spite of its near neighbour- 
 hood to a country which brought Europe, so to speak, to its 
 
 ^ VulHcmin, after Posselt, Rcvuc Suisse, vol. xxix. p. 323. Briickner, Cultitr- 
 hisforisc/ie Stuiiien (Riga, 187S). 
 
 - Tanner, Legatio Poloiio — Liihuanica in Moscoviam (Nuremberg, 1689), 
 p. 71, etc. 
 
i8 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 very gates, Moscow was still, take it all in all, what three 
 centuries of Asiatic slavery had made it. Some sijjjns tiicre 
 were, indeed, which clearly marked a bej];inning of mental 
 contact with the intellectual world of the West. Certain 
 men here and there had cast off, plu'sicaily and morally, the 
 ancient B\v.antine Tartar garb. Ideas were shooting up, 
 some originating power had shown itself, a whole programme 
 of reform, a more extended one, as will later on appear, than 
 that which Peter himself undertook to execute, had been 
 sketched out.^ 
 
 The dawn of the new day was blushing in the sky ; but 
 the growing light fell only on a chosen and restricted 
 circle. Tsar Alexis did not, like Ivan, put out artists' eyes, 
 on the plea of thus preventing them from reproducing their 
 masterpieces ; but when Tsar Michael took it into his head 
 to engage the services of the famous Oelschlager (Olcarius). 
 there was talk of throwing the 'sorcerer' into the river, the 
 court mutinied, and the city was in an uproar. Another 
 foreigner, who entertained some prominent Russian lords at 
 dinner, saw them, to his astonishment, lay violent hands on 
 everything on the table, and fill their pockets!"- Within 
 the Krcml, after the Poles and mock Tsars were banished, 
 nothing changed a jot. Before Peter himself was driven 
 out, he never saw any faces but those of his immediate 
 circle. When he went to church, or to the bath, a double 
 row of dwarfs, carrying red silken curtains, followed him, 
 a moving prison, always with him.-^ The child was almost 
 stifled. At Preobrajenskoi'e he began to breathe again. 
 One day — back in the open air at last, and free to move 
 about at will — he will wander to the banks of the laouza, 
 and once he has seen the Sioboda, he will not care to leave 
 it. He will call all Russia to follow him thither. 
 
 But dark times are before him }-et, — the su[n-eme test and 
 ordeal of the Asiatic system. 
 
 ' This point of view has led certain historians into paradoxical exat^ijoralion. 
 v. Klioulchewslci, Lessons in History i^ir'cn at the Moscow L'nivcrsity, 1SS7-1.SS9 
 (iithof^raphed). I owe my knowledge of this work to the kindness of Mr. 
 Stchukin, a young Russian savanl living in Paris, to wliom I herehy beg lo 
 tender my i^rateful thanks. 
 
 ^ Solovief, vol. xiv. p. 1 1 2. 
 
 • Kotoshihin, A'«w;'ti (/«;///;,• the Keii^n of Alexis (.St. l'eler^1>ur<j, 1SS4), p. 19. 
 
THE KREML, AND THE GERMAN FAUBOURG 19 
 
 IV 
 
 In 1682 Feodor, eldest son and successor of Alexis, died 
 childless. Who was to be his heir? Since the death of the 
 last descendant of Rurik (1598) the throne had almost 
 always been won by a revolution. Boris Godunof gained 
 it by a series of assassinations. Dimitri conquered it by 
 Polish swords. Vassili Shuiski owed it to his election by 
 the nobles. Michael Romanof to the voice of the people. 
 Although some shadow of dynastic title grew out of this 
 last selection, the accession of Alexis is believed to have 
 been preceded by. an appeal to popular suffrage. 
 
 Of Feodor's two younger brothers, one, fifteen years old, 
 — Ivan, the son of the Miloslavski, — was sickly, three parts 
 blind, and more than half an idiot. A communication 
 addressed in 1648 to the ministers of Louis XIV. mentions 
 a 'growth on the eyelids, which prevents the young Prince 
 from seeing anything, unless they are lilted up.' The great 
 dignitaries of the Crown pronounced unanimously in favour 
 of Peter, the son of the Nar3'shkin, younger than his 
 brother by some five years. They shrank, so they averred, 
 from being converted from court officials into sick-nurses. 
 Doubtless the youth of the second brother gave them 
 fair hope of a longer period of practical interregnum, 
 during which they might continue to wield power. They 
 swept the boyards, who chanced to be present at Feodor's 
 death, and the patriarch Joachim, who had given him the 
 last sacraments, along with them. Here, as in Poland, 
 a vacancy on the throne conferred a sort of intermediate 
 sovereignty on the Head of the Church. Thus, in 1598, 
 the patriarch Job ensured the triumph of Boris. There was 
 nothing legal in what happened then, any more than in 
 what took place now. The prelate harangued the officers 
 and courtiers who chanced to be within the Kreml, and 
 made a brief appeal for their votes, which were given by 
 acclamation. The improvised electors appeared outside 
 the palace, on the Red Staircase, before the crowd attracted 
 by the rumour of the great events which had set the Court 
 aflame. A name flimg to the mob, — and the thing was done. 
 Russia had a Tsar, and that Tsar's name was Peter. 
 
 Not a word of Ivan. Not an attempt to justify the 
 
2C I'ETER THE GREAT 
 
 violence done, ill his person, to all the lavvsof hcredit)-. The 
 coup was nothintj, in fact, but a victory won by the Nar)'sh- 
 kin over the Miloslavski, — taken by surprise, no doubt, 
 and left defenceless, by the suddenness of the crisis, and 
 the swiftness of the denouement. An ephemeral triumph, 
 indeed, which scarcely lasted a month. On the very 
 morrow of defeat, the vanquished faction re-entered the 
 lists, backed by two unforeseen allies, two new political 
 factors, destined to change the whole face of the struggle — 
 the Tsarevna Sophia, and the Strcltsy} 
 
 ^ Sum.irokof, Dtr ErsU Aufstm,! der Strclilzen (Riija, 1772), p. 10. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE TSAREVNA SOrillA 
 
 I. The terem of the Kreml — Moscow and Byzantium — Memories of Pulchcria 
 
 — By the Tsar's death-bed — Ambition and Love — VassiH Galitzin. 
 II. The Streltsy—'Y\\e\x greatness and their downfall — Soldiers and Merchants 
 
 — Symptoms and causes of revolt — Popular movements — Sophia and 
 Galitzin desire to use the revolt to conquer power — The Kreml besieged 
 
 — Three da}s of carnage — Sophia's bloodstained power — Peter's down- 
 fall — Ivan's enthronement — A twin throne — The Regent. 
 
 ir. The real Regent — An Idyll, and a domestic Drama — Dreams for the future 
 — The stumliling-block. 
 
 \\. The childhood of Peter the Great — Exile — Open-air life — Studies and 
 games — The Astrolabe— The English boat — Soldier and Sailor — Preo- 
 brajtnskc)ie camp, and the Lake of Pereiaslavl — His companions — The 
 first-fruits of reform — Rough models of an Army, a Navy, a Society. 
 
 V. Youth — Mairiage — Eudoxia Lapouhine — Early widowhood — Peter returns 
 to his pleasures — Swept on by the current— The maker carried away by 
 his work — The instrument of a party — Aristocratic opjiosition — Peter iis 
 leader — Betwixt two civilisations — Roman Europe and Protestant Europe 
 — The choice — Preparation for the struggle — The convulsion. 
 
 In 1682, seven of Alexis' daughters were still living. One 
 alone, Sophia, has left a name in history. Born, like Ivan, 
 of the Miloslavski consort, she had already reached her 
 twenty-sixth year. I have alluded to her beauty ; certain 
 Russian writers, notably Sumarokof, and some foreigners 
 even — such as Strahlenberg and Perry, — praise it very 
 liighly. None of them ever saw the Tsarevna. The testi- 
 mony of the Franco-Polish diplomat, La Neuville, who had 
 that privilege, is more conclusive. He spoils the romance 
 in which Peter's childhood is supposed to have been 
 mixed up, but that is no fault of mine. 'A shapeless body, 
 monstrously fat, a head as big as a bushel measure, hair 
 growing on her face, sores on her legs,' — so his description 
 runs. The Little -Russian historian, Kostomarof, tries to 
 
 21 
 
22 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 soften matters. Foreij^^ncrs, he hints, mi.ijjht think Sophia 
 U'j[ly, but she may still have possessed <;rcat charm for the 
 Muscovites of her own tiine. Excessive corpulence, even as 
 in the East at the present day, was not likely to offend their 
 taste. But the silence, on this point, of the Monk Micdvic- 
 dicf, the Princess's confidant and devoted servant, coupled 
 with his persistent praise of her moral qualities, is very 
 significant. 
 
 On this latter question, every one, even La Neuville, seems 
 agreed. 'She is as acute, subtle, and shrewd in mind, as 
 slie is broad, short, and coarse in person. And though she 
 has never read Machiavelli, nor learnt anything about him, 
 all his maxims come naturally to her.' 
 
 Up till the year 1682, Sophia's life had resembled, 
 — outwardly, at all events, — that of all Russian girls of her 
 time, aggravated, as in the case of persons of her great 
 rank, by the increased severity of its retirement. The 
 terciii of the Kreml exceeded all others in this respect. It 
 enforced solitude, minute and complicated acts of devotion, 
 and frequent fasting. The Patriarch, and the nearest 
 relations, were the only visitors. The physician was only 
 admitted in cases of very serious illness. When he entered, 
 the shutters were closed, and he had to feel his patient's 
 pulse through a covering. The Tsaritsa and the Tsarevny 
 passed through secret passages into the church, where the 
 inevitable red silk curtains screened them from the curiosity 
 of other worshippers. In 1674, two young lords, Butourlin 
 and Dashkof, turning the corner of one of the inner courts of 
 the palace, came suddenly upon a carriage, in which the 
 Tsaritsa was driving, on pilgrimage to a monastery. This 
 accident endangered their necks. There was a searching 
 inquiry, which even took them as far as to the torture- 
 chamber. The princesses had no allotted place in any of 
 the solemnities, which, in the case of the rest of the Court, 
 occasionally broke the hideous monotony of a life bound by 
 rigid and unchanging etiquette. Thc\' never appeared, 
 except at funerals, when they followed the bier, always 
 impenetrably veiled. The nation knew nothing of them, 
 save their names, spoken daily in the pra^'ers of the official 
 liturgy. They knew nothing of it — nothing, so to speak, 
 of human life, beyond the narrow circle within which fate 
 had imprisoned them. Unable, on account of their rarik, to 
 
THE TSAREVNA SOPHIA 23 
 
 marry any subject, debarred, by their religion, from alliance 
 with any foreign prince, they were doomed never to know 
 love, nor marriage, nor maternity. So the law willed it. 
 
 Probably, even at that date, some compromise was 
 admitted, Otherwise Sophia would certainly never have 
 been able to play, and at a moment's notice, the part in 
 which we shall shortly see her appear. On 27th April 
 1682, Peter was proclaimed Tsar. On the 23rd of the 
 following month, a revolt of the Strcltsy had overthrown 
 his sole rule, and associated his brother Ivan with him on 
 the throne. Everything points to the fact that Sophia was 
 the arch inspirer of this amp d'etat — nay, more, that, for 
 the most part, it was her handiwork. 
 
 The tcrcm of the Kreml must have felt the direct influence 
 of Byzantine ideas, with all that historic mingling of 
 asceticism and intrigue, which made up the life of the Lower 
 Empire. Sophia and her sisters, watching by the bedside 
 of their d}'ing brother, must have called up memories of 
 Pulcheria, the daughter of Arcadius, who seized the reins of 
 power during the minority of Theodosius, and held them after 
 his death, with the help of Martian, chief of the Imperial 
 Guard. Some beating of wings against that barred cage 
 there must have been, — body and soul alike rising in revolt, 
 some dreams of liberty and love. Here, as elsewhere, doubt- 
 less, most palace revolutions had their source in such 
 hidden emotions. Sophia certainly saw some male faces 
 within the Kreml, besides that of the Patriarch, or even 
 those of her near kinsmen, the Miloslavski, — energetic men, 
 but dull-minded. Feodor, who kept his bed long before the 
 end, needed a woman's care. A member of his immediate 
 circle was ready to incite him to break the tcrcm rule, by 
 taking his nurse from within its walls, and to recommend 
 Sophia to his notice. That man was Vassili Galitzin. 
 
 A remarkable man, in more ways than one. In con- 
 temporary Russian history, in Peter's own life-history, he 
 marks a period. Better, because more clearly than Mat- 
 vicief, he indicates that slow preparation, that intellectual 
 and moral evolution, the extent of which may indeed have 
 been exaggerated since — but which certainly did precede 
 the appearance of the great Refor'"jer, and rendered his 
 work possible. He personifies that elite of which I have 
 already spoken, amongst whom such men as Morozof, 
 
24 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Ordin Nashtshokin, and the Patriarch Nicone himself, had 
 ah-ead)', in preceding reigns, inaugurated a new period, 
 an era of revolution. After playing an important part, for 
 several years, in the government of his country, Vassili was 
 concerned in the abolition of the Micstnitc/icstvo — an essen- 
 tially Abiatic custom, in virtue of which no subject of the 
 Tsar could occupy, with regard to a fellow-subject, any 
 position inferior to that which one of his forebears might 
 have occupied, in relation to an ancestor of the said fellow- 
 subject — thus forming an insurmountable obstacle to any 
 wise selection by merit, an endless source of wrangling, 
 whereby the action of the Government was much enfeebled. 
 
 He thought of organising a regular army. According to 
 La Neuville, he carried his plans for the future further yet, 
 and had dreams — far beyond anything Peter dared attempt — 
 of freeing the serfs, and making them peasant proprietors. 
 Father Avril himself, in spite of his having been detained 
 in Moscow, and prevented from going to China, during the 
 period when the future Regent was all-powerful, pa}-s homage 
 to his libcral-mindedness. The other boyards, in tiieir 
 hatred for Catholicism, overruled their colleague's decision.^ 
 
 Galitzin spoke and wrote Latin with elegance and ease. 
 Me was constantly in the German suburb, and was in close 
 relations with its inhabitants ; he received Gordon the 
 Scotchman at his own table, and vv'as himself attended by 
 a German doctor, l^lumcntrost. The Greek, Sj^afari, who 
 constantly appears in his circle, and who, by his favour, held 
 a prominent position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 
 {Posolskii Prikac), was quite a modern type of courtier-like 
 diplomacy, and cosmopolitan experience, who liad travelled 
 the whole of Europe, and into China, who drew out plans 
 for the navigation of the great Asiatic rivers, and corre- 
 sponded with Witsen, the Burgomaster of Amsterdam. 
 
 Galitzin's palace, within and without, bore every resem- 
 blance to an important European dwelling, full of valuable 
 furniture, Gobelins tapestries, pictures, tall mirrors. He 
 had a library of Latin, Polish, and German books. This 
 library was later to contain the manuscripts of Krijanitch, 
 a Servian, and apostle of reforms, to whom Peter, very 
 probably, may have owed his inspiration. He had three 
 thousand houses built in Moscow, and even built a stone 
 
 * J'oyaq^e en divers pays de f Europe (P.iris, 1692), p. 314. 
 
THE TSAREVNA SOPHIA 25 
 
 bridge, — the first ever seen in the countr}-, — for which a Poh'sh 
 monk supplied the plan. He had a passionate affection for 
 France, and caused his son constantly to wear a portrait of 
 Louis XlV.^v 
 
 His fall, and Peter's accession, ensuing on it, arc honestly 
 held by La Neuville, to be a catastrophe for civilisation. 
 He did indeed still cling, to a certain extent, to the era he 
 was striving to abolish. He was not free from superstition. 
 He put a peasant, whom he suspected of trying to cast an 
 evil spell on him, to the torture.'-^ He was accused, in later 
 days, of having tried to gain Sophia's favours by means of 
 a love-philter, and of having caused the man who prepared 
 the potion to be burnt. ^ But Peter himself was not altogether 
 free from weaknesses of this kind. Take him altogether, 
 this man, who was to end by being one of the young Tsar's 
 adversaries, began by being his worthy forerunner. 
 
 Born in 1643, Vassili Galitzin was thirty-nine years old 
 when Fcodor's illness brought him into Sophia's company. 
 He was married, with tall children of his own. With him 
 there stood, beside the dying man's pillow, Simon Polotski, a 
 Little-Russian priest, a man of great knowledge for those 
 times, Silvester Miedviedief, a learned monk, a bibliographer 
 and court poet, and Hovanski, a soldier, much favoured 
 by the Stjr/lsy. Thus a political group, the elements of 
 which may have previously drawn together, and fused in the 
 dark shadow, was here assembled, Miedviedief was the soul 
 of the combination, but Galitzin held the foremost place 
 by Sophia's side, and held it by the power of love. 
 
 The Tsarevna was twenty-five, and, to La Neuville's eyes, 
 looked forty. Naturally hot-blooded and passionate, she had 
 never, as yet, felt the full current of life ; and when, at one and 
 the same moment, her mind and heart awoke, she cast her- 
 self into the stream fearlessly, furiously, — surrendered herself 
 utterly to the mighty flood which carried her along with it. 
 Ambition came to her with love. She naturally associated 
 the man without whom success would have had no charm 
 for her, with her ambitious projects. She incited him, 
 more than he her, to scale the heights of fortune they 
 might share together. Personally, he appears to us timid, 
 
 ^ Solovicf, I/istojy of Russia, vol. xiv. p. 97. Avril, p. 296. 
 
 ^ J'.-liaboujski, Memoirs (Tazykop edition), p. 21. 
 
 ^ Qustrialof, History of Peter the Great, vol. ii. pp. 48, 344. 
 
26 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 suspicious, irresolute — he soon gives signs of dizziness and 
 distress. He would even draw back at the supreme moment, 
 but for Miedvicdief and Ilovanski. Miedvicdicf spurs the 
 conspirators onward, inspires them with his own passion, 
 his own feverish love of combat. Ilovanski suj)plies the 
 formidable weapon he needs, for the successful carrying out 
 of his designs. 
 
 II 
 
 In 1682 the Strcltsy — called into existence by Ivan the 
 Terrible and his companion in arms, Adashef — had but a 
 short record and a somewhat tarnished glory behind them. 
 Yet, such as it was, they had contrived to turn it into a 
 capital, on which they lived in liberal fashion. Free men, 
 all of them, soldiers from father to son, they formed a 
 privileged military class, in the midst of the general servi- 
 tude, and their very privileges had won them an importance 
 quite out of proportion with their natural business and 
 service. They were lodged, equipped, and paid by the 
 state, in times of peace, while other free men were 
 forced to serve unpaid, and at their own charges, even in 
 time of war. They had a special administration of their 
 own, and a separate commandant, who was always an im- 
 portant boyard. In times of peace they kept order in the 
 streets, did patrol duty, furnished sentries, and guards of 
 honour, and served as firemen. One regiment of picked 
 men {Stroiiiannyi), (' the spur regiment ' ) attended the 
 Tsar whenever he went beyond the city walls. In war time 
 the Streltsy formed the vanguard and the backbone of his 
 army. There were twenty regiments at Moscow, eight 
 hundred to one thousand men in each, distinguished by the 
 colour of their uniforms — red, blue, or green kaftans with 
 broad red belts, yellow boots, and velvet fur trimmed caps, — 
 and a varying number in the provinces. Their military 
 duties not filling all their time, they went into trade and 
 manufactures; and, seeing they paid neither licence nor taxes, 
 they easily grew rich. Hence many well-to-do burgesses of 
 Moscow prayed for leave to be inscribed upon their lists, but 
 they were an exclusive set, and would have no intruders.^ 
 
 It was to them that Boris Godunof owed his victory 
 
 ' Oustrialof, vol. 1. p. 17, etc. Berg, The l\cign of Tsar Ft'odor (Petersburg, 
 1829), vol. ii. p. 36, etc. Ilerrmnnn, GeschichU Ktisslands (Goth.i, 1846-1860), 
 vol. iv. p. I , etc. 
 
THE TSAREVNA SOPHIA 27 
 
 over the Samoavauiets Dimitri ; under Tsar Michael, they 
 captured Marina Mniszech and her last partisan, Zaroutski ; 
 they took Smolensk from the Poles under Alexis, and de- 
 fended Tshiguirin against the Turks, under Feodor. During 
 the long internal and external crisis of the seventeenth 
 century, they constantly took sides with the regular power, 
 they conquered Rasin, the rebel Cossack, and practically 
 saved the monarchy ; but the troubles of that time reacted 
 on them, set up the ferment of agitation in their ranks. 
 
 Idleness completed the work of corruption. These natural 
 champions of order had, for some time before the period of 
 which I write, been making common cause with insurgents 
 of all kinds, even giving the signal for riots. Riots, among 
 the lower classes, had indeed become the order of the 
 day. Official greed and corruption, and all their consequent 
 abuses, had revolted the popular soul. Here, too, in this 
 half- formed society, face to face with a rotting State, the 
 way was prepared for Peter's coming. Though with less 
 cause for complaint, the Streltsy raised their voices above 
 those of all other grumblers. Their soldierly qualities, as 
 was soon to be proved, had become, and were to remain, less 
 than indifferent. But they were terrible brawlers. A day 
 of tempest was to convert them, ere long, into the fiercest 
 of ruffians. Alarming symptoms were evident among them 
 before Fcodor's death. The regiment of Siemion Griboicdof 
 rose against its colonel, accusing him of peculation ; — of 
 stealing their pay and forcing them to work on the building 
 of a country house of his, on Sundays. Thanks to the 
 weakness of the Government, standing between a dying 
 Sovereign, and heirs still in their childhood, the contagion 
 spread. When the Naryshkins came to power with Peter, 
 they found sixteen regiments in a flame. Sorely puzzled, 
 they sent for the exiled Matvicief, the founder of their 
 fortunes, the experienced statesman ; and, pending the 
 arrival of their saviour, they sacrificed the colonels of the 
 regiments. The pravicje, a punishment reserved for in- 
 solvent debtors, was applied. Before the assembled troops, 
 the incriminated officers were beaten with rods on the fleshy 
 parts of their legs, until they disgorged all their really, or 
 presumedly, ill-gotten gains. This torture lasted many hours, 
 but did not kill the colonels. But all discipline v;as destroyed, 
 and the wild beast thus unmuzzled in the ranks of this 
 
28 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Prctorian Guard, only waited the appearance of an easy 
 prey to make its sprin*:^ and use its claws. Sophia and her 
 councillors offered it the Xaryshkin party. 
 
 The stroke was prepared, the insurrection planned, swiftly 
 and boldly, — cynically too, almost openly. The Tsarevna's 
 uncle, Ivan Miloslavski, denounced in later years by Peter 
 as the chief author of the shameful deed, and hunted by 
 him with savage hatred to his grave, made himself desper- 
 ately busy, spreading h'ing tales, fanning the tiamcs of rage. 
 There was a story that the Narj-shkins had poisoned 
 Ft§odor, that they were ill-using Peter's elder brother, the 
 dispossessed Tsarevitch, that one of the family desired to 
 mount the throne. A Naryshkin, followed by a troop of 
 armed men, was seen ill-treating the wife of one of the 
 Siirltsy. He was an agent of the Miloslavski in disguise. 
 Feodora Rodinitsa, a confidant of So]:)hia's, went about the 
 streets, slipped even into the soldier's quarters, sowing 
 venomous words, and coin, and promises, broadcast. 
 
 But the conspirators awaited their pre-arranged signal, 
 Matvieiefs arrival. The Strdtsy, perfect in their part, 
 welcomed their former chief, and lulled his suspicions to 
 rest. On May iith, 1682, a dejjutation from the twenty 
 regiments brought him bread and salt. ' Honey on a 
 dagger's point,' said, later, the son of the unhappy old man, 
 condemned, doomed to his death, at that very moment. 
 Four days later, at dawn, the alarm sounded in all the 
 Streltsy quarters, the twenty regiments flew to arms, and 
 the Kreml was besieged. The gay-coloured kaftans had 
 been put aside for the nonce, and the Streltsy all wore their 
 red shirts, with sleeves rolled elbow high, — fell sign of the 
 work for which they had risen so early. Soldiers they were 
 no more, — judges rather, and executioners. They had drunk 
 deeply before starting, and wild with brandy, even before they 
 grew mad with carnage, they yelled in fury, brandishing their 
 halberts. They believed, or feigned it, that Ivan and Peter 
 himself had been assassinated, and professed to desire to 
 avenge their deaths. In vain were the Tsar and the Tsarevitch 
 brought out to them, safe and souml, on the top of the Red 
 Staircase. Desperate efforts were made to appease them, 
 but they would hear nothing, rccogm'se no one ; louder and 
 louder they yelled, 'Death to the assassins.' The head of their 
 own prikaz (office of management, — dcpariuicnt^, the aged 
 
THE TSAREVNA SOPHIA 29 
 
 Dolgorouki, came out upon the steps to call them to order. 
 Instantly two or three bolder spirits climbed the stairway, 
 clutched the old man, and threw him into space, while others 
 held up their pikes to catch him as he fell. ^ Lioubo ! 
 Lionbo ! ' 'that's good, that pleases us,' shouted the mob. 
 The massacre had begun. It lasted three days. Sought 
 out one by one, hunted through the palace, tracked into the 
 neighbouring houses, into churches, — the councillors and 
 relatives of Nathalia, Matvieief, all the Naryshkins, shared 
 Dolgorouki's fate. Some were slowly tortured to their end, 
 dragged by their hair across the squares, knouted, burnt 
 with red-hot irons, chopped up piecemeal, at last, with 
 halbert strokes. Nathalia made a desperate struggle before 
 giving up Ivan, her favourite brother. He finally sur- 
 rendered, of his own free will, at the prayer of old Prince 
 Odoievski, sacrificing his life for those of his family, which 
 the sav^age Streltsy undertook to spare. After having par- 
 taken of holy communion, in one of the churches within 
 the Kreml, he issued forth, clasping like a shield, in that 
 supreme moment, a sacred Icon. Instantly the image was 
 dashed from his grasp, and he sank in the sea of blood and 
 fury which still beat against the walls of the old palace. 
 It raged further yet, dashing over the town, lapping round 
 private dwellings and public edifices, wandering hither and 
 thither in search of the supposed accomplices of an im- 
 aginary crime, sacking and murdering everywhere as it 
 went. The rioters even fell upon the city archives, and 
 here we may discern a political intention — the desire to 
 endue their excesses with a popular character, — an impression 
 existed at the time that their object was to destroy all 
 documents bearing on the institution of serfdom. 
 
 And Sophia? Historians have essayed to clear her from 
 personal responsibility.^ This is all against the evidence. 
 Never was the maxim, Is fecit cui prodest, better applied. 
 Many vanquished there were, in those terrible days. One 
 conqueror alone appears, Sophia. So thoroughly does she 
 control the movement that she stops it, dams it up, the 
 instant she is so minded. A few words from Tsikler, a 
 mere lay figure, suffice to restrain the most furious of the 
 rioters. This Tsikler will be seen, on the very morrow 
 of the convulsion, in the Tsarcvna's immediate circle. The 
 
 ' Aristof, Disturbances at Moscow, during the Regency of Scfhia (Warsaw, i S7 1 ). 
 
30 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 most important posts, too, fall to her former friends 
 Ilovan.ski, Ivan Miloslavski, Vassili Galitzin. After the 
 hunt the quarry is divided. She takes her own share as a 
 natural ri^jht. Peter still remaininf:^ titular Sovereign, she 
 holds his power, as dc facto Regent, till more come to her. 
 Finall}-, she gives those who have done her such good 
 service their reward. To the Strcltsy, ten roubles each for 
 their pains, and, though the goods of their victims, which 
 they claim, are not given them openly, means are found to 
 afford them satisfaction, by putting the property up for 
 sale, and reserving them the right of purchase. They are 
 tenderly treated, for they will soon be needed afresh. And 
 on May 23rd the>' are at the Kreml again, clamouring to have 
 Ivan associated with Peter on the throne, which, thus divided, 
 will be more easily held in subjection. Measures have been 
 already taken to have the Patriarch and a ^e.\w boyards at 
 hand, there is talk of Joseph and Pharaoh, of Arcadius and 
 Honorius, of Basil and Constantine. Michael and Philarctus, 
 whose sovereignty left unpleasing memories behind it, are 
 entirely o\-crlookcd. There is another mock election, and 
 the famous double-seated throne is set up. Even this does 
 not suffice. Ivan, infirm, an idiot, must have precedence. 
 More rioting, yet another sham elective assembly. This 
 time Sophia casts off tlie mask completely. When Ivan 
 is proclaimed chief Tsar, the rioters are feasted, and the 
 Tsarevna does the honours. Their hands, like their shirts, 
 are bloodstained still, but she pours wine for them with 
 her own. They prove their gratitude by returning on the 
 29th of May, and conferring on her the title of Regent. 
 
 Ill 
 
 She has gained the summit at last; but her sole object In 
 reaching it, at the price of so many crimes, has been to taste 
 the delights of power with, and through, the chosen one of 
 her heart. All others must bow before him. Her will is 
 that he should command. During her seven years of 
 regency the real master of Russia — the real Regent — is 
 Vassili Galitzin. 
 
 The Tsarevna's virtue, like her political honesty, has 
 found defenders ; but the amorous Princess has herself 
 undertaken the task of enlightening us upon the point, and 
 
THE TSAREVNA SOPHIA 31 
 
 giving the facts their true historical values. Five years 
 have gone by. She reigns at the Kreml, and Galitzin is 
 bringing a disastrous Crimean campaign — she alone believes 
 it to have crowned him with laurels — to its close. Within a 
 short time he is to be with her at Moscow, and she writes — 
 ' Batiiis/ika, my hope, my all, God grant thee many years 
 of life. This is a day of deep gladness to me, for God our 
 Saviour has glorified His name, and His Mother's, by thee, 
 my all ! Never did divine grace manifest itself more clearly. 
 Never did our ancestors see greater proof of it. Even as 
 God used Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, so has 
 He led us across the desert by thy hand ! Glory be to Him, 
 who has showed us His infinite mercy by thee! What can 
 I do, oh my love, to fitly recompense thy mighty toil ! Oh 
 my joy, oh delight of my eyes! Dare I really believe, oh my 
 heart, that soon I shall see thee again, who art all the world 
 to me? That day will be a great one to me, which brings 
 thee once more to my side, oh my soul ! if that were 
 possible I would recall thee now, in a few moments, by 
 some magic invocation. Thy letters all come safely, by 
 God's mercy. The news of the battle of Perekop arrived on 
 the nth. I was making a pilgrimage that day, on foot, to 
 the monastery of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross ( Vozdvi- 
 jenski). Just as I neared the convent of St. Sergius, thy 
 messenger joined me. I hardly know how the rest of my 
 journey was accomplished. I read as I walked along. 
 How shall I prove my gratitude to God, to His Blessed 
 Mother, to the merciful Saint Sergius, worker of miracles? 
 Thou biddest me give alm.s to the convents, I have loaded 
 them all with gifts. I have gone on pilgrimage to every 
 one, on foot, as to the finst. The medals are not ready yet. 
 Have no care for them ; the moment they are ready I will 
 send them. Thou wouldst have me pray ? I do pray, and 
 God, who hears me, knows how I long to see thee, oh my 
 world, oh my soul ! I trust in His mercy, which will grant 
 me to see thee soon, oh all my hope ! As for the army, thou 
 shalt decide as thou wilt. For myself, I am well, thanks, 
 doubtless, to thy prayers ; all here are well. When God shall 
 permit me to see thee again, I will tell thee all, oh all m\' world! 
 thou shalt know my life, my occupations ; but do not delay, 
 cf)me, — yet do not hurry over much, j'ou must be weary. 
 What shall I do to reward you for everything, and above all 
 
32 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 others? No other would have done what thou hast done; 
 and thou hast spent so much pains before thou couldst 
 succeed.^ SoPlilA.' 
 
 This letter, though not precise])- modelled on the style of 
 Mile. Scudcri's heroines, is none the less conclusive. If La 
 Neuville is to be believed, Sophia would have made no 
 difficulty about bestowing the reward of which she held her 
 hero worthy. But there was an obstacle to this expression ot 
 her transports of ingratitude, — an obstacle called the Princess 
 Galitzin ; and, unluckily, the hero refused to do what was 
 necessary to Ljet rid of it, — 'feeling naturally bound to her 
 in honour, besides that he had received a great dowry 
 with her, and that his children by her were far dearer to 
 him than those he had by the Princess {the Tsarevfia), 
 whom he only cared for on account of her fortune.' Yet, 
 the chronicler proceeds, 'Women are ingenious, she (Sophia) 
 contrived to persuade him (Galitzin) to induce his wife to 
 become a nun, which done, according to Muscovite law, any 
 husband, on the excuse of the ph)'sical impossibility of his 
 remaining in celibacy, could obtain permission to marry 
 again. The good lady having freely consented, the Princess 
 counted fully on the success of her plans.' ^ 
 
 She was reckoning without another barrier, which rose 
 suddenly between her and what had looked like the 
 approaching realisation of her dearest hopes. 
 
 IV 
 
 As may well be imagined, the son of Nathalia Naryshkin 
 played a merely passive part amidst the terrible convul- 
 sions which more than once shook the heavy diadem of 
 Ivan the Terrible on his young brow, and filled his eyes 
 with bloody visions. Flattering legends have indeed 
 pictured him, as startling the world, by a courage beyond 
 his years, braving assassins, and driving them back under 
 the fire and majesty of his glance. At the same time his 
 opening genius, no less precocious, threw the exploits of 
 Pic de la Mirandola quite into the shade. He is described, 
 at three years old, as commanding a regiment, and prcscnt- 
 
 ' Published by Oustrialof, vol. i. p. 3S3. 
 
 2 Dcsixitch from the French Afjent, La Vic, dated Nov. 10, 1718, quoting 
 Peter's own words, in contirniation of iliese details (Foreign Oftice, I'aris). 
 
THE TSAREVNA SOPHIA 33 
 
 ing reports to his father. At eleven, under the tuition 
 of a Scotchman, Menesius, he has sounded all the mysteries 
 of military art, and has adopted personal and generally 
 innovating views, concerning several. I value legends, but 
 1 do not shrink from the necessity of contradicting them 
 when they seem historically incorrect. In this matter they 
 are completely so. Physically, and intellectually, the great 
 man's development would, as a matter of fact, appear 
 to have been somewhat slow. The colossus had some 
 trouble in getting on its legs : at three years old, he had not 
 parted from his wet nurse ; at eleven he could neither read 
 nor write. The baby strategian and his regiment {Pietrof- 
 Polk), on the subject of which another, and in most respects 
 well-informed, historian, in what is otherwise a curious 
 study, complacently dwells, are a pure and simple fiction.^ 
 I go further : never, even at a more advanced age, does Peter 
 give signs of great natural courage. He is far too nervous, 
 too easily excited ; his first appearances on the stage which 
 was to ring with the sound of his exploits, had nothing 
 heroic about them. Courage, like wisdom, came to him 
 late, and both were the result of one and the same effort of a 
 will strengthened by repeated trials. The terrible experi- 
 ences, the anguish, the terrors, which assailed his youth, left 
 an indelible mark on his character and temperament ; — an 
 evident proneness to the easy disturbance of the physical 
 and moral faculties, by any violent shock, — an instinctive 
 recoil of his whole being, in face of danger, — an inclination to 
 bewilderment, and loss of self-control. His will takes the 
 upper hand at last, and nature, once conquered, is all the 
 better servant ; but there the nature is, always, and un- 
 changing. Hence, Peter will all his life be a timid man, and 
 for that very reason, a violent one as well, — with a violence 
 not invariably conscious, and frequently calculated, like that 
 of Napoleon, but absolutely unreflecting, breaking away, 
 momentarily, from the control of his reason and his will. 
 This defect, to which I have already referred, this brand of 
 the cripple, he will carry with him all his life, graven in his 
 flesh; — the fierce expression of his harsh imperious features 
 twisted by a sudden convulsion. It has been said that an 
 attempt to poison him thus left its mark : whether the poison 
 were physical or moral matters little, its effect is the im- 
 
 ' Zabiclin, The Childhood of Peter the 6'r^a/ (Moscow, 1S72). 
 
34 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 portant matter. The venom instilled into the poor child's 
 veins, when the Strcitsj drew his little feet through his 
 uncle's blood, seems to me the most probable of the two. 
 
 He was frightened, as any child in his position would 
 have been frightened ; he hid himself, no doubt, in his 
 mother's skirts, and once more, without a shadow of regret, he 
 left the dreary palace, peopled with horrH:)le nightmares. 
 For Sophia's triumph condemned him to fresh exile — both 
 him and his, — put him outside the law, at least, and, happily 
 for him, outside the common rule. Exile, for this ten-year- 
 old Sovereign who was to grow up such an extraordinarily 
 turbulent man, meant room to stretch his limbs, air to 
 breathe, health for body and mind ; exile here stands for 
 freedom. 
 
 He makes the most of it. He does, indeed, return to the 
 Kreml, on days of high ceremony, to take his seat on the 
 twin-throne, specially ordered in Holland — still to be seen in 
 the Moscow Museum — but these are but transitory appear- 
 ances. The rest of the time is spent at Preobrajensko'i'c, 
 free from all the servitude and constraint of etiquette and 
 sovereignty, and nothing could suit him better. It must not 
 be forgotten that he is connected, on the maternal side, with 
 a hotbed of relative independence. When Nathalie first 
 arrived at the Kreml, her half Scotch habits caused a 
 scandal. Did she not even dare to lift a corner of the 
 curtain that screened her carriage window ? On his mother's 
 side, too, he is linked to a centre of European culture, but 
 fate has willed his separation from the Greco-Latin-Polish 
 School, the influence of which has hitherto prevailed in 
 Russia. The representatives of this school, led by Mied- 
 viedief, all belong to Sophia's party. One of his tutors, 
 Zotof, who also belonged to it, was forced to flee, and never 
 was rejilaccd. Left to himself, the child follows his own 
 fancy, leaning instinctively to foreigners. Thus he learns 
 many things, but hardly anything of military matters. He 
 will never be a great soldier, his mind is too practical, I 
 would even say too boiiJ\<^cois. He is described, at an early 
 age, as having laid the Oroiijcnnaia palata, the court arsenal, 
 under contribution. ]iut this seventeenth century Mus- 
 covite arsenal is only military in name. It really is a sort 
 of Eastern bazaar ; Peter sends there for watches, which he 
 amuses himself by taking to pieces, and horticultural imple- 
 
THE TSAREVNA SOPHIA 35 
 
 mcnts, the use of which he has explained to him. People 
 have chosen to exaggerate the extent of his boyish curiosity.^ 
 Let us take any child — a fairly gifted one, of course — with a 
 bright intelligence, let us suppose him absolutely removed 
 from the ordinary course of systematic education, and at the 
 same time perfectly free to satisfy the needs of his awaken- 
 ing intelligence, and his naturally active imagination. His 
 instinctive desire for knowledge will evidently turn in a great 
 variety of directions. Peter is an avroSiSaKro^;, as a diplomat 
 in his service, writing to Leibnitz, later expressed it.- 
 
 It does not in the least follow that he was a precocious 
 student. His exercise-books are still in existence ; at the 
 age of sixteen, his writing was bad, his orthography lament- 
 able, and he had not progressed beyond the two first rules 
 in arithmetic. His tutor, the Dutchman, Franz Timmer- 
 mann, had some trouble, himself, in working out a sum in 
 multiplication by four figures. It should be added that in 
 his lessons, arithmetical problems alternated with theorems 
 of descriptive geometry.^ 
 
 We who have a regular process of scholastic training, in- 
 variably and systematically graduated, shrink from seeing 
 an order of intellectual progress to which we are accustomed, 
 and which may after all be merely arbitrary, thus inverted. 
 But such inversions are frequent, in less precise and rule- 
 bound intellectual spheres than ours. 
 
 It is a mere chance, too, which interested Peter, at this 
 early age, in a class of studies which have but little charm 
 for most very young minds. In 1686 his attention was 
 accidentally drawn in conversation to a wonderful instru- 
 ment brought back by Prince James Dolgorouki, from a 
 journey abroad. With this instrument, he heard, distances 
 might be measured without moving a step. Nothing of the 
 sort had ever yet been seen in the Oroujemiaia palata. And 
 forthwith the astrolabe was sent for. Alas ! Dolgorouki 
 came back empty-handed, the instrument had disappeared 
 from his house — stolen, no doubt. Luckily, the Prince was 
 
 ^ Nastrof, The Early Education of Peter I. {Russian Archives, 1875), vol. ii. 
 p. 470. Comp. Pogodin, Early Years of Peter the Great (Moscow, 1S75), 
 p. 17, etc. 
 
 - Baron Urlnch, i6th Nov. 1707, in Guerrier's Leibnitz in seinen Beziehungen 
 zu A'// .f5/rt«(f (Leipzig, 1S73), vol. ii. p. 71. 
 
 ^ Oustrialof, vol. ii. p. 439, Cabinet of Peter I. {Imperial Archives), section i. 
 Look 38. 
 
36 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 upon the p.-)int of startin^r once more for the countries where 
 such wonders grew. Sophia and Galitzin were sending 
 him to Louis XIV., to ask his help ai^ainst the Turks. The 
 Most Christian Kini^ gave the Ambassador the reception 
 he might have expected, but the astrolabe was purchased. 
 When it reached Peter's hands, he was sorely puzzled, not 
 knowing how to use it. Somebody mentioned Timmer- 
 mann, and the Dutchman, who had been building houses 
 in the German quarter, became mathematical tutor at Prco- 
 brajcnskoTe. 
 
 Peter had neither time nor wish — nor, with such a master, 
 had he the means — to make great progress in this branch of 
 knowledge. In his case, the astrolabe was evidently, and 
 simply, the accidental manifestation of that instinct of touch- 
 ing everything, which is at the bottom of all childish natures. 
 Doubtless, the excessive prominence, in his character, of this 
 itching curiosity, is in many ways unusual, and denotes not 
 only a particularly formed and serious-minded nature in the 
 child himself, but also the existence of very special external 
 circumstances which influenced his mind. His ultimate 
 destiny made it necessary that, in the surroundings amongst 
 which he was placed, the things which should most power- 
 fully attract his intelligence, ever on the alert for new sensa- 
 tions — the most attractive, the most rz/r/'^z/i' things — should 
 also be the most useful and instructive points in the new 
 world, full of wonders, with which the circle of his own 
 existence was beginning to find contact. 
 
 For, it is clearly improbable — all legends notwithstanding 
 — that at ten years old, or even at sixteen, the future reformer 
 should have realised the advantage Russia would find, one 
 day, in being governed by a Prince who could \)\y fourteen 
 different trades. Fourteen is the number hallowed by tra- 
 dition ; but Peter never learnt fourteen trades. He did 
 study and practise a few, such as turning and dentistry, with- 
 out apparent profit to any one at all. ]5y this dispersal of 
 his attention, in spite of the breadth of an eminently compre- 
 hensive intelligence, he ran the risk of supcrficialit)' — and he 
 did not escape it. In later years, following the example of 
 his peers, and converting his natural inclinations into reasoned 
 aptitudes, he will perceive that to say to his subjects (a lazy, 
 ignorant, and awkward-handed nation), ' Do this or that, be- 
 stir yourselves, learn ! ' has less effect on them, than the 
 
THE TSAREVNA SOPHIA 37 
 
 powerful example of his own action. On principle, therefore, 
 but also and always by taste, by instinct, by temperament, 
 and in obedience to the pressure of the atmosphere around 
 him, he will go on bestirring himself, gathering up here and 
 there, pell-mell, and at random, every sort of knowledge, every 
 kind of facility, working everywhere, and on every under- 
 taking, with his own hands. And these same influences, 
 again, drive him, early in life, into the only line in which he 
 succeeds in becoming a good practical, if not a master-hand, 
 at the same time providing him with an inexhaustible source 
 of pleasure, if not of positive and enduring benefit, to himself, 
 and to his country. 
 
 Every one knows the story, — amplified and adorned, of 
 course, by the tellers, — of the old English boat, found in the 
 village of Isma'ilof, in a store of cast-off possessions, once 
 belonging to the great- uncle of the young hero, Nikita 
 Ivanovitch Romanof The legend, ingenious to the last, 
 will have it that Peter, as a child, had such a horror of 
 water, that he grew pale and trembled at the sight of a 
 brook. This may, perhaps, have been the mere sj'mbolic 
 expression of the natural difficulty felt by a landsman, an 
 inhabitant of the hugest continent in the world, about 
 entering into intimacy with that distant, invisible, unknown, 
 well-nigh unattainable, element. Peter will give Russia a 
 fleet before he gives her a sea. The whole character of his 
 life-work — precipitate, abnormal, paradoxical — is seen in this 
 one trait. When the old half-rotten wooden skiff, the 
 Isma'ilof boat, attracted the child's attention, it overcame 
 his instinctive repugnance, and confirmed him in his vocation 
 as a sailor. 
 
 No sufficient attempt has been made to explain the 
 presence of this boat, in a village close to Moscow, in the 
 very centre of terra firvia. When, some time later, Peter 
 established a shipbuilding yard some hundreds of versts 
 away, on the lake of Pereiaslavl, he merely followed a course 
 which had been already traced out, before him. That 
 strange thing, a navy without a sea, was his creation, but it 
 was not his invention. Properly speaking, indeed, he never 
 invented anything; this will be seen, as the series of his 
 manifold realisations is unrolled. Attempts had been made 
 in this direction, even under the reign of Tsar Alexis ; a 
 yacht, TJic Eagle, having been built at Diedinof, on the banks 
 
38 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 of the Oka, with the help of foreign carpenters, brouGjht in 
 for the purpose. Stru)\s notices this yacht fully in his 
 Travels} The idea was floating in the air, confused as yet, 
 but clearly directed towards the desired goal. 
 
 The Ismailof boat, like the astrolabe, at first appeared a 
 mysterious object in I'eter's eyes. The peasants, in old 
 days, had seen it sailing against the wind, — wonderful indeed ! 
 It was soon launched on a neighbouring pond. But how to 
 sail it? Timmermann was completely at a loss. Luckily 
 the artisans. Dutchmen too, who had worked at Dicdinof, 
 had not all disappeared. A few were living in the Faubourg. 
 Thus, Peter had two more teachers, Karschten-lkandt and 
 Kort, carpenters both. They advised the removal of the 
 boat to Pcreiaslavl, where there was a huge sheet of water. 
 Peter took their advice, and set himself eagerly to work 
 under their teaching ; but as a matter of fact, his principal 
 occupation at that moment was that of playing truant. Pie 
 did indeed learn some useful things, but chiefly he acquired 
 habits, and inclinations, — some of them deplorable. He 
 gained health, too, and vigour, iron muscles, a physical 
 temperament of extraordinary toughness, — save for, and in 
 spite of, his nervous attacks, the outcome of his hereditary 
 stain, — and a moral organisation, of marvellous suppleness, 
 robust, enterprising, except in those occasional moments of 
 weakness. 
 
 He made himself friends, too, — quite a little tribe, collected 
 at random, in his large domestic circle, in the pronn"scuity of 
 his vagrant existence — grooms from the paternal stables 
 {koniouJiy) who rode the little horses of the country with 
 him, barebacked, — scamps picked up in the streets. He 
 played soldiers with them, of course, and, naturally, he was 
 in command. Behold him then, at the head of a regiment! 
 Out of this childish play rose that mighty creation, the 
 Russian army. Yes, this double point of departure — the 
 pseudo-naval games on the lake of Perefaslavl, and the 
 pseudo-military games on the Preobrajenskoic' drill-ground 
 — led to the double goal, — the Conquest of the Baltic, and 
 the Battle of Poltava. 
 
 But to realise all this, to fill up the space thus indicated, 
 more was necessary than the passage of a unique personality, 
 however exceptional, from childhood to ripe age ; more than 
 
 ' .Amslcrdam, 1 746. 
 
THE TSAREVNA SOPHIA 39 
 
 the humanly possible development of an individual genius ; 
 there must have been a concourse of immense collective 
 forces — prepared beforehand, but motionlessly awaiting the 
 favourable hour, the man who should know how to use them 
 — linked to the natural effort. The hour and the man once 
 arrived, these were to be suddenly revealed, to use the 
 individual as much as he used them, to urge him onward, 
 quite as much as he was to stimulate their action. The 
 man himself was but the product of this latent energy, and 
 thus it is that, at the proper moment, he appears, rising out 
 of, and with, and by it. 
 
 Not only are the foundations of a fleet and an army laid, 
 amidst the boyish undertakings, ar.d the riotous companion- 
 ships of the fiery youth. A whole new society is takir.g 
 shape. All the old aristocracy, all the superannuated hier- 
 archy of Moscow, will soon be crushed beneath the feet of 
 the bold fellows, sprung from the stable and the kitchen, 
 whom he will make Dukes and Princes, Ministers and 
 Marshals. And in this again, he will only take up the 
 broken thread of national tradition. He will improvise 
 nothing, he will merely imitate his ancestors of the pre- 
 Mongol epoch, chiefs of a dronjina (fighting band) who 
 fought beside their drflu/iy, drank with them, when the 
 work was done, and refused to turn Mohammedan because 
 'drinking is the Russian's joy.' 
 
 Peter will always be a convivial comrade, and a heavy 
 drinker ; always, too, he wil^ keep the trace, an unpleasant 
 one in some particulars, of his taste for the comradeship of 
 the lowest of the population ; and he will leave something 
 of it in his work, and in the national life he fashioned. 
 The popular habits of the period preceding his accession 
 have since found eager apologists. Such praise should 
 surely be extended to the private personality of the great 
 reformer. This would be a hazardous undertaking. Un- 
 cleanly habits, coarse manners, degrading vices, the musty 
 smell of the wine-shop, a general atmosphere of c}'nicism, 
 all that is most shocking in his character, Peter picked up 
 in the street, in the common life of his country, before the 
 Reforms. He did wrong to keep these tastes, he did still 
 more wrong in desiring that his subjects should keep them. 
 
40 PKTER THE GREAT 
 
 The Tsarina Nathalia docs not appear to have realised, 
 until very late, the dangers her son ran among such com- 
 panions. She herself had others, very little better chosen, 
 who absorbed her. 
 
 The origin of the 'pleasure' regiments {potieshnyie) goes 
 back, according to the most reliable information, to the j-ear 
 1682; which fact suffices to deprive them, at th 2 outset, of 
 the serious character some people have attributed to them. 
 Peter was then ten years old.^ But in 1687, the young 
 Tsar's military games began to take on proportions which 
 attracted general attention. A fortress was built at Preobra- 
 jenskoi'e, on the banks of the laouza, whence cannon was 
 fired. The next year, the English skiff was discovered, and 
 from that time forward, Peter, drawn to PereTaslavl by the 
 dual attraction of fire and water, escaped all domestic 
 control. His life, it is reported, was frequently imperilled 
 in these sports, during which accidents frequently occurred. 
 To put a stop to them, Nathalia hit upon a plan which 
 seemed to her a certain one. ' Marry and change,' says a 
 Russian proverb. She looked about for a wife for her son. 
 He let her have her way. Unlike his future adversary, the 
 austere Charles Xli., Peter was by no means indifferent to, 
 nor scornful of, the fair sex. On the 27th of January 1689, 
 he led Eudoxia Lapouhin, the daughter of a prominent 
 Boyard, to the altar. But he set the proverb at nought. 
 Three months later, the couple had parted. He was tacking 
 about on the lake of Pereiaslavl, she, serving the apprentice- 
 ship of a widowhood which was to last all her life. Naviga- 
 tion has become more than a taste with the young Tsar, it 
 is a jealous and exclusive passion. Some obscure atavism 
 inherited from the ancient Varegians stirs his soul. He has 
 never seen the sea,— he never ceases dreaming of it, — he will 
 never know rest, till he has reached it. And this again is 
 according to tradition. For two centuries, every war under- 
 taken by his predecessors has had this object, — to reach the 
 sea on the North-west, by driving back Poland or Sweden, 
 or on the South-east, by driving back Turkey Still, even for 
 this, he will not part with his koiiio/i/iy. Already he plans 
 
 * See Oiistrialof, vol. ii. p. 329 ; ccjiiiji. Memoirs of Malvic'ief (Tmunanski 
 edition), vol. i. pp. 194-196. 
 
THE TSAREVNA SOPHIA 41 
 
 strategical combinations, for using and combining the naval 
 and land forces at his disposal ; and those same forces have 
 grown with the youth, who has already reached a giant's 
 stature. The toy has almost reached the proportions of a 
 weapon. In September 1688, the young Tsar requisitions 
 all the drums and fifes of a crack Strcltsy regiment for his 
 war game. In November, greatly to the displeasure of 
 Prince Vassili Galitzin, he takes two-thirds of the effective 
 strength of another regiment, and draws the teams for his 
 'pleasure' artillery from the depot of the komouslicnny'i 
 prikaz (stable department). There is a regular recruiting 
 station at Preobrajenskotc, and the grooms and cook boys 
 are not the only recruits whose names appear on the lists. 
 Those of 1688 contain the names of some of the greatest 
 Muscovite families, such as Boutourlin and Galitzin. 
 
 The presence of these aristocrats is in itself an absurdity, 
 one of those ironical surprises with which history abounds. 
 Peter, the unconscious artisan, as yet, of a great political and 
 social renovation, who knows not whither he goes, save that 
 he follows his own pleasure, has become the unconscious 
 instrument of a party pursuing a very different aim. His 
 work is confiscated, momentarily, for the benefit of tend- 
 encies diametrically opposed to it. These new comers, who 
 will shortly incite the future reformer to claim his stolen 
 rights, will one day help to swell the army of the most 
 resolute opponents of reform. But for the moment there is 
 no question of reform — far from it. The means by which the 
 Miloslavski, and, following them, Sophia, have, ensured or 
 obtained their power, — the abolition of the Miestnitchestvo, 
 the appeal to popular insurrection, — have bound their cause 
 up with that of the lower classes. The great nobility, that 
 section, at least, which remains most opposed to progress, — 
 wounded in its prerogatives and its ancient customs — has a 
 natural tendency to rally, first round Matvicief and Nathalia, 
 and then round Peter. So that the weapon, which amuses 
 Peter, is, in the eyes of those who now help him to forge the 
 blade, and sharpen its edge, destined to hasten the retalia- 
 tion of conservative and anti-European ideas, on the most 
 European-minded man Moscow has ever seen. ' Down with 
 Vassili Galitzin' will be their war-cry. Preobrajenskoie 
 has simply become a natural rallying point for malcontents 
 of every kind, and among these, the reactionaries, being the 
 
42 PETER Tlii: GREAT 
 
 most important, take the forcmi^st place. looter, himself 
 wouiuieti, c)utra;:jei.l, and stripped, I")y the transitory VLgiuic, 
 the close of which they so impatiently await, is their chosen 
 leader, the future avenger, so they fain would hope, of the 
 common injury. 
 
 But of this he recks not. He only cares for amusing 
 himself. He entertains himself, at PercTaslavl, sailing boats 
 whose canvas swells with no reforming breeze. Under cover 
 of his name, and with his concurrence, a struggle is brewing 
 between the silent Kreml and the noisy camp where he 
 spends his j-outhful ardour. But in this game, in which his 
 fortune and that of Russia are at stake, the only prize he 
 sees and covets, is larger scope for his schoolboy fancies. 
 Years must go by yet, before he finds his true path. Till 
 that time comes, careless of where the road may lie, he will 
 obetlicntly follow his chance guides. On the day chosen by 
 them, he will march to the assault of power, and will leave 
 them the chief benefits of his victory. 
 
 Thus, he steps backwards into history, indifferent alike to 
 his destiny and to his glory. 
 
 In Jul)', 1689, the storm breaks. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE MONASTERY OF THE TROITSA 
 
 I. Government under the Rej^ency — Its merits — Causes of weakness — Disap- 
 pointments and bitterness — Diversion to external matters — Tlie Crimean 
 campaigns — Disasters — Galitzin's return — Popular indignation — Peter's 
 party lakes advanta'^e of it — Tfie Kreml and the Preobrajenskoic camp 
 — Sopliia faces the storm — The conflict. 
 II. The night of the 7th of August — Attack or stratagem? — Peter's flight — The 
 convent of the Troitsa — The Archimandrite \'incent — Boris Galitzin — 
 The struggle is organised. 
 III. Parleys and mano:'uvres — Which way will the army go? — Sophia's courage 
 — Vassili Galitzin's weakness — Defection — The Regent submits — He 
 comes to the Troitsa — Exile — Question and torture — Sophia acknowledges 
 herself beaten — Her cloister — The new r<igi)ne — Peter's comrades in 
 power — The reaction — the Future. 
 
 I 
 
 Sophia's regency, justified, at all events, as it was, by Peter's 
 youth, if not its natural outcome, might, in 1689, have still 
 hoped to endure, more or less legitimately, for several years. 
 Peter was barely eighteen years old, and no Russian law — 
 lil<c that of Charles V. in France — has advanced the hour of 
 poh'ticai maturity in the case of sovereigns. Impatient 
 ambition may indeed endeavour to hurry the march of time. 
 But not Peter's own ambition ; he still cares so little about 
 power, that, for many a day yet, the accomplishment of the 
 great event will bring no change in his occupations. 
 
 The government of Sophia and of iier co-Regent, inaugu- 
 rating a gvnecocracy which, for almost a century — from the 
 tla}'s of Catherine I. to those of Catherine IT. — was to become 
 the general rule in Russia, does not strike me as having 
 deserved either the criticisms, or the praises, — all of them 
 equally exaggerated, — which have been showered upon it. 
 Neither Voltaire, who follows La Neuville in describing the 
 Tsarevna as a second Lucrezia Borgia, nor Karamzin, 
 
 following Leveque and Coxe, who calls her ' one of the 
 
 43 
 
44 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 greatest women tlie world has ever secn,'^ has, in my 
 opinion, done her justice. Ainong the old Russian historians, 
 Miiller in his criticisms of Voltaire's views,^ Boltin in iiis 
 notes of the History of Leclerc,^ and especially Emin* with 
 Aristof,^ among the moderns, have endeavoured, not altogether 
 successfully, to reconcile these contradictory exaggerations. 
 
 For my part, the government seems to mc to have had some- 
 thing exceedingly H)'7,antine about it. Xo Bj-zantinc quality 
 is lacking — Court intrigues, party struggles, Pretorian revolts, 
 liturgical quarrels as to how the fingers should be crossed 
 in prayer, how many times the word hallelujah should be 
 repeated, and whether, perchance, the Trinity should not 
 consist of four Persons, with a separate throne for the 
 Saviour of the world. Yet, other elements appear, which 
 raise it to a higher level. There is a continuation of that 
 economic springtime, so to speak, already inaugurated under 
 Alexis; a bcgiiming too, of an intellectual spring-tide. While 
 Galitzin was building houses in Moscow, Sophia was writing 
 plays. She had them acted at the Kreml ; she even, so some 
 ])eople say, acted in them herself. The policy of the regency, 
 internal and external, lacked neither energy nor skill. It 
 made a bold struggle against the abettors of religious quarrels, 
 who had taken the place of the rioters of former days, and 
 who came to the Palace, even as the Strcltsy had once come, 
 to seek the Patriarch, and wrangle with him. The chief of 
 the raskolniks, Nikita, was put to death. It defended order 
 with all its might, and. when the vSZ/rZ/jri' claimed the right to 
 disturb it, did not hesitate to punish its former allies. It 
 appealed from the rebellious soldiery, to the nation at large. 
 VVhen the Kreml was threatened, it removed the throne into 
 the protecting shadow of the altar. In October 1682 Sophia 
 and Galitzin took refuge in the convent of the Troitsa. 
 
 ' The Trinity,' standing some si.x leagues from Moscow, — 
 the traditional refuge of the Ro\'al house in hours of danger 
 — still retained all the characteristics of the great Russian 
 Obitiels : little fortified towns with a population of monks, 
 novices, and serving brothers, numbering their thousands, 
 
 ^ Karamzin, vol vii. p. 293. Levcque, Hist, de Russie (Paris, 1799), vol. iv. 
 pp. 204-234. 
 
 ^ Eiiuies, 1 7 50- 1 764. 
 » St. Petersburg', 1788. 
 
 * l.iDet of the Ktissian Sovcreis^n^ (9^^. PctcrsHu-!T. 1767-69). 
 
 * Rebellions in Moscow Jitrinq; the Kei^n of Sophia (Warsaw, 1S71). 
 
THE MONASTERY OF THE TROITSA 45 
 
 churches by the dozen, not to mention shops, workshops, and 
 trades of various kinds. Boris Godunof once souf^ht sheher 
 there ; and to this day the traces of the Polish balls which 
 rained im potently on the ramparts of that holy spot are 
 shown with pride. Thither, in his turn, and shortly too, 
 Peter was to come, to crave help and protection. 
 
 The appeal of the ad interim government had been heard, 
 and had procured it an army. Falling into an ambush at 
 Vosdvijenskoi'e, midway between Moscow and the TroTtsa, 
 Hovanski,nou' the hostile chief of the Strclts)\\oiX his head ; 
 his son shared his fate, and the rebellion, decapitated with 
 its chiefs, collapsed. 
 
 Abroad, — in the field of diplomacy, at all events — Galitzin 
 proved himself a faithful and fortunate exponent of the 
 traditional policy of territorial expansion, which had gradu- 
 ally set the frontiers of Muscovy farther and farther back, 
 towards the South and West. Taking skilful advantage of 
 the difficulties into which, in spite of Sobieski's victories, 
 their long war with Turkey had thrown the Poles, he snatched 
 Kief out of their hands. In June, 1685, a new IMftropolitan, 
 duly installed in the ancient capital, consented to receive 
 his investiture from the patriarch of Moscow. This was a 
 decisive step on the road which was to lead to the recovery 
 of the territories of Little-Russia and to the partition of the 
 Republic. 
 
 But these successes were compromised, unfortunately, by 
 the fatal consequences of causes connected with the very 
 origin of the Regent's power. When Sophia and Galitzin 
 put down the partisans of disorder and anarchy, they turned 
 their hands against the authors of their own prosperity. 
 Between the disappointment thus caused, on one hand, and 
 the bitterness roused, on the other, their policy became an 
 aimless struggle. It soon grew a hopeless one. The 
 very next year they were at their wits' end. When the 
 Bo)'ards — ill-treated and deeply discontented — seemed in- 
 clined to raise their heads, a mob was brought together on 
 the Loubianka, the most crowded square of the city. An 
 anonymous document had been found there, which coun- 
 selled the people to hurry in their thousands to the Church 
 of Our Lady of Kasan, where, behind the image of the 
 Virgin, another paper which sliould guide their course 
 would be discovered. Thither the crowd repaired, and a 
 
46 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 p;uniihlct, speaking evil of Sophia, and appealing to the 
 people to rise and massacre the lioyards who supported the 
 Tsarevna, was duly brought to light. This pamphlet, a mere 
 farce, was the work of Shaklovit}!, a new counsellor of 
 Sophia's, a representative of ancient Muscovy, in the purest 
 Byzantine style — a fierce and cunning schemer. The Tsar- 
 evna feigned terror, and her good people acclaimed her, and 
 offered to rid her of her enemies.^ 
 
 And now, even abroad, the luck began to turn. The 
 Regent, having promised Poland the help of the Muscovite 
 troops against the Turks, in exchange for Kief, made two 
 expeditions into the Crimea ; this again was the traditional 
 course. The Crimean Tartars formed a barrier between 
 Moscow and Constantinople, which Russia was not to over- 
 throw for another century. But there was nothing of the 
 great general about Galitzin ; in each campaign he left an 
 army, vast military stores, and the remnants of his reputa- 
 tion, on the steppes. Starting for his second expedition, he 
 found, before his palace door, a coffin, uMth the insulting 
 legend, 'Try to be more fortunate!"^ Returning to 
 Moscow in June 1689, a wild clamour, yells, and threats of 
 death saluted him. He was publicly accused of corruption ; 
 barrels of French louis d'or were said to have been openly 
 convej'ed into his tent. Meanwhile the Preobrajensko'id 
 camp was daily filling with new recruits, and Sophia saw 
 the ranks of her partisans melt before her eyes. Yet 
 she faced the storm bravely ; her ambition, and her love, 
 indeed, were at their very height. She had taken advantage 
 of the conclusion of peace with Poland to get herself pro- 
 claimed saniodicrjitsa (autocrat), with equal rank to her 
 brothers. This title figured, thenceforward, on all official 
 documents, and on occasions of public ceremony the Tsar- 
 evna took her place beside her brothers, or rather beside the 
 elder one, for Peter hardly ever appeared. She caused her 
 portrait, with the crown of Monomachus on her head, to be 
 engraved in Holland. At the same time, and notwithstand- 
 ing that, according to certain witnesses, she had given the 
 absent Galitzin an obscure rival, in the person of Shak- 
 lovityY, ^ she pursued the supreme object of her early dreams 
 
 1 Sliaklov'ilyi's depositions, see OuslrLilof, vol. ii. p. 39. 
 
 ' Avril, Voya:e en d vers F.ldts if Eurof'C et (V Aiic, p. 315. 
 
 8 Kouiakiii Archiva (.St. IVtorsljurg, 1S90-1895), vol. i. p. 55. 
 
THE MONASTERY OF THE TROITSA 47 
 
 — her marriage with the Regent and a common throne — 
 with ever-increasing ardour. To attain this end, she elabo- 
 rated a very complicated plan, which called for the intcr- 
 \ention of the Pope himself Ivan was to be married, his 
 wife to be provided with a lover so as to ensure the birth of 
 children ; Peter, thus put on one side, would be got rid of 
 somehow. Then, tempted by a proposed reunion, to be dis- 
 cussed and negotiated, at any rate, between the Orthodox 
 and the Roman Church, the Pope was to be induced to pro- 
 claim the illegitimacy of Ivan's children. The ground thus 
 cleared, Sophia and Galitzin would only have to cccupy it. 
 Meanwhile the Tsarevna was resolved to brazen it out. 
 While Shaklovityi, relegated by the Regent's return to the 
 subaltern position of a partisan and a police agent, kept his 
 eye on those few of Peter's friends who dared already to 
 cast aside the mask, she defied public opinion, by decreeing 
 a distribution of rewards to the companions in arms of 
 Galitzin, whose victory she still persisted in proclaiming. 
 Peter, well advised by those about him, refused his sanction. 
 She did without it : — here was open conflict! Generals and 
 officers, loaded with honours and with pensions, betook 
 themselves to Preobrajenskoie to thank the Tsar. He re- 
 fused to see them : — here was public rupture ! 
 
 II 
 
 The historic night of the 7th of August 1689 closes in at 
 last. A luminous summer night, darkened, unhappily, by the 
 contradictions of legend and of history. This much seems 
 tolerably clear. Peter was suddenly roused from slumber, 
 b\' fugitives from the Kreml, who came to warn him that 
 the Tsarevna had collected an armed band to attack Preobra- 
 jenskoie and put him to death. Nothing is less clearly 
 l)roved than this attempt of hers, nothing indeed is less 
 probable. The evidence of documents collected by the best 
 informed of all Russian historians, Oustrialof,^ would rather 
 go to prove that Sophia neither thought, nor, at that moment, 
 dared to think, of attacking the camp at Preobrajenskoie. 
 She knew it to be well guarded, kept on a war footing, 
 secure against any surprise. She rather feared, or perhaps 
 ^ See vol. ii. p. 56. 
 
48 PETER THE (iKEAT 
 
 fcifjncd to fear, an offensive niovcniciit on the (inrt of 
 these 'picasiiic rcL,Miiicnts,' full of spirit, all of them caj^er, 
 longing to distin'^uish themselves by some bold stroke. It 
 was a habit of hers, as we know, to feign terror, so as to 
 give the Stn/tsy or the Moscow populace a longing to 
 defend her. So little did she think of taking any action, 
 that until the next morning, she knew nothing of the warning 
 carried to her brother the night before, nor of its con- 
 sequences. For months ])ast, PreobrajenskoTe and the 
 Krenil had both been on the qui vive, watching, suspecting, 
 and accusing each other of imaginary atteinpts. When 
 Sophia, in the previous month, had paid a visit to Peter in 
 his camp, on the occasion of the Blessing of the waters of 
 the laouza, she had brought three hundred S/rc//sj' with 
 her. A few days later, when Peter went to the Krcml to 
 congratulate his aunt Anna on her fete-day, Shaklovityf 
 posted fifty reliable men near the Red Staircase, in case of 
 accidents. 
 
 An armed band was indeed collected within the Kreml, 
 on that fatal night. With what object? According to 
 Sophia's later assertion, to escort her, next morning, on a 
 pilgrimage. Among all those soldiers, several iiundrcds of 
 them, picked from the Tsarevna's most devoted followers, 
 there were only Jife who dropped a threatening word 
 against Peter or his mother. Two others, whose names have 
 gone down to posterity, Mielnof and Ladoguin, thought it a 
 good opportunity to desert, slip over to the Preobrajenskoie 
 camp, and ensure their welcome, b)' giving the alarm. Some 
 historians have tal ii them for false zealots, who obc\'cd a 
 watchword, given by the party instigating Peter to action.^ 
 This may have been. Let us get to the result, which is a 
 certainty. 
 
 Peter begins by running away. Without thinking of 
 verifying the reality of the danger threatening him, he 
 jumps out of h\S bed, runs straight to the stables, throws 
 himself, bare-legged, in his shirt, on to a horse, and iiides 
 himself in the neighbouring forest. A few of his KoiiiouJiy 
 join him there, and bring him clothes. Then come officers 
 and soldiers — only a {^^ as yet. The moment Peter sees 
 himself surrounded, and provided with a sufficient escort, 
 without waiting to warn his mother, iiis wife, or his other 
 
 * Pogodin, The Early Years of Peter the Great, pp. 183-226. 
 
THE MONASTERY OF THE TROITSA 49 
 
 friends, he puts spurs to his horse and tears off full gallop, 
 towards the TroTtsa. lie reaches it at six o'clock in the morn- 
 ing-, tired-out in body, broken down in mind. He is offered a 
 bed, but he cannot rest ; he sheds floods of tears, and sobs 
 aloud, terrified, anxious, asking thc^ Archimandrite Vincent, 
 twenty times over, whether he may reckon on his protection. 
 This monk had long been his devoted partisan, and even 
 his banker, in those critical moments through which the 
 deliberate parsimony of Sophia had caused him to j)ass.^ 
 His firm and affectionate words reassured the young Tsar 
 at last. Boris Galitzin, the Regent's cousin, Boutourlin, 
 and the other chiefs of the Preobrajenskoie camp, who 
 join the fugitive at the Troitsa, do better still. The events 
 which follow, like those already passed, give evident proof, 
 both that measures had been taken long beforehand, by 
 Peter's familiars, for the struggle now beginning, and that he 
 himself was quite incapable of taking any personal initiative, 
 or guiding part. His mind was wholly set on his lake at 
 Pereiaslavl and the boats he meant to sail there, as soon 
 as he could build as many as he chose. He left all the rest 
 to his friends. And he wmII leave them, now, full masters of 
 the situation they have created. 
 
 Before the end of the day, the Monastery is invaded, the 
 Tsarinas, Nathalia and Eudoxia, the PoticsJiny'ie, the Strcltsy 
 of the Souharef Regiment, long since won ovei' to the 
 younger Tsar's cause, arrive in quick succession. People 
 who found a road so quickly, must, surely, have been prepared 
 beforehand to take it. There is no sign of hasty concep- 
 tion about the measures for which Boris Galitzin forthwith 
 assumes responsibility. Everything seems arranged and 
 carried out according to a preconceived plan, and even the 
 Tsar's own sudden flight, possibly a foreseen, and therefore, 
 a prearranged event, would appear the signal designed to 
 mark the opening of hostilities between the rival camps. As 
 for the object of those hostilities, it is an understood thing ; 
 it scarce!}' would appear necessary to mention it. The fight, 
 if fight there is, will be to decide who is the master. 
 
 * Kourakm Archives, vol. i. p. 53. 
 
so PETER THE GREAT 
 
 III 
 
 Thc\- began by pailcyin^^. I'ctcr wrote to Sophia to ask 
 for explanations conccrninij the nocturnal armaments at 
 the Kreml. The Tsarevna sent an ambiguous reply. Both 
 sides were trying to gain time. One important factor had 
 not, as yet, taken any side in the struggle just beginning. 
 The troops, native and foreign, the majority of the Strcltsy, 
 and the regiments commanded by Gordon and Lefort, had 
 made no sign. The question was, which party they would 
 serve. On the i6th of Augu-it, Peter makes a forward step ; 
 a ^rrt///^?/rf (message) from the Tsar, convokes detachments 
 from all these troops, six men from each regiment, to 
 attend him on the morrow. Sophia answers boldly. Her 
 emissaries, posted at convenient spots, stop the Tsar's 
 messengers, while another gramota, signed by the Regent, 
 confines both troops and officers to their quarters, on pain 
 of death. At first this measure seems successful ; the 
 detachments do not answer to the call, and a story is 
 spread that Peter's grainota was forged. Yet slowly, in- 
 sensibly, the barracks empty, while the flow of soldiers and 
 officers, of every arm, increases at the Troitsa. Symptoms 
 of weakness are betrayed, even by those nearest to the 
 Tsarevna. Vassili Galitzin is the first to show the white 
 feather. He had thought for a moment, it is believed, 
 of going over into Poland, bringing back an army of Poles, 
 Tartars, and Cossacks, and then facing events ; but Sophia 
 must have dissuaded him from a plan which would have 
 separated her from her lover. Then, leaving her to her fate, 
 he yields himself to his own. retires to his country house at 
 Miedviedkof, three leagues from Moscow, and declares he 
 has no further part in the government. When foreign officers 
 come to take his orders, he gives them evasive replies, — the 
 irretrievable signal for general defection. 
 
 But the Regent herself will not, as }-et, acknowledge that 
 her brother has won ; she knows what she has to expect 
 from him. Already the leaders of the insurgent Raskohiiks, 
 crowding into the Kreml, have shouted, ' It is hi;.;h time that 
 you should take the road to the convent.' She would far 
 rather die. She sends messengers of peace, — the Patriarch 
 himself, — to the TroiLsa. The august emissary takes the 
 opportunit)' of making his private peace, and appears beside 
 
THE MONASTERY OF THE TROITSA 51 
 
 the Tsar at a solemn reception of the deserters, officers and 
 soldiers, whose number daily increases. Then she resolves 
 to play her last stake, and goes herself. Midway, at the 
 village of VosdvijenskoTe, where, seven years before, Hov- 
 anski's head had fallen in an ambuscade, Boutourlin stops 
 her. She is forbidden to proceed, and the Boyard's armed 
 followers load their muskets. She beats a retreat, but still 
 stands firm, and showers caresses on the Streltsy, most of 
 whom, bound b}' past complicity, by fear of reprisals, by the 
 temptation of fresh reward, remain faithful to her. They 
 swear to die for her, but, turbulent and undisciplined as ever, 
 they appear before the Kreml on the 6th of September, 
 demanding the person of Shaklovityi', the Tsarevna's con- 
 fidant, right hand, and temporary lover, that they may give 
 him up to Peter, desiring, so they say, to make him a scape- 
 goat, an expiatory victim, whose punishment shall appease 
 the Tsar's wrath, and effect a general reconciliation. She 
 gives in at last, after a desperate resistance, and from that 
 time it becomes evident that she can depend on nothing, nor 
 on any person, 
 
 Shaklovityi is a terrible weapon in Peter's hands. Put 
 to the question, under the lash, he supplies all the neces- 
 sary elements of the charges which the Tsar"s partisans 
 desire to bring against Sophia and her adherents. The 
 echo of his depositions draws Vassili Galitzin himself 
 from his retreat, and leads him, submissive and repentant, 
 to the Troitsa. This is the end. Peter refuses to receive 
 him, but on the intervention of Boris, he consents to show 
 him a measure of clemency. The ex-Regent is exiled to 
 Kargopol, on the road to Archangel ; then, farther North, to 
 larensk, a lonely village, where, all his wealth being con- 
 fiscated, he \\\\\ only have one rouble a day to support 
 himself and his family of five persons. There he will drag 
 on till 171 5 ; but the Tsar's half mercy goes no further. 
 Shaklovityi and his accomplices, real or suj"»posed, are con- 
 demned to death. Miedviedief, shut up at first in a monas- 
 tery, after enduring the most horrible tortures, comes to the 
 same end. The scaffold makes them all equal. 
 
 As for Sophia, her fate is what she had foreseen — a 
 convent, with some precautionary measures to increase the 
 severity of the punishment. 
 
 Peter's first care is to settle matters with his brother. In 
 
52 PETER THE r.REAT 
 
 a carefully composed letter, he denounces their sister's 
 misdeeds, but denies any intention of touching his elder 
 brother's rights, when he claimed those she had usurped 
 from himself. He even expresses his inclination to respect 
 Ivan's precedence; * he will always love him, and respect 
 him as a father.' He omits, nevertheless, to take his advice 
 as to the treatment to be meted out to the usurper. Ivan 
 Troi'^kourof, one of his early companions, is directly charged 
 to order the Tsarevna to select a convent. After a short 
 hesitation she too submits, and chooses the recently erected 
 Convent of the Virgin (NovodievitchyT,) close to Moscow. 
 The new regime has begun. 
 
 It is still an intermediate regime. Between Ivan, who 
 holds his peace, accepts accomplished facts, remains a mere 
 figure-head for ceremonial occasions, and Peter, who, the 
 tumult once hushed, disappears behind those who hcl|jed 
 him to pass victoriously through it, and returns to his own 
 amusements, the power falls to the real conquerors of the 
 moment. Boris Galitzin, a Muscovite of the old stamp, the 
 living antithesis of his cousin V'assili, begins by holding the 
 foremost place, occupied later, when he has compromised 
 himself and roused Nar)-shkin jealousy by protecting his 
 guilty kinsman, by the Naryshkins themselves, and the 
 other relatives of the Tsarina Mother. 
 
 The future great man's hour has not yet struck. The 
 serious struggle into which, for a moment, he has allowed 
 himself to be drawn, has not carried him beyond the limits 
 of the childish era of toy armies and sham fights. Yet, apart 
 from its immediate results, it has not failed to exercise an 
 all-important influence on Peter's destiny, on the develop- 
 ment of his character and of his talents. The young Tsar 
 does indeed leave business in the hands of his former com- 
 rades, but he has found others, new comers these, who will 
 rapidly oust the old ones from his affections, and who, if 
 they do not actually join him in making the historx' of his 
 great reign, are destined to point out the road and guide his 
 feet upon it. 
 
BOOK II— THE LESSONS OF THE 
 CIVILISED WORLD 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ON CAMPAIGN — A WARLIKE APPRENTICESHIP— THE CREA- 
 TION OF THE NAVY — THE CAPTURE OF AZOF 
 
 I. Peter's new comrades — Patrick Gordon — Francis Lefort — The nature of their 
 influence — Lefort's house in the Sloboda — A Rus.rian Casino — The fair 
 ladies of the Faiiboiirg — The Tsar is entertained — The Government of the 
 Boyards — Reactionary spirit — Annisenients at Preobrajenskoie — Warlike 
 sports — Pleasures — liuffoonery — The King of Preshurg and the sham King 
 of Poland — The Lake of Pereiaslivl — A fresh-water fleet — On the road 
 to Archangel — The Sea — Death of the Tsarina Nathalia — A short mourn- 
 ing — Peter goes back to his pleasures. 
 
 II. Russia's precarious position — The Tsar's weariness — He seeks diversion and 
 distraction — A foreign journev planned— Peler desires first to earn warlike 
 glory — Fresh campaign against ihe Turks — First attempt on Azof — Com- 
 plete failure — Peter's genius is revealed — Perseverance. 
 
 III. The greatness of Peter anti the greatness of Russia — The result of the Mongol 
 Conquest — Redoubled efforts— A second attempt — Repetition of the Siege 
 of Troy — Success — Peter can face Europe — He decide^ on his journey. 
 
 There has been a great deal of hair-splitting as to the 
 foreign companions who now make their appearance in 
 Peter's circle. P'acts and dates have been pretty generally- 
 mixed up on this subject, even so far as to make Patrick- 
 Gordon one of the young Tsar's confidants and instructors 
 long before Sophia's fall, and to indicate Lefort as the organ- 
 iser and principal worker in the coup d'etat of 1689. As a 
 matter of fact, neither came into contact with Peter till 
 during the time of his residence at the Tro'itsa, and it was 
 
 &3 
 
54 PETER THE GliEAT 
 
 not till much later that they were admitted into his intimacy, 
 and there played an important p.ut. Gordon had been a 
 follower of Vassili Galitzin. Lefort iiad no special position 
 whatever. 
 
 Born in Scotland, towards 1685, of a family of small Royal- 
 ist and Catholic lairds, Patrick Gordon had spent twenty 
 years of his life in Russia, vei;etatinfj as an officer of inferior 
 rank, and far from happy in the process. Before ever coming 
 to Russia, he had ser\ed the Emperor, fought with the Swedes 
 aganist the Poles, and the Poles against the Swedes. ' He 
 was clearly,' say his English biographers, ' a genuine Dugald 
 Dalgetty.'^ All his knowledge amounted to some recollec- 
 tions of the village school he had attended in the neighbour- 
 hood of Aberdeen, his native county, and to his military 
 experiences, in command of a dragoon regiment, in Germany 
 and Poland. In 1665, Alexis, and in 1685, Sophia, sent him 
 on diplomatic service. He thus travelled to England twice, 
 on commissions relative to the privileges of English mer- 
 chants in Russia, fulfilled his mission with success, but gained 
 no reward save a tcJiarka (goblet) of brandy, which Peter, 
 then a boy of fourteen, offered him, on his return from his 
 second journey. He considered himself ill-treated, requested 
 permission to retire, failed to obtain it, and was thenceforward 
 inclined to make common cause with malcontents. He took 
 part, however, in the disastrous Crimean campaigns, and 
 there won the rank of General. But, being naturally intelli- 
 gent, active, and well born, in his own country, he thought 
 •himself justified in aspiring to a yet higher position. Person- 
 ally known to the Kings Charles and James of England, 
 cousin to the Duke of Gordon, who was Governor of Pldin- 
 burgh in 1686, he was the recognised chief of the Scotch 
 Royalist Colony in the Sloboda. Speaking Russian, never 
 shrinking from a bottle of wine, he was, to a certain extent, 
 popular amongst the Muscovites themselves. His lively 
 intelligence, his external appearance — redolent of civilisation 
 — and his evident energy, were certain to attract Peter's 
 attention. The Tsar was always to lean towards men of a 
 robust temperament like his own. Patrick Gordon was, 
 indeed, afflicted with an internal malady, which finally carried 
 him off, but in 1697, at four-and-si.\ty )-ears of age, he closes 
 his journal with these words,' During the last few days I have 
 ^ .'^eslie Stephen and Sydney Lee, Dictionaiy of National Bio^^ra/'/iy. 
 
ON CAMPAIGN 55 
 
 felt, for the first time, an evident diminution of my health 
 and strength.' ^ 
 
 Francis Lefort arrived at Moscow in 1675, with fifteen 
 other foreign officers, who, like him, had come to seek their 
 fortune. He belonged to a family of Swiss origin, of the 
 name of Lififorti, which had left the town of Coni, and 
 settled at Geneva. His father was a druggist, and thus 
 belonged to the aristocracy of trade. The women of this 
 class had obtained leave from the Chamber of Reformation, 
 towards the year 1649, to wear 'double woven flowered 
 silk gowns.' At the age of eighteen, Francis departed for 
 Holland, with sixty florins, and a letter of recommendation 
 from Prince Charles of Courland, to his brother Casimir, in 
 his pocket. Charles lived at Geneva: Casimir commanded 
 a body of troops in the Dutch service. He made the young 
 man his secretary, giving him his cast-off wardrobe, worth 
 about three hundred crowns, and his card money, worth 
 about fifty more per day, as salary .^ This income, though 
 large, was far from certain. Two years later, Lefort 
 took ship for Archangel His first thought, when he set 
 foot on Russian soil, was to leave it as quickly as possible ; 
 but in those days, travellers could not leave the Tsar's 
 Empire when and how they chose. Foreigners were closely 
 watched — those who went abroad were looked at askance, 
 as possible spies. He spent two years at Moscow, where 
 he nearly died of hunger. He contemplated disappearing 
 into the relatively respectable obscurity of the household ot 
 some member of the Diplomatic Corps. He wandered from 
 the Danish envoy's antechamber, to the English Envoy's 
 kitchen, finding no permanent position anywhere. Yet, by 
 degrees, he won friends amongst the inhabitants of the 
 Sloboda. He found some kindly protectors, and even one 
 fair protectress, the rich widow of a foreign Colonel. In 
 1678 he definitely decided to settle in the countr}', and began 
 by taking him a wife. This was an indispensable beginning, 
 it being necessary, in order to disarm suspicion, to have a 
 family and a roof-tree. He married Elizabeth Souhay, the 
 daughter of a Metz burgher, a Catholic, with a fair fortune, 
 
 ^ Unpublished as yet, except in a derman translation. The original is in the 
 Archives of the St. Peiersburp; War Office. Some fragments appeared at Aberdeen 
 in 1S59, published by the Spalding Club. 
 
 * Vulliemin, Revue Suisse, vol. xxix. p. 330. 
 
 5 
 
56 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 and good connections. Two of Madame Souhay's brothers, 
 of the name of Bockkoven, Englishmen by birth, were liighly 
 placed in the army ; Patrick Gordon was son-in-law to one 
 of them. This fact, doubtless, induced Lefort to enter the 
 career of arms, for which he had otherwise neither taste nor 
 inclination.^ It was not from these two foreigners, clearly, 
 that Peter the Great and his army learnt what they had to 
 learn before they won Poltava. As I have already indicated, 
 their influence on the huge work of progress, of reform, and 
 civilisation, which is bound up with Peter's name, was really 
 very indirect. W'iiile it was yet in its infanc}-, they followed 
 each other, in rapid succession, to the grave. For the moment, 
 too, Peter cared for other things, and the lessons he learnt 
 from the old Scotchman and the young Genevan had no 
 connection with the science of Vauban and of Colbert. 
 
 Lefort now owned a spacious house on the banks of the 
 laouza, elegantly furnished in the PVench style, which had 
 already, for some years, been the favourite meeting-place of 
 the denizens of the Faubourg. Even during his absences, 
 they habitually gathered there, to smoke and drink. Alexis 
 had forbidden the use of tobacco, but in that respect, as in 
 many others, the suburb was favoured ground. Nobody 
 could organise a merrymaking so well as the Genevan. 
 Jovial, full of lively imagination, with senses that were never 
 jaded, he was a master in the art of setting people at their 
 ease, a thoroughly congenial companion. The banquets to 
 which he invited his friends generally lasted three days and 
 three nights : Gordon was ill after every one of them, Lefort 
 never ap[)eared to feel the slightest evil effect. During 
 Peter's first foreign journc)-, his drinking powers astounded 
 even the Germans and the Dutch. In 1699, in the month 
 of February, after an unusually festive bout, he took a whim 
 to finish his merrymaking in the open air. His folly cost 
 him his life ; but, when the pastor came to offer him the 
 last religious consolations, he dismissed him gail\', called for 
 wine and for musicians, and passed away peacefully to the 
 strains of the orchestra.^ He was the perfect type of the 
 
 ^ Korl), Diaritiiit ilinerisin .1/i?.r(-3<7</w (\'ic'nna, 1700), p. 214 — Comp. Oustri- 
 alof, vol. ii. p. 13; Alex. Gordon, History of Teter the Great, vol. i. p. 136, vol. ii. 
 p. 154. Solovicf, /Jislt'ry of /kussih, vol. xiv. ji. 142. /.a Ihoi^raphic dc Posscll, 
 Ir.inscrilied in Krencli by Vullicniin {Der Geticral iiini Admiral J-'rattz Lefort^ 
 Frankfort, 1S66), is full of curious informa'ion, hut devoid of tiic critical quality. 
 
 ^ Korb, u. 119. Oublrialof, vol. iii. pp. 262, 263. 
 
ON CAMPAIGN 57 
 
 mighty rev^eller, a species now almost extinct, though it has 
 left worthy descendants in Russia. Almost as tall in stature 
 as Peter himself, and even more powerful than the Tsar, he 
 excelled in every bodily exercise. He was a fine rider, a 
 marvellous shot — even with the bow — an indefatigable 
 hunter. Handsome in face, too, with charming manners ; his 
 information was very limited, but he had a polyglot talent 
 for languages, speaking Italian, Dutch, English, German, and 
 Slav. Leibnitz, who tried to win his favour during his stay 
 in German}', declares that he drank like a hero, adding, that 
 he was considered very witty.^ His house was no mere 
 meeting-place for merry boon companions of his own sex. 
 Ladies were to be seen there too, sharp-featured Scotch 
 women, dreamy-eyed Germans, and Dutch women of ample 
 charms. None of these fair dames bear any resemblance to 
 the recluses of the Russian tcrcuis, hidden behind their iron 
 bars and silken veils {fatas). Their faces are uncovered, and 
 they come and go, laughing and talking, singing the songs 
 of their own country, and mingling gaily in the dance. 
 Their simpler dresses, more becoming to the figure, make 
 them seem more attractive than their Russian sisters. Some 
 of them are of somewhat easy morals. All this it is which 
 first attracts and captivates the future reformer. 
 
 During the seven years of the Regency, in spite of the 
 tendencies common to Sophia and Vassili Galitzin, the 
 history of Russian civilisation could boast but few days 
 marked with a white stone. The government, ill at ease in 
 its precarious situation, tormented, harried, fighting for exist- 
 ence from its first day to its last, was scarcely in a position 
 to take thought for anything, save its own existence. But 
 during the seven years which followed on the coup d'etat 
 of 1689, matters, as I have already hinted, grew even 
 worse. This was a season of anti-liberal reaction, nay more, 
 of frankly retrograde movement. Peter did not cause, 
 but neither did he prevent it. He had no hand in the 
 ukase which drove out the Jesuits, nor in the decree by 
 virtue of which Kullmann, the Mystic, was burnt alive in 
 the Red Square. These executions were the work of the 
 Patriarch Joachim, and indeed, up till March 1690, when he 
 died, the government was svvaj'ed by his authority. In his 
 will, the prelate charged the young Tsar not to bestow 
 
 ' Guerrier, Leibnitz in Seinen Beziehuugen zu Kussland, p. 12. 
 
58 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 military commands on heretics, and to destroy the Pro- 
 testant churches in the Slobodn} I'cter was by no means 
 inclined to obey ; he even thoucjht of providinf^ the Patriarch 
 with a more liberal-minded successor, in the person of 
 Marcellus, Metropolitan of Pskof, but he lacked the power. 
 Marccllus, so he declared, in later days, was not appointed 
 for three reasons. P'irst, because he spoke barbarian 
 tongues (Latin and French). Secondly, because his beard 
 was not long enough. Thirdly, because his coachman 
 was allowed to sit on the box of his carriage instead ot 
 riding one of the horses harnessed to it. Peter was power- 
 less. In July 1690 Gordon thus writes to one of his friends 
 in London : ' I am still at this Court, where I have a great 
 deal of anxiety and many expenses. I have been promised 
 great rewards, but up to the present I have received nothing. 
 I have no doubt that when the young Tsar himself takes 
 the reins of government, I shall receive satisfaction.' But 
 the young Tsar was in no hurry to take the reins of govern- 
 ment, and indeed he never was where the interests of that 
 government demanded his presence. Where was he then? 
 Very frequently, after 1690. in the Sloboda, particularly in 
 Lefort's house. He dined there constantly — as often as two 
 or three times a week. Often, too, after spending the whole 
 day with his friend, he would linger in his company till the 
 following morning. Little by little, he brought his other 
 boon companions with him. Soon they found themselves 
 cramped for space, and then a palace, built of brick, replaced 
 the favourite's former wooden house. Within it was a ball- 
 room for 1500 persons, a dining-room hung with Spanish 
 leather, and a yellow damask bedroom, 'with a bed three 
 ells high, and bright red hangings'; there was even a picture- 
 gallery.'' 
 
 All this luxury was not intended for Lefort alone, nor 
 even for Peter, who cared but little for it. The young Tsar 
 was thus beginning a system to which he was to remain 
 faithful all his life. At St. Petersburg, many years later, while 
 himself lodged in a mere hut, he insisted that Mcnshikof 
 should possess a yet more splendid palace. ]3ut he ex- 
 pected to be relieved, by him, of all court receptions and 
 festivities. Lefort's palace, then, became, at one and the 
 
 ' Onstri.ilof, vol. ii. p. 496. 
 ^ VulHcmiii, p. 590. 
 
ON CAMPAIGN 59 
 
 s.ime time, a kind of auxiliary to the very shabby establish- 
 ment kept up by the Sovereign at PreobrajenskoTc, and 
 a sort of casino. The furthest gardens of the Sloboda 
 bordered on the village where Peter and his fortunes had 
 grown up together. There was dancing in Lefort's house 
 in the Sloboda, — there were displays of fireworks at Preo- 
 brajenskoie. This was a new mania of the young Tsar's, 
 He endeavoured, in later years, to justify the excess to 
 which he carried this pastime (originated by Gordon, who 
 had some knowledge of pyrotechny) by asserting the neces- 
 sity of inuring his Russian subjects to the noise and smell 
 of gunpowder. This, after Poltava, would appear somewhat 
 superfluous ; still Peter went on firing rockets, and com- 
 posing set pieces, with the same eagerness as ever. The 
 truth is, that from first to last he delighted in fireworks. To 
 the end they were his favourite form of entertainment. He 
 was no sportsman. Even as early as 1690 his predecessors' 
 favourite hunting-box at Sokolniki was falling into ruin. 
 Like his grandson, the unfortunate husband of the great 
 Catherine, he loved noisy display, and he carried all things 
 to extremes; the entertainment, to which a considerable part 
 of his time was now devoted, involved considerable danger 
 to himself and those about him, so incontinently did he set 
 about the sport. Gordon's journal of February 26th, 1690, 
 records the death of a gentleman, killed by the explosion ot 
 a rocket weighing five pounds. The same accident occurred 
 on 27th January, in the following year. 
 
 These displays of fireworks alternated with the manoeuvres 
 of the Potieshnyic, also presided over by Gordon, and 
 accompanied by serious risks. In a sham assault which 
 took place on the 2nd of June 1691, Peter was burnt in the 
 face by a grenade, and several officers close to him were 
 seriously wounded. Shortly afterwards, Gordon himself 
 was wounded in the leg. In October, 1691, Peter led a 
 charge, waving his naked sword. Officers and soldiers, 
 excited by the sight, fell on each other in real earnest, and 
 Prince Ivan Dolgorouki was killed in the scuffle.^ 
 
 The roughness and violence of these warlike games were 
 not in themselves absolutely unusual ; the times were rough 
 and violent. Charles XII., preparing for his career as a 
 mighty warrior, outstripped his future adversary in this rc- 
 
 * Oustrialof, vol. ii. p. 1S6. 
 
6o PETER THE GREAT 
 
 spect. But there is a special and characteristic feature about 
 the sham warfare in which Peter so deh'ghted, — the touch of 
 comic buftbonery it invariably bctra\-s, which indicates a 
 special tendency, destined to be considerably developed in 
 the youn<,f man's mind. The fort on the banks of the laouza 
 had grown into a little fortified town, with a regular 
 garrison, a flotilla of boats, a Court of Justice, Adminis- 
 trative Offices, and a Metropolitan, — Zotof, a former tutor of 
 the young Tsar's, whom he later created ' Pope ' or ' Patriarch 
 of the Fools.' It even had a King. This part was pla}'ed 
 by Romodanovski, who bore the title of King of Prcsburg, 
 (the name now given to the town), and, in this quality, warred 
 jigainst the King of Poland, represented by Boutourlin. 
 In 1694, the King of Poland was called upon to defend a 
 duly fortified place against a besieging army led by Gordon. 
 At the very first attack, without waiting for the effect, 
 reckoned on beforehand, of the operations prescribed by 
 science — lines of circumvallation, approaches, mines, and 
 so forth — the garrison and its commander threw down 
 their arms and took to flight. Peter was in a fury ; the 
 fugitives were ordered to return to the fort, and to figlit to 
 the bitter end. There was a tremendous expenditure of 
 cannon fire, which, in spite of the blank cartridge, killed and 
 wounded several people. P'inalK', the King of Poland was 
 made prisoner, and led into the conqueror's camp with his 
 hands tied behind his back.^ 
 
 It should not be forgotten, that at this period Russia was 
 at peace, and even in actual alliance, with Poland, and that 
 the real King of that friendly nation, whom all Plurope ac- 
 claimed, was called John Sohieski ! In a series of manoeuvres, 
 carried out in 1692, I see mention of cavalry drills, in which 
 a squadron of dzvarfs took part. In 1694, the church 
 choristers, enrolled in some new military body, were fighting, 
 under the command of the court fool, Tourgut^nief, against 
 the army clerks. 
 
 Peter was given up to his amusements. During this tran- 
 sition period, lasting nearly six \-ears, the whole life of the 
 future hero would seem to have been one perpetual merry- 
 making, one orgy of noise and bustle, broken, indeed, by 
 some useful and instructive exercises, but falling, for the 
 most part, into puerility and licence of the worst kind. At 
 
 ' Jeli;i1)Oiijski, Memoirs, p. 39. 
 
ON CAMPAIGN 6i 
 
 one moment he was learning to throw bombs, and climbing 
 to the top of masts ; the next he was singing in church, in 
 a deep bass voice ; then, straight from divine service, he 
 would go and drink till the morrow, with his boon com- 
 panions. 
 
 Von Kochen,a Swedish envoy, speaks of a yacht, entirely 
 built, from stem to stern, by Karschten-Brandt's pupil ; and 
 another foreigner mentions a note from the Tsar, inviting 
 himself to his house, and warning him that he means to 
 spend the night drinking.^ In the list of objects brought 
 from Moscow to Preobrajenskoie for the Sovereign's use, I 
 see mortars, engineering tools, artillery ammunition, and 
 parrots' cages. VVithin the fortress of Presburg, engineer 
 officers, pyrotechnists, skilled artisans of evcr\' kind, elbowed 
 the douraks (court fools), who killed soldiers for a joke, and 
 escaped all punishment.^ 
 
 Peter's military pastimes had, for some time, taken on a 
 more serious or would-be serious form. In 1690, a regiment 
 of Guards, the Preobrajenski, was raised, with a Courlander, 
 George Von Mengden, as colonel. This was soon followed 
 by the Siemionovski regiment, — one-third of the effective 
 strength, in both cases, consisting of French Protestants.^ 
 But the approaching campaign of Azof was to teach the 
 young Tsar the real value of these apparently warlike 
 troops, and the danger of not approaching serious matters 
 seriously, 
 
 Peter gave himself a world of pains to build a fleet on the 
 lake at Pereiaslavl — the Pletcheievo-Oziero, but this work 
 was not his only occupation there. It is a pretty spot, 
 reached from Moscow by a pleasant road running through 
 a succession of valleys, and over woody hills. The clear 
 waters of the Viksa, pouring out of the western end of the 
 lake, pass through the neighbouring lake of Somino, and fall 
 into the Volga. Westward, the gilded cupolas of the 
 twenty churches of the town of Pereiaslavl-Zaleski rise 
 round the great Cathedral of the Transfiguration. Here 
 Peter had built himself a one-storied wooden house, — the 
 windows glazed with mica, — a double-headed eagle with a 
 
 ^ Oustrialof, vol. ii. p. 360. 
 
 ^ Russian Archives, 1875, vol. iii. p. 221. 
 
 ' Details as to the original constitution of these regiments, which were to play 
 such an important part in the national history, will be found in the Saint 
 Petersburg Journal, April 177S. 
 
6a PETER THE GREAT 
 
 gilded wooden crown, set over the entrance door, was the sole 
 aciornmcnt of the liumble dwelling; but life went cheerily 
 within those walls. The shipj-ard was but a few steps 
 distant, but it is hardly likely that Peter worked in it during 
 his frequent midwinter visits to the shores of his 'little 
 sea.' There was the greatest difficulty, in February 1692 
 in inducing him to leave it, to receive the envoy of the 
 Shah of Persia in audience.^ The fact was, doubtless, that in 
 that retired spot, far from the maternal eye, and from other 
 less kindly curiosity, he felt himself more free to indulge 
 in other pastimes. These were shared with numerous 
 companions, frequently summoned from Moscow. Their 
 carriages often rolled past caravans, laden with hogsheads 
 of wine, and beer, and h}'dromcl, and kegs of brandy. There 
 were ladies, too, amongst the visitors. In the spring, when 
 the lake was open, shipbuilding and drill began again, but 
 none of it was very serious. A year before the campaign 
 of Azof Peter has not made up his mind where, on what 
 sea, and against what enemies, he will utilise his future war- 
 fleet ! But he has already decided that Lcfort, who has 
 never been a sailor, shall be his Admiral ; that the vessel 
 on which he will hoist his flag shall be called the Elephant ; 
 that the ship will be full of gilding, have an excellent 
 Dutch crew, and a no less excellent captain — Peter himself '^ 
 The young Tsar's last journey to Pcrei'aslavl took place in 
 May 1693. He was not to look upon his lake and his ship- 
 yard again for twenty years — till 1722, when he was on the 
 road to Persia. The fresh-water flotilla, which had cost him 
 so much pains, given him so much delight, and never served 
 any useful purpose, was lying in utter decay, — hulls, masts, 
 and rigging, all rotten and useless. He fell into a fury ; — 
 these were sacred relics, and he gave the strictest orders for 
 their preservation. All in vain. In 1803 but one boat 
 remained, lying in a pavilion, itself fallen into ruin. There 
 was not a sign of the house in which Peter had lived ; every- 
 thing, even to the birch trees, under the shade of which the 
 carpenter's apprentice once rested from his toil, had utterly 
 disappeared.^ 
 
 ' Ciorflon's /(7;/;«<7/, Fcl). i6, 1692. 
 
 2 I'ossclt, ber General uud Admiral Franz I.efori (Fr.-inkfort, 1866), vol. ii. 
 
 PP- 3'3-3'5- 
 
 ' Oustrialof, vol. ii. p. 146. 
 
ON CAMPAIGN 63 
 
 In 1693 he felt himself cramped on the Pletchcicvo- 
 Ozicro, just as he had felt himself cramped, once before, 
 on the ponds at PreobrajenskoTe. He extracted his mother's 
 long-refused consent, and started for Archangel, He was 
 to see the real sea at last. He had been obliged to promise 
 not to go on board any ship — he was only to look at 
 them without leaving the shore. These vows, as may be 
 imagined, were soon forgotten. He nearly drowned himself, 
 going out on a miserable yacht, to meet a ship he had 
 caused to be bought in Amsterdam. She was a warship, 
 but she brought other things besides guns — rich furniture, 
 French wines, apes, and Italian dogs. When Peter set his 
 foot on board, he was transported with delight. ' Thou 
 shalt command her,' he wrote to Lefort, ' and I will serve as 
 common sailor.' And to Burgomaster Witsen, who had 
 purchased the ship for him : ' MiN HER, all I can write you at 
 this present moment is that John Flamm (the Pilot) is safely 
 arrived, bringing forty-four guns, and forty sailors. Greet 
 all our friends. I will write thee more fully by the ordinary, 
 for in this happy hour I do not feel inclined to write, but 
 much rather to do honour to Bacchus, who, with his vine- 
 leaves, is pleased to close the eyes of one who would other- 
 wise send you a more detailed letter.'^ This is signed — 
 ' Scliipcr Fon scJii 
 
 '/ santus profet 
 ' i ties' 
 which is intended to mean ' Captain of the St. Prophet.' 
 Peter, though already one-and-twenty, still treated ortho- 
 graphy as a schoolboy joke, and, for the moment, he treated 
 naval matters after much the same fashion — playing at 
 being a sailor, as he had already played at being a soldier, 
 or a civilised man. In Lefort's house in the Sloboda, he 
 dressed after the French fashion. He walked the streets of 
 Archangel, in the garb of a Dutch sea-captain. Holland was 
 his passion ; he adopted the Dutch flag, — red, white, and 
 blue — merely changing the order of the colours, and he was 
 to be seen sitting in the wine-shops, emptying bottle after 
 bottle, with the compatriots of Van Tromp and Van Ruyter. 
 
 In January, 1694, he was back in Moscow, beside the 
 dying bed of his mother, Nathalia. When the end came he 
 showed great grief, weeping freely. But three days after- 
 
 ^ Letters and Correspondence, vol. i. p. 23. 
 
64 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 wards he was back, mcrrymakincf with Lcfort. Was he then 
 heartless, incapable of tender feeling? Not altogether; he 
 showed nothing but kindness to Ivan, and, till the very end 
 of that unhappy Sovereign's life, which occurred in 1696, he 
 treated him with fraternal affection. Catherine was one 
 day to find him something better than a passionate lover 
 — a friend, and, later on, a husband, not absolutely witiiout 
 reproach indeed, but trusty, devoted, and deeply attached, 
 if not over-refined nor impeccably faithful. At the time of 
 his mother's death he was very young ; and he was, and 
 always remained, impatient of all constraint. His recovery 
 from the loss of a parent, who had been a certain restraint 
 on his actions, was as rapid and complete as his utter 
 obliviousness of the actual existence of his wife. 
 
 On the 1st of May, he started once more for Archangel, 
 and recommenced his whimsical sailoring existence. He 
 made promotions in his fleet, just as he had previously 
 made them in his army. Romodanovski, Boutourlin, and 
 Gordon, became respectively', Admiral, Vice-Admiral, and 
 Rear-Admiral, without ever, the two first at least, having 
 seen the sea, or set foot on the deck of any vessel. Peter 
 himself remained a mere captain, just as he had remained a 
 private of bombardiers in his own land forces. Determined 
 efforts have been made to find some deep intention behind 
 this deliberate appearance of modesty and self-effacement, 
 which, in later years, was perpetuated, and developed into a 
 system. I really believe that the dates, the circumstances, 
 the very origin and earliest manifestations of this pheno- 
 menon, stamp it as a mere freak of fancy, which, like all 
 freaks of that nature, have their logical explanation in some 
 characteristic quality. It is the constitutional timidity of the 
 man, masked, transfigured, idealised by the contradictory 
 external appearances of a strong, self-willed, extravagant 
 nature, and by the deceptive brilliance of his marvellous 
 career, which is thus betrayed. There is nothing very deep, 
 nor very serious, in all that constituted the existence of the 
 future great man at the time of which I write. But all these 
 pleasures and studies, the new fancy for foreign company, — 
 the casino in the S/ohoda, — the PreobrajenskoTe camp, and 
 the Archangel wine-shops, — Lefort, Gordon, and the Dutch 
 sailors, — all these, I say, had the effect of throwing him 
 violently, and completely, out of the rut in which his 
 
ON CAMPAIGN 65 
 
 ancestors had run, — out of the pas^, into a road of which the 
 end was not yet evident, but which already gave promise of 
 leading him towards a future, stuffed with surprises. 
 
 II 
 
 And how was Russia faring, while her appointed lord 
 rushed hither and thither, according to his capricious and 
 vagabond fancy? Russia, so far as she was capable of 
 understanding and reasoning over what befell her, was 
 beginning to think she had gained but little by the coup 
 d'etat of 1689. The young Sovereign's friendships among the 
 Nicvitsy, and his constant visits to the Sloboda, had caused 
 liis subjects little displeasure or alarm. Alexis had accus- 
 tomed them to such practices. But the late Tsar's western 
 tastes, though less pronounced than Peter's, had been far 
 more attractive in their results — industrial successes, legis- 
 lative reforms, real progress, bearing evident fruit. The 
 sole apparent harvest of Peter's firework displays, and mili- 
 tary games, amounted to several dead men, and numerous 
 maimed cripples. Besides, though the young Tsar carried 
 his European amusements to an extreme point, the Boj'ards 
 who governed in his name were, in all serious matters, 
 rather disposed to be retrograde. Added to which, they 
 governed very ill. Galitzin's expedition against the Tartars 
 had been a failure. But at all events he had been beaten 
 far from the frontiers of his own country, on the plains of 
 Perekop. Now these same Tartars threatened the very 
 borders of Holy Russia! Alarming news, calls for assistance, 
 reports of defeat, came pouring in from every side. Mazeppa 
 was threatened in the Ukraine. Dositheus, patriarch of 
 Constantinople, wrote letters filled with gloomy rumours. 
 A French envoy, he averred, had met the Han of the Crimea, 
 and the Grand Vizier, at Adrianople. He had bestowed 
 10,000 ducats on the first, 70,000 on the second, on their 
 prom.ise that the Holy Places should be placed under French 
 protection. The bargain had already been partly carried 
 out. Catholic priests had taken the Holy Tomb, half 
 Golgotha, the church at Bethlehem, and the Holy Grotto, 
 out of the hands of the orthodox monks. They had 
 destroyed the icons, and the Russian name had become a 
 
66 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 scorn in the eyes of the Sultan, and his subjects. The Sultan 
 had omitted the two Tsars of Russia from his written 
 announcement of his succession, to all the other European 
 rulers. News came from Vienna, where the Russian envoys 
 had bouj^ht over the Foreign Office translator, Adam Stifle, 
 tliat the ICmperor's ministers, and the Polish and the Turkish 
 cnvo\-s, were in perpetual conference, to the utter exclusion 
 of Russia. That country was completely put aside, and ran 
 serious risk of being left alone to face the Tartar and the 
 Turk. 
 
 Public uneasiness and discontent, thus justified, grew 
 louder day by day. Peter, meanwhile, had wearied of his 
 to\-s. Archangel roads, and the White Sea, frozen for 
 seven months out of twelve, were but a poor resource. He 
 had thought of seeking a passage through the Northern 
 Ocean, which might open the road to China and the Indies. 
 But the lack of means for such an expedition was all too 
 evident. On the Baltic, nothing was possible. The Swedes 
 were there already, and did not seem likely to be easily 
 dislodged. Lcfort put forward another plan, and now it is, 
 especially at this slippery corner in the young hero's life, 
 that the Genevan adventurer's influence brings forth really 
 important consequences. His position, for some years past 
 has been pre-eminent. He is the first figure in the series, — 
 carried on in the persons of Ostcrmann, Bijhren, Munich, 
 — of great parvenus of foreign origin, who, for more than 
 a century, were to sway the destinies of Russia. Two 
 sentries mounted guard before his palace. The greatest 
 lords in the country waited in his antechamber. Peter 
 treated him, on every occasion, with a consideration hardly 
 usual from a sovereign to a subject. He even publicly and 
 soundly boxed the ears of his own brother-in-law, Abraham 
 Feodorovitch Lapouhin, who fell out with the favourite, 
 and damaged his wig.^ During his absences, he wrote 
 him letters, which breathed an exaggerated tenderness. He 
 received, in return, missives revealing more unceremonious 
 familiarity than affection. - 
 
 In 1695, the Genevan began to reflect on the satisfaction 
 he might find in showing off his prodigious good fortune 
 
 ' ryliiicf, Old Moscow (^y. PelcrslniifT, 1S91), ]i. 491. 
 
 "^ I'ctcr the Gre.it's IVrititis^s and Correspondence, vol. i. p. 754. Compare 
 Ouslrialof, vol. iv. part i. pp. 553-611. 
 
ON CAMPAIGN 67 
 
 before his Swiss and Dutch friends. Peter had already sent 
 certain of his young comrades abroad. Why not follow 
 them in person, to see, and study at first-hand, the wonders 
 of which Tinimermann and Karschten-Brandt had only 
 given him a partial and mutilated idea? What delight for 
 his eyes! What diversion in his budding boredom ! What 
 instructive sights ! And what new pleasures ! But an objec- 
 tion crops up. What kind of figure would the Tsar of all 
 the Russias cut in Europe? He could only bring an 
 unknown name, darkened and humbled by recent ai d 1 y 
 former defeats, which he had made no personal eftbrt to 
 retrieve. This thought, doubtless, it was, which forced Peter 
 to reflect on his own life, on the sports and occupations 
 which had hitherto absorbed all his activity, and to recognise 
 their complete futility. A light flashed across his brain. 
 Before presenting himself to the men of the western world, 
 such great men, in his estimation, — should he not raise him- 
 self to their level, carry them something more than a record 
 of schoolboy prowess? But how to set about it? At this 
 point the young Tsar's fervid imagination fell in with the 
 mental distress of the Boyards, to whom he had hitherto 
 left the cares of state. They, too, felt the urgency of 
 doing something to help themselves out of the unpleasant 
 quandary, internal and external, into which the carelessness 
 and awkwardness of a hand-to-mouth policy had led them. 
 The impulse of these varied motives led up, at this particular 
 moment, to the first attempt on Azof. 
 
 The intuitive genius of the future conqueror of Poltava, to 
 whom, with many praises, the plan of campaign elaborated 
 on this occasion has been ascribed, had, I believe, nothing 
 to say to it. There was no necessity, indeed, for his taking 
 that trouble. The plan, a traditional and classic one in the 
 liistory of Russia's relations with her redoubtable southern 
 neighbours, had been prepared long beforehand. Bathory, 
 the great warrior borrowed by Poland from Transylvania, 
 proposed it to Tsar Ivan in 1579.^ The town of Azof, stand- 
 ing some ten miles from the Don, — called Tanais before the 
 Christian era, the Tana of the middle ages, — a Genoese 
 trading factory, captured and fortified by the Turks in 1475, 
 had long been the natural point of attack and defence, for the 
 two nations who had stood face to face, in perpetual quarrel, 
 * P. Picrling, Popes et Tsars (Paris, 1890), p. 204. 
 
68 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 for centuries. It was the key of the river-mouth on one 
 hand, the key of the Black Sea on the other; but the chief 
 effort of the Muscovite army was not to be turned in this 
 direction. The Box-ards, with the greater part of the 
 available Russian forces, — with all the old army, that which 
 had followed Galitzin in his disastrous undertakings 
 against the Tartars, — were simply to follow in his steps, 
 and fight his campaign over again, with much the same 
 results. The attempt on Azof was a mere accessory, an 
 isolated coup dc viain, wherein the young Tsar's originating 
 power was to find its scope. The leaders of the huge camp, 
 moving slowly down to the Crimea, were heartily glad to be 
 rid of him. They let him work his own sweet will. Nor 
 did he himself give much pains to his preparations. The 
 undertaking, in his eyes (as one of his letters written at the 
 outset of the expedition clearly proves), was a mere con- 
 tinuation of the big mancjeuvres round Presburg.^ He 
 reckoned on taking the town by surprise; yet he refrained 
 from confiding his 'pleasure' regiments to the improvised 
 leaders he had given them during his sham battles on the 
 banks of the laouza. These fights seem to have convinced 
 him that the troops thus employed had developed into a 
 real and serious military force, fit to face a great war ; but 
 he also felt, apparently, that his present adventure, being 
 very different in its nature, called for different precautions. 
 The ' Kings ' of ' Poland ' and of ' Presburg ' were accordingly 
 dismissed ; yet, faithful to a habit long since abandoned 
 in western warfare, he determined to divide the supreme 
 command. Three Generals-in-chief — Golovin, Gordon, and 
 Lefort^ — rode at the head of his army, which numbered all 
 his newly raised regiments, those of the Guard, Lefort's, and 
 some detachments of troops drawn from the court and from 
 the cities, Strcltsy and Tsarcdvortsy, thirty-one thousand 
 men in all. The expedition thus organised still bears a 
 close resemblance to a pleasure party. The Generals, one 
 of whom at least, Lefort, has not a notion of what real war 
 means, wrangle from the outset. The young Tsar cracks 
 jokes, carries on his favourite games of masquerade and 
 rough buffoonery, interferes in all directions, gives contra- 
 
 ' I>etterto Apraxin, April i6, 1695. IVritiit^ and Ccri espoudence, vol. i. p. 28. 
 2 Petrof, The Armed Forces of Kussia (Moscow, 1892. rublished under the 
 auspices of the Ministry for War), vol. ii. p. 4. 
 
ON CAMPAIGN 69 
 
 dictory orders, assumes the pseudonym of Peter Alexi^ief 
 and the rank of captain, so as to parade at the head of his 
 bombardier company. Though he has stripped Romo- 
 danovski of his prerogatives, he has left him his title, and 
 in the middle of the campaign he writes : — 
 
 * MiN Her Kenich, — Your Majesty's letter, dated from 
 your capital of Presburg, has been duly delivered to me. 
 Your Majesty's condescension binds me, in return, to be 
 ready to shed every drop of my blood, with which object I 
 am just about to march, BOMBARDIER PETER.' ^ 
 
 The end is what we might have expected. Peter, like 
 Sophia and Galitzin, is reduced to misleading opinion by 
 reports of imaginary triumphs. Te Deums are sung at 
 Moscow for the capture of a couple of insignificant forts. 
 But all the world knows that the attack on the fortress of 
 Azof has failed, twice over, with great loss and slaughter. 
 The new army and its young founder have been tried, and 
 found wanting. Seven years of youthful extemporisation, 
 on the value of which judgment has been deferred, have 
 ended in piteous and humiliating failure. 
 
 Here the history of Peter the Great begins. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Peter was not a great man only — he was the most 
 complete, the most comprehensive, and the most diversified 
 personification of a great people that has ever appeared. 
 Never, I should think, have the collective qualities of a 
 nation, good and bad, the heights and the depths of its scale of 
 morality, every feature of its physiognomy, been so summed 
 up in a single personality, destined to be its historic type. 
 Those same unsuspected powers of mind and soul, which 
 drove Peter into sudden action, and raised him to greatness, 
 were the very qualities which Russia has displayed from 
 day to day, from year to year, these two centuries past, and 
 which will make her greatness, as they made his. Beaten 
 by the Turks, beaten by the Swedes, overrun by Europeans, 
 as she had once been by Asiatics, after twenty defeats, 
 twenty treaties of peace, forced on her by her conquerors, 
 she was still to enlarge her frontiers at their expense, to 
 dismember Turkey, Sweden, and Poland, to end by dictating 
 
 ^ May 19, 1695. iVritings and Correspondence, vol. i. p. 29. 
 
70 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 laws to the Continent of Europe. And all this because she 
 persevered. 
 
 Perseverance, obstinate determination to reach the goal, 
 even when that seemed utterly impossible, — never to swerve 
 from the path once chosen, however danc^erous, never to 
 chan;Te adopted measures, though they be defective, simply 
 to double and treble effort, panting, like some wearied wood- 
 cutter, to multiply blows and await their result, resolutely, 
 patiently, stoically, — this is the secret hidden in the Russian 
 soul, teinp:;rcd to adamantine hardness by centuries of slavery 
 and centuries of redeeming toil. The greatness of Peter, the 
 greatness of Russia, are the outcome of the Mongol conquest, 
 and of the patient genius of the Moscow Kniaz, hardened on 
 the anvil which wore out their conqueror's hammers. 
 
 The Moscow grumblers had fine sport on the morrow 
 of that first disastrous campaign, recalling the Patriarch 
 Joachim's prophetic words and the anathemas he launched 
 against the foreign soldiery, commanded by heretic generals. 
 Nevertheless, Peter increased his calls on foreign science and 
 industry. He sent to Austria and to Prussia for engineers, 
 to Holland and to England for sailors and for shipwrights. 
 The flotilla on the lake of PereTaslavl had been utterly 
 useless. He set about building another, at Voroneje, in the 
 valley of the Don. He met with enormous, well-nigh in- 
 superable, difficulties. The artisans engaged abroad first 
 tarried in their coming, and then, when they saw the country 
 and the proffered task, took to their heels. The native 
 workmen, not understanding what was required of them, spoilt 
 the work, and being punished, deserted, too, en masse. The 
 forests where the timbers were cut caught fire, and hundreds 
 of square leagues were burnt. The higher order of workers, 
 officers, engineers, and doctors, imitated and exaggerated 
 the freaks of conduct of which their master still set the 
 example. There were scenes of orgy, quarrels, bloody 
 scuffles. General and Lord High Admiral Lefort, being 
 simimoned by courier to render an account of certain 
 details, connected with the administration of his Department, 
 thus opens his report: — ' lO-day Prince Boris Ale.xieievitch 
 (Galitzin) is coming to dine with me, and we shall drink 
 your health. I fear you have no good beer at Voroneje ; I 
 will bring you some, and some Muscat wine as well.'^ No 
 
 * Solovief, vol. xi\. p. 227. Compare Ouj'.rialuf, vul. iv. part i. p. 5S5, etc. 
 
ON CAMPAIGN 71 
 
 matter! The work had been begun in the autumn of 1696. 
 On the 3rd of the following May, three-and-twenty galleys 
 and four fireships were launched, and dropped down the 
 river Don, on the way to the sea. At tlieir head Captain 
 Peter Alexieief on the galley Principium, built, in great part, 
 by his own hands, did duty as pilot. Lord High Admiral 
 Lefort, Vice- Admiral Lima, a Venetian, and Rear-Admiral 
 Balthasar de L'Osiere, a Frenchman, followed on board the 
 other vessels. This time the Russian fleet was created in 
 good earnest. 
 
 I must at once acknowledge that it was not a very brilliant 
 fleet, nor did the land army, commanded by its new General- 
 lissimo, the Boyard Shein, with which it was to co-operate 
 in a new attempt on Azof, cover itself with laurels. The 
 'pleasure' regiments had fallen too much into the habit of 
 joking. As for the Strdtsy, they had grown fit for nothing 
 but besieging palaces ; one cannon shot threw them into 
 wild rout. Peter, as he watched them, must have meditated, 
 even under the walls of the impregnable fortress, on the 
 fate to which he destined them, in the near future. The 
 appearance and behaviour of this camp, previous to the tardy 
 arrival of the military men promised by the Emperor, call up 
 memories of the siege of Troy. The Generals lost their 
 heads, and Gordon, the most capable of them all, having 
 vainly tried to open a breach in the wall, the whole body of 
 troops, officers and men, were called into council, and invited 
 to give their opinion as to the operations to be undertaken. 
 A Strdets suggested that a mound of earth should be raised 
 against the enemy's ramparts, so as first to overlook and 
 then to bury them. Vladimir the Great had, it appeared, 
 adopted this expedient to reduce Kherson.^ This strategy 
 was adopted with enthusiasm, with the sole result of causing 
 the Turks some little alarm, and drawing smiles from the 
 (ierman engineers when they reached their destination, at 
 last. Peter's own high spirits, cheerfulness, and boyish 
 boldness were delightful. He writes jokingly to his sister 
 Nathalia, who is alarmed at the dangers to which she fancies 
 she is exposed ; ' It is not I who run after the bullets, they 
 run after me. Will you not tell them to stop?' But steady 
 as he was, even then, in his long prepared resolutions, he was 
 specially subject to fits of dismay and momentary discourage- 
 
 ^ I'elrof, vol. ii. p. 6. 
 6 
 
713; PF.TER THE GREAT 
 
 mcnt, — very easily tlisconccrtcd, in fact. On tlie 20th of 
 May, attcniptint; to reconnoitre the Turkish fleet, which he 
 desired to j^revent from cnteriiii^ the Don, and re-victualling 
 the fortress, he fell into a sudden terror of its formidable 
 appearance, and beat a precipitate retreat with all his galleys. 
 At ten o'clock the next morning he was in Gordon's tent, 
 gloomy, depressed, full of the worst forebodings. At three in 
 the afternoon, he was back again, beaming with joy. The 
 Cossacks, without receiving any orders, follcnving the insj^ira- 
 tion of their own courage, had flown across the water in their 
 tchalki, frail leather skirts, fleet as the bird whose name they 
 bear {tchaika, seagull), had attacked the Sultan's huge vessels 
 on the preceding night, and driven them into flight, with 
 heavy loss.* Here was a fine opportunity for Gordon's 
 artillery to distinguish itself! For, though, the guns never 
 being properly trained, not a single shell fell within the town, 
 a tremendous amount of powder was burnt in triumphal 
 salvos. The arrival of a fresh detachment of troops, the 
 taking of a redoubt, the capture of one of the enemy's skiffs, 
 — everything was made a pretext for a cannonade. 
 
 liut no matter ! The effort, this time, is so tremendous, the 
 determination to conquer so intense, that, with the help of 
 Cossacks and German engineers, the thing is done at last. 
 On the i6th of July the guns at last open an effective 
 fire. On the 17th the Zaporojtsi (Dnieper Cossacks), who 
 are as bold on land as on sea, carry part of the out- 
 works of the fortress by a bold stroke, and on the 18th. 
 Peter writes to Romodanovski : ' Your Majesty will learn 
 with joy that God has favoured your armies ; your Majesty's 
 prayers, and your good fortune, have brought the people of 
 Azof to surrender yesterday.' 
 
 Now the young Tsar can dare to show himself to his 
 western neighbours, and cruel experience has convinced 
 him that he still has everything to learn from them. His 
 mind appears broadened, and illuininated by a new bright- 
 ness. He conceives a vast plan of naval policy, he lore- 
 sees the share which the foreign element must have in 
 its execution, and provides for it amply. He desires to 
 unite the Don with the Volga by a network of canals, but 
 he does not propose to go blindly about such an undertaking. 
 It is not enough to engage constructors in Venice, in Holland, 
 
 ^ Gordon's yi'«r«(j/. May lo, 1696. 
 
ON CAMPAIGN 73 
 
 in Denmark, and in Sweden. It is not enough to send fifty 
 officers of his household into foreign countries — twenty-eight 
 to Italy, twenty-two to Holland and to England.^ He must 
 follow them, he must put himself to school, and in grim 
 earnest this time, seriously, laboriously, in the sweat of his 
 brow. There is something childish still, about this thirst for 
 knowledge, and passion for work, — more than one sign of 
 puerility will mark the studious pursuits of the future car- 
 penter's apprentice at Saardam, — but the goal is marked out, 
 the impulse has been given. The great journey, the grand 
 tour of Europe, is to inaugurate one of the most wonderful 
 careers in history. 
 
 ^ Solovief, vol. xix, p. 238, 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE JOURNEY — GERMANY — HOLLAND -ENr.I,AND— THE 
 
 RETURN 
 
 I. Precedents — The Tsar's incognito — First disguise— The great embassy — 
 Peter Mihailof — Impression in Moscow and in Europe — Departure de- 
 layed — A consjiiracy — Bloodstained ghosts — The woodcutter's hatchet 
 and the axe of Ivan the Terrible — Sweden — Riga, a chilly reception — A 
 future casus belli — In Germany — Koenigsberg — Curiosity and eccen- 
 tric!' ies — An artillery diploma — Koppenbriigge — Meeting with Charlotte 
 Sophia of Prussia — Peter's first social appearances — Leibnitz. 
 II. Holland — Zaandam — Legend and history — The house at Krimpcnburg — A 
 fair Dutchwoman — Amsterdam — Serious study begins — Shijjwright and 
 Sov-ereign — Weaknesses and oddities — The Russian Bacchus. 
 
 III. England — An uncomfortable room — Peter at Kensington Palace — Unfavour- 
 
 al)lc impressions — Purnet — More legends — London and Deptford — Toil 
 and pleasure — Mrs. Cross, the actress — General initiation. 
 
 IV. En route for Vienna — The arrival a failure — Austrian pride — Moral depression 
 
 — The Emperor and the Tsar — The drawbacks of incognito — A diplomatic 
 check — F"ailure of the journey to Venice — Alarming news from Russia — 
 ' The seed of the Miloslavski ' — Hasty return — Interview witii .\ugustus II. 
 at Rawa— Close of the journey. 
 
 To find any precedent, in Russian history, for Peter's journey, 
 we must £jo back to the eleventh century. In 1075 ^^^ 
 Grand Duke of Kief, Izaslaf, paid a visit to the Emperor 
 Henry IV. at Mayence. Thus once again, unconsciously, no 
 doubt, Peter took up an old tradition. From the days of 
 Ivan the Terrible, the mere desire, on the part of any sub- 
 jects of the Tsar, to visit foreign countries had been held 
 high treason. In Tsar Michael's reign, a certain Prince 
 Hvorostinin was severely prosecuted on this very score. 
 He had spoken, before some friends, of a journey to Poland 
 and Rome, which he was much inclined to take, 'to find 
 somebofly to talk with.' Yet a little later, the son of Alexi.s' 
 
THE JOURNEY 75 
 
 favourite councillor, Ordin-Nashtchokin, having secretly 
 crossed the frontier, there was some question of his being 
 put to death abroad.^ 
 
 Peter himself did not venture to brave opinion to the 
 extent of giving any official character to his departure. All 
 he dared permit himself was a kind of half clandestine frolic, 
 and there is a sort of naive timidity about the precautions 
 taken to ensure an incognito, which, with his constitutional 
 petulance, he was to be the first to break. A great Embassy 
 was organised, charged with a mission to request the 
 Emperor, the Kings of England and of Denmark, the Pope, 
 the Low Countries, the Elector of Brandenburg, and the 
 Republic of Venice — the whole of Europe, in fact, save 
 France and Spain — 'to renew the ancient bonds of friend- 
 ship, so as to weaken the enemies of the Christian name.' 
 The ambassadors were three in number. Lefort, as 
 ambassador-in-chief, took precedence of his colleagues, 
 Golovin and Voznitsin. Their suite consisted of fifty-five 
 gentlemen and ' volunteers,' amongst them a non-commis- 
 sioned officer of the Preobrajenski regiment, who answered 
 to the name of Peter Mihailof, — the Tsar himself During 
 the whole course of the journey, letters intended for the 
 Sovereign were to bear the simple superscription, 'To be given 
 to Peter Mihailof This was mere childishness, — but there 
 is something touching about one detail. The seal to be 
 used by the mock non-commissioned officer represented a 
 young carpenter, surrounded by his shipwright's tools, with 
 this inscription : ' My rank is that of a scholar, and I need 
 masters.'^ 
 
 At Moscow, opinion as to the real object of the journey 
 was very different. The Tsar was generally believed to be 
 going abroad to do much as he had done, hitherto, in the 
 Sloboda, in other words, to amuse himself.^ Did Peter himself, 
 at that moment, perceive the distant horizon towards which 
 his steps were tending? It is very doubtful. He did 
 indeed, as he travelled through Livonia, talk of trimming his 
 subjects' beards, and shortening their garments;* but, judging 
 from the faces and habiliments of his travelling companions, 
 this may fairly be taken for an idle jest. Lefort was garbed 
 
 * Solovief, vol. ix. p. 461 ; vol. xi. p. 93. 
 
 ' Oustrialof, vol. iii. p. 18. ' Ibid. p. 640. 
 
 * IJlomcber^;, An Account of Livonia [L.nr\(\or\^, p. 332 (French edition, 1705). 
 
76 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 in the Tartar style, and the young Prince of Inieretia wore a 
 splendid Persian costume. 
 
 The journey indeed, in its earlier days, was very far from 
 possessing the importance, either from the Russian or from 
 the European point of view, with which later events have 
 invested it. It made, in fact, no sensation whatsoever. I regret 
 to have to contradict, in this matter, another legend, very 
 dear to the national vanity. Russians had already grown 
 accustomed to see their Sovereign rushing hither and thither, 
 or rather indeed to never seeing him at all ; European 
 eyes were turned in quite a different direction. The moment 
 Peter had pitched on, to make acquaintance with his western 
 friends, and rouse their curiosity, was a solemn one for them. 
 The Congress of Ryswick was just about to meet. It 
 absorbed the attention of the whole world, political, com- 
 mercial, and intellectual. Of this I will offer one proof only, 
 — any one who goes to the Ouai d'Orsay, may there con- 
 sult the eight volumes containing the correspondence of 
 Louis XIV. with the plenipotentiaries who were engaged, in 
 the course of the year 1697, in defending his interests before 
 that great diplomatic gathering. I will undertake that 
 Peter's name will be found to occur only once, and that once 
 in a most casual manner. The Tsar had paused in his work 
 and scientific pursuits at Amsterdam, and had travelled to 
 the Hague, where his embassy was officially received. The 
 plenipotentiaries mention this fact, and that is all. He and 
 they had been near neighbours for many months, they 
 residing at Delft, he studying at Amsterdam, — yet they do 
 not even seem to have suspected his existence. It is very 
 doubtful whether they knew his name. P^ven in connection 
 with Polish affairs, which constantly occupied their attention, 
 they never refer to it. They have no suspicion, evidently, of 
 the part which the future ally of Augustus II. aspires hence- 
 forth to play. 
 
 The appearance of the Russian Sovereign beyond the 
 frontiers of his little-known Empire attracted interest in a 
 special circle only. In the following year, it was to furnish 
 the teaching body of Thorn with the subject of a public dis- 
 putation.^ Learned men had already turned their attention 
 to IMuscovy. In England, Milton had written a book on the 
 
 ' Conjectiirit aliquot pontkie de siisceptis tnagni Muscovia Dtuis . . . «//«■ 
 eribus (Thoruiiii, 1698, St. I'dcrsburj; Lilirary). 
 
' THE JOURNEY 77 
 
 great Northern Empire, which had been followed by a whole 
 literature devoted to the same subject. Leibnitz had 
 recently expressed his opinion" that the Muscovites were the 
 only people capable of freeing- Europe from the Turkish 
 yoke. And it was with this learned world, especially, that 
 Peter Mihai'lof desired to enter into relations. Erom this 
 point of view, the brief interval of respite and relaxation 
 which the exhaustion of Erance had granted Europe, between 
 the great crisis which had placed Louis XIV. face to face with 
 the most formidable of coalitions, and the approaching 
 struggle of the Spanish Succession, was a most propitious 
 moment for a tour, ' on business or on pleasure bent,' through 
 the old European Continent. 
 
 The Tsar's departure, which had been fixed for the month 
 of Eebniar}^ 1697, ^^'^^ delayed by the discovery of a plot 
 against his life. At the head of the conspirators we find an 
 old acquaintance, Tsikler, Sophia's former henchman, who 
 had joined Peter's party, but whom the Sovereign's scorn 
 had turned into a malcontent. As for his accomplices, 
 they are easily guessed, — the Streltsy, again and always the 
 Streltsy\ Was Peter doomed ever to find them in his path, 
 breathing threats and hatred? This incident was quickly 
 closed, a few heads were cut off, and at last, on the loth of 
 March, the start was made. But a shadow had fallen across 
 the brightness of the journey, and the feeling of intense 
 bitterness rose higher and higher in the j'oung Sovereign's 
 heart. Were these Streltsy to haunt him for ever? Were 
 they never to cease recalling the bloodstained ghosts that 
 had hovered round his cradle? 
 
 W^ell, war it should be, since they desired it ! Their 
 account should be settled on the first favourable oppor- 
 tunity. And he swore to be on his guard henceforth, to set 
 steel against steel, unsleeping watchfulness against perpetual 
 plotting, the scaffold waiting on the Red Square, against the 
 dagger lurking ready in the shadow. The friends and the 
 most faithful helpers of the Sovereign must see to it, till he 
 returned to do the work himself But even from afar, he 
 would stir up Romodanovski's zeal. Wheresoever he went, 
 in German}', in Holland, and in Itngland, through all the 
 new and wonderful and dazzling sights he was to behold, 
 his eyes were to cany with them the terrible vision, the 
 anguished nightmare, of the mortal peril which seemed 
 
78 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 bound up with his destiny. Thus docs the distrustful, fierce, 
 imj')lacai:)lc i;cnius of his ancestors revive and grow in liini, 
 wcddin»j the splendour of his civilising work to the bloody- 
 shadows of a horrible carnage ; woodcutter and executioner 
 at once, he wields alike the hatchet and the axe. 
 
 The progress of the embassy was slow. There were 250 
 persons to transport. Lefort alone had ten gentlemen, seven 
 pages, fifteen scrving-mcn, two jewellers, six musicians, and 
 four dwarfs in his train. At Riga, on Swedish ground, the 
 reception was courteous, but cold. The Governor, Dahlberg, 
 sent word that he was ill, and did not appear. Later on, 
 Peter was to try to turn this fact into a casus belli, and talk 
 of personal insult to himself. Officially speaking, his person- 
 ality cannot have been in question. At Riga, as elsewhere, 
 the ambassadors gave the word that the reported presence 
 of the young Sovereign in their company was to be treated 
 as an idle story. He was supposed to be at Voroneje, busy 
 with his shipbuilding. There may have been a touch of 
 malice about the literal manner in which Dahlberg accepted 
 this assurance. And the Russians, following, in this respect, 
 an inclination which, I am inclined to fear, has grown 
 hereditary, demanded all the rights of hospitality after too 
 familiar and exacting a fashion. Peter went so far as to 
 endeavour to take plans of the fortress with his own hands. 
 This attempt was instantly cut short. The Swedes can 
 hardly be said to have done wrong, for Peter's father had 
 besieged the place. The fault, at all events, if fault there 
 was, was on both sides. 
 
 At Mittau, the travellers' ill-humour passed away. The 
 reigning Duke, Frederick Casimir, was an old acquaint- 
 ance of Lefort's. He gave the embassy a cordial and 
 magnificent reception. Peter forgot his incognito, and 
 surprised his entertainers by the unexpectedness of his 
 remarks, and by his jokes on the habits, prejudices, and 
 barbarous laws of his own country. The West was begin- 
 ning to take hold of him, but he was still the same extra- 
 vagant fantastic youth. At Libau, he beheld the l^altic, the 
 Varegians' Sea, for the first time. ]^ad weather prevented 
 his going farther, at that moment, and he spent his days in 
 the Wciiikcller, with the sailors of the port, drinking and 
 joking, and insisting, this time, on passing himself off as a 
 plain captain, who had been sent to arm a privateer for the 
 
THE JOURNEY 79 
 
 service of the Tsar. At last he reached Koenlgsbcrg, having 
 outstripped his embassy, which travelled by land, while he 
 made a short cut by sea, on a merchant vessel. He refused 
 to receive the greeting of the Prince of Holstein-Beck, sent 
 by the Elector of Brandenburg to meet him, made the master 
 of the vessel vow he had no distinguished passenger, 
 remained on board till dusk, and did not make up his mind 
 to accept the lodging prepared for him till ten o'clock at 
 night. There he found the Sovereign's Master of the 
 Ceremonies, Johann von Besser, an accomplished courtier, 
 a learned man, and a poet into the bargain. He rushed at 
 him, snatched off his wig, and threw it into a corner. 'Who 
 is he?' he asked his own people. The functions of the 
 personage in question were explained to him as far as 
 
 possible. ' Very good, let him bring me a ! ' This 
 
 anecdote, I must acknowledge, although vouched for by 
 a serious and a far from ill-natured historian, has a suspicious 
 air.^ But the numberless analogous traits preserved by 
 tradition, leave us in no doubt as to the reality of the 
 general impression it produces. This much is clear, the 
 reformer of the future was still a young savage. The next 
 morning he paid a visit to the Elector, conversed in bad 
 German, drank a great deal of Hungarian wine, but, having 
 once more assumed the character of Peter Mihai'lof, refused 
 to receive the Sovereign's return visit. Later on he changed 
 his mind, and prepared what he considered a magnificent 
 reception, capped with some fireworks of his own composi- 
 tion. At the very last moment the Elector begged to be 
 excused. A sorry business, this, for the bearers of the 
 unpleasant tidings, Count von Kreyzen and I'rovost von 
 Schlacken : Peter was at table with Lefort and one of his 
 dwarfs ; Lefort sat pipe in mouth, the Tsar, half drunk, 
 and full of tenderness for his favourite, leaning across, 
 from time to time, to kiss him. He invited the messengers 
 to seat themselves beside him. Then suddenly, striking 
 the table furiously with his fist, he cried : ' The Elector is 
 a good man, but his counsellors are devils ! GcJic ! gcJie I 
 (be off with you ! '), and rising, he seized one of the Branden- 
 burgers by the throat, and dragged him towards the door, 
 still shouting, ' Gelie ! Gehe ! ' 
 
 ' Bergman, Peter der Grosse ah Alensch und Regent (Riga, 1S23), vol. i. 
 p. 256 (Russian edition, vol. i. p. 223, note). 
 
8o PETER THE GREAT 
 
 When he went out to walk the streets of Kocnif^^sberj^, as 
 a simjile tourist, every one took to their licels, to avoid 
 mectini^ him, for he hatl a fertile fancy for jokes of a far 
 from ai^reeable order. Meeting a lady of the court one day, 
 he stopped her with a sudden gesture, shouting 'Halt!' in 
 a voice of thunder. Then taking hold of the watch, which 
 hung at her waist, he looked at the hour and departed.^ 
 
 The IClector, notwithstanding, continued to show his guest 
 a friendly face, and give him a hospitable welcome. His 
 love of show and ceremonial was flattered by the presence of 
 this extraordinary embassy, and he looked forward to the 
 conclusion of a defensive alliance against Sweden. Thus 
 he spent 150,000 crowns — it was wasted money. Peter 
 slipped through his fingers, his mind distracted, taken up 
 with other things. His attention, or rather that of his 
 counsellors, w'as absorbed by political matters, and by I'olish 
 affairs. The death of Sobieski had been followed by the 
 rival candidatures of the Elector of Saxony and the Prince 
 de Conti. Peter sided with Augustus, — in other words, 
 against France, the ally of the Turk. Writing from 
 Koenigsberg to the Polish lords, he formally announced 
 his intention of interfering in the struggle. Prince Romo- 
 danovski should lead an army upon the frontiers of Lithuania. 
 He had got to threats already. 
 
 The embassy dallied at Koenigsberg, waiting on events. 
 Peter seized the opportunity of satisfying his curiosit}', his 
 impatience to acquire knowledge — both of them as keen as 
 ever. Certain of these curiosities of his were more than 
 singular, as when he insisted on seeing a criminal broken on 
 the wheel, which instrument of torture he apparently dreamt 
 of introducing, as a matter of variety, into the criminal pro- 
 cedure of his own country. The authorities demurred, on 
 the score of the non-existence of any criminal deserving such 
 a punishment. The Tsar was astounded. ' W'hat, all that 
 fuss about killing a man ! Why not take one of the servants 
 of his own suite ?'^ He was working daily with the Master 
 of Artillery, Sternfeldt, and after a few weeks, was the 
 recipient of a regular diploma, which should not be too 
 seriously taken. Three years later, Peter was with the King 
 
 ' Posselt, vol. ii. pp. 407, 600, 601 ; Theiner, Historital Moiiiimculs (RomCf 
 1S59). p. 369 ; Herimann, Gcschtcfile A'usslamfs, vol. iv. p. 67. 
 
 '■' rollnitz (Baron Charles Louis), Munoirs (Berlin, 1791), vol. i. p. 179. 
 
THE JOURNEY 8i 
 
 of Poland, at the Castle of Birz6, in Lithuania. The two 
 Sovereigns, both of them given to eccentricities, anuised 
 themselves by firing heavy cannon at a mark. Augustus 
 made two hits, Peter never touched the target once.^ 
 
 The young Tsar was already the strange creature with 
 whom the European world was destined, later, to make 
 acquaintance, and at whom it was long to marvel and to 
 tremble. Active beyond all description, turbulent, prying, 
 cheerful, as a rule, full of jokes and high spirits, good-natured 
 too, with sudden shifts of temper, fits of gloomy depression, 
 or violence, or melancholy, genial but wayward, restless and . 
 disturbing. One night, as he sat at supper with the Elector, 
 in a low room floored with marble, one of the servants 
 dropped a plate. In a moment Peter had bounded to his 
 feet, with haggard eyes and features working ; he drew his 
 sword, and thrust in all directions, fortunately without 
 wounding any one. When he calmed down, he imperiously 
 demanded that punisliment should be inflicted on the guilty 
 serving-man. The difticulty was got over by having some 
 poor devil, already sentenced for a different peccadillo, 
 whipped before his eyes.^ 
 
 Early in July, Augustus seeming to be definitely taking 
 the upper hand in Poland, the embassy started forth afresh. 
 Vienna was the point on which the journey was to have 
 been first directed, in the hope of negotiating a treaty of 
 alliance. But the Tsar's envoy, Nefimof, desired, in appear- 
 ance at all events, to forestall its efforts. According to his 
 report, the alliance, offensive and defensive, was already con- 
 cluded. Lefort, on the other hand, urged a direct move to 
 Holland, tliough his somewhat tepid Calvinistic zeal weighed 
 less in tlie matter than has been frequently supposed. 
 Chance had far more to do than has generally been imagined 
 with the direction of this journey, and even with the general 
 appearance finally impressed on it by circumstances. 
 
 It is strange that Peter did not pause at Berlin on his way 
 to Holland — he merely passed rapidly across the town. The 
 future capital of Frederick the Great appeared to him but a 
 barren field for the gratification of his curiosity. He had 
 the good fortune to behold, elsewhere, the most attractive 
 thing in all Prussia, and thus to make acquaintance with one 
 
 ' Oiistrialof, vol. iv. p. 90. 
 
 ^ Pollnitz, Memoirs. Pollnifz is not altogether a reliable witness. 
 
82 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 of the fairest fruits of German civilisation and culture. The 
 Hlectrcss of Brandenburg, the future Queen Sophia of 
 Prussia, had not accompanied her husband to Kocnigsberg. 
 She had taken advantage of his absence, to pay a visit to her 
 mother, the Eiectress Sophia of Hanover. But the arrival of 
 the ruler, — still a more or less fabulous monarch, — of 
 mysterious Muscovy, had not failed to arouse her interest. 
 Mother and daughter were numbered amongst the most well- 
 educated women of their day. Sophia Charlotte, at one time 
 the destined bride of the Due de Bourgogne, grandson of 
 Louis XIV., had spent two years at the court of Versailles. 
 Her French associations had clung to her. At the age of 
 barely niiie-and-twent)', she had the reputation of being the 
 prettiest and the most witty woman in her country. Her 
 intimate circle was eminently intellectual. Leibnitz, who 
 was one of its members, had inspired it with the very 
 lively interest with which the event, which had so excited 
 the town of Koenigsberg, had personally filled him, open- 
 ing, as it did, before his versatile mind whole new horizons, 
 a fresh programme of study, ethnographical, linguistic, and 
 archaeological, a huge scheme of great scientific enter- 
 prises, in the execution of which, the part of the great 
 German savant, aided by the Russian Sovereign, seemed 
 clearly indicated. He had already set himself to learn the 
 history and the language of the country. Long years before, 
 he had called Poland the natural rampart of Christianity 
 aj^ainst barbarians of every kind, whether Muscovite or Turk. 
 All this was forgotten. Peter might indeed be a bar- 
 barian, but he was a barbarian with a great future before 
 him., and Leibnitz rejoiced over him, ranking him with Kain- 
 Ki-Amalogdo-Khan, the Sovereign of China, and Yasok- 
 Adjan-Nugbad, the King of Abwssinia, his contemporaries, 
 who likewise seemed to be meditating mighty undertakings.^ 
 Sophia Charlotte had caused circumstantial reports concern- 
 ing the Tsar's stay at Koenigsberg to be sent her. These, 
 while giving her no very high idea of the degree of culture 
 and education she might expect to find in the august 
 traveller, had not diminished her desire of seeing him. She 
 kept up an active correspondence on this subject with the 
 state minister, Fuchs. In May 1697, she wrote: 'I would 
 have him persuaded to come here, not to see, but to be seen, 
 ' Gucrrier, Leibnitz in seinen Beziehungen zu KusslanJ, pp. 8-20. 
 
THE JOURNEY 83 
 
 and we would willingly keep the money generally spent on 
 rare animals for use on this occasion.' And a month later, 
 'Though I am a great enemy of dirt, my curiosity, this time, 
 is too strong for me.'^ 
 
 Peter, interested in his turn, urged, doubtless, by his 
 pleasant memories of the fair ladies in the Sloboda, willingly 
 agreed to a meeting, to take place at Koppenbrligge, in 
 the Grand Duchy of Zell, a fief of the House of Ikandcn- 
 burg, belonging to the Prince of Nassau. At first the 
 young Sovereign took fright at the number of people l.e 
 noticed in the place, — the two Electresses having neglected 
 to warn him they were bringing their whole family with 
 them. He tried to steal away, hastily left the village, and 
 more than an hour was spent in parleying before he could be 
 induced to return. At last he made his appearance at the 
 castle, but his only reply to the compliments addressed to 
 him by the two Princesses, was to cover his face with his 
 hands, repeating the words, ' Ich kann nicht sprcchen."^ 
 Shyness this, if you will, but constitutional timidity as well. 
 I hold to this opinion, and see a confirmation of it in the 
 continuation of the interview. For the young Sovereign 
 soon recovers from his agitation, and is, indeed, very quickly 
 tamed. At supper he shows signs of awkwardness, and is 
 guilty of some boorishness. He is puzzled with his napkin, 
 which he does not know how to use, and eats in dirty and 
 slovenly fashion. He forces the whole company to remain 
 at table for four hours, drinking endless toasts to his health, 
 and standing each time. But in spite of all, the impression 
 lie produces is not a bad one. He seems simple, with a great 
 deal of natural wit, answers questions readily and prompt!}', 
 and, once started, carries on the longest conversation without 
 any difficulty. Asked if he cares for hunting, he answers by 
 showing his hands, hardened by toil. He has no time for 
 hunting. After supper, he agrees to dance, on condition 
 that the two Princesses set the example. He desires to put 
 on gloves, but finds he has none. The gentlemen of his 
 suite take the whalebone stays of their partners for a natural 
 physical feature, and loudly remark that ' the German 
 ladies' backs are devilish hartl.' The Tsar sends for one of 
 
 ^ Varnhagen von Ense, Lehen der A'onigin von Freusseii, Sof/iie C/iarlo/te 
 [Berlin, 1837), pp. 74, 76. 
 
 '^ ' I do not know how to talk I ' 
 
84 PETER THE CIKEAT 
 
 his jesters, and as the silly bufifoonery of that individual 
 does not seem to please the ladies' taste, he seizes a huge 
 broom and sweeps him outside. But here again, take him 
 all in all, his attractiveness seems to have been stronger than 
 the astonishment he aroused. He was a lovable savage at 
 all events, and, better still, ' He is' (so writes the Electress's 
 mother) ' an altogether extraordinary man — it is impossible 
 to describe him or even to imagine what he is, without 
 having seen him,' Neither the mother nor the daugliter 
 iiad found those four hours at supper a moment too long. 
 Both of them would have willingly stayed longer yet, 'without 
 feeling an instant's weariness.' The younger Electress 
 closes her letter, recounting her impressions, to Fuchs with 
 this unfinished but very suggestive sentence : ' I have said 
 enough to weary you, but I cannot do otherwise. I find 
 pleasure in speaking of the Tsar, and if I had only myself to 
 consider, I would tell you that ... I shall always have 
 real pleasure in being of service to you.'^ 
 
 Leibnitz was not, unfortunately, present at this meeting. 
 He had reckoned on the passage of the embassy through 
 Minden, and had hastily sketched out a plan of work and of 
 reforms to be presented to the Tsar He only succeeded in 
 gaining admittance to one of Lefort's nephews, who dismissed 
 liim civilly. Peter remained utterly inaccessible. Learned 
 men who knew nothing of shi[)building, and had no know- 
 ledge of the preparation of fireworks, possessed, as yet, no 
 interest for him. He panted to see the country of Karschten- 
 Brandt and Kort. At Schenkenschen, a Dutch frontier 
 town, on the road to Amsterdam, a woman asked the 
 travellers whether they were Christians. There was a 
 rumour that the Muscovites were on their way to Cleves, 
 to receive Holy Baptism ! 
 
 II 
 
 Saardam or Zaandam, and the shipwright-Tsar's cottage 
 in that charming little Low-Country village, to which so many 
 pilgrimages are now made, never knew fame till towards the 
 middle of the eighteenth century. Baron INillnitz, who 
 devotes five pages of his memoirs, written in 1726, to a 
 
 ' P>mann, Memoirs hearing on the Htslory of Sophia Charlotte (Berlin, l86i), 
 pi). n6-i20. The details of the interview are taken from the Correspondence of 
 the two Princesses with Fucks. 
 
THE JOURNEY 85 
 
 description of this out-of-the-way corner, makes no mention 
 of the illustrious guest to whom it has owed its later 
 glory. The celebrated writer, Wagenaer, dbes not refer 
 to Zaandam, in his account of Peter's visit to Holland.^ 
 A curious example this, of the fashion in which popular 
 imagination will add its own marginal notes to a given page 
 of history. Historically speaking, w-e may be Cjuite sure, 
 the greater part of the time-honoured details of Peter's 
 residence in the neighbourhood of Amsterdam, have no 
 foundation in fact. It is not even absolutely certain that 
 he ever occupied the cottage now so piously preserved. 
 According to Scheltema, who quotes Noomen's diary, as 
 yet unpublished, the dwelling belonged to a blacksmith 
 of the name of Guerrit Kist. The records of the Lutheran 
 community of the place speak of a different proprietor 
 — Boij Thijsen. All the workmen's houses lining the little 
 canal which falls into the Y so absolutely resemble each 
 other, that some confusion may very well have arisen. 
 Voltaire and his disciples have indeed followed the life of 
 the heroic apprentice step by step, and hour by hour, down 
 the whole course of his legendary freak ; they see him 
 making his bed in his humble cottage, cooking his food, 
 constructing first a model ship, and then a model windmill, 
 each of them four feet long, with his own hands. He fits a 
 mast into his sailing boat, spends long days in the ship- 
 building yards, wielding the hatchet or the plane, and in 
 spite of all these multitudinous occupations he visits saw- 
 mills, spinning-mills, rope-walks, compass-makers' and lock- 
 smiths' workshops. Going into a paper-mill, he lays hands 
 on the apparatus for drawing the sheets, and performs 
 this delicate task with the most perfect success. How long 
 must it have taken him to do all these things? Almost two 
 years, Voltaire assures us. 
 
 The Tsar spent one %veek in the village of Saardam.^ 
 
 What brought him there? Chance, to a certain extent, 
 
 and, to a very great one, that ignorant simplicity which was 
 
 his constant companion throughout his first European tour. 
 
 ^aandam was, at that time, a fairly important shipbuilding 
 
 ^ Wagenaer, History of Amsterdavi (Amsterdam, 1750), p. 721. See also 
 Vaderlaudsche Hisiorie (Amslt-rdam, 1757), vol. xvi. pp. 377-379. 
 
 "^ Voltaire has somewhat contradicted himself on this point. Compare his 
 Works, 1853 edition, vol. iv. pp. 576 and 663. 
 
86 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 centre, numberinj]^ some fifty ship-j-ards, but, whctlicr as 
 regards the importance or the perfection of the work turned 
 out, none of these establishments could bear any comparison 
 with the shipbuilding yards at Amsterdam. Peter, leaving 
 the majority of his travelling companions at Koppenbriigge, 
 and accompanied by some dozen of his 'volunteers,' passed 
 through the Capital without a halt, and hurried straight to 
 the little village. Wherefore? because the best workmen 
 amongst the Dutch carpenters, none of them, of course, first- 
 rate, whom he had employed at Preobrajenskoic', at Pcrcias- 
 lavl and at Voroncje had chanced to be natives of Zaandam. 
 Whence he had concluded, that to see fine ships, and learn 
 how to make them, it behoved him to go there, and not 
 elsewhere. 
 
 He established himself in the village inn. Faithful to his 
 mania for dressing-up, he forthwith sent for suits like those 
 worn by the local boatmen — red waistcoats with large 
 buttons, short jackets, and wide breeches. Thus garbed, he 
 and his followers wandered through the streets, visiting the 
 work-yards, even entering the workmen's houses, to the 
 huge astonishment of their denizens. These houses bore a 
 strong resemblance to those Peter had been accustomed 
 to inhabit in his own country. He found one that took 
 his fancy, and settled down in it. He bought a boicjer 
 or small sailing-boat, fitted it with a stepped mast, then a 
 new invention, and spent his time sailing his little vessel on 
 the Gulf. At the end of a week he had had enough of it. 
 The ships he had seen on the waters of the Y, or in the 
 shipbuilding yards, were mere merchant vessels, of moderate 
 tonnage. His presence had flurried the quiet population of 
 the place, causing trouble to the local authorities, and some 
 inconvenience to himself. Noliody, it is quite clear, was 
 deceived by his disguise. His arrival had been foretold, and 
 a description of his person given to one of the local workmen 
 by a relation employed in Russia; 'Tall, with a head that 
 shakes, a right arm that is never quiet, and a wart on his 
 face.' Some children, whom he had treated roughly, threw 
 stones at him. He lost his temper, forthwith forgot his 
 incognito, and loudly proclaimed his quality. He was given 
 a hint that his d'^parture would be hailed with satisfac- 
 tion, and his Emoassy having arrived at Amsterdam, he 
 determined to rejoin it. 
 
THE JOURNEY 87 
 
 One week he spent at Zaandam, — sailinp^ about in a boat, 
 and making love to a servant-c^iil at the inn, to whom he 
 presented fifty ducats.^ ]^ut his strange behaviour and his 
 carnival disguise had made their impression. He had 
 sowed the seeds, in that out-of-the way spot, of a crop of 
 picturesque anecdotes, out of which the legend was to grow. 
 Before the end of the eighteenth century, Joseph li., Gustavus 
 III. and the Grand Duke Paul of Russia — early in the nine- 
 tt^enth, Napoleon and Maria Louisa, were to visit the dwelling, 
 authentic or non-authentic, within which the posthumous 
 \\orship of a late-born religion had been set up. Napoleon 
 it appears, showed little interest, and Marie Louise burst out 
 laughing, when she saw how poor a spot it was.^ But in 18 14 
 Alexander I. decorated it with a commemorative slab of 
 white marble. The poet Joukovski, going thither with the 
 future Emperor Alexander II., pencilled the cottage walls 
 with some enthusiasfc lines, saluting the cradle of Russia 
 under that humble roof Modern tourists may read the 
 following distich, beside a portrait of the great man : 
 
 ' Nichts is 
 
 den groottn man 
 
 te Klein.' 
 
 The cottage, which stands on the Krimp, in the western and 
 somewhat retired quarter of the town, is a wooden structure 
 on a brick-built foundation. Guerrit Kist, or Boij Thijsen, 
 shared it, in the year 1697, with a widow, who relinquished 
 her lodging to Peter in consideration of a rent of seven 
 florins — which he omitted to pay ; he was always apt to 
 forget such matters. There is one room only, a funnel- 
 shaped chimney-corner, with wooden jambs and mantel- 
 piece, a sort of wooden cupboard with folding doors, 
 A\ ire-latticed, and hung with curtains, in which the sleeping- 
 mattress was placed {betsteede) and a ladder leading to the 
 attic ; no other furniture which can have been used by the 
 tenaiit in 1697, all the rest was bought by the Empress 
 Elizabeth, and carried off to Russia. The house, which, after 
 
 ^ Mcerniann, I ecttire on Feter the Great's First Journey {Vd^xxs., 1812), p. 59, 
 etc.; Narlof, Aneeiiotes of Feter the Great (St. I'eterslurg, 1891^, pp. 5-7; 
 Noflvieii's titifuhlished Jotirtial in the Utrecht Lihiary. This journal is shortly 
 to be published by Frofessor Kort, of Dorpat (lourief). ScheUenia relied on it 
 absolutely, Koonien was a Zaandam clolh-mcrchant. 
 
 '^ Scheltema, Historical Avecdotes of Feter the Great (Lausanne, 1S42), p. 409. 
 
 7 
 
88 I'KTER TllK CHEAT 
 
 the Tsnr's departure, was the home of several generations of 
 artisans, was for a long time utterly forgotten ; it is just 
 possible that it ma\- have been recognised. A sort of arched 
 shed, built by the King of Holland, surrounds and preserves 
 what now remains of it ; — the western side, that is to say, 
 consisting of two rooms with a loft above them, all of them 
 sinking under the weight of the ruined roof. The right side 
 of the building and the chimney have utterly disappeared. 
 The Dutch quite lately made over these relics to the Russian 
 Government, and this has taken fresh measures for their 
 preservation, which may be indispensable, but which are 
 somewhat distressing to lovers of the picturesque. There is 
 even a Calorifere\ 
 
 A picture of the Dutch school, once at the Mon Plaisir 
 Palace at Peterhof, representing a man in a red waist- 
 coat, clasping a girl of veiy opulent charms, long had the 
 reputation of being a memento of the great man's visit to 
 Saardam. This canvas, now at the Hermitage Palace, was 
 certainly not painted from nature, for the artist, 1. I. Hore- 
 mans, was not born till 17 15. Nartof, who was, in later 
 years, a member of Peter's intimate circle, mentions the girl, 
 who, he says, would not consent to accept Peter's advances, 
 till a glance into the stranger's purse had convinced her he 
 was no common boatman ; and in a fragment of a letter in 
 Leibnitz's collection, which bears no indication of its origin, 
 I find, under the date of 27th Nov. 1697, the following 
 lines : — ' The Tsar has happened on a peasant girl of Saar- 
 dam, who pleases his fancy, and on holidays, he betakes 
 himself there alone in his boat, to take his pleasure with 
 her, after the manner of Mercules.' ^ 
 
 Peter found better employment at Amsterdam. His 
 arrival there was awaited by a friend, well-nigh a collabo- 
 rator, the burgomaster of the town, Nicholas Witsen. This 
 official, who had visited Russia during the reign of Alexis, 
 and written a celebrated book on lilastern and Southern 
 Tartary, who was the constant correspondent of Lefort, and 
 acted as his master's intermediarv in tiie matter of the ships 
 ordered, and other purchases made by him, in Holland, could 
 not fail to offer the traveller the heartiest welcome. He lost 
 no time in obtaining access for him to the great shipbuild- 
 ing yards of the East Indian Company. This marks the 
 ' Guerrier, Leibnitz Correspondence (St. Petersburg, 1S73), P- S'* 
 
THE JOURNEY 89 
 
 opening of the serious work and usefulness of Peter's first 
 journey. 
 
 The man himself was still unchanged, with his fads and 
 his oddities, his queer habits and grimaces. He still pre- 
 tended to hide himself under the name of 'Master Peter' 
 {Peterbas) or ' Carpenter Peter of Zaandam,' shammed deaf- 
 ness if he was addressed in any other manner, and thus 
 contrived to make himself more remarkable than ever. 
 When his Embassy went to the Hague, to be received in 
 solemn audience, he refused to accompanx' it, but intimated 
 his desire to watch the reception from a neighbouring room. 
 Some company having entered this apartment, the Tsar 
 desired to leave it, but, finding that, for this purpose, he was 
 obliged to cross the audience-chamber, he requested that 
 the members of the States-General should turn their faces 
 to the wall, so that they might not see him !^ He reached 
 the Hague at eleven o'clock at night. At the Amsterdam 
 hotel, to which he was first conducted, he refused the fine 
 bed prepared for him, in the best room, and insisted on 
 climbing up to the roof, to choose some tiny chamber. 
 Then changing his mind utterly, he resolved to seek a 
 lodging elsewhere. Thus it came about that the Old Doelen 
 Inn had the honour of his presence. One of his servants 
 was there already, sleeping in a corner on his bear-skin. 
 The Tsar kicked him to his feet ; ' Give me thy place ! '^ 
 
 He stopped his carriage twenty times between Amsterdam 
 and the Hague, to measure the width of a bridge, go into a 
 mill, which he had to reach by crossing a meadow, where 
 the water was often up to his knees, or enter some middle- 
 class house, whose inhabitants he caused, first of all, to be 
 sent outside. Wherever he went, his insatiable curiosity 
 and whimsicality went with him. He barely escaped maim- 
 ing himself by suddenly stopping a saw-mill. He clung to 
 the driving wheel in a silk factory, at the risk of being 
 carried away by one of the secondary wheels ; he studied 
 architecture with Simon Schynvoet of Leyden, mechanics 
 with Van der Heyden, fortification with Cochorn, whom he 
 tried hard to enlist in his own service, — printing with one 
 of the Tessing brothers, — anatomy with Ruysch, natural 
 history with Leuwenhoek. He took the gentlemen of his 
 suite into the celebrated Boerhaave's anatomical theatre, 
 
 * Schcltema, jip. 140-142. * Jbid. 
 
90 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 and when tlicy expressed some disi^ust at the preparations 
 they s.iw there, he forced thein to bite into the corpse which 
 was beint^ dissected. lie learned to use compass, and sword, 
 and plane, and even the instruments of a tooth-drawer, 
 whom he saw, one day, operating in the open air, in a pubh'c 
 square. Me built a frigate, he made his own bed, did his 
 own cooking, constructed a Russian bath for his own use ;^ 
 he took drawing lessons too, and learned to engrave on 
 copper, frequented the studio of Koerten Block, sat to her 
 for his portrait, wrote his name in her album, and himself 
 engraved a plate showing forth the triumph of the Christian 
 religion over the Moslem faith.^ 
 
 There is more feverish activity than reasoned a{:)plication 
 about all this, a great deal of caprice too, and even a touch of 
 insanity. Tiic notions of science and art thus picked up are 
 somewhat disconcerting. ' If you want to build a ship,' we 
 read in one of Peter's note-books belonging to this period, 
 'you must begin, after taking the superficial area, by making 
 a right angle at each end.'^ Napoleon, with all the univer- 
 sality of his genius, — the widest and the most comprehensive 
 our modern world has ever known, — never pretended to be a 
 great doctor or a skilful etcher. All his practical knowledge 
 was specialised. Yet Peter was following an instinct which 
 was not to play him false. He was giving himself the best 
 of preparations for the real task wliich awaited him, — not 
 the building of ships, or of factories, or of palaces (foreign 
 specialists could always be brought in for such pur[)oses), 
 but the inauguration of a whole plan of civilisation. He was, 
 after all, carrying on the process which had begun with his 
 first uncertain gropings amongst the exotic riches of the 
 Oronjcnna'ia Palata, the inventory — inevitably hasty, and 
 summary — of the various treasures, industrial, scientific, and 
 artistic, which he proposed to borrow from the Western 
 world. But as his field of curiosity enlarged, and, with it, his 
 mind widened, the careless child, the inattentive youth, of 
 former days, showed more and more of the qualities of the 
 Sovereign. Often, at Pcrciaslavl, or at Archangel, he had 
 
 1 Mcermann, p. 60. 
 
 ' Scheltcma, Russia atid the Lmv Countries {hms.\.c^^TiVC\, 1817). vol. i. p. 221 ; 
 F. Miillcr, Attempt at a Kussian-Nethcrlattd Bi/'liri:ya/'/iy. pp. 164, 165; 
 Pickarski, Literature and Seieiice ni Kiissia (St. Petersburg, 1S62), vol. i. p. 9. 
 The cngravinf^ referred to is in the Amsterdam Museum. 
 
 ' Oustrialof, vol. iii. p. 93. 
 
THE JOURNEY gi 
 
 utterly forgotten Moscow, and the rest of his empire. But 
 this was past. Far as he was from his capital, and the 
 frontiers of his country, he insisted on being kept informed 
 of the smallest details in the management of those public 
 affairs, which he had once so willingly neglected. He would 
 know everything that happened, hour by iiour ; and many 
 things were happening. Even the momentary application of 
 his energetic activity in that direction had borne fruit. Near 
 Azof, the forts of Alexis and of Peter were in course of 
 building, at Taganrog, two m.ore forts, named after the 
 Trinity and St. Paul, and a harbour, were being constructed. 
 On the Dnieper, the Turkish attacks on the fortresses of Kazy- 
 kermen and of Tavan had been victoriously repulsed. The 
 navy, too, was making rapid progress. The King of Sweden 
 had sent 300 cannon to arm the ships, either not dreaming 
 they might ever be turned against himself, or heroically 
 indifferent to that possibility. Augustus was strengthening 
 his position in Poland. Of all these things Peter was 
 informed ; he kept up an active correspondence with the 
 persons charged to represent him at the head of the 
 Government. Romodanovski gave him news of the Streltsy, 
 Vinnius wrote to ask him for Dutch gunsmiths. He did 
 even better than to send him these. He set about recruit- 
 ing a whole staff, most numerous and varied, which was to 
 second him in that work of transformation, the plan of 
 •which was growing clearer and clearer in his brain ; — a 
 skilled boatswain, of Norwegian birth, Cornelius Cruys, 
 whom he made an admiral ; several naval captains, three- 
 and-twenty commanders, five-and-thirty lieutenants, seventy- 
 two pilots, fifty physicians ; three hundred and fort\'-five 
 sailors, and four cooks. These men would need special 
 stores. He set himself to collect and send them off Two 
 hundred and sixty cases, filled with guns, pistols, cannon, 
 sail-cloth, compasses, saws, cabinet-makers' tools, whale- 
 bone, cork, and anchors, and marked w ith the letters P.M. 
 (Peter Miha'iiof) were despatched to Moscow. One consign- 
 ment — the germ of the future School of P'ine Arts— consisted 
 of eight blocks of marble, designed, no doubt, to rouse the 
 inspiration of future artists. Another case contained a 
 stuffed crocodile. Here we have the nucleus of a museum.^ 
 There were occasional checks in this wonderful activity, — a 
 
 ' Oustiialof, vol. iii. pp. 104- no. 
 
92 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 pause, now and then, in the Sovereign's correspondence 
 with his representatives. Peter's answers were sometimes 
 slow in coming. He would soon excuse himself shyl}', 
 almost humbly— the fault lay with Hmiclnitski, the Russian 
 Hacclius.^ Lefort's pupil had not — never was to — cast off 
 tiic old man in this respect. The weaknesses of the 
 daily guest at the Slolwda banquets still clung to him. 
 Hut, in spite of all, he found means, during those four 
 months spent in Holland, to accomplish an enormous amount 
 of work. 
 
 He was left in perfect freedom for the purpose. His 
 eight days' visit to Zaandam had revolutionised the vil- 
 lage. At Amsterdam, once the first moment of surprise 
 was past, his presence was almost unobserved. It was not 
 till some years later that the greatness of the part he was 
 called to play, and the frequency of his visits to Europe, 
 drew public attention to his relatively obscure beginnings. 
 And then, taken at a disadvantage, finding no trace of its 
 hero in the turmoil of the great maritime city, the legend 
 was fain to seek its guiding marks in a more modest spot, 
 and thus settled at Zaandam. The immediate impression 
 left there, by the visit of Peter Mihailof and his noisy 
 comrades, is clearly shown in the two following extracts 
 from contemporary chronicles. 
 
 The Records of the Lutheran community at ZaaruJam : — 
 
 ' He came incognito, with very few followers, spent a 
 week at Krimpcnburg, in the house of a blacksmith, of the 
 name of Boij Thijsen, and then went to Amsterdam, where 
 his great Embassy had arrived. He was seven feet high, 
 wore the dress of the peasants of Zaandam, worked in 
 the admiralty dockyard, and is a great admirer of ship- 
 building.' 
 
 Noomen's Journal : — 
 
 ' Thus were the State and our little town of Westzaandam 
 delivered and released from these celebrated, numerous, 
 distinguished, extraordinary, and very costly visitors.' 
 
 A resolution of the States General, dated 15th August 
 169S, informs us that the entertainment of the Embassy cost 
 the State 100,000 florins. Neither this document, nor any 
 
 ' Hmiclnitski was the victorious Chief who led the Cossacks in their striigcjle 
 against the Poles in the seventeenth century. Both in Russian, and in I'olish, the 
 Wold Iliiiiel means ^<?/.t, and aIho (/runi-e»fuss. 
 
THE JOURNEY 93 
 
 of the other resolutions referring to the stay of the Ambas- 
 sadors at Amsterdam, contains any reference to Peter 
 himself^ 
 
 III 
 
 In the seventeenth century, the Amsterdam shipbuilders 
 had a well-deserved reputation, but they were more prac- 
 tical than learned. Their processes differed in different 
 ship-yards, but no consistent theory, no carefully thought- 
 out justification of traditional proportions and methods, 
 existed in any one of them. Peter, as his study of the craft 
 advanced, became aware of this, and the fact distressed him. 
 The why and the wherefore, and with that, all chance of 
 making- the pirinciple his own, were beginning to escape him. 
 An Englishman whom he met at the country house of the 
 cloth-merchant, John Tessing, boasted of the superiority of 
 English shipbuilders in this respect. ' In his country,' he 
 said, 'theory and practice went hand in hand.' Thus it 
 came about, that in January, 1698, the young Tsar was in- 
 duced to cross the Channel. 
 
 He had met William III. already, both at Utrecht and at 
 the Hague, and was assured of a courteous welcome. A 
 yacht belonging to the Royal Navy, with an escort of three 
 battle-ships, was sent to fetch him from Amsterdam. Vice- 
 Admiral Mitchell, and the Marquis of Caermartiien — this last 
 an oddity, and almost as heroic a brandy-drinker as Lefort 
 himself, — were attached to the person of the Imperial guest. 
 Some uncertainty exists regarding the house inhabited by 
 the Tsar, during his stay in London. Some believe it to 
 have been 15 Buckingham Street, Strand, on the walls of 
 which a commemorative inscription is now placed. Others 
 ojMne that he lived in Norfolk Street. When the English 
 King entered the room selected by Peter for his own use, 
 and in which he slept, with three or four of his servants, His 
 Majesty almost fainted. The air was foul, and quite un- 
 breatheable ; in spite of the cold, all the windows had to be 
 thrown open. Yet, when Peter returned William's visit at 
 Kensington Palace, he gave proof of very evident progress, 
 
 ^ Dutch State Papers, The Hague. See, with reference to Peter's visit tc 
 Holland, besides the authorities already quoted, A. lazykof, Peter the Great at 
 Zaandam ami Annterdani (Berlin, 1872). 
 
94 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 in many social matters. He had a long conversation in 
 Dutch with the Kini^, he was assiduousK- polite to Princess 
 Anne, the heir to tlie throne, and was so much dcliL,ditcd 
 with her conversation that, in writing to one of his friends, 
 he described her as ' a true daughter of our church.' An 
 apparatus for showing the direction of the wind, placed in the 
 King's cabinet, interested him greatly, but he only cast a 
 careless glance on the marvels of art which filled the palace. 
 His visit was, on the whole, a failure, the impression he pro- 
 duced being far from favourable. The inhabitants of this 
 home of culture, and refined elegance, were more difficult to 
 please than the ladies of Koppenbriigge. A few years later, 
 Burnet, in his memoirs, almost seems to apologise to his 
 readers, for speaking of so sorry a personage.^ Was such a 
 man likely to be fit to govern a great empire? The Bishop 
 doubts it. A promising shipwright he might be. He had 
 not been seen to interest hfmself in any other matter, and 
 ever in that, he was disposed to give too much attention to 
 mer(; detail. Thus does the great Whig historian lay his 
 uneriing finger on the weak points of a marvellous genius, 
 without ever seeming to suspect the existence of those powers, 
 which, in a future page, I shall endeavour to demonstrate, l^ut 
 these written impressions cannot have been absolutely fresh, 
 and distance, doubtless, deceived him with an optical illusion, 
 analogous to that the effects of which we have already noticed 
 in Holland. 
 
 Peter remained in England almost as long as he had tarried 
 with the Dutch, and here, too, he gave his mind to many 
 things. With all his usual curiosity, minuteness, and practi- 
 cal-mindedness, he made the tour of every public establish- 
 ment likely to furnish him with useful information for his 
 future creations — the Mint — the Observatory — the Royal 
 Society. Though the pictures in Kensington Palace did 
 not transport him with admiration, he had his portrait 
 painted by Kneller, the pupil of Rembrandt and of Fer- 
 dinand Bo\. This picture, preserved at Hampton Court, is 
 one of the best of him in existence. He took his pleasure 
 too, giving free rein to his five-and twenty years, and making 
 practical acquaintance with local manners and customs. 
 'J'he servant-girl of the Zaandam inn was replaced by an 
 actress, Mrs. Cross, who, so it would appear, had reason to 
 ' Vol. ii. p. 221, etc. 
 
THE JOURNEY 95 
 
 complain of the Tsar's stinginess ; but he sharply reproved 
 the persons who ventured to lecture him on this subject, ' I 
 find plenty of men to serve me well, with all their heart and 
 mind, for 500 guineas. This person has only served me 
 tolerably, and what she has to give is worth much less.'^ 
 He won back his 500 guineas, over a match, fought in the 
 house of the Duke of Leeds, between a Grenadier of liis own 
 suite, and a celebrated native boxer. Six weeks out of the 
 three months were devoted to pursuing — at Deptford, a village 
 formerly on the outskirts of the capital, now merged within 
 it — those studies for which the Amsterdam shipyard had not 
 sufficed him. Here too he delighted in masquerading as a 
 working apprentice, walking through the streets with his 
 hatchet on his shoulder, and drinking beer and smoking a 
 small Dutch pipe in a tavern, which, until the year 1808, 
 bore the name of the Tsar's Tavern, and showed his portrait 
 on its signboard. Behold a new field for the legend-mongers, 
 who did not fail to take advantage of it ! Even Burnet's 
 usually clear vision and faithful memory were thus led 
 astray. But there is no uncertainty as to the residence 
 occupied by Peter at Deptford. Its identity has been 
 further established by witnesses, before a Court of Justice. 
 When the owner, John Evelyn, re-took possessii^n of his 
 dwelling, which he had given up temporarily for the use of 
 the Russian Sovereign, he found it in a condition which 
 might have suggested the idea that Baty-Han himself had 
 been there. Doors and windows had been torn out and 
 burnt, hangings dragged down and soiled, valuable pictures 
 utterly ruined, and their frames smashed to pieces. Evelyn 
 claimed, and received, reimbursement of his loss from the 
 public Treasury.- This mansion. Saves Court, though half- 
 ruined at the present day, standing in the middle of the 
 docks, and used as a police-barrack and counting-house, — is 
 still bound up with the memory of the illustrious guest it 
 once sheltered. The street by which it is approached is even 
 now called Tsar's Street. 
 
 Peter toiled hard at Deptford, under the direction of the 
 famous Anthony Dean, whose father had made himself 
 unpopular by passing over into France, and there teaching 
 the art of shipbuilding. In a letter dated March 4th, 1619, 
 
 1 Nartof, p. g. The original expression is even coarser yet. 
 ^ Shoubinski, Hisloiical Sketches (St. retersburg, 1893), P- }P- 
 
96 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 refcninnr to some excess committed at Moscow by one of his 
 provisional rcpiesL-ntativcs, while in a state of intoxication, 
 he writes, not without a touch of melancholy regret, ' We 
 run no risk of doing anything of that kind here, set'ing wc 
 arc immersed in study from morning till night.' But even 
 at Deptford, his toil as an apprentice and his passion for all 
 sea-faring matters did not completely absorb him. As in 
 Ilollaiid, his interests and his studies took every possible 
 direction. He kept adding recruits to the body of his 
 future collaborators — workmen and overseers for his mines 
 in the Ural, engineers who were to cut a canal which was to 
 join the Caspian and the Black Sea by the Volga and the 
 Don. lie and Lord Caermarthen negotiated the concession 
 of the Russian tobacco monopoly to a group of English 
 capitalists, in return for the somewhat modest sum of 4S,ooo 
 roubles, which he needed to balance the budget of his Em- 
 bassy, l^urnet forgot all that. Yet legend speaks of an 
 uncut diamond, wrapped in a scrap of dirty paper, — the 
 symbolic gift which Peter is said to have conferred on his 
 royal host ere he departed. But at Koenigsberg, if the 
 story-tellers are to be believed, he tossed a huge ruby into 
 the bosom of the Electress' low-cut gown, as he sat at table 
 with her.^ Now the Electress did not go to Koenigsberg ! 
 
 IV 
 
 By the end of April, Peter was back in Holland, and 
 before long he was on his way to Vienna. The request 
 for aid against the Turks, addressed to the States General 
 by the Embassy, had not been favourably received. The 
 States had even gone so far as to suggest to the King 
 of England that he should mediate between the Ottoman 
 Porte and Austria, so as to place that country in a position 
 to turn all her forces against France, in the fresh struggle 
 which was so evidently approaching, — for the health of 
 Charles II. of Spain was rapitily declining. This blow must 
 be parried. Unfortunately, the movements of the Russian 
 monarch's huge Embassy were very slow. It must take 
 
 ^ Coxe's Trar'f/s (hnndon, 1.S74), veil. iv. p. 87. Niestroicf, ' Peter the Circal's 
 Visit to Holland and England,' in ilie Messa^vr Universe/, 1871. 
 
THE JOURNEY 97 
 
 tluee weeks to reach the capital of the Holy Empire. 
 According to German official sources, its retinue was thus 
 composed : — One court marshal, one equerry, one major- 
 domo, four chamberlains, four dwarfs, six pa^es, six trum- 
 peters, one cup-bearer, one cook, one quarter-master, twelve 
 lacqueys, six coachmen and postillions, twenty-four serving- 
 men, thirty-two footmen, twenty-two carriage horses, thirty- 
 two four-horsed carriages, and four six-horse waggons for 
 the baggage, and twelve saddle-horses.^ Yet Peter pro- 
 posed to enter Leopold's capital at eleven o'clock at night, 
 and in the fourth coach, so as to pass unnoticed. At 
 the very last moment the plan failed, and everything 
 turned out ill for every one. The Embassy, with its end- 
 less train of followers, was forced to kick its heels one 
 whole long day, just without the approaches to the town. 
 The road was blocked by a great march-past of troops, not 
 to be interrupted for such a trifle. Peter, caring nothing 
 for the troops, jumped into a post-cart, whh. a single 
 servant, and pushed forward. Yet the incident annoyed 
 him much, and gave him an equal sense of discomfort. He 
 was sorely put out of countenance, and the appearance of 
 the Imperial residence only deepened the impression. The 
 whole place awed him, with its air of implacable pride, 
 haughty etiquette, and inaccessible majesty. Tlie Imperial 
 ministers, already deeply engaged with Holland and with 
 England, sought every pretext to delay the audience 
 solicited by his Ambassadors. He, to cut things short, 
 demanded a personal interview with the Emperor, and met 
 with a prompt refusal. By what right ? it was inquired. 
 Here was Peter Mihailof's first lesson in diplomacy. He 
 began to understand the inconvenience of disguises. Three 
 times he returned to the charge. At last the Vice-Chan- 
 cellor of Bohemia, Czernini, was sent to him. 'What do 
 you want? ' 'To see the Emperor, and speak with him on 
 urgent affairs.' 'What affairs? Are the Ambassadors of 
 your country not here to see to them ? ' The poor dis- 
 guised Tsar beat a hasty retreat ; ' He would not even 
 mention affairs,' he said. 
 
 A meeting was appointed at the Favorita Palace. He 
 was to enter by a private staircase, a small si)iral one com- 
 
 ' Weber, Archiv fiir Slichsische Geschichtc (Leipzig, 1873), vol. xi. p. 338. 
 
98 PETER THE C.REAT 
 
 municatinc:^ with the Park. He agreed to evcrythiiif;:^. Once 
 in tlic iMiipcror Leopold's presence, he forgot himself so far 
 as to attcmi)t to kiss his hand. He evidently felt liimself 
 very small and inferior ; he kept putting his hat on, and 
 l)ulling it off, nervously, and could not make up his mind to 
 keep it on his head, in spite of the Emperor's repeated 
 requests that he should do so. The interview, which lasted 
 a quarter of an hour, was of the most commonplace descrij)- 
 tion. Lefort interpreted, for Peter did not dare to fall back 
 on his own bad German. It was not till he had left the 
 Palace that he regained his self-possession, and then, in an 
 instant, all the natural and exuberant gaiety of the man 
 returned. A boat lay moored on a little pond in the Park. 
 He rushed to it, and rowed about till he was out of breath. 
 He was like any school-boy, just escaped from the trials of 
 a difficult e.vamination.^ 
 
 But the interview bore no fruit. The Emperor was quite 
 resolved to respect Peter Mihailofs incognito. At the ban- 
 quet which followed the audience at last granted to the 
 Embassy, the young Sovereign, bitten afresh with his old 
 mania, insisted on standing behind Lefort's chair. He was 
 allowed to do so without protest. The political proposals 
 he had come to make, by no means fell in with the decided 
 intentions of the Austrian Court, which was bent on having 
 i:)cacc with the Turks at any price. Yet Peter took great 
 pains to give satisfaction in these new surroundings. He 
 was much more circumspect than elsewhere. He paid a 
 \isit — at the Favorita, again, and almost secretly — to the 
 ]"Lmpress and the Imperial Princesses, and did his best to 
 make himself pleasant. He even ventured .some advances 
 towards the dominant Church, and went so far as to rouse 
 hopes among the Catholics, similar to those he had already 
 roused amongst the Protestants. On St. Peter's Day he was 
 l)resent, with his whole Embassy, at a solemn service in the 
 Jesuit Church, where he listened to a sermon preached in 
 Slav by Father Wolff, and heard the preacher say 'that the 
 keys would be bestowed a second time, upon a new Peter, 
 that he might open another door' He composed, and lighted 
 with his own hands, the fireworks which formed part of an 
 entertainment given, that same day, by his Ambassadors, to 
 
 ' Vienna State Papers, Cercni)niall-Pr(jlocollc. Compare Ouslrialof, vol. iii. 
 ])p. 126, 127; Shciner,'p. 372. 
 
THE JOURNEY . 99 
 
 the cream of Viennese society, and which, according to the 
 Tsar's testimony, wound up in very much the same fashion 
 as the fetes in the Sloboda. According to one of his letters 
 to Vinnius, a great deal of wine was drunk, and there was 
 considerable love-making in the gardens.^ Shortly afterwards, 
 the Emperor invited the Ambassadors to a masked ball, at 
 which Peter wore the dress of a Friesland peasant. The 
 Emperor and Empress appeared as the host and hostess of 
 an inn. Innkeeping {das WirtJischaft) was as much in 
 fashion, at that moment, as shepherds and shepherdesses 
 and all pastoral matters were soon to be. But this enter- 
 tainment had no official character whatever. At supper 
 Peter sat between Freilin von Turn, who w^as his own 
 pendant, as a Friesland peasant, and the wife of Marshal 
 von Staremberg, who wore a Swabian costume. A few days 
 later the Embassy departed. The diplomatic object of the 
 journey had utterly failed, and the scientific resources of 
 Vienna had been no compensation for Peter's disappoint- 
 ment in this respect. He desired to go to Venice, there to 
 study a form of shipbuilding, new to him as yet — those 
 oared galleys which were to play such a great part in the 
 future of the Russian navy. Just as the travelling prepara- 
 tions were completed, the Tsar was compelled to stop short. 
 Serious news had arrived from Russia. 
 
 ' The seed of the Miloslavski has sprouted once again.' 
 Thus he picturesquely describes it. There was a fresh 
 mutiny amongst the Streltsy. Tike a flash his mind was 
 made up, and the direction of his journey changed from 
 south to east. A few days later he was at Cracow. ' You 
 will see me sooner than you think for,' he had written to 
 Romodanovski, whom he accused of weakness and pusil- 
 lanimity. I^ut more reassuring news awaited him in the 
 old Polish capital : Shein, his generalissimo, had put down 
 the rebels ; Moscow was safe. He slackened his pace a 
 little, halted at Rawa, and there spent three days with 
 Augustus II. The history of this meeting, which was to 
 give birth to the Northern War, belongs to another chapter 
 of this book. As far as Peter's studies are concerned, his 
 journey ended at Vienna. Before setting forth its conse- 
 quences, distant and immediate— the creation, in other words, 
 
 ^ Writings and Corj-es/'ondeme, vol. i. p. 263. 
 
loo. PETER THE GREAT 
 
 on the confines of ancient Europe, of a new power, political, 
 social, and economic, and the transformation, political, social, 
 and economic too, of a certain area of the old European 
 continent — I must fully describe the physical traits and 
 mental characteristics of the man who was to be the in- 
 strument to perform this revolution. Standing on the 
 threshold of the work, I must endeavour to picture forth 
 its maker. 
 
PART II 
 
 THE MAN 
 
BOOK I— BODY AND MIND 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PHYSICAL PORTRAIT — CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 
 
 I. Pen and pencil portraits — Kneller and Von Moor — St. Simon — Strength Tin d 
 
 nervousness — Twitcliings — Oddities of dress — The lay figure in the Winter 
 Palace — What his dress really was — Darned stockings and cobbled shoes 
 — The Doubina. 
 
 II. Temperament — The delight of action — An audience at 4 o'clock in the 
 
 morning — A working day of 14 hours — Ubiquity and universality — states- 
 man, drum-major, dancing-master, fireman, major-domo, physician — The 
 Tsar and his negro boy — The individual and the race — Russian indolence 
 ■ — Agreement of physical and moral phenomena — Long winters, and short- 
 lived springs — Periods of inertia, and fits of feverish activity — The heroes 
 of the National Legend. 
 III. W\ns Peter brave? — Narva and Poltava — The idea of duty — Contradictions — 
 Moral energy and weakness — Inconstancy and versatility in detail — 
 Steadiness and perseverance in the whole undertaking— Peter's impulsive- 
 ness — Traits of the national character — Brain and heart — Want of 
 feeling— Cheery and sociable disposition — Boyish pranks — Why he was 
 disliked — Frequent fits of violence and rage — Sword thrusts. 
 IV. Drinking excesses — A scene of bloodshed in the Monastery of the Basilian 
 Fathers — The Tsar not sober — Habitual drunkenness — Its results. 
 V. Coarse pleasures — Banquets and orgies — Female drunkards — A regular 
 tippler — Theological controversies at table — Peter's tastes are those of the 
 public-house and the servants' hall — Was he cruel ? — Judge and execu- 
 tioner — Reasons of State — Idealism and sensuality — The bondage of the 
 Law. 
 
 The picture of Peter, painted in London by Sir Godfrey 
 Kneller, in 1698, shows us a fine young fellow of gracious 
 and manly presence. The features are refined and regular, 
 the expression full of dignity and pride ; the wide-open eyes 
 and somewhat full, half-smiling, lips, are instinct with beauty 
 and intelligence. The physical mark discreetly indicated on 
 the right cheek — the wart of the description sent to the 
 Zaandam workman — rouses confidence in the artist's fidelity. 
 8 103 
 
104 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Yet this same fidelity has been much ch'sputed. Not to 
 mention the hideous waxen figure which dishonours the 
 i^^allcry of the Winter Palace at St. Petersburj^, Leroi and 
 Caravaque, as also Dannhauer, and even Karl Von Moor — 
 with whose work I'eter himself was so well pleased, that he 
 sent the portrait from the Mafrue to Paris, in 1717, to have it 
 reproduced at the Gobelins Factory — were all of them far 
 less flattering.^ The portraits painted on the spot, and at the 
 same period (1717) by Nattier and Rigaud, pleased the Tsar 
 less. They have a somewhat arch expression, and give 
 nothing of that fierce, and almost savage look of power, 
 which Moor so successfully indicated. 
 
 True it is, indeed, that twenty years — and what eventful 
 ones ! — had passed over the Tsar, between the date of 
 Kneller's picture and that of Moor's. But Noomen saw the 
 great man before Kneller met him, and in his Journals, I find 
 this rough and evidently frank description : — ' Tall and 
 robust, of ordinary corpulence, lively and quick in all his 
 movements, the face round, the expression rather severe, the 
 eyebrows dark, like the short curling hair . . . he walks with 
 long steps, swinging his arms, grasping a new hatchci haft in 
 his hand.' The vanished hero stands before us! Again, 
 about the same period, under the hand of Cardinal Kollonitz, 
 Primate of Hungary, who met the Tsar at Vienna in 1698, 
 and was rather benevolently inclined towards him than 
 otherwise — I read as follows : — ' Neither in his person, his 
 aspect, nor his manners, is there anything to specially 
 distinguish him, and betra\' his princely quality.' ^ St. Simon's 
 portrait is well known. I should be disposed to adopt it, as 
 indicating a happy medium — for all the contemporary 
 documents on which I have been able to lay my hand, agree 
 with it in every essential point. Here are. two, deposited 
 amongst the papers of the French Ministry for P'oreign 
 Affairs, during the Tsar's residence in Paris in 1717. 'His 
 features were rather handsome, the\' even showed a certain 
 gentleness, and no one would have thought, on looking at 
 him, that he would occasionally take to cutting off the heads 
 of those of his subjects who displeased him. He would have 
 
 ' K<i\'n\sV.\, Dictionary of Eiifp-aved Portraits, Y). 1572. The whereabouts of 
 the original of this portrait is unknown. 
 
 - Tlieiner, p. 372. Compare Ruzini's Account sent from Venice to Vienna; 
 Pontes rerum Austriacaruni (Vienna, 1S67), Part 11. vol. xxvii. p. 429. 
 
PHYSICAL PORTRAIT— CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 105 
 
 been a very well-built prince, but that he carried himself so 
 badly. He walked with round shoulders, worse than any 
 Dutch sailor, whose ways he seemed to cop)'. He had large 
 eyes, a good nose and mouth, a pleasant face, though some- 
 what pale, and light brown hair kept rather sliort. He made 
 endless grimaces. One of his comn^ionest tricks was to try 
 to look at his sword by bending his head backwards over his 
 shoulder, and to raise one of his legs and stretch it out 
 behind him. He sometimes turned his head as if he desired 
 to bring his face above the middle of his shoulders. Those 
 who waited on him asserted that this kind of convulsion 
 always came upon him when his thoughts were very earnestly 
 fixed on any special subject.'^ And again 'The Tsar is 
 exceedingly tall, somewhat bow'ed, his head generally bent 
 down, he is very dark, and there is a something wiJd in his 
 look. His mind appears bright, and his understanding very 
 ready. There is a sort of grandeur in his manners, but this 
 is not always kept up.'^ The disagreement as to the colour 
 of Peter's hair may be put dow-n to the fault of the wig- 
 makers, he having adopted the style of hair-dressing pecu- 
 liar to the European dress of that date. All are agreed as to 
 his grimaces, and nervous trick-^, the perpetual shaking of his 
 head, the round-shoulderedness which struck the Emperor's 
 Ministers in 1698, when he was only 24, and the fierce 
 expression of his eyes. The Archbishop of Novgorod, 
 lanovski, admitted to audience to kiss the hands of Ivan and 
 of Peter, when the two brothers shared the throne, felt no 
 alarm when he approached the elder sovereign. But when 
 he met the younger Tsar's glance, he felt his knees shake 
 under him, and, from that day forward, the presentiment that 
 he would be done to death by that second hand, which his 
 trembling lips had scarcely touched, was always wilh him. 
 
 ' It is well known,' says Staehlin, ' that this monarch, from 
 his early youth until his death, was subject to short but 
 frequent brain attacks, of a somewhat violent kind. A sort 
 of convulsion seized him, which for a certain tiine, and some- 
 times even for some hours, threw him into such a distressing 
 condition, that he could not bear the sight of any one, not 
 even his nearest friends. This parox}-sm was always pre- 
 
 ^ Mimoires et Documents (Russie), vol. ii. p. 117. 
 
 ^ Despatch from M. de Liboy-sent to Dunkirk to receive the Tsar, April 
 
io6 PETER THE C.REAT 
 
 ceded by a stronc^ contortion of the neck towards the left 
 side, ami by a violent contraction of the muscles of the 
 face.' ^ Hence arose, doubtless, Teter's perpetual recourse to 
 remedies, some of them occasionally very strange, as for 
 instance, a certain powder, compounded of the interior and 
 the winj^s of a magpie.- I lence too, his habit of sleeping with 
 his two hands clasping the shoulders of an orderly officer.^ 
 Some people have tried to believe this last fact to have given 
 rise to the malevolent suppositions which have hovered round 
 the private morals of this sovereign. But this explana- 
 tion is, unfortunately, far from being sufficient. In 1718, 
 while at table with the Queen of Prussia, Peter began to 
 wave one of his hands — that holding his knife — in so violent 
 a fashion, that Sophia Charlotte took fright and would have 
 left her seat. He, to reassure her, seized her arm, but 
 squeezed it so tightly, that she cried out. He shrugged his 
 shoulders. ' Catherine's bones are not so tender ! ' he was 
 heard to remark aloud.* 
 
 These traits of nervous delicacy had already appeared in 
 the case of Ivan the Terrible, and probably arose from the same 
 cause — the excess and violence of the shocks undergone in 
 infancy and childhood. It was the legacy of old Russia — re- 
 presented by the Streltsy, and doomed to death already — to 
 her great Reformer. But with the poison, happily,she bestowed 
 the antidote — that mighty work which was to purify his blood 
 and invigorate his nerves. Ivan had no such good fortune. 
 
 To sum it up, Peter may be described, physically, as a fine 
 man, exceedingly tall (hi^ exact height was 6 ft. 8i in.),'' dark 
 — 'extremely dark, as if he had been born in Africa,' says 
 one of his contemporaries^ — powerful in frame, with a good 
 deal of majesty about him, marred by certain faults of 
 deportment, and a painful infirmit}', which spoilt the general 
 effect. He dressed carelessly, put on his clothes awry, 
 frequently appeared in a most untidy condition, was always 
 changing his garments, military or civil, and would occasion- 
 ally select a garb of the most grotesque description. He had 
 
 1 ^M^(-</fto (Richou's translation, Str.aslnirg, 17S7), p. 80. 
 ' Scherer's Anecdotes (Paris, 1792), vol. ii. p. 82. 
 ' Narlof. p. 29. 
 
 * Memoirs of the Marp-avine of Bairettth. 
 
 " Two Arcliines, and fourteen \'erchoks, Golikof, History of Peter the Great 
 (Mi)scf)\v, 1842), vol. X. p. 170. 
 
 • Louville's i1/(f/;/<7//-J (Paris, 1818), vol. ii. ]i. 239. 
 
PHYSICAL PORTRAIT— CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 107 
 
 no sense whatever of propriety in dress. He showed himself 
 to the Danes, at Copenhagen, in 17 16, with a green cap on 
 his head, a black military cravat tightly buckled round his 
 neck, and his shirt collar fastened by a big silver button, set 
 with mock stones, such as his own officers were in the habit 
 of wearing. A brown overcoat with horn buttons, coarse 
 worsted stockings, full of darns, and very dirty shoes, com 
 pleted his costume.^ He agreed to wear a wig, but insisted 
 on its being very short, so that he might be able to thrust it 
 into his pocket ; and his own hair, which he rarely cut, 
 showed far below it. 
 
 His hair grew naturally very long and thick. In 1722, 
 during his Persian Campaign, being inconvenienced by its 
 quantity, he had it cut, but, being very economical in mind, 
 he insisted on having a new wig made out of it, which wig 
 now figures on the lay figure in the Winter Palace. It is 
 indeed the only genuine thing about that figure ; the waxen 
 face, with its glass eyes, was modelled on a cast taken after 
 death, and the weight of the plaster on the decomposing 
 flesh threw all proportions out. Peter's cheeks were 
 naturally full and round. He never wore the coat of pale 
 blue gros de Tours, silver-trimmed, nor the sword-belt 
 embroidered to match, and the silver-clocked poppy-coloured 
 stockings, in which the figure is dressed up, but once in all 
 his life. That was at Moscow, in 1724, on the day of 
 Catherine's Coronation. She had worked with her own hands 
 on the splendid garment, and he consented to wear it for 
 the occasion. But he kept to his old cobbled shoes. Ihe 
 rest of his authentic and everyday garments are placed in 
 two wardrobes which surround the throne — itself a mock 
 one, on which the lay figure is seated. There is a thick cloth 
 cloak, worn threadbare, a hat devoid of lace, pierced by a 
 bullet at Poltava, and some grey woollen stockings, full of 
 darns. In the corner stands the famous doubina, a fairly 
 thick ivory-headed rattan cane, with which we shall make 
 closer acquaintance. 
 
 The sovereign's intimate circle frequently saw him in his 
 shirt-sleeves, for, even at table, he never scrupled to take off 
 his coat if he was too hot. Restraint, of any kind, he never 
 would endure. 
 
 ^ Luntlhlad, Life of Charles XII. (Gorman Traiislaliun, Jciisscn Tucb, 
 Hamburg, 1S37), vol. i. p. S6. 
 
io8 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 II 
 
 * Tlie soul's joy lies in doing.' The greatest of northern 
 poets was swift to recognise the hero of that might}' scries 
 of brilUant exploits, the image of which I would fain evoke, 
 and has summed him up — his temperament, his character, 
 and almost ail his genius — in those few words. As Posselt 
 says, 'In Thatcndrangc ivar scin waJircs Genie': — Yes; his 
 strength, his greatness, and his ultimate success, were all 
 of them due to that \it.d energy which made him, both 
 physically and morally, the mo.st turbulent man, the most 
 indifferent to fatigue, the most intensely sensible of the j'iry' 
 of action, whom the world has ever seen. Nothing more 
 natural than that the legends should have described him as 
 a supposititious child, the son of foreign parents. His whole 
 nature appears utterly at variance with the surroundings 
 into which he was born. He has no prejudices, and his 
 Russian subjects brim over with them. They are fanatics in 
 their own religion ; he is almost a Free-thinker. They look 
 askance at every novelty ; he is never weary of innova- 
 tions. They are fatalists; he, an originating force. They 
 worship form and ceremony ; he views all such things with 
 an almost cynical scorn. Finally, and above all, they are 
 indolent, lazy, emotionless, — frozen, as it were, into a per- 
 petual winter, or slumbering in some everlasting dream. 
 He, driven by the feverish love of movement and of labour, 
 which I have already described, wakes them roughly from 
 their torpor, and their sluggish inactivit}', with downright 
 blows, failing on them with sticks, and, not unfrequently, 
 with axes. It would be interesting to follow his perpetual 
 comings and goings, even during the space of a few months. 
 Cast a mere glance over the list of his correspondence with 
 Catherine — some 223 letters, published, in i86i,bythe Minis- 
 try f'lr Foreign Affairs. The various dates — from Lemberg 
 in Galicia, from Marienwerder in Prussia, from Tsaritsin on 
 tlie Volga, — in the south of his cin[)ire, from Vologda, in the 
 north, from Berlin, Paris, Copenhagen — make the brain reel. 
 One moment he is in the depths of Finland inspecting 
 forests ; then again in the Ural inspecting mines. Soon he 
 is in Pomerania, taking part in a siege ; in the Ukraine, 
 where he is occupied in breeding sheep ; at the brilliant 
 
PHYSICAL PORTRAIT— CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 109 
 
 Court of some German prince, where he acts as his own 
 Ambassador ; and then, suddenly, in the Bohemian moun- 
 tains, where he enacts the part of a private tourist. On the 
 6th of July, 17 1 5, I find him at St. Petersburg-, about to put 
 to sea with his fleet. On the 9th he is back again in his 
 capital, sending the Montenegrins a consolatory letter con- 
 cerning the excesses committed on them by the Turks, 
 signing a convention with the Prussian Minister, and giving 
 Menshikof instructions as to the preservation of the tmiber 
 in the neighbourhood of the town. On the 12th he is at 
 Revel : on the 20th he has rejoined his fleet at Kronstadt, 
 and has forthwith embarked with it.^ And so on, year in 
 and year out, from the beginning to the end of his life. He 
 is always in a hurry: he makes his coachman drive full 
 gallop ; when he is on foot he never walks — he runs. 
 
 When did he take his rest, then ? It is not easy to con- 
 ceive. He would sit far into the night, glass in hand, but 
 even then he was discussing, holding forth, trying his guests 
 sorely, from time to time, with his sudden changes from 
 gaiety to ill-humour, his sallies, his ill-bred jokes, and fits of 
 fuiy ; and he would give audiences at four o'clock in the 
 morning. This was the hour for which he summoned his 
 two Ambassadors, Ostermann and Boutourlin, before send- 
 ing them to Stockholm, after the conclusion of peace with 
 Sweden, in 172 1. He received them, garbed in a short 
 dressing-gown, below which his bare legs were exposed, a 
 thick nightcap, lined with linen, on his head — for he per- 
 spired violently — and his stockings dropped down over 
 his slippers. According to his orderly officer, he had been 
 walking about for a considerable time, awaiting the arrival 
 of the two gentlemen. Forthwith he fell upon them, ques- 
 tioned them closely, and in every direction, to make sure 
 they thoroughly knew what they were about, and then, having 
 dismissed them, dressed hastily, swallowed a glass of vodka 
 (Russian brandy), and hurried off to his dock)'ards.- 
 
 P'ven the pleasures he permitted himself — banquets, illumi- 
 nations, masquerades — imposed extra labour on him ; he 
 took more pains than actual relaxation, letting off his own 
 fireworks, directing the order of processions, beating the big 
 drum — for he was drum-major among other things — and 
 leading the dances, for he had made a study of the chore- 
 
 ^ Golikof, vol. vi. pp. 33, 35, 321. - Scheier, vol. iii. p. 267. 
 
no PETER THE GREAT 
 
 graphic art. In 1722 at Moscow, at the weddings of Count 
 Golovin with the daughter of Prince Romodanovski, he 
 performed the duties of the house-steward. The heat 
 having become oppressive, he had the nece-^sary tools for 
 opening a window brought to him, and thus employed him- 
 self for half an hour. He went about gravely, carr}'ing the 
 staff, which was his sign of of?ice, pirouetted before the 
 bride, remained standing during the feast, directing the 
 waiting, and ate nothing himself until all was over.^ He 
 gave personal and active attention to the treatment of his 
 negro page, who suffered from t;enia.^ 
 
 But indeed his favourite occupation, even in his hours of 
 recreation, was v/ork, perpetual work. Thus he engraved 
 on copper, and turned in ivory. In May 171 1, the French 
 envoy Baluze, to whom he had granted audience at Jaworow, 
 in Poland, found him in the garden, in the company of a 
 fair lad\'. He was pushing his suit wMth a charming Pole, 
 Madame Sieniawska, and meanwhile, saw and plane in hand, 
 he was busily engaged in building a boat I ^ 
 
 Nothing but illness, and consequent sheer inability to 
 move, would induce him to cease, or even diminish, this wild 
 expenditure of strength. And if this did occur, he was full 
 of distress and regret, showering apologies on those who 
 worked under him. ' Let them not,' so he writes, 'fancy he 
 was idle ; he was really incapable of moving, quite worn 
 out.' And even while complaining and chafing against this 
 condition of enforced inaction, — as, for example, in 1708, 
 during a violent attack of scorbutic fever, — he would per- 
 sonally direct the repression of a Cossack revolt on the Don, 
 the victualling of his armies, the building operations of 
 various kinds already begun in his capital, and a mass of 
 other details of every kind.^ 
 
 Not one escapes him. At Arcliangel, on the Dvina, he 
 takes it into his head to inspect every one of the boats 
 which carry the rustic pottery, made in the nei<^hbourhood, 
 to the market. So vigorously does he set about it, that he 
 ends by tumbling into the hold of one vessel, and smashing 
 
 ' Bcrj^holz's Journal, Bi'(Sihiiir:^s-Mai:;azi}iy vol. xx. p. 462; Hynerof, The 
 Countess Goloz<kin (St. Petcrshiirj;, 1S67), p. 102, etc. 
 
 '■' For this ancc(i"te, with its coarse ilelails, see I'oushkin's Works, 1878 
 edition, vol. V. p. 27.S. 
 
 ' Dcsi aicli from IJaliize to the King, May 12, 1711, French Foreign OfTice. 
 
 * Golikof, vol. iii. p. 301. 
 
PHYSICAL PORTRAIT— CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS in 
 
 a whole cargo of the fragile ware.^ In January, 1722, at 
 Moscow, after a night in carnival time, spent in driving from 
 house to house in his sledge, singing carols after the manner 
 of his country, and gathering a harvest of small coins, besides 
 swallowing nuinerous glasses of wine, beer, and vodka, he 
 hears, early in the morning, that a fire has broken out in a 
 distant quarter. Thither he flies at once, and for two whole 
 hours does fireman's duty ; after which he mounts his sledge 
 again, and is seen tearing along as if he really desired to 
 break his horses down. Be it remarked that he is occupied, 
 at that same moment, with a serious change in the higher 
 administration of his empire. He is about to break up his 
 'council of revision,' the duties of which are to be trans- 
 ferred to the Senate, besides which, he must shortly give 
 orders concerning the funeral of a regimental major.- 
 
 In 1721, when he undertook the work of drawing up his 
 Navy Regulations, he laid out a plan for the emploj-ment 
 of his time, to which he closely adhered. According to his 
 Journal, he wrote, during four days of the week, for fourteen 
 hours a day, — from five in the morning till noon, and from 
 four in the afternoon till eleven at night. This lasted from 
 January to December 1721.^ The MS. of these Regula- 
 tions, entirely in his hand, and full of corrections, is now 
 amongst the Moscow archives. These also contain rough 
 copies, written by the Tsar, which prove that a great number 
 of the diplomatic documents respecting the Northern war, 
 signed by the Chancellor Golovin, were directly inspired, 
 and originally written, by his master. And the same 
 may be said of the majority of the memorandums and 
 important despatches signed by his ordinary political col- 
 laborators, Golovin, Sheremetief, and General Weyde, and 
 yet more so in regard to the legislative and administrative 
 work of his whole reign — the creation of the army and 
 the fleet, the development of commerce and industry, the 
 establishment of mills and factories, the organisation of 
 justice, the repression of official corruption, the constitution 
 of the national economy. lie wrote all minutes, often 
 several times over, drew up all schemes, and frequently 
 
 * Staehlin's Anecdotes, ]■>. i lo. 
 
 " Beigholz's yi;«r«a/, Jhischings-Magazitt, vol. xx. p. 360; ll'ritins^^s and 
 Correspondence, vol. i. ]). 811. 
 
 ^ (iulikof, vol. ix. p. 27, , 
 
112 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 several editions of the same scliemc This did not prevent 
 him from attendintj to all the details of the manai^ement of 
 his own house, and even of the houses of his kinsfolk : as 
 wiic.n, for example, he fixed the quantity and quality of 
 the brandy to be supplied to his sister-in-law, the Tsarina 
 Prascovia.^ 
 
 And yet in spite, and even because of it all, he was 
 the true son of his country and of his race, and I, for my 
 part, would readily stake my reputation on my certainty 
 of his Russian ori^^in. He corresponded to a certain phase 
 of the national life, which clearly seems to betray the in- 
 fluence of the special conditions of physical existence in these 
 latitudes. In Russia, after long and cruel winters, there 
 come late and sudden springs, which instantly cover the 
 waking earth with verdure, in a sudden explosion, as it were, 
 of vernal forces. The same springtime awakenings, the same 
 rushes of energetic growth, stir the souls of the men who 
 inhabit these countries. The length and rigour of the winter 
 season, which condemns them to a certain slothfulness of 
 existence, make them indolent, without, as in hot Eastern 
 countries, making them effeminate. Mind and spirit are 
 braced, rather, by the enforced struggle with inclement and 
 ungrateful nature. When the sun returns, the swiftly work- 
 ing elements must be swiftly followed, so as to crowd the 
 work of several months into the space of a few weeks. This 
 fact brings forth special physical and moral habits, — special 
 aptitudes too ; and of these habits and aptitudes Peter is 
 simply a particularly powerful expression. Such exceptional 
 extremes as he may betray in these respects are doubtless the 
 survival of the savage elementary forces, peculiar to the epic 
 heroes of the Russian legend, — superhuman giants all, who 
 bore the heavy burden of an excess of vigour they could not 
 use, — wearied out by their own strength ! 
 
 Peter, when he passes out of our sight, will leave the 
 Raskolniks, who seek to relieve themselves of the same 
 burden by galloping to and fro, on January nights, barefoot 
 and in their shirts, and rolling in the snow.- 
 
 ' Siemievski, The Tsarina Prascovia {St. Petersburg, 1S83), note to p. 58. 
 * Solovief, History of Russia, vol. xiii. p. 166, etc. 
 
PHYSICAL PORTRAIT— CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 113 
 
 III 
 
 Did Peter's energy, and his enterprising — nay, his extra- 
 ordinarily venturesome — genius, equal his courage? 
 
 He never sought danger, like his great Swedish adversary, 
 — never found pleasure in it. In his earlier days, he gives us 
 the impression of being a downright coward. My readers 
 will not have forgotten his precipitate flight, on the nighc 
 of August 6th, 1689, and his far from heroic appearance 
 at the Troitsa. The same thing came to pass in 1700, 
 under the walls of Narva : — In spite of the most ingenious 
 explanations and apologies, the hideous fact remains. At 
 the news of the unexpected approach of the King of Sweden, 
 the Tsar left his army, made over the command to an as yet 
 untried, and newly-enlisted Chief, to whom he gave written 
 instructions, which bore traces, according to all competent 
 judges, not of ignorance only, but of the greatest perturbation 
 of mind. ' He is no soldier,' was the outspoken comment of 
 the Saxon General Hallart, who saw him on this occasion, 
 in the tent of the new Commander-in-Chief, the Prince de 
 Croy, scared out of his wits, and half distracted, making loud 
 laments, and drinking bumper after bumper of brandy to 
 pull himself together, — forgetting to date his written orders, 
 or to have his official seal affixed to them.^ Peter, in his own 
 journal, has given us to understand that he was unaware 
 of Charles Xll.'s rapid march, and this flagrant falsehood 
 amounts to an acknowledgment of his weakness. 
 
 Yet, he did his duty bravely at Poltava, exposing his 
 pcr-,on in the hottest of the struggle.- To this he made up 
 his mind beforehand, as to any other trying and painful 
 experience, showing no eagerness, but yet betraying no 
 weakness, coldly, almost mournfully. There was nothing of 
 the paladin about him, not a spark of the spirit of chivalry ; 
 and, in that point also, he was essentially Russian. Ill, and 
 confined to his bed, early in that same year, he wTote to 
 Mcnshikof, in a somewhat melancholy strain, desiring to be 
 
 ^ Documents published by Herrmann, in his History of Russia, vol. iv. p. 116 ; 
 Vockerodt's Journal, puljlished by Herrmann, Kussland unter Peter d. G. 
 {1872), p. 42 ; and Kelch, Liefldndische Ceschichte (1S75), vol. ii. p. 156. All 
 agree on this head. 
 
 - This is acknowledged even by Swedish historians. See Lundblad, vol. ii. 
 p. 141. 
 
114 I'ETER THE GREAT 
 
 warned whenever there was any certainty of a decisive action, 
 for he 'could not expect,' he said, 'to escape that sort of 
 affair.' His mind once made up, all the risks of the 
 adventure, personal and other, seem equalised in his mind. 
 Me calculated them all, with the same composure, and 
 accepted whatever came, with the same calmness of mind. 
 When, in 17 13, Vice-Admiral Cruys, desirinij^ to prevent the 
 Sovereign from exposing his person in a dangerous cruise, 
 referred to recent catastroplics, and instanced the story of a 
 Swedish Admiral who had been blown up with his ship, 
 Peter wrote on the margin of his report, ' The okolnitchyi 
 Zassiekin strangled himself with a pig's ear ... I neither 
 advise nor order any one to run into danger ; but to accept 
 money, and then not to give service, is a shameful action.' 
 The idea of service owed, of duty, was alwa\'s before him, 
 like a landmark, — beckoning him to climb the steep and 
 rugged slope of virile virtue, and heroic sacrifice. But his 
 progress towards the summit was always slow. This man, 
 who proved himself, in the end, one of the most intrepid, the 
 most resolute, and the most stubborn in the world, was also, 
 at certain moments, one of the most easily discouraged, 
 and, on some critical occasions, one of the most chicken- 
 hearted. Napoleon, — another great man, compact of nerves, 
 — was subject, in moments of failure, to the same sudden and 
 passing fits of weakness, and the same quick revulsions of 
 spirit, which brought him back, like a flash, to self-possession, 
 and to the power of using his faculties and resources, still all 
 aflame with excitement, and thus multiplied tenfold. But, 
 in Peter's case, the proportions of the phenomenon were far 
 more marked. When he heard of the defeat of his army 
 under the walls of Narva, he disguised himself as a peasant, 
 so as the more easily to escape from the enemy, which he 
 fancied already on his heels. He shed floods of tears, and 
 fell into such a prostrate condition, that no one dared mention 
 military matters to him. He was ready to submit to any 
 conditions of peace, even the most humiliating.^ Two years 
 later, he was before Noteburg, a paltry town to which he 
 had laid siege with his whole army. An assault, led by him- 
 self in person, not being so successful, at the outset, as he 
 
 ' Vockerodt, who describes this scene, may have exaggerated, but tlie multi- 
 plicity of analogous traits in c.\i-;tcncc woul.I appear to mc conclusive in his 
 favour. 
 
PHYSICAL PORTRAIT— CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 115 
 
 had hoped, he hastily gave orders to retreat. ' Tell the Tsar,' 
 replied Michael Galitzin, a Lieutenant-Colonel in command 
 of a detachment of the Sieniionovski, * that at this moment 
 I belong to Peter no longer, but to God!' According to 
 some other witnesses, the Tsar's order was never delivered ; 
 but with it or without it, and, it may even be, without having 
 dropped the heroic sentence enshrined in legend, Galitzin 
 continued the attack, and carried the place.^ 
 
 To a much later date, and even after Poltava, Peter was 
 unchanged, in this respect. The occurrence on the Pruth, to 
 which I shall later have to refer, proves it. He was an 
 almost parodoxical mixture of strength and weakness, in 
 which the conflict of contradictory constituent elements may 
 be clearly traced. Unflinching in his attachment to the 
 great lines of a life and work, which, for unity and con- 
 sistency, form one of the marvels of history, he was 
 inconstancy and versatility personified, in all matters of 
 detail. His ideas and resolutions, like his temper, changed 
 suddenly, like a gust of wind. He was essentially a man of 
 impulse. During his French journey, in 17 17, a chorus 
 of complaint rose from all those who had dealings with him, 
 concerning his perpetual change of plans. No one ever 
 knew what he might take it into his head to do on the 
 morrow, or even within the next hour, — whither he might 
 choose to go, — and how to travel. Nowhere could the 
 length of his stay be reckoned on, never could the pro- 
 gramme be laid out in advance, even for a single day. This 
 quality is eminently characteristic of the Slavonic race, that 
 most composite product of different and various origins, 
 cultures, and influences, both European and Asiatic. To 
 these, perhaps, it partly owes that power of resistance and 
 extraordinary grit, of which it has given proof in under- 
 takings which have necessarily been of considerable duration. 
 The frequent relaxing of the spring relieves it, and prevents- 
 its wearing out. But this mixture of suppleness and rigidity 
 may also exist as an individual characteristic. It has been 
 very evident in the case of some historical imitators of the 
 great Reformer, and would almost seem destined by Provi- 
 dence, as a means of husbanding their strength. It rendered 
 Peter admirable service, even in matters involving most 
 important interests. The facility with which he would 
 
 ' Oubtrialof, vol. iv. pp. 197-202. 
 
Ii6 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 chancre front, — turninrj his back on Turkey, to face Sweden, 
 — abaiuloning his projects in the Sea of Azof, to turn his 
 mind towards the Baltic, — but throwing himself, alwa\'s and 
 everywhere, thoroutjhly into the matter in hand, without 
 ever dispersing his efforts, — ccrtainl)' proceeded from it. So, 
 too, did the very great facility with which — in matters of 
 detail — he would acknowledge a personal error of judgment, 
 or fault in practice. When, in 1722, he revoked the Ukase 
 by which he had introduced the Presidents of the Adminis- 
 trative Bodies into the Senate, which was a legislative 
 asscmbix', he unaffectedly described it as 'an ill-considered 
 measure.' This did not prevent him, on other occasions, 
 from holding out against wind and tide, against all other 
 opinions, and all extraneous influences. No man ever knew 
 better what he wanted, and how to have it done. The 
 inscri[)tion ' Facta puto qiiiecumqiie jiibco ' which some student' 
 of 0\'id placed on one of the medals struck in commemora- 
 tion of the great events of this reign, was the most appropriate 
 motto the Tsar could have chosen. 
 
 It should be noted, that in his mistakes and in his failures, 
 it was his brain alone, always, that was at fault — feeling 
 had nothing at all to do with it. Peter was absolutely 
 devoid of sentiment. That weakness for Menshikof and other 
 favourites, which so offends us, would appear to be simply 
 the outcome of miscalculation. He had a very high opinion 
 of the intellectual standard of certain of his collaborators. 
 His opinion of their moral standard, in the case of every 
 one, was of the very lowest. Menshikof was a rascal, in his 
 eyes, but a rascal who was also a genius. In the case of 
 the others, whose genius w^as not sufficient to compensate 
 him for their peccadilloes, he could, even when they were his 
 closest friends, prove himself very firm, and even exceedingly 
 harsh. He coolly informed one of ihem, Andrew Viiinius, 
 that h<; had removed him from his position at the head of 
 the Postal Administration, because he felt convinced that he 
 had, while occupying that post, enriched himself and cheated 
 the State, more than was fair and reasonable. But this 
 implied no change in his favour, ' No favourite of mine 
 shall lead me by the nose,' he asserted on this occasion.^ 
 
 I have never seen any instance of such absolute insensi- 
 bility of feeling. During the course of the trial of his son 
 
 ' Letter, dated April i6, 1701, IVritiii^ and Corres/'onticiiiC, vul. i. p. 444. 
 
PHYSICAL PORTRAIT— CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 117 
 
 Alexis — the incidents of which mi^ht well have moved 
 him — he had strength, time, and inch'nation to give his 
 attention both to his usual amusements, and to other State 
 business, which demanded all his clearness of mind. A 
 great number of Ukases relating to the preservation of the 
 Forests, the management of the Mint, the organisation of 
 various industrial establishments, the Customs, the Raskol, 
 and Agriculture, bear dates coeval with those of some of 
 the gloomiest episodes in that terrible judicial drama. And 
 at the same time, none of the anniversaries which the Tsar 
 was accustomed to celebrate, with much pomp and noise, 
 were forgotten or neglected. Banquets, masquerades and 
 fireworks, all pursued their course. 
 
 He had an immense fund of unalterable gaiety, and a 
 great love of social intercourse. In certain respects, his 
 character and temperament remained that of a child, even in 
 his ripe age. lie had all the naive cheerfulness, the effusive- 
 ness, and the simplicity of youth. Whenever any lucky 
 event happened to him, he could not refrain from announcing 
 his deliglit to all those who, as he thought, should take an 
 interest in it. Thus he would write fifty letters at a sitting, 
 about a military achie\ement of very second-rate import- 
 ance — as, for example, the taking of Stettin in 17 IS--"- All his 
 life he was easily amused. He was seen at Dresden in 171 1, 
 iTiounted on a hobby horse, shouting 'Quicker! quicker!' 
 and laughing till he cried when one of his companions 
 turned giddy and fell off.- At the popular rejoicings which 
 followed the conclusion of the Peace of Nystadt, in 1720, he 
 behaved like a schoolboy on a holiday. He pranced and 
 gesticulated in the middle of the crowd, jumped on the 
 tables, and sang at the top of his voice. To the last days of 
 his life, he loved teasing and rough play, delighted in coarse 
 pleasantries, and was always ready for a practical joke. In 
 1723, he caused the tocsin to be sounded in the night, turned 
 all the inhabitants of St. Petersburg — where fires were 
 frequent, and terrible in their results — out of their beds, and 
 could not contain himself for joy, when, rushing half dis- 
 tracted in the direction of the supposed disaster, they came 
 upon a brazier, lighted, by his orders, in a public square, 
 by soldiers, who laughed in their faces, and greeted them 
 
 ^ Golikof, vol. V. p. 543. 
 
 ^ Archiv fur Sachsische Geschichtc, vol. xi. p. 345. 
 
Ii8 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 with sliouts of 'A(M-il fool's day !'^ One day, when sitting 
 at table with the Duke of Holstein, he praised the curative 
 qualities of the waters of Olonets, which he liad used for 
 several years. The duke's minister, Bassewitz, expressed 
 his intention of following his example. The Tsar, with a 
 mighty blow upon the diplomat's fat round back, cried out, 
 ' What ! pour water into such a cask ! Come, come ! ' - 
 
 How was it then, in spite of his cheerful qualities, that he 
 inspired more fear than affection ? How was it that his 
 death came as a relief to all around him ? — the end of a 
 painful nightmare, of a reign of terror and constraint. In 
 the first place, on account of those habits of his, which bore 
 the mark of the society in which he had lived since child- 
 hood, and of the occupations in which he had always found 
 the most delight. To the roughness of a Russian barin, he 
 joined all the coarseness of a Dutch sailor. Further, he was 
 violent, and frequently hast)', just as he was often cowardly ; 
 and this arose from the same cause, the same radical vice of 
 his moral constitution — his total lack of self-control. The 
 power of his will was, more often than not, inferior to the 
 impetuosity of his temperament, and that will, which always 
 met with prompt obedience in external matters, could not, 
 consequently perhaps, sufficiently restrain the surging tumult 
 of his instincts and his passions. The extreme servility of 
 those about him contributed to the development of this 
 innate disposition. ' He has never been over polite,' writes 
 the Saxon Minister Lefort,^ in his Journal, in May 1721, 'but 
 he grows more and more intolerable every day. Happy is 
 the man who is not obliged to approach him.''* The progress 
 of this fault was so gradual as to be almost insensible. In 
 September 1698, at a banquet given in honour of the 
 Emperor's Envoy, Guarient, the Tsar lost his temper with 
 his Generalissimo, Shein, in the matter of certain army 
 promotions, of which he disapproved. He struck the table 
 with his naked sword, exclaiming, 'Thus I will cut the whole 
 of thy regiment to pieces, and I will pull thine own skin over 
 thine ears ! ' When Romodanovski and Zotof attempted to 
 
 ^ Bertjhnlz, Journal, Biischitigs-AIagazin, vol, xxi. p. 238. 
 
 - Jhik., vol. XX. p. 387. 
 
 ' Tills Lefort nnist not he confounded with the favourite, who will be referred 
 to later ; the relationship between the two is sonicwliat disputed. 
 
 * Collected Works of the Ivitcrial Russian Historical Society (Sbornik), 
 vol. iii. p. II},. 
 
PHYSICAL PORTRAIT— CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 119 
 
 interfere, he flew at them. One had his fingers almost cut 
 off, the other received several wounds on the head. Lefort 
 — or, as some other witnesses declare, Menshikof — was the 
 only person who could succeed in calming him.^ But, only 
 a few days later, when supping with Colonel Tchambers, he 
 knocked that same Lefort down, and trampled on him, and 
 when Menshikof ventured, at some entertainment, to wear 
 his sword, while he was dancing, he boxed his ears so soundly 
 that the favourite's nose began to bleed." In 1703, taking 
 offence at the remarks addressed to him, in public, by the 
 Dutch Resident, he gave immediate proof of his displeasure, 
 by a blow from his fist, and several more with the flat of 
 his sword.^ No notice was taken of this outburst ; the 
 Diplomatic Corps in the Tsar's capital having long since 
 learnt to make a virtue of necessity. The Raab family, 
 resident in Esthonia, still preserves a cane with which Peter, 
 enraged at not finding horses at the neighbouring posting- 
 house, wreaked his fury on the back of the proprietor of the 
 country-house. This gentleman, having demonstrated his 
 innocence, was permitted to keep the cane by way of com- 
 pensation.'* And again, Ivan Savitch Brykin, the ancestor 
 of the celebrated archaeologist Sneguiref, used to tell a story 
 that he had seen the Tsar kill a servant, who had been slow 
 about uncovering in his presence, with blows from his cane.^ 
 Even in his correspondence, the Sovereign would occasionally 
 get into a fury, and lose all self-control ; as, for example, 
 when he fell on the unfortunate competitor of Augustus il., 
 Leszczynski, and called him 'traitor, and son of a thief,' in 
 a letter which ran more than the ordinary risk of not being 
 treated as confidential.^ 
 
 IV 
 
 The drinking-bouts in which the Tsar habitually indulged 
 had a great deal to do with the frequency of these outbreaks. 
 ' He never passed a single day without being the worse 
 
 ^ Oustrialof, vol. iii. p. 625 ; vol. iv. p. 211. 
 
 2 Korb, pp. 84, 86. 
 
 ^ Despatch from Baluze, Nov. 28, 1703, Frcncli Foreign Office. 
 
 * Russian Stale Papers, vol. ii. pp. 249 and 390. 
 
 * Popof, Tatihtchef and his 7 ?w^j (Moscow, 1S61), p. 531. 
 
 * .Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 66. 
 
 9 
 
I20 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 for drink,' so Baron Pollnltz affinns, in his account of the 
 Sovcrcit^n's visit to Bcrh"n in 17 17. 
 
 On the morning of the iith July 1705, Peter, who was 
 paying a visit to the Monastery of the Basih'an I^^athcrs at 
 I'olo^k, paused before the statue of the ilkistrious martyr of 
 the Order, the blessed Jehosaphat, who was represented 
 with a hatchet sticking in his skull. lie desired an explana- 
 tion. ' Wlio put that holy man to death?' said he. The 
 monks answered, ' The Schismatics.' That single word drove 
 him beside himself. Me thrust with his sword at Father 
 Kozikowski, the Superior, and killed him. His officers 
 threw themselves on the other monks. Three were killed 
 outright ; two others, mortally wounded, died a few days 
 later. The monastery was sacked, the church was dese- 
 crated and used as a military store. A contemporary 
 description sent from Polo^k to Rome, and published in the 
 Uniate Churches there, gave various horrible and disgusting 
 details. The Tsar was described as having called his Eng- 
 lish mastiff to worry the first victim. He was said to have 
 ordered the breasts of certain women, whose sole crime had 
 consisted in being present at the horrible scene and having 
 testified their terror and emotion, to be cut off. There was 
 a certain amount of exaggeration about this, but the facts 
 I have already indicated are quite unshaken. A first draft 
 of the Journal of the Swedish War. prepared by Makarof, 
 the Tsar's Secretary, contained this laconic mention of the 
 incident: 'Went on the 30th of June (ilth July) to the 
 Uniate Church at Polo^k, and killed six monks for having 
 spoken of our generals as heretics.' Peter struck the entry 
 out with his own hand, and thus strengthened the acknow- 
 ledgment of the fact. On one point every descri{)tion of the 
 incident is agreed. Peter, when he went to the Basilian 
 Church, was in a state of intoxication. He had only just 
 quitted some nocturnal orgy.^ 
 
 He never failed indeed, once the wine had died out in 
 him, to regret the harm done, and endeavour to repair it. 
 His repentance was as easy as his wrath was swift. In May 
 1703 I find these significant lines, written by his own hand, 
 in a billet addressed to Feodor Apraxin : ' I know not how 
 I left you, for I was too much overwhelmed by the gifts 
 
 * See, on this subject, Theiner, Motiutticnts, p. 412; Dom Gu^pin, Vie de 
 /osapkat (Vsx'i^, 1874), vol. ii. p. 430; Ouslrialof, vol. iv. p. 373. 
 
PHYSICAL PORTRAIT— CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 121 
 
 of Bacchus ; wherefore I beg you all to forgive me if I 
 caused distress to any of you, . . . and to forget all that 
 is past.' 
 
 He frequently drank to excess, and insisted that those 
 who had the honour of sitting at table with him should do 
 the same. At Moscow, and, in later years, at St. Petersburg, 
 the complaints of the Diplomatic Body on this subject were 
 never-ending. It was a positive danger to life. Even the 
 very women of the Tsar's circle were subject to the common 
 rule, and Peter would find unanswerable arguments to force 
 them to bear him company, glass in hand. The daughter 
 of Shafirof, his Vice-Chancellor, a baptized Jew, refused a 
 goblet of brandy. * Vile Hebrew spawn,' he shouted, * I '11 
 teach thee to obey ! ' and he punctuated his remarks with 
 two hearty boxes on the ear.^ 
 
 He was always in the forefront of the revel, but so robust 
 was his constitution, that though, in the end, his health 
 broke down, his excesses often left him steady in body, and 
 clear in mind, while legs were trembling, and senses reeled, 
 in the case of every one around him. On this fact another 
 legend has been built. This perpetual and almost systematic 
 debauch was, we are told, an instrument of government, 
 a means of reading the most secret thoughts of his guests, 
 to which the great man deliberately resorted. A somewhat 
 shady expedient, if indeed, this were true. In any other 
 country the Sovereign who attempted such a game would 
 have risked his authority, and his prestige. And even in 
 Russia, the political benefit would not have outweighed the 
 moral loss, — that degradation of the whole of society, of 
 which local customs still bear some trace. My readers will 
 remember the story of the toast, 'A toi ! France!' proposed in 
 the presence of Louis XV. by a guest who had been carried 
 away by the freedom of some too familiar merrymaking. 
 'Gentlemen, the King is here!' answered the monarch, thus 
 recalled to a sense of his dignity. And no more such 
 festivities took place. But Peter allowed himself to be 
 addressed in the second person singular, every day of his 
 life, in a constant succession of such entertainments. If 
 any one went too far, and it suited him to take notice of the 
 fact, the only means of repression he would ever resort to 
 took the shape of an enormous bumper of brandy, which the 
 
 ^ Weber's Correspondence (published by Hcriniann, 18S0), p. 173. 
 
122 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 offender was forced to swallow at a sincjle draught. This 
 was perfectly certain to put an end to Ins pranks, for, as a 
 general rule, it sent him under the table.^ 
 
 I should be sorry, indeed, to admit that all this shows any 
 trace of a deep-seated idea or deliberate design. I can see 
 nothing that would lead to such an opinion. I am, on the 
 contrary, struck by the fact, that, especially towards the end 
 of his reign, the more and more frequent recurrence of the 
 prolonged and extravagant orgies in which the Sovereign so 
 delighted did not fail to considerably prejudice the conduct 
 of State affairs. * The Tsar,' writes the Saxon Minister, 
 Lcfort, on the 22d of August 1724, 'has kept his room for 
 the last six days, being ill in consequence of the debauches 
 which took place at the Tsarskaia-Mj'sa (the TsarskoTe- 
 Sielo of the present day) on the occasion of his baptizing a 
 church, with 3CK)0 bottles of wine. This has delayed his 
 journey to Kronstadt.'^ In January, 1725, the negotiations 
 for the first Franco-Russian alliance received a sudden 
 check. The French Envoy, Campredon, much disturbed, 
 pressed the Russian Chancellor, Ostermann, and ended by 
 dragging from him this expressive admission : * It is utterly 
 impossible, at the present moment, to approach the Tsar on 
 serious subjects ; he is altogether given up to his amuse- 
 ments, which consist in going every day to the principal 
 houses in the town, with a suite of 200 persons, musicians 
 and so forth, who sing songs on every sort of subject, and 
 amuse themselves by eating and drinking at the expense of 
 the persons they visit.' ^ Even at an earlier period, during 
 the most active and heroic epoch in his life, Peter would 
 make these temporary disappearances, and thus bear testi- 
 mony to the faults of his early education. In December 
 1707, when Charles XII. was making his preparations for the 
 decisive campaign which was to carry him into the very 
 heart of Russia, the defensive efforts of the whole country 
 were paralysed, because the Tsar was at Moscow amusing 
 himself Courier after courier did Menshikof despatch, 
 entreating him to rejoin his army. Me never even broke 
 
 1 ScVierer, vol. v. p. 28. 
 
 - Sboinik, vol. iii. p. 3S2. 
 
 3 Despatch, dated Jan. 9, 1725, French Foreign Office. See also, in ai^ee- 
 nient, a letter from the Dutch Resident, De Bie. to the Secretary of the States- 
 r.cne'ral, Fngel, dated Dec. 3, 171 7, Dutch Archives. 
 
PHYSICAL PORTRAIT— CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 123 
 
 the seals of the packets, and went on making merry.^ He 
 could stop himself short in a moment, it must be allowed, 
 and he had a genius for making up for lost time. But it 
 can hardly be said that it was for the sake of the internal 
 affairs of his country that he thus forgot, during many weeks, 
 to make war against his terrible adversary. 
 
 Coarse tastes naturally go hand -in-hand with public- 
 house morals. In the society of women, to which he was 
 always partial, what Peter seems to have cared for most, was 
 mere vulgar debauchery. And especially he loved to sec 
 his female companions drunk. Catherine herself, according 
 to Bassewitz, was ' a first-rate toper,' and owed much of her 
 success to that fact. On gala days, at Couit, the sexes were 
 generally separated, and Peter always reserved to himself 
 the privilege of entering the ladies' banqueting-room, where 
 the Tsarina presided, and where nothing that she could do 
 to render the spectacle agreeable to the master's eye 
 was neglected. But in more intimate gatherings, the meal 
 was shared by both sexes, and then the close of the festivi- 
 ties took a character worthy of the feasts of Sardanapalus. 
 The clergy, too, had their place in these banquets, at which 
 they were frequently to be seen. Peter had a particular 
 liking for sitting near these ecclesiastical dignitaries. He 
 would mingle the most unexpected theological discussions, 
 with his most copious libations, and would apply the 
 regulation punishment of a huge bumper of brandy, to the 
 errors of doctrine which he loved to detect, — whereupon, now 
 and again, the controversialists would come to blows, to his 
 huge delight. His favourite guests — Dutch sea-captains 
 and merchants — were by no means the humblest of the com- 
 panions with whom he would sit at table, and familiarly 
 clink his glass. At Dresden, in 171 1, at the Golden Ring, 
 his favourite lounge was the serving-men's room, and he 
 breakfasted with them in the courtyard.- 
 
 There was nothing delicate, nothing refined, about Peter. 
 At Amsterdam, during his first visit there, he fell in love 
 
 * Essipof, Life of .Meiishikof {Russian State Papers, 1S75), p. 52. 
 "^ Archiv fiir Sachsische Geschickte, vol. xi. p. 345. 
 
124 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 with Tcstje-Rocn, a celebrated clown, who p^avc open-air 
 performances, and whose silly jokes were the delight of the 
 lowest populace, and would have carried him off with him 
 to Russia.^ 
 
 He was a boor. In certain respects, he never, to his last 
 day, lost any of his native savagery. But was he a cruel 
 savage ? This has been affirmed. Nothing, apparently, 
 could be more clearly established, than his reputation for 
 ferocity ; yet, this matter should be looked into. He was 
 frequently present in the torture-chamber — where prisoners 
 were submitted to the question, the strappado, or the knout 
 — and also at executions in the public squares, when all the 
 apparatus for inflicting the most revolting torments was 
 openly displayed. It is even believed that he did not always 
 play the part of a mere spectator. I shall have occasion to 
 return to this point, with reference to the terrible scenes 
 which closed the existence of the Streltsy. I?ut any dis- 
 cussion on this matter strikes me as idle. He may occasion- 
 ally have acted the part of executioner. Why not ? He 
 was already familiar with the sailor's trade, and with the 
 carpenter's, and he did not feel — he was not capable of 
 feeling — any difference. He was merely the man in whose 
 person the greatest number of functions were united, in a 
 country where the accumulation of functions was a feature of 
 public life. The name of the executor of his principal works 
 in St. Petersburg, also figures on the lists of his Court 
 Jesters !- 
 
 Did Peter, then, actually cut off men's heads ? It may be. 
 But did he find pleasure in the act? That, too, is 
 j)robable; — the pleasure he found in doing anything, the joy 
 of action, — but there it ends. I do not believe one word of 
 the story told by Frederick the Great to Voltaire, about the 
 meal during which, in presence of the King of IVussia's 
 ICnvoy, Baron Von Printzen, the Tsar amused himself by 
 decapitating twenty Streltsy, emptying as many glasses of 
 brandy between each stroke, and finally inviting the Prussian 
 to follow his example.-^ Round every trait of Peter's 
 character, and every cha])ter of his history, innumerable tales 
 have thus clustered, which should be put aside a priori, for 
 no other reason but that of their evident absurdity. As 
 
 > Schcltema, Anecdotes, p. 157. - Sieniievski, Slovo t Dtelo, p. 262. 
 
 ' Voltaire's IVorks, vol. x. p. 71. 
 
PHYSICAL PORTRAIT -CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 125 
 
 regards the rest, they deserve careful investigation. I have 
 already referred to my own habitual guide — an agreement 
 of general data, which, in spite of some diversity in detail, 
 all tend steadily, and precisely, in the same direction. Now, 
 I can discover nothing, in Peter's case, which would point to 
 the authentic mark of the real wild beast — the greedy 
 delight in inflicting suffering, the downright taste for blood. 
 He shows no sign of anything of this kind ; there is not even 
 any appearance of an habitual condition of sanguinary fury. 
 He is hard, rough, and unfeeling. Suffering, in his eyes, is 
 a mere fact — like health or sickness — and has no more 
 effect on him than these ; — therefore I am ready to follovv' the 
 legend so far as to believe that he pursued the men he had 
 doomed to death, on to the very scaffold, with reproaches and 
 invectives — that he jeered at them, even in their death-agony.^ 
 But inaccessible as he is to pity, he is moved, and easily 
 moved, by scruple, when reasons of State do not seem to 
 him to be involved. That famous axiom which has been 
 ascribed, with so much praise, to Catherine II. ' It is better 
 to set six guilty persons free, than to condemn one innocent 
 man to death,' is no part of the historic legacy of that great 
 Sovereign. Before her days, Peter had written it with his 
 own hand, and on the page of a Military Regulation ! ' - 
 
 Some of his contemporaries have, indeed, admitted the 
 impossibility of explaining many of his actions, otherwise 
 than by the pleasure he seems to find in doing disagreeable 
 things to other people, or even by causing actual pain. 
 Thus they quote the story of one of his favourites. Admiral 
 Goiovin, who refused to eat salad because he hated the 
 taste of vinegar, which always made him ill. Peter immedi- 
 ately emptied a great flask of it down his throat, and almost 
 choked him.^ I am disposed to believe this anecdote, because 
 I have heard so many others of the same nature : — delicate 
 young girls forced to drink a Grenadier's ration of brandy — 
 decrepit old men obliged to prance about the streets, dressed 
 up like mountebanks. These things were matters of daily 
 occurrence all through Peter's reign. But this fact may 
 bear a different interpretation. Peter had adopted certain 
 
 ^ Siemievski, SIoz'p i Dielo, p. 260. 
 
 "^ Rosenheim, Military Let^is la tion in Russia (St. Petersburg, 1S7S), p. 155. 
 See also Filippof, Peter the Great's Reform, and his Penal Laws, p. 143, etc. 
 ^ Korb, as quoted above, p. 88. 
 
126 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 fasliions in dress, in food, and in amusement, which he judjj^ed 
 fitting, and which, because they suited him, must, so he 
 arf:^ued, suit everybody else. This was his fashion of under- 
 standing his autocratic functions, and his duties as a 
 Reformer. On that he took his stand. Vinegar, looi<ed at 
 from this point of view, was part of the national law, and 
 what happened to Golovin, with respect to that condiment, 
 was repeated, in the case of others, with regard to clieese, 
 oysters, or olive oil — the Tsar never losing an occasion of 
 forcing them down the throats of any persons in whom he 
 noticed a shrinking from his gastronomic novelties. ^ In the 
 same wa}', having chosen to set his capital in a marsh, and 
 to call it 'his Paradise,' he insisted that every one else should 
 build houses in the city, and delight, or appear to delight in 
 it, as much as he himself 
 
 Clearly he was not a man of ver}' tender feeling. In 
 January 1694, when his mother was lying seriously, and 
 even dangerously, ill, he fretted furiously at being kept 
 in Moscow, would not endure it, and fixed the day for his 
 departure. At the very hour when he should have started, 
 her death-agony began, and he lost no time about burying 
 her. Neither must I overlook the blood-stained ghost of 
 Alexis, and the weeping shadow of Eudoxia. But, even here, 
 the circumstances, which, morally speaking, went so far to 
 make up the man's character, and certain other facts, — such 
 as the terrible events inseparable from any revolutionary 
 period, and the rebellious instincts of a nature which would 
 brook no contradiction, not forgetting the uncompromising 
 nature of his whole policy, the most personal and most self- 
 willed that ever existed, — must be tak-cn into account. 
 
 He adored his second son, and his correspondence with 
 Catherine — always most affectionate, as far as she is con- 
 cerned — teems with expressions proving his constant soli- 
 citude for the health and happiness of his two daughters, 
 Anne and I'.lizabeth, whom he jokingly described as 
 'thieves,' because they took up his time, but whom he also 
 calls 'his bowels ' {Enigcweidc). He went every day to their 
 school-room, and looked over their lessons. 
 
 He did not shrink from entering the cell of a prisoner, 
 one of his former favourites, and informing him that he 
 very much regretted being obliged to have his head cut off 
 ' Vockcrodt, according to Herrmann, p. 19. 
 
PHYSICAL PORTRAIT— CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS 127 
 
 on the following morning-. This he did to Mons, in 1724. 
 But, so long as his friends appeared to him worthy of his 
 friendship, lie was not only affectionate, he was coaxing and 
 caressing, even to excess. 
 
 In August 1723, at the Fete in commemoration of the 
 creation of the Russian Navy — in presence of the 'Ances- 
 tress ' {^Diedojishka) of his fleet, the English boat found in a 
 barn in 1688 — Peter, not altogether sober, it is true, kissed 
 the Duke of Holstein on the neck, on the forehead, on the 
 head — having first pulled off his wig — and finally, according 
 to Bergholz, embraced him in a yet more tender manner.^ 
 
 Even from the point of view with which we are now 
 engaged, these peculiarities can hardly be taken to mark 
 him as a mere imitation of an Asiatic despot. Something 
 better he surely is, both as a Sovereign and as a private 
 individual — something quite different, at all events, removed, 
 in many respects, from common humanity, above it, or below 
 it, but never, either instinctively, or intentionally, inhuman. 
 A series of Ukases which bear his signature prove that his 
 mind, if not his heart, was open to ideas, if not to sentiments, 
 of a gentler kind. In one of these, he claims the title of 
 ' Protector of Widows, of Orphans, and of the Defenceless.' ^ 
 The moral centre of gravity, in the case of this great uncon- 
 scious idealist, who was also (and his was not a unique case) 
 a mighty sensualist, must be sought for on the intellectual 
 side. In spite of the natural heat of his temperament, he 
 succeeded, on the whole, in the majority of instances, in 
 subordinating his sensations to that common law of which 
 he had proclaimed himself the Chief Slave — believing that 
 he thus acquired the right of bringing all other wills, all 
 other intelligences and jiassions, without distinction, and 
 without favour, under its rule. 
 
 ^ Biisckiiigs-AIagaziii, vol. xxi. p. 301. 
 
 a Collected Laws, pp. 337, 462, 777, 839, 3279, 3290, 329S, 36.8. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 
 
 Mental capacity — Power and elasticity — Comparison with Napoleon I. — 
 Slavonic acceptivity — Intercourse with the Quakers — Law — Curiosity and 
 impatience for knowledge — A niglit spent in a museum — Incoherent and 
 rudimentary nature of the knowledge thus acquired — Peter's diplomacy — 
 Was he a great leader? — Lack of proportion — Mixture of gravity and 
 puerility — Peter as surgeon and dentist — Scientific and artistic creations — 
 Peter and the Abhe Bignon. 
 
 His clearness and pers])icuity of mind — His epistolary style — The Oriental 
 touch — Proposal to reconstruct the Colossus of Rhodes — Contradictory 
 features — Generosity and meanness — Loyalty and roguery — Modesty and 
 love of bragging — History and tradition — The Western spirit of chivalry, 
 and the Byzantine influence in Russia — ^Joan of Arc and (^)ueen Olga — 
 Bayard and St. Alexander Nevski — Peter's morality — Lack of scruple 
 ami scorn for convention — Causes and results. 
 
 Strength and narrowness of insight — Intellectual short-sightedness — Absence 
 of the psychological sense — Disinclination for abstract conception — Want 
 of comprehension of the ideal elements of civilisation — Yet he was an 
 idealist. 
 
 Love of disguises — Buffoonery — Moral debauch, or political intention — 
 The Court jesters — Poj^ular manners — The Tsar's amusements — The ugly 
 side of these recreations — Mingling of masquerade and of real life — A 
 jester made Keeper of the Seals — I^lasked senators sit in council. 
 
 The mt)ck Patriarchate — The object of itsestal)lishment — Pope or Patriarch ? 
 — Did Peter intend to cast ridicule on his clerg)'? — Origin and develop- 
 ment of the institution — The mock Pope and his conclave— Grotesque 
 ceremonies and processions — lather Caillaud's habit — The marriage of 
 the Knes-papa — The Princess AJjbcss — Synthesis and explanation of the 
 phenomenon — Local causes and foreign influences — Byzantine asceticism 
 and Western Satinic practices — .Moral compression and reaction — Oii- 
 ginality, despotic fancy, and levelling tendencies — Peter and Ivan the 
 Terrible — Louis XI. and Falstafl. 
 
 The brain of Peter the Great was certainly a phenomenal 
 ort^anism. Irresistibly, both by its nature and by its force, 
 it enforces a comparison with that of Napoleon I. We note 
 the same power of continuous effort, without apparent weari- 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 129 
 
 ness, the same spring and flexibility, the same faculty of 
 applying itself, at one and the same time, to an indefinite 
 number of subjects, all absolutely dissimilar and of most 
 unequal importance, without the smallest visible scattering 
 of the mental faculties, or any diminution of the attention 
 devoted to each particular object. At Stockerau, near 
 Vienna, in 1698, when the Russian Ambassadors were in 
 conflict with the Imperial officials over the details of their 
 solemn entry into the capital, Peter Mihailof, while sharing 
 in all the discussions, which cause him not a little irrita- 
 tion, writes orders, to Vinnius, concerning the building 
 of a Russian church at Pekin ! In one of his letters to 
 Admiral Apraxin, dated September 1706, I find instruc- 
 tions for the campaign then in course, directions as to the 
 translation of a cargo of Latin books, and advice as to the 
 education of a couple of puppies, with the following details 
 of what they are to be taught : — ' First, to retrieve ; second, 
 to pull off" their hats ; third, to present arms ; fourth, to 
 jump over a stick ; fifth, to sit up and beg for food.' On 
 the 15th of November 1720, writing to lagoujinski, whom 
 he had sent on a mission to Vienna, he holds forth on the 
 retrocession of Schleswig to the Duke of Holstein, mentions 
 the picture of a pig-faced girl, brought back to Russia by 
 Peter Alexieievitch Tolstoi, desiring to know where the 
 girl is, and whether it is possible to see her ; and speaks of 
 two or three dozen bottles of good tokay, which he would 
 like to possess, desiring to know the price and the expense 
 of transport, before he gives the order for purchase.^ 
 
 His was a mind open to every perception, with that 
 eminently Slav faculty, which Herzen describes under the 
 name of acceptivity, carried to the extremest point of develop- 
 ment. Until he arrived in London he had probably never 
 heard of the Quakers, nor of their doctrine. By a mere 
 chance, the house he inhabited was that in which the famous 
 William Penn had lived during that critical time in his 
 stormy existence, when he was prosecuted as a traitor, and 
 as a conspirator. This fact sufficed to throw the Tsar 
 into almost intimate relations with Penn himself, and his 
 co-religionists, Thomas Story and Gilbert MoUyson. He 
 accepted their pamphlets, and listened devoutly to their 
 
 1 Writings and Correspondence, vol. i. p. 253 ; Golikof, vol. ii. p. 296 ; 
 vol. viii. p. 120. 
 
I30 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 sermons. When, some nineteen \'ears later, he arrived at 
 Friederichstadt, in Holstein, with a body of troops who were 
 to assist the Danes a<j;ainst the Swedes, his first question 
 was as to whether there were any Quakers in the town. 
 Their meetiiic^-places havinjr been pointed out to him, he 
 duly attended their gatherings.^ He did not understand 
 much of Law's sj'stem, nor of finance in general, yet Law 
 himself, his system, and his fate, interested him deeply, from 
 the first moment when he had any knowledge of him. lie 
 corresponded with the adventurous banker, and followed his 
 course with curious eyes — delighted at first, indulgent after- 
 wards, but always sympathetic, even in the speculator's 
 hour of darkest disgrace.- 
 
 The moment there is a question of seeing or learning 
 anything, his eagerness and anxiety of mind make Napoleon 
 appear a comparatively patient man. Arriving at Dresden 
 one evening, after a day of travelling which had reduced all 
 his suite to a state of utter exhaustion, he insisted, the 
 moment he had supped, on being conducted to the Kunst- 
 kaiiicra, or museum of the town. lie reached it at one 
 o'clock in the morning, and spent the night there, feeding 
 his curiosity by torchlight.^ And indeed, this curiosity, as 
 lias already been made evident, was as universal and as 
 indefatigable as it was devoid of taste and of propriety. 
 When the Tsarina, Marfa Apraxin, Feodor's widow, died, 
 in 1715, at the age of fifty-one years, he desired to verif}' the 
 truth of a general public belief, which had its foundation 
 in the sickly constitution of the late Tsar, and the austere 
 habits of his widow. To attain this object, he insisted on 
 performing the autopsy of the corpse with his own hands, 
 and satisfied himself completely, so it would appear, as to 
 his sister-in-law's virtue.* 
 
 The sum of his knowledge and qualifications, thus per- 
 petually increased, preserved, in spite of its prodigious 
 variety, a certain incoherent and rudimentary quality. 
 Russian was the only language he could speak fluently ; 
 his Dutch would only carry him through conversations with 
 seafaring men and on naval subjects. In November 1721, 
 
 ^ Clarkson, Life of WiUiam Pom (1S13), p. 253. 
 2 Russian Slate Papers (1S74), p. 157S. 
 ' Arrhivfiir Siichsischc Gesdiichte, vol. xi. p. 345. 
 * Dulgorcukof's Memoirs, vol. i, p. I4. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 131 
 
 finding it necessary to hold a secret conversation with the 
 French Envoy, Campredon, who had resided in Holland 
 and made himself familiar with the language of that country, 
 he was fain to have recourse to an interpreter, and made 
 a somewhat unlucky choice.^ He was scantily acquainted, 
 indeed, with the usual methods of Western diplomacy. In 
 May 1719, La Vie, the French Resident at St. Petersburg, 
 remarked 'that he had allowed the Conferences at Aland to 
 proceed without insisting on '"the preliminary points,"' 
 thus allowing the Swedes to mislead him by means of a 
 most compromising sham negotiation, the only result of 
 which was to separate him from his allies. In his foreign 
 policy, he worked on a system peculiar to himself, or to his 
 nation. He combined Slavonic shrewdness w'ith Asiatic 
 cunning. He threw foreign negotiators off their guard, by 
 a manner peculiar to himself, by unexpected acts of famili- 
 arity or of rudeness, by sudden caresses. He would inter- 
 rupt a speaker by kissing him on the brow ; he would make 
 long speeches, really intended for the gallery, of which his 
 hearers could not understand a word, and would then dis- 
 miss them before they had time to ask for an explanation.- 
 
 He has passed, and does still pass, even in the eyes of 
 certain military historians, for a great military leader. Cer- 
 tain new and happy ideas as to the duty of Reserves, the 
 part to be played by cavalry, the principles of the mutual 
 support to be rendered by isolated bodies of troops, simpli- 
 fication of military formation, and the employment of impro- 
 vised fortifications, have been ascribed to him. The Battle 
 of Poltava, so we are assured, furnishes an unique example, 
 and one which aroused the admiration of Maurice de Saxe, 
 of the use of redoubts in offensive warfare, — which redoubts 
 are said to have been Peter's own invention. We are further 
 told that he personally conducted the numerous siege opera- 
 tions which took place during the Northern War, and that 
 this direct intervention on his part ensured their success.^ I 
 am not qualified to enter into any controversy on such a 
 subject, and I should have been disposed to bowunquestion- 
 ingly before the admiring testimony of Maurice de Saxe. 
 13ut a contradictory witness stops me short — the Journal of 
 
 * Campredon's Despatch, Dec. i, 1721, French Forci^jn Ofllce. 
 ^ De Bie, to the States Gener.il, May 3, 17 12, Dutch State Papers. 
 ^ Petrof, as already quoted, vol. ii. p. 84, etc. 
 
132 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 the Northern War, to which I have already referred. This 
 record, drawn up under Peter's personal superintendence, 
 does not make him appear either a great historian or a good 
 strategian. The descriptions of battles which I find in these 
 pages — and there is indeed little else to be found — arc de- 
 plorably scanty, as in the case of the battle of Narva, or, 
 when they enter into detail, flagrantly inexact. I know not 
 whether the great man was the real inventor of the redoubts 
 which pla)'ed such an important part at Poltava, but all the 
 world knows that he contented himself, in that battle, by 
 leading a regiment, leaving the chief command, as always, 
 to his generals. He studied military engineering with some 
 care, and took measures to put his new acquisitions on the 
 lialtic shores into a due state of defence. But the fortress 
 of St. Peter and St. Paul at St. Petersburg can hardly be 
 called a masterpiece of engineering skill ; and even his 
 greatest admirers admit that not one of the other works of 
 this kind, commenced under his direction, has ever been 
 completed.^ As to the sieges, the success of which may have 
 been ascribed to him, they appear to me to have invariably 
 ended in an assault, all the credit for which was due to the 
 brilliant qualities, the courage, and the discipline of the new 
 Russian army. These qualities strike me as forming the 
 only increase in this particular line which may be written 
 down to the undisputed personal credit of the great creator. 
 He did, as I shall elsewhere show, create almost every 
 portion of that wonderful instrument by which the power 
 and prestige of his country have been ensured. He was an 
 unrivalled organiser, and I am even willing to admit, with 
 some of his apologists, that he outstripped his own time — in 
 recruiting matters, for instance — in the application of cer- 
 tain principles which had been proclaimed and theoretically 
 affirmed in Western countries, long before, but which had 
 been pushed to one side by established routine, and elbowed 
 out of practical experience. 
 
 What prevented him from acquiring a real mastery of any 
 particular branch of knowledge was not only his lack of a 
 sense of proportion, but also a radical defect which, from the 
 beginning to the end of his life, led him to joke, as it were, 
 with serious things, and take childish matters seriously. 
 Of this fact, his studies and pretensions, in matters of 
 
 ' Pctrof, as alrc.-idy quoted, vol. ii. p. 84, etc. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 133 
 
 surgery and dentistry, are a more than sufficient proof. 
 After the date of his return from Holland he always carried 
 a case of surgical instruments upon his person, and never 
 allowed an opportunity of using them to slip through his 
 fingers. The officials connected with the St. Petersburg 
 hospitals had orders to warn him whenever an interesting 
 surgical case occurred. He was almost always present at 
 the operations, and frequently wielded the surgeon's knife 
 with his own hand. Thus one day he tapped a woman 
 afflicted with dropsy, who died a few days later. The poor 
 creature had done her best to defend herself, if not against 
 the operation, at all events against the operator. He made 
 a point of attending her funeral. A bag full of teeth, 
 extracted by the august pupil of the travelling Amsterdam 
 dentist, is still preserved in the Museum of Arts at St. 
 Petersburg. One of the surest methods of paying court to 
 the Sovereign was to claim his assistance for the extraction 
 of a grinder. He not unfrequently pulled out a sound tooth. 
 His valet de chambre, PolouboTarof, complained to him one 
 day that his wife, under pretext of a bad tooth, had long 
 refused to perform her conjugal duties. He sent for her, 
 operated on her then and there, in spite of her tears and 
 screams, and warned her that if she continued obdurate he 
 would pull out every tooth in her two jaws. But it is only 
 fair to recollect that Moscow owes him the first military 
 hospital, built in 1706, to which he successively added a 
 school of surgery, an anatomical collection, and a Botanical 
 Garden, in which he himself planted a certain number of 
 specimen trees. In that same year, too, dispensaries were 
 established, by his care, in St. Petersburg, Kazan, Glouhof, 
 Riga, and Revel. ^ 
 
 Artistic or scientific studies and creations were far from 
 being, in his case, simple matters of taste or natural inclina- 
 tion. It is a well-known fact that he possessed no artistic 
 sense, no taste for painting, nor even for architecture. His 
 low wooden cottage at Preobrajenskoie, soon so sunken in 
 the soil that he could touch the roof with his hand, amply 
 sufficed for his own personal needs. For many years, he 
 would not live in any other kind of house, even at St. Peters- 
 burg. Yet he held it proper to build palaces for his col- 
 laborators to dwell in. But building operations flagged at 
 
 * Shoubinski, Historical Skehhes, p. II, etc. 
 
134 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 last. Once more he saw the necessity for settin<T a personal 
 exainplc, and so he ended by having a Winter and a Summer 
 Palace of his own. These were a somewhat clumsy imitation 
 of Western models — for he insisted, too, on being his own 
 architect. The main body of the buildings clashed with the 
 wings, and formed ungraceful angles. Further, he would 
 have double ceilings in the rooms reserved for his own use, 
 so that he might still fancy he was living in a wooden cabin. 
 Ikit the impulse had been given, and in course of time, 
 the French architect, Leblond, retained at the heavy salary 
 of 40,000 livres a year, succeeded in correcting past errors, 
 and in giving the new capital that monumental and decora- 
 tive appearance appropriate to its dignity. Peter took pains 
 also, to add to the small collection of works of art made 
 during his first stay in Holland. When he reappeared in 
 Amsterdam in 1717, he had learnt to put on the airs of an 
 enlightened amateur. He ended by possessing works by 
 Rubens, Vandyck, Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Van der Werf, 
 Lingelbach, Bergheim, Mieris, Wouvermann, Breu(;hel, 
 Ostade, and Van Huyssen. He had a collection of sea 
 pictures in his Summer Palace. In his country house at 
 Peterhof there was a whole gallery of paintings. A talented 
 engraver and draughtsman, I'icard, and a curator named 
 Gsell, of Swiss origin, formerly a picture-dealer in Holland, 
 were engaged to look after these collections, the first ever 
 seen in Russia. 
 
 But there was not a touch of personal interest in these 
 matters. We may venture to doubt whether the Tsar took 
 much pleasure in his correspondence with the Abbe Bignon, 
 the King's librarian, and a member of the Academic des 
 Sciences, of which Peter had become an honorary member 
 after his stay in Paris in 17 17. In 1720 he sent his librarian, 
 — for by this time he had provided himself with a librar)' — 
 a German, Schuhmacher by name, to the Abbe with a 
 manuscript, written in gold on vellum, which had been 
 found at Si^mipalatinsk, in Siberia, in the vaults of a ruined 
 church. He desired to have the document deciphered, and 
 to know, first of all, in what language it was written, lie 
 appears to have been greatly deliglUed when the Abb(§, 
 having called in the assistance of the King's regular 
 translator, Fourmont, informed him that the mysterious 
 language was that of the Tangouts, a very ancient Kalmuk 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 135 
 
 tribe. It was not till after his death that it occurred to two 
 Russians whom he had sent to Pekin to study Chinese, and 
 who had remained there for sixteen years, to look more 
 closely into this scientific process, and thus to make a dis- 
 covery which somewhat compromised the reputation of the 
 Parisian Orientalists, The manuscript was of Manchurian 
 origin, and the text was absolutely different from that given 
 by Fourmont.^ But Peter died in the conviction that he 
 had elucidated an important point in the national paleo- 
 graphy and ethnography, and thus conscientiously performed 
 his duty as a Sovereign. 
 
 Among the curiosities collected by him in his Museum of 
 Art and of Natural History, contemporary writers m°ntion 
 some living specimens of the human race : a man with 
 some monstrous infirmity, and children afflicted with ph}'si- 
 cal malconforrnations.- The great man believed that such 
 exhibitions as these mi":ht serve the cause of science. 
 
 II 
 
 His mind was clear, perspicuous, exact, going straight to 
 its point, unhesitatingly and unswervingly — like a tool 
 wielded by a sure hand. In this respect, his correspondence 
 is exceedingly characteristic. He never writes long letters, 
 like his heiress, Catherine II. — he has no time for that, He 
 has no style, no rhetoric — he fails both in caligraphy and in 
 spelling. His handwriting is generally as illegible as that 
 of Napoleon. In most of his words there are letters missing. 
 A note addressed to Menshikof begins thus: — ^ Mci Jicz 
 hnide in Ka?najiiara,^ which is intended to mean 'Mein Herz- 
 brudcr und Kamarad ' (my heart's brother, and comrade !). 
 Even in his signature, ^Izpi , he introduces a whim- 
 sical abbreviation, borrowed from the Slavonic alphabet. 
 But he says what he has to say, well and quickly, 
 finding the right expression, the words which best con- 
 vey and sum up his thoughts, without any delay or 
 apparent effort. He is rather fond of a joking style of 
 composition, and the great Catherine's peculiarity in this 
 respect may have been a mere imitation of his. Thus, for 
 example, he writes to Menshikof in the character of a dog of 
 which his favourite is particularly fond. Very often he will 
 
 ^ Golikof, vol, viii. p. 84. ^ Biischings-Magazitt, vol. xix. p. 115. 
 
 10 
 
136 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 break out intn sallies, cjften carried much too far, both in 
 thought and in expression ; but oftener still, he is incisive 
 and sarcastic. Vice- Admiral Cruys sent him a Report, in 
 which he complained of his officers, and complimented the 
 Tsar himself, saying, that Peter, ' himself an accomplished 
 sailor, would know better than any one how indispensable 
 discipline was in the Navy.' He replied, ' The Vice- 
 Admiral chose his own Subordinates, he can therefore blame 
 none but himself for their faults. On quite a recent occasion, 
 he appeared less convinced of the qualities which he now 
 attributes to the Sovereign. His criticisms and his com- 
 mendations were doubtless made after he had been drinking. 
 They have not a leg to stand on. Either he must cease to 
 include Die in his list of skilful sailors, or he must no longer 
 say white nhen I say black.' ^ 
 
 There is something oriental in the natural imagery and 
 picturesqucness of his style. Referring to his alliance with 
 Denmark, and the disappointment it had caused him, I find 
 this reflection, written in his hand, ' Two bears in the same 
 lair never agree.' And another, 'Our alliance is like two 
 young horses harnessed to a carriage.' - Si)eaking of Poland, 
 where the public mind is in a state of continual ferment, he 
 writes, * Affairs there are just like new braha' (a drink made 
 of barley and millet). A man who talks idly is compared to 
 ' a bear who talks about gelding a mare.' Plven as a 
 legislator, he makes use of this sort of language. When he 
 creates the post of Attorne\'-General in the Senate, he de- 
 clares his desire to prevent that body from 'playing at cards 
 with the laws, and sorting them, according to their colours,' 
 adding that the Attorney-General is to be ' his eye.' 
 
 Though a poor historian, from the artistic point of view, 
 he was far from lacking the historic sense. He described 
 events verj' ill, but he understood their meaning and their 
 bearing very well indeed. Even in his letters to Catherine, 
 which are of the most confidential kind, his comments are 
 exceedingly correct. He evidently had the clearest compre- 
 hension of what he was doing, and of what was happening 
 to him. 
 
 His fancy was naturally attracted by what was large, and 
 even by what was exaggeratedly huge — a very oriental 
 
 * Oustrialof, vol. iv. p. 272. 
 
 * 1712, and 1716, Letters to Catherine I. (i86i edition), pp. 29 and 49. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 137 
 
 quality, again. In his last years he meditated a sort of 
 reconstruction of the Colossus of Rhodes. A huge tower 
 was to have been set astride over the strait, between Kron- 
 stadt and Kronsloot. It was to be crowned by a fortress 
 and a lighthouse, and below it the largest vessels were to 
 pass with ease. The foundations were actually laid in 1724.^ 
 He would fall into fits of feverish enthusiasm, epic or tragic, 
 and this, with freaks of eccentricit}-, and stains of coarseness, 
 which have puzzled many excellent judges. There is some- 
 thing Shakespearian about some of his inspirations. In 
 1697, when his departure for Europe was delayed by the 
 discovery of Tsikler's plot — struck by the link existing 
 between the criminality of the present and that of the past 
 — he caused the corpse of Ivan Miloslavski, which had been 
 rotting in the tomb for twelve years past, to be disinterred. 
 The remains were taken to Preobrajenskoie on a sledge, 
 dragged by twelve hogs, and placed in an open coffin under 
 the scaffold on which Tsikler and his accomplice Sokovnin 
 were to die by inches — cut to pieces, hacked slowly limb 
 from limb. At every knife-thrust the blood of the con- 
 demned men was to flow, in an avenging stream, on all that 
 remained of the hated enemy, who had been snatched from 
 his silent grave, to undergo the ghastly reprisals of his 
 conqueror.2 In 1723, another scene, less hideous, but quite 
 as extraordinary, was enacted at PreobrajenskoTe. Peter 
 caused his wooden cottage, which — (it had been temporarily 
 removed) — had been replaced, by his orders, in its original 
 position, to be burnt. In those days, and in a country, the 
 inhabitants of which were so little removed from the nomadic 
 form of existence, dwellings were looked upon as furniture. 
 It was a symbolic and commemorative conflagration. Under 
 that roof — as Peter confided to the Duke of Holstein — he 
 had conceived the plan of his terrible duel with the Swedish 
 monarch, now brought to a happy close ; and in his joy over 
 the peace thus restored, he desired to efface every memory of 
 the anguish of the past. But he took it into his head to 
 heighten the solemnity of this pacific demonstration by a 
 display of fireworks. He kindled the half-rotten timbers of 
 his cottage with Roman candles, and set the roof alight 
 
 ^ Golikof, vol. X. p. 425. 
 
 * Jeliaboujski's Memoirs, p. 112; Gordon's /c?«/v;a/, March 4, 1697; Ous- 
 trialof, vol. iii. p. 22. 
 
138 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 with many-coloured fires, beating the drum himself, mean- 
 while, from the beginning to the end of the auto da fc} 
 
 Now and again, even in a far more elevated sphere of con- 
 ception and of feeling, he seems to rise without an effort, and 
 hover with those choicest souls in history, whose flight soared 
 highest, and whose scope was widest. In 17 12, Stephen 
 lavorski, the Little-Russian monk whom he had brought 
 from Kief to Moscow, and raised to a bishopric, publicly 
 found fault with him, thundering reproaches, in one of his 
 sermons, against husbands who forsook their wives, and 
 men who would not fast at the appointed seasons. This was 
 rank high treason, and a report to this effect was sub- 
 mitted to the Sovereign. Peter merely made this note on 
 the margin of the document : ' First of all, face to face, — then 
 before witnesses.' 
 
 When lavorski made as though he would retire into a 
 monastery, he would not hear of it ; but he caused the 
 Patriarch of Constantinople to send him a dispensation, 
 which relieved him from the necessity of observing the 
 Russian Lent.^ A fanatic attempted, one day, to murder 
 him, firing two pistol shots at him in his sleep. The weapon 
 missed fire each time, and the would-be assassin, overcome 
 with terror, woke the Tsar, and told him what had happened. 
 • God,' he said, ' must have sent him to give the monarch a 
 miraculous sign of His protection,' adding, 'now kill me!' 
 ' Nobody kills Envoys,' responded Peter calmly, and he let 
 the fellow go.^ This anecdote may not be absolutely 
 authentic ; and it was somewhat unlike Peter, I confess, to 
 allow such a fine opportunity for judicial proceedings — with 
 all the paraphernalia of examination, search for accomplices, 
 and sittings in the Torture Chamber — to escape him. He 
 may, indeed, have allowed lavorski, if he were the only 
 person clearly implicated, to go free. But the adventure, — a 
 pure invention, possibly, or at all events an arrangement of 
 facts, — corresponds to an attitude of mind very characteristic 
 of the Sovereign, and especially of his later manner. I 
 frequently notice him giving himself airs of superior-minded- 
 ness, and of a scornful philosoj^hy as regards his own person, 
 and this under the most varied circumstances. When he 
 returned from Warsaw, after his disastrous campaign on the 
 
 * Bcrgholz, Ihischitti^s-Afaijfaziti, vol. xxi. p. 202. 
 
 2 Solovief, vol. xvi. jj. 374, ■' Colikof, vol. x. p. 176. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 139 
 
 Pruth, he was complimented on his happy return, ' My 
 happiness,' was his reply, 'amounts to this — that instead of 
 having received a hundred strokes with a rod, I have only 
 been given fifty.' Then, speaking to himself, ' I came, I 
 saw, I conquered,' and as if correcting himself, 'hardly that ! 
 hardly that !' Nieplouief, one of his favourite pupils, arrived 
 late for a morning appointment with the Tsar, in one of 
 the naval workshops. The Sovereign was waiting for him. 
 Nieplouief made his excuses. He had sat up late the night 
 before with friends. ' Very well, I forgive thee, because thou 
 hast told the truth ; and besides ' — here Peter would seem 
 to have reverted to his own peculiarities, and applied one of 
 the national proverbs to the incident — ' is not every man the 
 grandson of a woman ? ' (Kto babie nic vnouk ?) ^ 
 
 Were these methods of thought, of speech, of act'on 
 natural to the Tsar? Did they really correspond to his 
 innate qualities of mind and character? Were they not 
 rather a deliberate pose, which he would occasionally cast 
 aside, through inadvertence, caprice, or downright weari- 
 ness? The idea is admissible, at all events, so frequently 
 did he belie and contradict his own behaviour. When he 
 made his entry into Derbent in 1723 he was heard to say, 
 * Alexander built this town ; Peter has taken it ! ' On his 
 return from his Persian campaign he caused his easy con- 
 quest to be thus described on one of the innumerable 
 triuinphal arches already erected at Moscow, even before the 
 victory of Poltava : 
 
 'Struxerat fortis, sed fortior banc cepit urbem.' 
 
 That day, evidently, he had quite forgotten to be modest ! 
 At the taking of Narva, in 1704, he forgot even to be 
 generous — struck the enemy's commandant, Horn, whose 
 only fault was that he had defended the place too bravely ; 
 and caused the corpse of his wife, who had been killed in the 
 assault, to be cast into the water. "^ In 17 10, at the taking of 
 Wiborg, he granted the honours of war to the besieged, and 
 then, when the capitulation was signed, he kept the garrison 
 prisoners. This incident occurred again both at Derpt and 
 
 ' Nieplouiet's Memoirs (St. Petersburg, 1893), p. 106. 
 
 - Lundblad, vol. i. p. 17 ; Adlerfeld, Histoire militaire de Charles XII. 
 (Paris, 1 741)) vob ii. p. 224. 
 
I40 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 at Rigi.^ Yet this same man, after the battle of Twaer- 
 mynde (in July 17 14), embraced Ehrenskold, anaval captain, 
 and declared himself proud of havinjT had to strug^^^le with 
 such an adversary. He carried out the conditions of peace 
 signed with Sweden, in 1721, lo)-ally enouc^h, but the fashion 
 in which he had opened hostilities on that occasion was 
 a very [pattern of knavery. In May 1700, returnine^ to 
 Moscow from Voroneje, he reproached the Swedish Resi- 
 dent, Knipercron, in the most friendly terms, with the alarm 
 apparently felt by his daughter, then paying a visit to 
 Voroneje, as to the imminence of a conflict between the two 
 countries. He had done his best to calm her. ' Silly child,' 
 he had said, 'how can you imagine that I would be the first 
 to make an unjust war, and break a peace which 1 have 
 sworn shall be eternal?' He embraced Knipercron before 
 witnesses, and made him the most reassuring protestations, 
 vowing that if the King of Poland were to seize Riga, he, 
 Peter, would take it back, and restore it to the Swedes. 
 At that very moment he had actually undertaken to join 
 Augustus against Sweden. The common plan of attack 
 was prepared, and the partition of the expected booty duly 
 arranged. On the 8th of the following August, having heard 
 from Oukra'intsof, his Envoy at Constantinople, that the 
 signature of peace with the Porte, which he had been await- 
 ing before throwing off the mask, was an accomplished fact, 
 his troops were instantly set in motion, and marched towards 
 Narva. At that very instant his other Envoy, Prince Hilkof, 
 was received in audience by Charles XII., and gave him fresh 
 assurances of his master's pacific intentions.^ 
 
 The essentially practical turn of his mind not unfrequently 
 rendered it narrow and mean. When Leibnitz proposed to 
 him to establish magnetic observatories all over his Em- 
 pire, the great savant very nearly forfeited the Tsar's good 
 graces.^ But this did not prevent him from endeavouring 
 to discover the strait which was later to bear the name of 
 Behring. That was an evident commercial outlet, and there- 
 fore a desirable end to be attained. His economy amounted 
 
 1 Polevoi", History of Peter the Great (St. Pcterslnirg, 1843), vol. iii. pp. 79, 89. 
 Compare Peter's Writ iiii^s and Cones f'otideitce, vol. iii. pp. qg, and ill. 
 
 '^ Oustrialof, vol. iii. p. 369; vol. iv. Part ii. pp. 159-161 ; Fryxell, History 
 of Charles XII., translated by Jensen (Brunswick, 1861), vol. i. p. 78. 
 
 ' Baer, Peters Verdieiis'e iiin die Eiiveiteruiiff dcr Geographisehen A'entiiisst 
 (St. Petersburg, 1868), p. 56. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 141 
 
 to absolute stinginess. He would use the mathematical 
 instruments, which never left his person, to measure the 
 daily consumption of the cheese served up to him ; and to 
 make amends for the shabby salary he gave his chief cook, 
 Velten, he turned the meals to which he invited his friends 
 into picnics, at a ducat a head.^ His love of interfering 
 with everybody and everything made him always willing 
 to act as godfather, but the present he bestowed on the 
 child's mother, when, according to the custom of the 
 country, he kissed her cheek, never exceeded a ducat slipped 
 below her pillow, in the case of an officer's wife, or a rouble, 
 in that of the wife of a private soldier.'^ He gave thirty 
 roubles to a pilot named Antip Timofieief, who saved his 
 life in a hurricane on the White Sea in 1694.^ And this 
 was a great effort of generosity on his part. 
 
 And yet I believe he was always, and everywhere, per- 
 fectly sincere with himself, and perfectly natural, even in his 
 most contradictory moments. He was naturally diverse in 
 character, for reasons to which I shall have to refer again, 
 and both his constitution and his moral education were per- 
 fectly different from those to which we are accustomed. 
 The country which gave him birth, the race to which he 
 belonged, the tradition from which he proceeded, must 
 never be forgotten. Rurik, Oleg, Saint Vladimir, Sviato- 
 polk, and Monomachus, those heroes of Russian history and 
 legend, are great figures indeed, but they must not be con- 
 founded with the historic and legendary glories of ancient 
 Europe. They are as different from these, in character, as 
 they are in name. There is nothing about them of Bayard 
 or of Francis I. Rather, with their patriarchal customs, they 
 bear a moral resemblance to the kings of Scripture. The 
 Russians of the present day will not, I am sure, consider 
 this assertion either as a gratuitous insult, nor as an unjusti- 
 fiable denial of their possession of the instinct of chivalry ; 
 I would just as soon deny the immense knowledge, and the 
 admirable education, by which so many of them are distin- 
 guished. But not the less true is it that, in Peter's days, 
 most Russians could not read, and that, no knightly lance 
 having ever been broken in their country, they passed 
 through the Middle Ages without any knowledge of chivalry, 
 just as later they passed through the Renaissance period 
 
 ' Scherer, vol. iii. p. 254. - Ibid. ^ Oustrialof, vol. ii. p. 367. 
 
142 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 without knowint^ inuch of Greek or Roman art.^ The time 
 and distance thus lost have indeed been successfully re- 
 couped, but the fact remains that for many years the country 
 knew nothiii;T of that brilliant and noble-hearted line which, 
 from the days of Roland to those of ]^a)ard, made the word 
 honour s\-nonymous, in Western Europe, with fidelit}' to a 
 plii^hted promise; and further, that it underwent the contrary 
 influence of the Greek Empire, from which it imbibed not 
 only arts and sciences, habits, relis^ion, and form of policy, 
 but also all the Greek traditions of fraud and wily cunnini^. 
 I'^vcn the le[^endar\' type of womanhood in Russia has no 
 heroically ideal quality. She is no Joan of Arc, the inspired 
 virgin, driving a whole people to victory through the im- 
 pulse of her faith; nor is she Wanda, the gentle Polish 
 mart\'r, who preferred death to espousing a foreign prince 
 offensive to the national instinct. She is Olga, a brisk 
 and bold-hearted lady, who hunts, and fights, and trades, 
 triumphs over her enemies as much by cunning as by 
 strength, and, when the Greek Emperor would marry her 
 against her will, dismisses him in most uncompromising 
 fashion. Peter, like Alexander Xevski, — that UI}'sses among 
 saints, as Custine called him,- a prince more wise than 
 valiant, a model indeed of prudence, but no type of gener- 
 osity and good faith, — was her true descendant ; and so it 
 came to pass that Campredon, the French Envoy, writing 
 in 1725, concerning one of the Tsar's collaborators in his 
 work, described him thus : ' He is far from upright, and 
 this it is which acquired him the confidence of the late 
 Sovereign.' ^ 
 
 The same apparent contradictions are noticeable in Peter's 
 daily morals and religion. Was he a believer? It would 
 seem almost doubtful, so off-handedly did he sometimes 
 treat the ceremonies and ministers of a religion which, at 
 other times, he would practise with the greatest fervour. 
 When his sister Maria lay dying, he drove away the monks, 
 who hastened about her to perform the traditional cere- 
 monies, such as offering the dying woman food and dnnk 
 
 1 'The brealh of chivalry never stirred the depths of Russia' (Pierling, A'l/sxia 
 ami /lie Holy See, p. 189). The chapter in this interesting; work, entitled, 'The 
 Renaissance in Moscow,' is quite conchusive, as re ;ards my view of this subject. 
 
 2 Ntissia, vol i. p. 265. 
 
 8 May 3, 1725, Sbornik. vol. Iviii. p. 255. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 143 
 
 of various kinds, and inquiring plaintively whether she 
 desired to leave life because she had not enough to eat ! 
 He would do away with all such mummeries ! Let it be 
 admitted, then, that he clings to simple faith, and will have 
 no superstitions. But yet I note his habit of writing down his 
 dreams.^ The English Envoy, Whitworth, in his despatch 
 of 25th March 1712, speaks of a victorious struggle with a 
 tiger during the Tsars sleep, which has strengthened him in 
 his warlike intentions.^ At the same time, all proprietx', 
 morals, good or bad, civility, and decency, seem to have been 
 a dead-letter to him. In 1723, lajoujinski, one of the par- 
 venus by whom he was surrounded, took it into his head to 
 cast off his wife, with whom he had no fault to find, and by 
 whom he had growr-up children, to marry the daughter of 
 the Chancellor, Golovkin. As the wife on one side, and 
 the Chancellor on the other, objected violently, Peter, who 
 liked the plan, because it lowered the ancient aristocracy for 
 the benefit of the new, intervened without hesitation. The 
 woman was thrown into a convent ; the father was ordered 
 to give his consent. The Tsar declared the first marriage 
 null and void, and undertook to bear all the expenses of the 
 second. From the respect thus shown for family ties his 
 regard for the rest of the moral law may easily be argued.^ 
 At Berlin in 1718, during a visit to a collection of ancient 
 medals and statues, his attention was attracted to the 
 figure of a heathen divinity, one of those with which the 
 ancient Romans frequently adorned the nuptial-chamber. 
 He beckoned to the Tsarina, and commanded her to kiss 
 the figure. When she appeared to object, he shouted 
 brutally, ' Kop ab ' ('Head off'), giving her to understand 
 the risk entailed by disobedience; after which he requested 
 the King, his host, to present him with that rare objet 
 d'art, as well as with several other curiosities, includ- 
 ing an amber cabinet, which, according to the Margrave 
 of Baircuthi, had cost an enormous sum of money. In 
 the same way, having remarked a mummy in a Natural 
 History Museum at Copenhagen, he manifested his inten- 
 tion of appropriating it. The head of the museum referred 
 
 ^ Siemievski, SIoVo i Dielo, p. 273, etc. 
 - Sbornik, vol. Ixi. p. 167. 
 
 ^ Campredon's De5;patch, dated March 22, 1723, French Foreign Office; 
 Dolgorouki's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 17. 
 
144 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 the matter to his royal master, who answered by a polite 
 refusal. The mummy was an exceptionally handsome and 
 larj^e one: there was not another like it in Germany. Peter 
 went back to the museum, fell on that mummy, tore off its 
 nose, mutilated it in all directions, and then took his de- 
 ])arture, sayint^, ' Now you may keep it ! ' ^ On his departure 
 from the Golden Ring Hotel at Dresden, in 171 1, he took 
 down with his own hands, and would have carried off, in 
 s[)itc of the servants' opposition, the valuable curtains sent 
 by the Saxon Court, to decorate his apartments. At Dantzic, 
 in 1716, finding himself inconvenienced by a draught of cold 
 air during the performance of divine service, he stretched 
 out his hand, without a word, snatched the wig off the 
 head of the Burgomaster, who stood beside him, and put it 
 on his own.'^ 
 
 I do not believe that Baron von Printzen was ever obliged 
 to climb to the top of a mast to present his credentials to the 
 Russian sovereign, who was busy in the rigging, and would 
 not allow any interruption of that work. This anecdote 
 — also related by the great Frederick to Voltaire ^ — appears 
 to me to stamp one of its tellers — I know not which — as a 
 downright liar. Baron von Printzen arrived in Russia in 
 1700. At that period, St. Petersburg — the only place where 
 he could have met with such a reception — had no existence. 
 There was no shipbuilding there till 1704, when von Printzen 
 had already been succeeded in his office by Keyserling. 
 Further, the envoy of the Elector of Brandenburg, and 
 future King of Prussia, having started from Berlin on the 
 I 2th of October, must have arrived at his post in the very 
 heart of a Russian winter, a season which reduces all rigging 
 operations in the open air to a condition of forced idleness. 
 On the other hand, Campredon's assertion that when, on the 
 occasion of the peace negotiations with Sweden, in 1 721, he 
 asked for an audience of the Tsar, Peter came from the 
 Admiralty to receive him, wearing a sailor's blouse, seems 
 to me worthy of belief. 
 
 This entire absence of scruple, this disdain for the usual 
 rules of conduct, and scorn of propriety, were accompanied 
 
 ^ Scherer, vol. ii. p. 15. 
 
 * I'olevoi, vol. iv. p. 4. There .ire several versions of this anecdote; see 
 Scherer, vol. ii. p. 77. 
 
 ' Voltaire's Works, vol. x. p. 71. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 145 
 
 by a very deep feeling, and absolute respect, for law, for 
 duty, and for discipline. Why and how did this come to pass? 
 Doubtless because, in this case, we have something beyond a 
 mere unthinking negation of the indispensable foundations 
 of any social edifice ; in spite of a large amount of caprice and 
 whimsicality, which gave birth to many inconsistencies, a 
 more worthy motive did exist in Peter's mind. He had 
 undertaken to reform the existence of a whole people, whose 
 scruples and prejudices made up a good half of their religion 
 and morality. He regarded these, with a good deal of 
 correctness, as the principal obstacle to any progress, and 
 therefore, very logically, he never lost an opportunity of 
 warring against them. When piloting his flotilla of galleys 
 on the waters of the Don, in 1699, he noticed a Dutch sailor 
 enjoying a fricassee of tortoises, caught in the river. He 
 mentioned it to his Russians, and there was a general outcry 
 of disgust. Such food appeared to them abominable and 
 unclean. Straightway his cook had orders to serve the 
 horrid dish at his own table, under the guise of chicken. 
 Shei'n and Saltykof, who dined on it, fainted away when, by 
 their master's order, the plumage of the bird they believed 
 themselves to have devoured was respectfully presented to 
 them. 
 
 Peter felt himself called to clear the national conscience of 
 the dross left by centuries of barbarous ignorance. But he 
 was too impetuous, too rough and coarse, personally, and, 
 above all, too passionately eager, to perform this work with 
 real discernment. He hit out wildly, in all directions. 
 Thus, even while he corrected, he depraved. The mighty 
 teacher was one of the greatest demoralisers of the human 
 species. Modern Russia, which owes him all its greatness, 
 owes him most of its vices also. 
 
 Ill 
 
 His genius, indisputable as it is, and huge as was its field 
 of action, does not give us the impression of taking in vast 
 spaces and mighty wholes in one swift lightning glance. It 
 rather gives us the idea — so great is its comprehension of, 
 and passion for, detail — of a multitude of glances, simul- 
 
146 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 tancously fixed on a variety of objects. And, indeed, 
 Peter's general ideas, wlien such become apparent to us, 
 always strike us as being somewhat vague and inconsistent. 
 His plans and combinations are very apt to hick accuracy 
 and precision, and, when his gaze turns on a distant object, 
 liis sight would seem to grow confused. Intellectually 
 speaking, he suffered from short-sight. Of this the building 
 of St. Petersburg is sufficient proof. Here execution came 
 before conception. The plans were left for future considera- 
 tion ; and thus there came to be quarters without streets, 
 streets without issue, and a port without water. The usual 
 instinct of that lightning mind was to act at once — leaving 
 reflection to a later date — without taking time to discuss 
 projects, so long as they seemed attractive, nor weigh means, 
 provided these lay close at hand. Peter's power of judg- 
 ing his collaborators, which, according to his panegyrists, 
 amounted to a sort of divination, would seem to be open to 
 much discussion. The means he employed, such as taking 
 hold of the hair of the individuals he thought of selecting, 
 lifting their heads, and gazing for an instant straight into 
 their eyes — those summary processes which roused the ad- 
 miration of even so serious an historian as Solovief^ — are 
 only an additional proof of that superficiality which I have 
 already pointed out, as being the essence of all his know- 
 ledge and all his aptitudes. He had not the smallest 
 knowledge of psychology. One day he found, in the house 
 of a schoolmaster, a servant girl, who took his fancy. He 
 made her his mistress, until he could make her his Empress ; 
 and, forthwith, he proposed to make the schoolmaster 
 the founder of the national education. That is the plain 
 story of Catherine and of Gliick. The woman began by 
 wandering from camp to camp, the prey of the officers 
 and soldiers of her future lord ; the man, a humble pastor 
 in a Livonian village, began by teaching the little Russians 
 confided to his care to sing the Lutheran Psalms. The 
 Tsar, on becoming aware of it, closed the school and dis- 
 missed the master, l^ut the national education proceeded 
 no further. 
 
 One day, at the launch of a new ship, a sight which 
 always heated his imagination, Peter fell to descanting on 
 historical philosophy. Recalling the march of civilising 
 
 ' Sliidics (18S2), ]). 205. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 147 
 
 culture in Europe, from its Greek cradle, and on through its 
 Italian glories, he finally expressed his conviction that 
 Russia's turn had come. ' Let us hope,' he said, ' that within 
 a few years we shall be able to humiliate neighbouring 
 countries by placing our own on the highest pinnacle of 
 glory.' His conception of civilisation is here clearly be- 
 tra\-ed — the sentiment of a manufacturer in strong competi- 
 tion with the factory over the way. He had too little 
 cultivation to analyse and understand the elements of the 
 superiority of those foreign rivals whom he envied, ai d 
 desired to excel. All he saw was the exterior, and therefore 
 he esteemed the whole below its value. His intelligence, 
 vast and comprehensive though it was, shows, on one side, a 
 certain quality of limitation. It is radically inaccessible to 
 any abstract conception. Hence he was very unskilful in 
 judging any series of events, in deducing the consequences 
 of a particular point of departure, in tracing effects back to 
 their causes. He was quick to seize the practical advan- 
 tages of civilisation, but he never had any suspicion of the 
 necessary premises of all civilising undertakings. He was 
 like a man who would begin to build a house from the 
 roof, or who would work at the foundations and summit 
 of an edifice, at one and the same time. His being a 
 good carpenter, or even a fair naval engineer, did not 
 suffice to set the moral forces of his people in organic 
 motion. 
 
 To sum it up, Peter possessed more ingenuity than actual 
 genius. His government was the handiwork of an artisan 
 rather than that of an artist, of an active official rather 
 than of a statesman. He had an extraordinary gift of 
 manipulating men and things ; and his surprising dexterity 
 in this respect, coupled with a marvellous power of assimila- 
 tion, is still noticeable in almost any modern Russian, who 
 will come from the banks of the Don, where he never saw a 
 machine nor a factory, and, after a few weeks spent in some 
 western industrial centre, will be perfectly informed on the 
 latest improvements of modern machincr\-, and well able 
 to apply them in his own country. But Peter had not an 
 original idea of his own, and cared little for originality in 
 other people. He did not even attempt to put the elements, 
 external or internal, which he used in his attempts at 
 political or social construction, into independent motion. 
 
148 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 His work was a mosaic, a mere patchwork. Even this 
 imitation of the foreigner was not, in itself, his own original 
 invention. It had been the constant rule in Russia since 
 the days of Boris Godunof. All he did was to substitute a 
 torrent, a cataract, a perfect avalanche, of German, Dutch, 
 English, French, and Italian products, for the little stream 
 of importation which had passed from Poland and slowly 
 filtered into the arid Russian soil. His work — I say it again — 
 was a mechanical performance, — superficial always, and far 
 from intelligent, sometimes, — directed solely to external 
 ends, without a thought of internal possibilities. It had been 
 begun with so much carelessness as to the real nature, and 
 inner values, of the materials selected, that its end and object 
 perforce escaped the understanding of the nation called 
 upon to perform it. It was heterogeneous, incongruous, and 
 ill-arranged, useless in many particulars, harmful in others : 
 a Dutch fleet, a German army, and a Swedish Government, 
 the morals of Versailles, and the lagoons of Amsterdam — all 
 included in the same series of borrowed treasures. Not a 
 perception of the ideal side of the undertaking, nothing but 
 a perpetual bondage to the tyranny of preconceived ideas. 
 When he was informed that the canals he had cut through 
 the Island of St. Basil ( Vassili-Ostrof) — the only scrap of 
 firm ground in his new capital — were useless, and too narrow 
 for traffic, his first thought was to hurry off to the Dutch 
 Resident, borrow a map of Amsterdam, and compare the 
 dimensions, compass in hand. 
 
 Yet I have said he was an idealist, and I hold to that 
 opinion. An idealist he was, in virtue of that part of his 
 nature which escaped from the chances and incoherence of 
 his daily inspiration. An idealist — after his own fashion — 
 by the general subordination of his thought, and the constant 
 sacrifice of his own person, to an end without aiu' material 
 or immediate tangibilit\'. I mean the splendid destiny to 
 which he believed his country appointed. Not, indeed, that, 
 in the limited range of his mental sight, and amid the passion 
 and perpetual tumult of his career, this end ever took very 
 precise shape. That famous Will, which has been the theme 
 of so many ingenious politicians, was, as I shall later prove, 
 a mere hoax, with which he had nothing to do. The 
 far horizon towards which his course was shaped loomed 
 up before him, uncertain and confused : like a camp, it 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 149 
 
 may be, filled with the clatter of armed men, or else a busy 
 fruitful hive — a. centre of life, at all events — industrial, 
 intelligent, even artistic. He dreamed indeed, but with 
 wide-open eyes ; and, with all the positiveness of his mind 
 and nature, he ended — so great was his effort, so mighty his 
 faith — by almost touching and possessing this phantom 
 dream of his. He went a step farther. He would ensure 
 the continuity of this hallucination of what was to be. that 
 far-distant, tremendous destiny, and, like the splendid 
 despot that he was, he drove it into the very marrow of his 
 subjects' bones — beat it in mercilessly, with blows of sticks, 
 and hatchet strokes. He evolved a race of eager vision- 
 aries out of a people of mere brutes. He left something 
 better behind him than a mere legend. He left a faith, 
 which, unlike other faiths, is spiritualised, instead of material- 
 ised, in the simple minds which have enshrined it. ' Holy 
 Russia' of this present day — practical, brutal, and mystic, 
 above all things, even as he was, — standing ready, like a 
 many-headed Messiah, to regenerate Ancient Europe, even 
 by submerging her, is Peter's child. 
 
 An idealist, yes ! A dreamer too, a great poet in active 
 life, was this horny-handed woodcutter ! Napoleon, the 
 soldier mathematician, with conceptions less extravagant 
 than Peter's, with a more judicious sense of possibilities, and 
 a more real grasp of the future, was an idealist too. 
 
 IV 
 
 One of the most sharply marked and peculiar traits in 
 Peter's character — a character offering contrasts so strong as 
 to endue it, from certain points of view, with an appearance 
 of absolute deformity — is the intense and never-ceasing 
 strain of buffoonery, which sets an harlequin's cap on that 
 imperious brow, twists those harsh features into a merry- 
 andrew's grin, and everywhere and always — through all the 
 vicissitudes of a career crammed with great events and 
 mighty actions — mingles the solemn with the grotesque, and 
 carries farce even into the region of absolute tragedy. This 
 is betrayed very early, quite in the dawn of Peter's reign, by 
 the disguises adopted by the young ruler, from the very 
 
ISO PETER THE GREAT 
 
 outset, for himself, and imj)oscd, by him, on his friends and 
 collaborators. So early as 1695, Prince Kcodor Romodan- 
 ovski united the title of King of Presburg with that 01 
 General. And even when writing to him on the most serious 
 subjects, Peter never failed to address him as ^ Min Her 
 Kcnic/i,' and to sign himself 'Your Majesty's very obedient 
 Slave, Kncch Piter Koniojidor, ' or else, ' /r Daheleix Knch, ' 
 which last formula was unintelligible to any one but himself. 
 He lost no opportunity of expressing his resolution to shed 
 the last drop of his blood in the service of this mock 
 sovereign. Meanwhile he had created Zotof, his former tutor, 
 Archbishop of Presburg, Patriarch of the banks of the 
 laou/ca, and of the whole Kimkonl (a name of German origin 
 given to the quarter known as the German suburb). Tihon 
 Nikititch Strcshnief was made Po{)e. He was addressed as 
 ' Most Holy Father,' and ' Your Holiness,' and all his replies, 
 whether they were business letters orofacial reports, were, by 
 order, couched in the same style. Romodanovski addressed 
 his letters to ' Bovibardicr Peter AlcxicicvitcJi,'' and closed them 
 with a simple formula of politeness, appropriate from a 
 .sovereign to a subject. In May 1703, after the taking of 
 Nienschanz, Peter, acting as secretary to Field-Marshal 
 Sheremetief, drew up, with his own hands, a report to the 
 King — in other words, to Romodanovski — informing him 
 that the Field-Marshal had promoted him and Menshikof to 
 be Knights of St. Andrew, 'subject to His Majesty's appro- 
 bation.' And so settled was the determination to take this 
 burlesque seriously, that it actually survived the original 
 actors in it. In 17 19, when Feodor Romodanovski died, the 
 title and privileges of his imaginary sovereignty passed 
 to his son Ivan, and Peter, in an autogra]jh letter con- 
 gratulating Captain Sieniavin upon a victory won at sea, 
 assures him of the satisfaction this success will cause 'His 
 Majesty.' ^ 
 
 On the 3rd of February 1703, he writes to Menshikof — 
 calling him 'My heart' — to inform him of the opening 
 of a fort, built on a property he had lately bestowed on 
 him, and christened under the name of Oranicnburg — the 
 present Ranenburg, in the Government of Riazan. The 
 Metropolitan of Kief presided at the ceremony. This 
 mock Metropolitan was Mussine-Pushkin, one of the real 
 
 1 Golikof, vol. vii. p. 264. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 151 
 
 sovereign's boon companions, and by no means one of the 
 least debauched. A plan of the fortress, showing the names 
 given to the bastions, was enclosed in this letter. The first 
 bastion was baptized with brandy, the second with lemonade, 
 the third with Rhine wine, the fourth with beer, and the fifth 
 with hydromel. The score, or thereabouts, of persons who 
 made up the party, amongst whom were the Prussian and 
 Polish Envo}'s, Keyserling and Koenigseck, an English 
 merchant named Stiles, and several important Russians, 
 appended their signatures to this letter, substituting joking 
 sobriquets for their real names. Menshikof's reply was 
 couched in a serious strain, for the Swedes were giving him 
 much trouble, and he was in no laughing mood ; but he 
 did not forget to express his thanks to his august friend for 
 the honour he had done him, by getting drunk upon his 
 property. 
 
 In 1709, when the victory of Poltava was to be celebrated 
 at Moscow, a huge wooden palace was built on the Tsaritsijie 
 Lougiie\ Romodanovski, enthroned in the Hall of Audience, 
 and surrounded by the principal dignitaries of the Court, 
 summoned the leaders of the victorious army to present their 
 reports on the incidents and happy issue of the battle. The 
 first to advance was Sheremetief: ' By the grace of God and 
 the good fortune of your Cesarean Majesty, I have overcome 
 the Swedish army.' ' By the grace of God, and the good 
 fortune of your Caesarean Majesty,' said Menshikof, in his 
 turn, ' I have taken General Loewenhaupt and his army 
 prisoners at Perevolotchna.' Last of all came Peter : ' By 
 the grace of God, and the good fortune of your Caesarean 
 Majesty, I and my regiment have fought and conquered at 
 Poltava.' All three presented the mock Ca,\sar with the 
 regulation reports, and retired, bowing. After which, the 
 astounded Swedish prisoners were brought in, and marched 
 past the throne. A banquet, presided over by this strange 
 substitute for the Sovereign, who was seated upon a raised 
 dais, and condescended to summon Colonel Peter Alexie- 
 ievitch to his own table, closed the ceremony.^ 
 
 Eftbrts have been made to justify these pasquinades — 
 almost revolting, at such a moment, and in such serious cir- 
 cumstances — by various interpretations of their meaning. 
 Some will have it that this was Peter's method of inculcating, 
 
 ' Golikof, vol. xi. p. 567, etc. 
 II 
 
152 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 by his own example, the principle of subordination which he 
 desired to instil into his subjects. Others, that it was an 
 attempt to destroy all memory of the MicstniicJiestvo, by a 
 deliberate confusinn^ of all ranks, and every precedence. 
 Such ideas ma\-, indeed, have occurred to him. He always 
 showed the deepest intuition of the true foundation of all 
 real discipline — the sense that he who will be obeyed must 
 know how to obey — that he who desires service must him- 
 self learn how to serve. The expressions, ' I serve,' ' since 
 I have been in the service,' were very habitual with him ; and 
 not less evident and endurini:^ was his constant desire to 
 familiarise iiis subjects, to fill their e)-cs and their souls, with 
 that great ideal, to which he sacrificed his own life, and to 
 which everything was to be sacrificed — to which all things 
 must bow, and, in comparison with which, all else, even the 
 Tsar himself, was to be accounted nothing. Such a design 
 may have existed, at the back of such scenic effects as I 
 have just described. But the means used by Peter for the 
 furtherance of this object, proceeded solely and directly 
 from his whimsicality, his love of disguises, of humbug and 
 mystification, and from a licence of imagination which no 
 sentiment of propriety, of respect, or even of self-respect, 
 could keep within bounds. It should not be forgotten that 
 masquerades were at that time a great fashion in western 
 countries, and they had long had a settled home in Russia. 
 Ivan the Terrible delighted in them. Peter thus merely 
 followed the prevailing custom, which his inherent prone- 
 ness to exaggeration, of view and of practical action, led him 
 to carry to so extreme a pitch, that the means he employed 
 finally far exceeded, and even ran counter to, his original 
 intention. 
 
 Nothing but the extreme docility of a national tempera- 
 ment, long since broken in to every form of despotism, saved 
 the very idea of sovereignty from fading out of the public 
 mind at this period. This will appear especially true 
 when we consider that certain of the wildest and least justi- 
 fiable of the sovereign's disguises lowered human dignity, in 
 his own person, to the most abject and shameful level. In 
 1698, just after his first foreign journey, he took part in a 
 procession, in which the mock patriarch, Zotof, wearing a 
 mitre decorated with a figure of Bacchus, led a troop of 
 disorderly bacchantes, their heads adorned with bundles of 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 153 
 
 liglited tobacco instead of vine-leaves.^ Here, of course, 
 we have an allu.<-ion to the monopoly, lately acquired by 
 the Marquis of Caermarthen, and, therefore, a political 
 intention. But the manner selected for intimatin;^ this does 
 not strike us as being any the less objectionable. In the same 
 year, on the very day after that on which one hundred and 
 fifty Stn'/isj/ha.d died, in horrible tortures, Peter's cheerfulness 
 was unabated. He kept the Brandenburg Envoy, whom lie 
 liad received in farewell audience, to dinner, and regaled him, 
 at dessert, with a scene of bufifooner}', during which the mock 
 patriarch, having bestowed his benediction on all present, 
 with two crossed pipes, gave the signal for the dances to 
 begin. The Tsarevitch Alexis, and his sister Nathalia, 
 watched this entertainment from behind a hanging which 
 was pushed aside for their convenience."'^ 
 
 Twenty years later the same thing was going on. During 
 the carnival of 1724, a troop of sixty or seventy individuals — 
 gentlemen, officers, priests (including the Tsar's Confessor, 
 Nadajinski), burghers, and common people, amongst whom 
 one, a sailor, walked on his hands with his head down, 
 making strange faces and wild contortions, attended the 
 Sovereign through the streets. These people, chosen from 
 amongst the greatest drunkards and vilest debauchees in the 
 country, constituted a regular brotherhood, which met on 
 fixed days, under the name of 'Council which knows no 
 sadness' {Bezpietchalnyi sobor),?iX\d indulged in orgies which 
 occasionally lasted for twenty-four hours. Ladies were 
 invited to these gatherings, and the most important officials, 
 ministers, generals, and grave and aged men, were frequently 
 obliged to take part in them. In January 1725, Matthew 
 Golovin, a man of illustrious family, eighty years of age, 
 was ordered to appear in one of these processions, dressed 
 as a devil. He refused, and, at a word from Peter, he w as 
 seized, stripped naked, a cap with pasteboard horns was 
 put upon his head, and he was forced to sit, for a full hour, 
 on the frozen Neva. He caught a violent fever, of which 
 he died.^ 
 
 Not an event, during the whole course of the reign, from 
 the Peace of Nystadt, to the wedding of a favourite dwarf, 
 but was made the pretext for fresh doings of the kind. 
 
 » Korb, p. 115. * Ibid., p. liS. 
 
 " Dolgoroukof, Memoirs, vol. i. p. 136. 
 
154 PETER THK GRKAT 
 
 When the dwarf died, Peter ranL,^cd maskers round liis 
 cofTin, even as he had aheady rant;cd them round his 
 marriage-bed. Every dwarf in St. Petersburg thus appeared, 
 in 1724, at the funeral of one of their number, all of them 
 dressed in black, and following a tiny hearse, drawn by six 
 little Spanish horses. The same )'ear, during a masquerade 
 which lasted a week, senators were forbidden to unmask, 
 even in the council chamber, during the hours devoted to 
 important business.^ 
 
 Peter had a great number of Court jesters or fools. 
 Strahlenberg^ gives a list, which contains many names 
 possessing other claims to importance. Zotof, Tourguenief, 
 Shanskoi, Lanin, Shahofskoi, Tarakanof, Kirsantievitch, 
 and Oushakof, the most admired of all. These names can 
 be accounted for. Plogcl, in his history of Court jesters,' 
 divides those who surrounded the Tsar into four categories. 
 Firstly, fools by natural infirmity, in whom the Sovereign 
 finds amusement. Sccojidly, fools by punishment, con- 
 demned to play the part, for having failed in wisdom, in 
 their former functions, — this was the case of Oushakof, 
 who, as a captain in a guard regiment, had been sent from 
 Smolensk to Kief with important despatches, reached the 
 town during the night, found the gates shut, and, when there 
 was some delay about opening them, turned round, rode 
 back to Smolensk, and complained of his discomfiture to 
 his commanding officer. Thirdly, simulated fools, who 
 shammed mental disturbance to escape death, after having 
 been implicated in some plot — a stratagem which did not 
 always impose upon Peter, who, however, judged the 
 self-chosen punishment of the poor wretches sufficient. 
 Fourlhly, fools by lack of education. Peter, who was in the 
 habit of sending a great number of young men abroad, 
 examined them, when they came back, as to the information 
 acquired. Those who did not give him satisfaction escaped 
 severer punishment by assuming the cap and bells. In the 
 great Tsar's time these private jesters had a certain part 
 assigned them, and a political importance of their own. 
 They supplemented his police force. They boldly and 
 
 ' Bergholz, Buschhiqs-Afai^aziii, vol. xxii. p. 436, etc. 
 
 2 Das Nord und Oest/h/ie 'J'heil von Europe, tittd Asia (Stockliolm, 1 730), 
 
 p. 231;. 
 
 » Gcschkhte der Hofiiaryti (Licgnilz, 17S9). p. 409. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 155 
 
 loudly reported the evil deeds of his ministers, at his table, 
 relating their thefts and their embezzlements. Peter even 
 occasionally deputed them to avenge him. On these occa- 
 sions they would carefully contrive to make the guilty 
 person drunk, would pick a quarrel with him, and then 
 thrash him soundly.^ Strahlenberg's list does not give the 
 names of the two most famous members of this burlesque 
 and pitiful legion : the Russian, Balakircf, and the Portu- 
 guese, D'Acosta, a relation, doubtless, of the celebrated con- 
 vert Uriel. To this last, Peter confided the functions of 
 director-general and organiser of the revels, and Head of the 
 staff emplo}'ed in them. In 1713 he gave him the title of 
 Count and Han of the Samo}'edes. This last promotion 
 was made the occasion of a series of burlesque ceremonies, 
 in which several families of real Samoyedes, brought for 
 the purpose from the depths of Siberia, were forced to figure. 
 Amongst them appeared one of the Empress's cooks, dis- 
 guised as a Samoyede, with a huge pair of stag's horns 
 on his head, and girt with a yellow ribbon, to which was 
 suspended a medal, bearing the name ' Actaeon ' engraved 
 upon it. Peter occasionally associated this man with 
 Oushakof and Balakiref, and frequently made him his 
 favourite butt. The poor wretch had a wife, whose reputa- 
 tion was of the lightest, and the Tsar never failed, when he 
 saw him before company, to lift two of his fingers, with a 
 s)'nibolic gesture, above his forehead." 
 
 These forms of amusement, coarse as they seem, especially 
 in these days, might have passed almost uncriticised. They 
 were the natural, and, in a sense, the indispensable, rebound 
 of an existence devoted to a toil, which, without them, would 
 have exceeded the limit of human strength, even in the case 
 of such an exceptionally robust nature as Peter's. The great 
 man thus instinctively sought relief for his overstrained 
 nerves, and, extreme as he was in all particulars, inevitably 
 fell into the worst excesses. It might even be urged that 
 the disgusting, cynical, or inhuman side of his bcliaviour 
 was atoned for by the unconstrained gaiet}' and large- 
 hearted good-humour which usually marked it. Half a 
 century later. Christian Vll. of Denmark caused a certain 
 Count Brandt, who had been set upon on the score of his 
 
 1 Koiirakiii Papers, \o1. i. \\. 73. 
 
 * Scherer, vol. iii. p. 56 ; liergjiolz, Biischings-I^lagaziii, vol. xix. p. 87. 
 
156 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 conjugal misfortunes, to be tried and condemned to death, 
 because, in his fury, he had raised his liand ai^ainst the 
 Sovercii^jn. Peter bore tiie hearty blows showered upon him 
 b>' Catherine's head cook, when that functionary was not in 
 a joking humour, witiiout a word of complaint.^ It may be 
 said that he should have chosen the subjects of his jests 
 elsewhere than in the kitchen, but that was his style. He 
 was no aristocrat. He was essentially vulgar, on the con- 
 trary — as much allied, by certain traits of rustic humour 
 and childish gaiety, with the plebs of every countr)-, as he 
 was distinguished and widely separated, by the general 
 tendency of his mind and character, from the native plebeian 
 element. His earliest comrades, the Konioiihy, had made 
 him thoroughly acquainted with the manners and habits of 
 the Russian populace, and to' that, in part, he owed his 
 knowledge of the masses, and his gift for ruling them. I 
 have described him during the Christmas festivities as fol- 
 lowing the practice, traditional in the lower classes, of the 
 Slavic nic {Ckrista slavil, ' praising Christ ') — that is, of sing- 
 ing the Saviour's praises before the doors of houses, and 
 claiming the gifts usually bestowed. One day the richest 
 merchant in Moscow, Filadief, refused to be sufficiently 
 generous in his donation. Peter forthwith collected the 
 inhabitants of the whole quarter before his house, and 
 forced him to pay a ransom of one rouble for every head 
 in the crowd. ^ Here a certain quality of his genius appears : 
 his aptitude for stirring the mob by appealing to its lowest 
 instincts. 
 
 The really dangerous side of these pleasures and relaxa- 
 tions resided in the deliberate confusion, kept up by Peter, 
 of madness with reason, of mere masquerade with serious 
 existence. These sham counts and patriarchs, these buffoons 
 and harlequins, constantly added to their carnival dignities 
 and functions, and mingled with them, others, which made, 
 or should have made, them, very serious personages. Zotof 
 was Keeper of the Seals; Ivan Golovin, who, though he had 
 Ijeen witli Peter in Holland, knew nothing of naval matters, 
 was, /<v- t/iat very reason, created head of the Admiralty, 
 The Sovereign and his friends found this a very pretty sub- 
 ject for jesting, but the fleet, — which, among>t themselves. 
 
 ' Bcrgholz, Busihinqs-Magaziti, vol. xix. p. 87. 
 * Korb, p. loi. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 157 
 
 whenever they drank Ivan Mihailovitch's health, they called 
 \{\s family, — was far from being the better for it. 
 
 No justification nor excuse can be offered for these dis- 
 orders. They were the clear and evident weak point of a 
 most superior mind, — too far removed from the common 
 track, too completely bereft of the balance which education, 
 tradition, and social surroundings, generally enforce, even in 
 the most independent natures, — to be able to maintain its 
 equilibrium in that huge space wherein it moved, and 
 traced out its own path. 
 
 It will naturally be inquired whether the public and official 
 institution of the mock Patriarchate, to which I have already 
 referred, really was intended, as some think, to prepare 
 the way for the suppression of the real one. I would 
 willingly admit this, were it not for my sense of the evident 
 dangers such an indirect course would have involved. Would 
 not Peter have thus risked, not only the dignity of the whole 
 clergy, but the very idea of religion ? Some people have 
 looked on this burlesque as a mere parody of the Papacy. I 
 cannot share their opinion. 1 find Zotof alternately desig- 
 nated Knes-papa and Patriarch. And, when Peter set the 
 mock Caesar, Romodanovski, beside the Knes-papa, whose 
 rank was it, whose title, whose function, that he sought to 
 ridicule and roll in the mud? I am rather disposed to 
 believe his chief desire was to divert a mind predisposed 
 by certain hereditary germs of Eastern despotism, certain 
 constitutional vices, and certain faults of early education, 
 to whimsical eccentricities. I will not deny that more 
 serious intentions may have occasionally existed, and may 
 even have been at the root of this wild and licentious 
 debauch of fancy. But these soon disa]ipearcd — carried 
 awa\', and fairly drowned, in the muddy waves of that 
 tumultuous stream. 
 
 This is by no means the opinion of a recent apologist, so 
 convinced in his own opinion as to express astonishment 
 that no one before him had become aware of the real and 
 abiding depth of the plans and calculations thus set in 
 
158 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 motion !)>• the great sovereign. How is it, he wonders, tliat 
 no oiic has perceived that this was the Tsar's manner of 
 hiding the forces secretly prej)ared, and the work of de- 
 struction to which he had aheady doomed them, from the 
 eyes of liis enemies? The Kncs-papa and his Conclave, 
 so we are told, drunk, or seemingly drunk, as they may 
 liave been in the da>time, spent their nights in unrelent- 
 ing toil. The correspondence of the mock Pontiff with 
 liis Deacon (the title taken by Peter himself), with all its 
 apparent ravings, and its filthy jokes, was a mere matter of 
 cvjiher. Thus, in Zotofs letter to the Tsar, dated 23rd 
 I'ebruary 1697, Carnival, with his companions, Ivashka 
 (drunkenness) and leremka, (debauchery), against whom 
 Peter was warned, are said to stand for cunning and servile 
 l'o!and,with her allies, the Hetman of the Cossacks, and the 
 Han of the Tartars.^ This interpretation has not even the 
 virtue of ingenuity. Is it likely that, in 1697, Peter or his 
 collaborators would have taken so much pains to convince 
 the Swedes or the Poles of the poverty of their resources? 
 It was only too apparent, at that moment, and the optical 
 delusion they would have desired to produce was a very 
 different one. As for the laborious niglits of such a man as 
 Zotof, my imagination rebels at the very thouL^ht. In a 
 despatch from the French envoy C^lampredon, dated 14th 
 March 1721, I find the following words : 'The Patriarch, of 
 whom I have spoken above, and who is here known as 
 Knes-papa, is a professional drunkard, chosen by the Tsar 
 himself, with the purpose of turning his clergy into ridicule.' 
 This is a true description, so far, at least, as the moral 
 identity of the personage is concerned, although the indivi- 
 dual actually referred to was Zotofs successor. Did Peter 
 really think of turning his own clergy into ridicule? lie 
 may, indeed, have desired to lower the Patriarchate, as 
 being a rival authority to his own. Up till this time, the 
 Tsar, according to immemorial custom, had always walked 
 in the solemn Palm-Sunday procession at Moscow, leading 
 the Patriarch's mule. Thus, from \ear to year, the supre- 
 macy of the ecclesiastical power, dating from the prepon- 
 derating part played by the Patriarch Philaretus during the 
 reign of the first of the Romanoffs, was formally affirmed. 
 
 ' .See Paper, by M. Ivan Nossovitch, in Russian Aiilii/itities (1S74), p. 
 735- 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 159 
 
 Peter replaced this solemn procession by the burlesque 
 cortege of his Kues-papa, who rode on an ox, and was 
 followed by an army of vehicles drawn by hogs, bears, and 
 goats.-^ The political intention is here quite manifest. Ikit 
 it is equally clear that this intention rapidly faded, and 
 became more and more debased, in the prolonged course 
 of the huge and irreverent parody, which a very sensible 
 eye-witness, Vockerodt, described as a ' mere mental and 
 physical debauch.'- Yet this phenomenon calls for another 
 explanation. Its depth, its extent, its duration, were all so 
 remarkable, that I cannot accept it as the outcome of a 
 single individual inspiration, however fanciful and licentious. 
 And, indeed, I remark a very general tendency, during the 
 period immediately preceding Peter's accession, to irony, to 
 satire, and to the comic representation, or caricature, of all 
 the important acts of life. This may be the mere rebound 
 from the asceticism to which I have already referred, and 
 which, as I have pointed out, had led to a denial of every 
 outward manifestation of social existence.^ As to the form 
 which Peter gave, or, perhaps, onl)' contributed to give, this 
 tendency, it may bear some relation to the excesses in which 
 popular imagination and passion indulged, in other countries, 
 under the action of so-called demoniac influences. My 
 readers will recollect the orgies of the nocturnal revels and 
 messes noires so common in France early in the seventeenth 
 century, of which the mystifying performances of modern 
 disciples of the occult arts are but a pale reflection.^ The 
 analogy of causes would here seem to confirm the analogy 
 of facts. Both in Russia and in France we have a revolt, 
 physical and mental, against the ordinary course of life, 
 which compressed and wounded body and spirit alike; and 
 human beings, seeking for momentary relief, dashed at a 
 bound beyond the pale of reality, outside the limits of law, 
 and religion, and society. The strange thing is that Peter 
 should have presided at these Saturnalia. But surely he — 
 the first and willing prisoner within the iron circle of his 
 own Ukases — sharing, as he did, the common condition, 
 may well have felt the common need. 
 
 ^ Rergholz, Biis/rhin^s-H/ai^azhi , vol. xix. p. 128. 
 
 * Vockerodt. See Herrmann, p. 19. 
 
 ' Zaljielin, Lives of the Tsarinas, p 426. 
 
 * See Michelet, Histoire de France (Flamni.irion edition), vol. xi. p. 54. 
 
i6o PETER THE GREAT 
 
 I must now proceed to facts, and tliesc, 1 believe, will 
 .strike my readers as being conclusive. 
 
 The origin of the scenes of desecration in which the Pope 
 or Patriarch Zotof and his successors played their part, 
 dates, as I have said, from the earliest years of this reign. 
 ]?ut its decorative accessories were successively developed. 
 Peter, after he had created a pontiff, proceeded to appoint 
 him cardinals and a conclave. This was the Vsics/iontc/iie- 
 'ichyi or VsicpiianiclcJiyi Sobor/ \\vq. Conclave or Council of 
 the maddest or the most drunken ' — a fixed institution, almost 
 official in its character. The Tsar worked out its organisa- 
 tion from year to year, inventing statutes and regulations, 
 which he drew up with his own hand, even on the very eve 
 of the battle of Poltava.^ Its members consisted of the most 
 dissolute of his boon companions, with whom, — either out of 
 mere brutal and despotic caprice, or in the idea of debasing, 
 so as the more easily to control them, — he associated a certaui 
 number of men of serious mind, and rigid morals. The 
 members' first duty was to present themselves at the house 
 of the Kncs-papa, called the Vaticaiiiiin, and there oftcr him 
 their homage and their thanks. Four stutterers, conducted 
 by one of the Tsar's footmen, were spokesmen on this 
 occasioti, in the course of which the new arrivals were 
 invested with the red robe which was to be their future 
 official costume. Thus garbed, they entered an apartment 
 called the Hall of the Consistory, the only furniture of 
 which consisted of casks ranged round the walls. At the 
 end of the room, on a pile of emblematic objects, such as 
 barrels, bottles, and glasses, was the throne of the Kncs-papa. 
 One by one the cardinals defiled before him, each receiving 
 a glass of brandy, and listening to this formula: ' Rcvcrcud- 
 issiiue, open thy mouth, swallow what thou art given, and 
 thou shalt tell us fine things.' After which, all being seated 
 on the casks, the sitting was opened, and continued many 
 hours, during which copious libations were mingled with 
 low jests. The Conclave was held in a neighbouring house, 
 to which the members went in procession, headed by the 
 Knes-pat>a, sitting astride on a wine-butt drawn by four 
 oxen. He was attended by mock monks — Jacobins, Fran- 
 ciscans, and so forth. The habit of Father Cailloau, a 
 French Franciscan, resident in IVToscow, had supplied the 
 
 * See Nossovitch's Paper. Compaie Siemievs'.>i, Slovo t Die/o, p. 2S1. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES i6i 
 
 pattern for their dresses. Peter went so far as to try to 
 force the monk himself to take part in the procession, and 
 only desisted in face of the energetic opposition of the 
 French minister. He himself, dressed as a Dutch sailor, 
 generally ordered the march of the procession. A spacious 
 gallery, lined with narrow beds, awaited the members of the 
 conclave ; between the beds casks sawn in half were ranged, 
 filled with food. The sham cardinals were forbidden to 
 leave their beds before the close of the Conclave. Certain 
 conclavists, attached to the person of each, were charged 
 with the duty of inciting them to drink, urging them to the 
 wildest extravagances, to the most filthy jests, and also, 
 so we are told, to talk unreservedly. The Tsar was always 
 present, listening, and noting things down on his tablets. 
 The Conclave lasted three days and three nights. When 
 there was no question of electing a new Pope, the time 
 was employed in discussions relative to such matters as the 
 cjuality of some particular brand of wine, with which one 
 of the cardinals had found fault. 
 
 In 1714 Peter took it into his head to vary the monotony 
 of this programme by celebrating the wedding of the Knes- 
 papa Zotof, an old man of eiglity-four, whose sons were 
 distinguished officers in the army. One of these vainly 
 besought the Tsar to spare this shame to his father's old 
 age. The bride was a noble lady, Anna Pashkof, nearly 
 sixty years of age. Immense preparations were made for 
 the celebration of this extraordinary wedding. We must 
 not forget that the Northern War, with all its dreary array 
 of daily sacrifice and mourning, which sucked the resources 
 of the country dry, was then in progress. Yet, four months 
 in advance, all the lords and ladies of the Court had orders 
 to be ready to play their part in the ceremony, and to send 
 detailed descriptions of their chosen disguises to the Chan- 
 cellor, Count Golovkin, so that there might not be more 
 than three of any character. Twice over, on the 12th of 
 December 17 14, and the 15th of January 171 5, performers 
 and costumes were duly inspected by Peter himself With 
 his own hand he wrote out all the instructions and arrange- 
 ments for the ceremonial, specially invented for the occasion. 
 On the appointed day, at a signal given by a cannon, fired 
 from the fortress of St. Petersburg, the male and female 
 particip.itors in the masquerade gathered — the former in 
 
i62 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 the Chancellor's house, the latter in the dwelling of the 
 rrincess-Abbess, a lady of the name of Rjevski, ' an active 
 and compliant, but exceedingly drunken body,' as one of 
 her contemporaries described her. She was replaced, after 
 her death, by Princess Anastasia Galitzin, the daughter of 
 Prince Prozorovski, a great friend of Peter's, whom lie 
 treated like his own sister, until he had her publicly whipped 
 in the courtyard of the offices of the Secret Police at Pieo- 
 brajenskoi'e, she having been accused of comj)licity with 
 Alexis, after having been commissioned to watch and spy 
 upon him. She bought back the Tsar's favour by accepting 
 the post of Princess- Abbess.^ 
 
 The procession formed up in front of the Tsar's Palace, 
 and, crossing the frozen Neva, took its way to the Church 
 of St. Peter and St. Paul, on the opposite bank, where 
 a priest of over ninety years of age, actually brought from 
 Moscow for the purpose, awaited the bride and bridegroom. 
 At its head was Romodanovski, the mock Caesar, dressed as 
 King David, carrying a lyre, draped in a bearskin. I^'our 
 bears were harnessed to his sledge, and a fifth followed it 
 like a footman. These creatures screamed in the most 
 frightful manner under the blows which were rained upon 
 them from start to finish. King David was followed by the 
 bride and bridegroom, seated on a very high sledge, sur- 
 rounded by Cupids, a stag with huge horns on the coach- 
 man's box, and a goat seated behind them. The mock 
 Patriarch wore his pontifical robes. All the greatest people 
 in the capital — ministers, aristocrats, and diplomatic corps, 
 — followed the procession, some of them more than a little 
 constrained and uncomfortable; but for that Peter did not 
 care a jot. Prince Menshikof, Admiral Apraxin, General 
 ]5ruce, and Count Vitzthum, the Envoy of Augustus II., 
 costumed as Hamburg burgomasters, plaj-cd on the hurdy- 
 gurdy. The Russian Chancellor, the Princes James and 
 (Gregory Dolgorouki, the Princes Peter and Demetrius 
 Galitzin, dressed as Chinamen, played on the flute. The 
 Austrian Resident, Pleyer, the Hanoverian Minister, Weber, 
 the Dutch Resident, De Bie, as German shepherds, blew the 
 bagpipes. Certain gentlemen, Michael Glebof, Peter and 
 Nikita llitrof, had been dispensed from performing on a 
 musical instrument on account of their age, but ihey had to 
 
 ^ Diilj^oroukof, Memoirs, vdl. i. p. 75. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 163 
 
 put in an appearance. The Tsarcvitch, pi^arbed as a hunts- 
 man, blew his horn ; Catherine, with eight of her ladies, 
 wore Finnish costume ; the old Tsarina Marfa. the widow 
 of Tsar Feodor, appeared in Polish dress. The Princess of 
 OstT-^rieslaiid had an old German costume. All these ladies 
 pla\'ed the flute. Peter, dressed, as usual, as a sailor, rattled 
 on the drum. He was surrounded by a noisy and motley 
 crew of Venetians blowing shrill whistles ; Honduras savages, 
 who waved their lances ; Poles, scraping violins ; Kalmuks, 
 tinkling the da/a/ai/ca (Russian guitar) ; Norwegian peasants, 
 Lutheran pastors, monks ; Catholic bishops with stags' horns 
 on their heads ; Raskolniks, whale-fishers, Armenians, 
 Japanese, Lapps, and Tungouses. The noise of the instru- 
 ments, the screams of the bears, the clang of the bells that 
 rang out of every church tower, and the acclamations of the 
 thousands of onlookers, rose in an infernal cacophony of 
 sound. ' This is the Patriarch's wedding ! ' shouted the spec- 
 tators ; ' Long live the Patriarch and his wife ! ' The cere- 
 mony closed, as may be imagined, with a banquet, which 
 soon became an orgy, during which a flock of trembling 
 octogenarians acted as cupbearers. The festivities continued 
 the next day, and lasted well into P'ebruary.^ 
 
 But it would be very unbecoming on my part to omit one 
 detail. On the very day of the wedding, Peter, still in his 
 sailor's costume, contrived, between the masquerade and the 
 banquet, to give an audience to Count Vitzthum, during 
 which, after having discussed most important matters, he 
 charged him with a letter for his master, dated that very 
 day, and dealing with Polish affairs. He also received 
 l^assewitz, and talked over the Duke of Holstein's business 
 with him.^ This incident, in itself worthy of all admiration, 
 will not diminish the disgust inspired by the circumstances 
 which surrounded it. 
 
 When Zotof died, in 17 17, Peter drew up fresh regulations 
 for the election of his successor — quite a little volume of 
 grotesque contrivances, in which he particularly insisted 
 on the verification of the candidate's sex, according to 
 the custom established at Rome since the days of the 
 
 ^ Golikof, vol. vi. pp. 279-290. L.-Uer from De Hie to the Secretary of the 
 States-Gjneral, St. Petersburg, Fel). i, 1715, Dutch State Papers; Dolgoroukof, 
 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 14 1. 
 
 - Golikof, vol. vi. pji. 279-290. 
 
i64 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 famous Pope Joan. We must not forget that, just at that 
 moment, he was expecting the return of his son Alexis, 
 and was making ready to begin that terrible trial which was 
 to cast such a painful shadow over the last years of his life. 
 No symptom of that shadow was apparent as yet. Tlie new- 
 candidate was called Peter Ivanmitch Boutourlin. He had 
 hitherto borne the title of Archbishop of St. Petersburg 
 'in the diocese of drunkards, gluttons, and madmen.' lie 
 was a member of one of the most illustrious families in the 
 country. This time Peter kept the part of Subdeacon to 
 the Conclave for himself. The members of this Conclave 
 received their ballot balls, or r.ither the eggs which repre- 
 sented them, from the hands of the Princess-Abbess, 
 whose breasts they kissed ... I pass over details, which 
 are either indescribable or uninteresting.^ A few months 
 later the unhappy Alexis was agonising in the Question 
 Chamber under the torture of the whip, and yet his father 
 sat gaily at table with the new Knes-papa — 'the Patriarch, 
 or rather the burlesque of a Patriarch,' as Vockerodt calls 
 iiim — and presided over scenes of the vilest and most 
 disgusting debauchery. 
 
 In 1720 Peter took it into his head to marry Boutourlin 
 to Zotof's widow ; and once more we see him lavishing the 
 strangest drolleries, obscenities, and unheard-of profanities, 
 in all directions. A bed was set up within a p\'ramid, which 
 had bien built, in 1714, before the Palace of the Senate, in 
 commemoration of a victory over the Swedes. He must 
 needs scoff at his soldiers' victories, at the blood spilt in 
 defence of the country, even at his own glory ! The newly 
 married couple were put to bed dead drunk, and subjected 
 to the grossest indignities at the hands of the populace. 
 The next morning, the new Kncs-papa opened his Ponti- 
 ficate, by giving his blessing after the fasJiion of tJie Riissiau 
 priests, to a procession of maskers, who waited on him at 
 his house.2 
 
 This Pontificate was of very short duration. On the lOth 
 of September 1723, I read in one of Canipredon's despatches : 
 'The ceremony of the installation of the new Patriarch will 
 take place at Moscow ; the Concla\e will be held in a small 
 
 ' Sit'mievski, Slovo i Dielo, p. 281, etc. ; .Scbercr, vol. ii. p. 163. 
 ' Dcspatcli from the French Resident, I^ \'ie, St. I'eterslnirg, Oct. 4, 1720, 
 Frencli I'oreif^n Ol'fice ; Bergholz, lUisihiir^^-Ma^nziii, vol. xix. p. 127. 
 
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS AND MORAL FEATURES 165 
 
 island near PreobrajenskL on which there is a peasants' 
 cottage. The mock cardinals will there assemble on the 
 appointed day ; they will have to drink wine and brandy, 
 for four-and-twenty hours, without going to sleep, and after 
 that fine preparation, they will choose their Patriarch.' ^ 
 
 There can be no two opinions concerning these shameful 
 scenes and aberrations from decenc\'. The only possible 
 disagreement is as to what explanation may be given of 
 them. I hold to that I have already indicated. Peter was 
 the representative of a society in process of formation, into 
 which historical premisses, and his own personal initiative, 
 had introduced, and continued to maintain, diverse and 
 opposing elements of fermentation — a society in which 
 nothing stable, nothing consecrated, and, therefore, nothing 
 sacred, existed. From the days of Ivan the Terrible, all the 
 remarkable men in this society had been eccentrics — ' Saino- 
 doiuy' according to the expressive national term — and this 
 fact is explained by the absence of a common fund of national 
 culture. Peter was the same. He was a huge Mastodon, 
 and his moral proportions were all colossal and monstrous, 
 like those of the antediluvian flora and fauna. He was 
 full of elementary forces and instincts — the true primi- 
 tive man, close and thick-growing like a virgin forest, 
 bursting with sap, and infinitely diverse. Man, as he was 
 before a long course of natural selection developed him into 
 a special type of the human species — like no one else, and 
 still full of the most incongruous resemblances, mighty, 
 capricious, tragicomic, a kinsman of Louis XL, and own 
 r.ousin to Sir John Falstaff. Very plebeian too, as I have 
 already said — a close neighbour of those lower strata, out of 
 which a chosen circle was slowly rising. He chose his 
 friends and collaborators among the common herd, looked 
 after his household like any shopkeeper, thrashed his wife 
 like a peasant, and sought his pleasure where the lower 
 populace generally finds it. When, to all this, we add the 
 incessant clash, within his brain, of ideas and inspirations, 
 which, though often contradictory in themselves, generally 
 tended to a deliberate upheaval and a consequent universal 
 levelling process — when we consider that he consciously 
 possessed the most absolute power, over the men and things 
 around him, that any human being has ever known — and 
 ^ French Foreign Office. 
 
i66 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 when we recollect the urfjcnt need, that, as I have said 
 already, must from time to time have stung him, to \i<ilcntly 
 cast off the realities of existence, because, in the lon^^-run, 
 they grew unendurable, even to such a man as he was — 
 this strange aspect of the great Tsar's moral character will 
 surely be sufficiently explained. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 IDEAS, PRINCIPLES AND SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 Abundance of ideas — Aids to memory — These ideas mostly suggested — Peter 
 haunted by the West — Inadequacy of certain essential notions — Justice, 
 religion, morality — Intellectual incoherence — Utilitarian spirit. 
 
 General conception of the Sovereign's duty — Contradictory principles 
 mingled with it — Individual abnegatii^n, and absorption of the common 
 life — Introduction of the social principle into the organisation of the 
 country, and acceptance of its extreme consequences — 1 he first servant 
 of the State — Peter relinqui>hes the wealth amassed by his predecessors — 
 The patrimony of the Romanofs — Peter Mihailofs pay — Mis account 
 book — 366 roubles a year — The reverse of the medal — \\ himsicality and 
 despotism — The servant's hand raised against his master. 
 
 The causes of this contradiction — Revolutionary nature of the Reform — 
 Asiatic elements — The Regime of terror aggravated by them — ^Historical 
 connection — Arbitrary Government and the Inquisiii(jn — A dilettante in 
 Torture — Universal espionage — 'The tongues' — The Secret Police and 
 the Tribunals of the Convention — Duration of this regime, and patience of 
 the country under it — Suited to the National habits. 
 
 A system of perpetual threats — Summary executions — The Doubina — The 
 executioner's axe — Desertion — Attempts to repress it — The brand — Out- 
 lawry — None of these measures suffice — A general snuve-qia-peut — ' Near 
 the Tsar, near death' — Absenteeism of the great families — Parvenus — 
 The system thus rendered still more oppressive — Favouritism — Ancestral 
 traditions — 1 heir share in the Reform, and their influence on its scope. 
 
 I HAVE already, in the course of my remarks on the intellec- 
 tual gifts of the great reformer, described them in active 
 operation, — for action was his invariable condition. It now 
 remains for me to show them in more direct connection with 
 the realities of life, and of practical government. 
 
 Peter's ideas came to him in shoals. Their abundance is 
 proved by the means he employed to protect the daily pro- 
 duct of his active brain against the weakness of his own 
 memory. He always carried tablets with him, which he 
 constant!)' drew from his pocket and covered with hasty 
 12 1^7 
 
I68 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 notes. When these were filled — and this was all too soon — 
 he would la)' hands on the first piece of paper that came 
 handy, and would even use the smallest clear space on an\' 
 document within his reach, — whether its contents bore any 
 relation to the subject of his m(jmcntar\' preoccupation or 
 not. Thus, on the marj.,nn of a report on the proposed 
 establishment of the St. Petersburg Academy, and following 
 certain notes of his, respecting this particular business, the 
 following lines, also in his handwriting, appear: — 'I must 
 send orders to Roumiantsof, in the Ukraine, to exchange 
 all the oxen he can get in the province for sheep, and to 
 send some one abroad to learn how to take care of that sort 
 of animal, how they are shorn, and how the wool is prepared 
 for use.' ^ 
 
 These ideas, if we look into them closely, are no more 
 than suggestions, coming directly from without, and but 
 slightly modified by any internal intellectual process ; and 
 the)' are more remarkable for their number than for their 
 amplitude. Peter thought, just as he looked at things, in 
 detail, and the chief quality of his mind was a marvellous 
 reflecting power. But the mirror of his intellect would 
 appear to us to be broken up into too many, and too 
 strangely disposed, facets. A certain number of the sur- 
 rounding objects, — and these often the nearest ones, — 
 escaped his perception altogether. He spent years in the 
 near vicinity of such a man as Possoshkof, and utterly 
 ignored the existence of that profound and original thinker. 
 Probably the poor philosopher suffered from the fact, that he 
 was neither a German nor a Dutchman. In vain did he 
 send some of his writings — his treaty on poverty and wealth, a 
 huge and astonishing political enc)'clopa.'dia — to his sovereign. 
 In vain did he even recommend himself to his notice in that 
 domain of practical performance, which Peter so particularly 
 appreciated. Possoshkofif was the first person to open salt- 
 petre works in Russia. Prince Boris Galitzin gave him 
 fourteen roubles for his discovery, and that was all he ever 
 made by it. When, long after Peter's death, people began 
 to read his work, he was shut up in prison, and there died. 
 No publisher touched it till half a century later — in 1 799. 
 Peter had no use for his knowledge and his talents. Yet, 
 during his first visit to the Hague, he applied to the Secretary 
 
 ^ Staehlin, p. 170. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 169 
 
 of the States General,^ Fagel, to find him a man who would 
 undertake to organise and direct his State Chancery, — another 
 Dutch boatswain to erect another machine, and set it going ! 
 A short time later, in London, he took the advice of a Pro- 
 testant ecclesiastic on the same subject. The Apolciponicna 
 of Francis Lee,- show clear traces of this consultation, and 
 some of his readers have discovered, beside a learned dis- 
 sertation on the plan of Noah's Ark, the principle of those 
 future administrative bodies, on which the working of Peter's 
 Government was to hinge. That looking-glass of his was 
 invariably turned westward. The Memoirs of Ostermann, 
 unpublished as yet, are indeed said to contain this sally, 
 ascribed to the Tsar : ' Europe is necessary to us for a few 
 decades ; after that, we will turn our back on it.' ^ I have not 
 been able to verify the quotation, but even the fact of its 
 correctness would not convince me of the authenticity of the 
 remark. Failing clear proof of that, I should be much more 
 inclined to take it as the dictum of some modern Slavophile. 
 Action — with this man of perpetual motion^often pre- 
 ceded thought, or, at all events, followed immediately on it; 
 and the number of his acts for this reason far exceeds the 
 quantity of his ideas. Certain very essential notions he ab- 
 solutely lacked, especially in matters of mere justice. In 
 171 5, some of his sailors burnt certain Dutch ships, which 
 they had taken for Swedish ones. He vowed it was Sweden's 
 business to pay the damage, because the incident had occurred 
 near Helsingfors ; and Helsingfors stood on Swedish soil. 
 And he really believed he was within his right. He forced 
 the Swedish Chancellor, Piper, whom he had taken prisoner 
 at Poltava, to sign a draft for 30,000 crowns on Stockholm, 
 and, when the Swedish Government refused to pa\', he threw 
 the Chancellor, — a sick man, over 70 years of age, — into a 
 dungeon, where he died the following year."* I have already 
 spoken of the inconsistency and confusion of mind, betrayed 
 in all his behaviour, as regards religious matters. The 
 Registers of the Confessional, about which Catherine was later 
 to make such a mystery to Voltaire, and the penalties for 
 refractory persons, were all of his invention. He used to sing 
 
 ^ Scheltema, Russia and the Lcnu Cottntiies, vol. i. p. 1/5" '^3- 
 
 2 London, 1752. 
 
 ^ Russian Archives, 1S74, p. 1579. 
 
 * Bergliolz, Biischings-IMagazin, vol. xi.\. p. 67. 
 
17© PETER THE GREAT 
 
 in the church choirs, and each of his victories was celebrated 
 by a service which lasted at least five hours. The thanks- 
 giving for the victory of Poltava lasted seven, so as to give 
 good measure to the God of armies. Poor-boxes were 
 placed in all the churches he usually frequented, to receive 
 the fines he inflicted on any members of the congregation 
 whom he caught in un.seemly attitudes, talking or sleeping. 
 And an iron collar, which the severity of the Sovereign 
 reserved for haidened offenders, is still preserved in the 
 Convent of St. Alexander Nevski. Such persons heard 
 their Mass, the following Sunday, firmly fastened by the 
 neck to one of the pillars of the sacred edifice ! ^ 
 
 Yet, at other moments, both his words and actions seemed 
 to indicate a leaning towards Protestanism. He would sur- 
 round himself with Calvinists and Lutherans, would hold 
 long doctrinal discussions, in which his orthodoxy often 
 appeared very questionable, and would listen, with ap- 
 parent devotion, to sermons that recked of heresy. An 
 edict, published in 1706, and approved by him, granted all 
 Protestants free exercise of their worship. 
 
 But again, Theiner has published a series of documents 
 proving the hopes felt at Rome — both before, and after, 
 this decision — as to a possible reunion between the two 
 churches. The Sovereign went so far, at certain moments, 
 as to be gracious even to the Jesuits. He began, it must 
 be confessed, by expelling them, in 1689, and the opinion 
 he expressed of them at Vienna, in 1698, was far from 
 friendly. ' The Emperor,' he was heard to say, ' must know 
 those people are much richer than he is, yet during the whole 
 of his last war with Turkey, he never forced them to send 
 him a man, or even a copper coin.' Notwithstanding which, 
 only eight years later, the Jesuit Fathers had colleges, both 
 at Moscow, St. Petersburg, and at Archangel. This went on 
 till 17 19, then, all of a sudden, they were driven out again. 
 Why ? Because of a quarrel with the Austrian Court, the 
 natural protector of the disciples of Loyola. Peter, not 
 finding himself able to injure the Emperor, wreaked his bad 
 temper on the ]Miiperor's/>;v;/r>i\y. All his principles, whether 
 in religion or in politics, were of a piece with this sorry per- 
 formance.'- 
 
 ' Schcrcr, vol. iii. p. 238. 
 
 * Golikof, vol. vii. jip. 237, 431. \Vcl)er, I. ast Anecdotes, p. 34S. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 171 
 
 As regards the Jews, he would seem to have had a settled 
 determination of a sort. He could not abide them. He would 
 not have them in his empire at any price. And yet, I find 
 in his inner circle a Mej'er, a most undoubted Jew, who, 
 with his brother-in-law, Lups, served the Tsar in various 
 operations connected with army finance and supply. The 
 contractor was to be seen, close to his employer, sitting on 
 his right, even at the deliberations of the Senate, and treated 
 with every respect and consideration.^ 
 
 The fact is, that in everything, and above all things, Peter 
 was utilitaricDi, and thus it came about, that, in matters of 
 morality, his opinions and his line of conduct generally led 
 him into practical cynicism. He made a law whereby 
 infanticide was punished with death, but the lawgiver was 
 astounded to find that Charles V, had visited adultery with 
 the same penalty. 'Had he too many subjects?'- One 
 day, at Vichn)-i- Volotchok, in the Government of Nov- 
 gorod, whither he had gone to inspect some canals in 
 course of construction, he noticed, in the crowd, a young 
 girl, whose pretty face, and air of embarrassment, both 
 struck him. He beckoned to her. She came at once, 
 but all abashed, hiding her face in her hands. He 
 said something about finding her a husband. Her young 
 companions burst out laughing. He inquired the reason, 
 and was told the unhappy child had gone astray, and that 
 her lover, a German officer, had left her with a baby in 
 her arms. No crime this, in the Tsar's eyes ! Sharply he 
 took the girl's companions to task, sent for the infant, and 
 openly declared his pleasure at the thought that he would 
 some day be a good soldier. He kissed the mother, gave 
 her a handful of roubles, and promised not to lose sight of 
 her.^ He bestowed 10,000 ducats, and an order for banish- 
 ment, on Tolstoi', the President of the commercial depart- 
 ment of his Government, to help him to get rid of an Italian 
 courtesan ; but, that the money might not be altogether 
 wasted, he contrived a secret negotiation at Vienna and 
 at Rome, in which the fair lady was expected to act as a 
 decoy.* 
 
 * .Staelilin, p. 333. 2 /^j-^_ 3 Staehlin, p. 233. 
 
 * Campredon's Despatches, 17th Aug. 1722 (French Foreign Office). 
 
172 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 II 
 
 Peter had, as I have endeavoured to show, a general con- 
 ception of his duties, of the part he had to pla}', and of 
 the riiijhts it conferred on him. Yet, unconsciously, he 
 mingled two principles, which — though he neither knew it 
 nor cared — were in radical contradiction to each other. 
 Starting from his own absolute individual sacrifice on the 
 altar of the common interest, he arrived at the complete 
 absorption of the whole community into his own all-engross- 
 ing individuality. Louis XIV.'s pretensions were nothing 
 to his. He not only claimed that the Sovereign was the 
 State, but that the whole life of the nation, past, present, 
 and future, was identical with his own. He firmly believed 
 that the intellectual and economic renewal — over which he 
 did indeed preside, but which certainly proceeded, in part, 
 from causes anterior to, and independent of, his action — was 
 his personal work, his creation, his chattel, devoid of any 
 reason for, or possibility of, e.xistence, apart from him. He 
 doubtless believed in a jjrolongation of this work, be\'ond 
 the probable term of his own existence. All his efforts, in 
 fact, were directed to this object. But, at the bottom of his 
 heart, he. could not conceive its existence without any parti- 
 cipation of his. Hence his indifference in the matter of the 
 dynastic question. It is no dchige that he foresees, after his 
 own departure : he sees something not far removed from 
 utter void. 
 
 His rights and duties, as he understood them, were quite 
 a novelty to Russia. Until his time, the whole organisation 
 of the country, including its political life, had been founded 
 on the family idea. His father, the Tsar Alexis, had been no 
 more than the chief of a race, and of a household ; there was 
 no society in his days, no suspicion of a reciprocity of rights 
 and duties. This was the true Oriental concej^tion of exist- 
 ence. Peter returned from the west, brin-^ing with him a 
 social ])rinciple, which he ]Mit forward with all his usual 
 determination and e.xaggeraticjn. He proclaimed himself 
 the first servant of his. country, and carried this idea to an 
 extreme and fantastic point. In 1709 he wrote to Field- 
 Marshal Sheremctief, asking him to su[iport his application 
 to the sovereign — that is to say, to Romodanovski — to be 
 
PRINCIPLES AND SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 173 
 
 promoted rear-admiral, humbly pleading his own cause, and 
 reciting his services. In 17 14 he received, and uncomplain- 
 ingly accepted, the refusal of the Admiralty to his re- 
 quest for promotion. In 1723, when he was with the 
 fleet at Revel, he asked for a doctor's certificate to enable 
 him to get leave from the Lord High Admiral to sleep on 
 shore.^ He built himself a country house near Revel, which 
 he christened CatJiarmenthal, and expressed astonishment, 
 on the occasion of his first visit to it, at seeing the park quite 
 empty. Did people think that he had set so many hands to 
 work, and spent so much money, for no one's benefit but his 
 own? The very next morning the town crier informed the 
 inhabitants of Revel that the park was theirs, for their free 
 and unrestricted use.^ Immediately after his accession to 
 the throne, he. divided the considerable fortune amassed by 
 his father and his grandfather into two parts. By means of 
 the privileges and monopolies assigned to the sovereign, the 
 Tsar Alexis had accumulated 10,734 diessiatbies of cultivated 
 land and 50,000 houses, bringing in a revenue of 200,000 
 roubles. Peter would keep none of this. He made all his 
 wealth over to the State, only reserving the modest patri- 
 mony of the Romanofs, '800 souls' in the Government of 
 Novgorod, for his private use.^ The only increase of income 
 he would accept, was the usual pay of the various grades he 
 successively held in the anny and in the fleet. Receipts, 
 signed by his hand, are still preserved, acknowledging the 
 sum of 366 roubles, the amount of his annual pay as a chief 
 carpenter. We also have his account book, which, though 
 not very regularly kept, is full of curious details. ' In 1705 
 I earned 366 roubles for my work in the Voroneje shipyards, 
 and 40 roubles as my captain's pay; in 1706, 156 roubles 
 altogether, received at Kief; in 1707, received at Grodno, 
 my colonel's pay, 460 roubles. Expenses — In 1707, gave at 
 Vilna, for a monastery, 150 roubles ; for stuffs bought in the 
 same town, 39 roubles ; to Anisia Kirillovna, for wearing 
 apparel, 26 roubles ; to Prince George Shahofsko'i for wear- 
 ing apparel, 41 roubles ; to the aide-de-camp Bartcnief, for 
 a ver)- important errand, 50 roubles.'* Going one day round 
 
 ' Sbornik, vol. xxv. p. 152. Golikof, vol. v. p. 257. Bergholz, Biischings- 
 Magnzin, vol. xxi. p. 281. '^ Scherer, vol. iii. p. 65. 
 
 •* Karnovitch, Greiit Russian Fortunes (St. Petersburg), 1S85, p. 27. 
 * Cabinet, Series I., No. 64, iVritings and Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 31. 
 
174 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 the forges at Istic, in the Government of Riazan, he mingled 
 with the workmen, toiled, hammer in hand, for several hours, 
 and then counted up his gains. He had earned i8 altifics 
 (copper coins of 3 kopecks each) for a corresponding number 
 of poods of metal, on which he had spent his strength. He 
 drew the monc)', and gleefully announced that as soon as he 
 got back to iVIoscow he should go to the Riady (a sort of 
 bazaar), and there spend it on a pair of shoes, those he had 
 on his feet being quite worn out.^ 
 
 Something there was, at once touching and imposing, 
 about this attitude of mind, but it had another side. To 
 begin with, there was a good deal of whim about it, and of 
 this the great man himself was well aware. Writing to 
 Catherine from Helsingfors, in 1713,116 says, ' On the 6th 
 of this month the Admiral promoted me to the rank of 
 General, whereupon I beg to congratulate the General's wife. 
 A strange business ! I was made a Rear-Admiral while I was 
 campaigning on the Steppes, and here I am a General while 
 I am at sea.'- Xartofs story of the Tsar's meeting with 
 Romodanovski, on the Preobrajenskoie Road, throws a 
 comical light on the perpetual ambiguity which it pleased 
 him to keep up, between the reality of his rank, and the 
 fiction of his assumed position. Peter, seated, as usual, in 
 his unpretending vehicle, saluted the mock sovereign, giving 
 him his ixXXc,' iMcin g)iddigei' Her Kaiser,' hui forgetting to 
 uncover. Romodanoxski — in a splendid carriage, surrounded 
 by a numerous suite, and preceded by a footman, who drove 
 back the crowd with a heavy whip, shouting ' Stand back ! 
 hats off!' — swept by like a whirlwind, casting a furious 
 glance on the real sovereign. An hour later he sent for 
 Peter MihaTlof, and without himself rising, or offering him a 
 seat, roughly addressed him, inquiring what he meant by 
 not baring his head when he saluted him. ' I did not recog- 
 nise your Majesty in your Tartar dress,' was Peter's reply.^ 
 And his Majesty did not press the matter, remembering, 
 doubtless, a certain letter received from Peter Mihailof in 
 consequence of a complaint made by James Bruce, and thus 
 beginning : ' Wild beast ! {Zvier) how long will you go on 
 ill-treating people thus.-' I'.ven here' (Peter was then in 
 Holland) ' the wretches you have maimed come to me. Let 
 
 » N.-irlof, p. 55. 
 
 * LonespoHtkiice, i86i efiiticm, p. 34. ' Nartof, p. 93. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 175 
 
 there be an end to your too great intimacy with Ivashka 
 (drunkenness) ! ' ^ 
 
 Another, and a much more serious, fault appears. All 
 this false humility, and all the very real self-sacrifice which 
 goes with it, do not prevent the relations of this man with 
 the nation he professes to serve — and for which, indeed, he 
 strips himself and sacrifices his whole existence — from being 
 not only of the most exacting — that might be justified — but 
 of the most arbitrarily despotic nature. He evidently looks 
 on all service and sacrifice as being only the due of that 
 towering and merciless ideal, to which every one, like him- 
 self, is bound to contribute. But, granting this, he might 
 have been expected to make some allowance for natural lack 
 of aptitude, for weakness, for mental inadequacy, and indi- 
 vidual incapacity. He would not even admit the existence 
 of such failings. The man who did not take up his appointed 
 place, and there perform the task assigned him, was held 
 a traitor, a relapser, and, as such, was forthwith outlawed. 
 His property, if he had any, was sequestrated, — for, being 
 good for nothing, he was not worthy to possess anything. 
 He was allotted a small subsistence out of his own income, 
 the rest passed to his relations, and their mere declaration, 
 confirmed by him, and presented to the Senate, sufficed for 
 the transfer. If he was old enough to marry, he was for- 
 bidden to take a wife, lest his children should be like him- 
 self, — for the State had no need of such persons.- At Moscow, 
 in December 1704, Peter himself inspected all the staff at his 
 disposal, Bo'iars, Stolniks, Dvorianin, and other officials of 
 every kind. Against each name he wrote with his own hand 
 some special duty to be performed.^ If any man failed in 
 his functions, or tried to slip out of their performance, his 
 punishment, at the very least, was civil death. 
 
 But was the toiler free when once his task was finished ? 
 No, indeed ; for the principle, in virtue of which he had been 
 called upon to labour, claimed him altogether. His body 
 and his soul, his thoughts, his occupations, his ver}' pleasures 
 belonged to the Tsar. And here we see the consequence of 
 the confusion between the idea itself and the man who repre- 
 
 ^ Correspondence, Dec. 22, 1697, vol. i. p. 226. Compare Oustrialof, vol. iii 
 
 P- 95- 
 
 - Ukase, dated Dec. 6, 1722. Golikof, vol. ix. p. 83. 
 ' Golikof, vol. ii. p. 513. 
 
176 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 sentcd it. There was only one goal, and one road which led 
 to it. '1 he Tsar led the van, and all the rest must follow. 
 His subjects had to do what he did, think as he thou;4ht, 
 believe what he believed, and even take their amusements 
 when, and as, he took his. They had to do without bridges 
 across the Neva, because he liked crossing the river in a boat, 
 and they had to shave their beards, because his beard grew 
 sparseK'. They must even get drunk when he got drunk ; 
 dress themselves up as cardinals, or as monkc\'s, if that 
 pleased him ; scoff at God and His saints, if the fancy took 
 him ; and very likely spend seven hours with him in church 
 on the following day. Any resistance, any weakness, a mere 
 lack of comprehension, a sign of visible effort, a symptom of 
 disgust, or a mere failure in understanding instructions, was 
 punished with the rod, the lash, or even the headsman's axe. 
 The so-called servant would raise his hand upon his master, 
 to strike, and often to kill him. In March 1704, Prince 
 Alexis Bariatinski was whipped in the public square for 
 having failed to bring up a few recruits for inspection. In 
 that very same year Gregory Kamynin underwent the same 
 punishment for having refused to share in the delights of the 
 SlavUni^} 
 
 III -* 
 
 These contradictions, flagrant as the}' are, can be ex- 
 plained. Peter was a violent reformer. His reform was 
 revolutionary in character, and his government consequently 
 partook of those conditions of existence, and of action, which 
 have always been the inseparable concomitants of a political 
 and social state of revolution. Again, his government, in 
 spite of its revolutionary character, was the outcome, to a 
 certain extent, of the former course of the national history, 
 customs, and traditions. Of this fact Peter himself was 
 evidently conscious. On one of the triumphal arches, raised 
 at Moscow, on the occasion of the peace with Sweden, in 
 1 72 1, the effigy of the reigning Tsar was associated with 
 that of Ivan the Terrible. Ihis idea emanated from the 
 Duke of Holstein. The uncle seems to sanction the 
 nephew's action, and thus to claim an historical connection, 
 
 ' Jeliaboujski, Afemoirs, pp. 214, 225. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 177 
 
 which is, indeed, constantly confirmed by all that nephew's 
 acts and ways of thought.^ But, though principles might 
 differ, practice daily gave the lie to theory. Theory, in 
 this case, was frequently liberal in the extreme ; practice 
 almost always stood for despotism, arbitrary rule, inquisi- 
 tion, downright terrorism. Peter's reign was a reign of 
 terror, as Cromwell's had been, as Robespierre's was to be, 
 but with a special stamp of savagery of its own, derived 
 from his Asiatic origin. In 1691, Basil Galitzin, Sophia's 
 unfortunate political partner, was visited, even in his distant 
 and cruel exile, by a fresh criminal prosecution. A 
 tclicrniets (monk) had heard the Ex-regent foretell the 
 Tsar's approaching death. Put to the question, several 
 times over, he still adhered to his denunciation. The 
 proofs seemed clear enough, yet the enquiry ended by 
 establishing that the monk had never seen the exile, and 
 had never travelled to larensk, v/here he was interned. The 
 whole story had been invented ' ot bezoiiniia^ in a fit of frenzy, 
 a form of mental alienation common both in Ivan's reign 
 and in Peter's, resulting from the constant and haunting 
 terror of the secret police, and of the torture chamber. The 
 whole system was a part of the national tradition. The 
 Russian proverb, ' The knout is no angel, but it teaches 
 men to tell the truth,' contains at once its sanction and its 
 apology. Of that fact Peter was deeply convinced. He 
 was himself the most eager of inquisitors, delighting in the 
 monstrous art, drawing up manuscript notes for the conduct 
 of examinations, in which he frequently took a personal 
 share, watching the smallest details, laying stress on every 
 word, spying the slightest gesture. He caused a private 
 jeweller, suspected of misappropriation, to be brought to his 
 palace for examination. Twice over, for an hour each time, he 
 put him to the combined tortures of the strappado and the 
 knout, and he cheerfully related all the grisly incidents of the 
 business to the Duke of Holstein, that v^ery evening.- With 
 an army of spies and detectives already at his beck and 
 call, he would personally supplement their efforts, listening 
 behind doors, and moving about amongst the tables during 
 banquets, when enforced libations had heated men's head.?, 
 and loosened their tongues. He would set men to watch 
 
 ^ Staehliii, p. 217. 
 
 "^ Siemievski, The Empress Catherine II. (St. Petersburg, 1884), p. 154. 
 
178 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 and supervise those officials, civil or military, who were 
 stationed too far from him to be under his personal eye. 
 He corresponded with these spies, and gave them very 
 extensive powers. Field-Marshal Shcrcmctief, who was 
 emplo\-ed to put down a revolt in Astrakhan, was thus 
 watched by a sers^eant of the f^uard, Shtchepotief Baron 
 Von Schleinitz, the Tsar's minister in Paris, was spied on 
 by one of his own copying clerks, named lourine.^ My 
 readers will recognise the methods which sent Bellcgarde, 
 Dubois, and Dclmas, to represent the convention in the camp 
 of General Dumouriez. 1 here is a close family resemblance 
 between all revolutions. 
 
 A contemporary memoir writer describes a single year 
 of the great Russian reign, as being hardly more than an 
 enumeration of tortures and executions.-' The arrest of 
 one culprit brought about the arrest of ten, twenty, or even 
 a hundred more. The man was first of all put to the torture, 
 to force him to give the names of his accomplices, which 
 names he gave, not unfrequently, at random. When his 
 memory failed him, a sort of coarse canvas hood was put 
 over his head, and he was led through the streets, in search 
 of passers-by, whom he might point out to the officers of 
 justice. Then a shout would rise, more terrible e\'cn than the 
 call of ' fire,' and the most populous quarters would straight- 
 way become a desert. ' The tongue, the tongue,' thus the 
 populace designated the involuntary, but generally docile 
 instrument of this hunt for culprits, and forthwith there was 
 a general sauve qui pent? Secret accusations were of common 
 occurrence. A series of ukases provided for them, offering 
 encouragement and bounties to informers, and threatening 
 any persons knowing anything affecting the safety of the 
 Tsar or of the empire, who hesitated to come forward, with 
 the most terrible chastisements.^ The usual bounty was a 
 sum of six roubles, but in special circumstances, it rose much 
 higher. In 1722, ten bags, each containing 100 roubles, 
 were laid, with a lantern beside them, in one of the Moscow 
 squares. The contents, according to an announcement, 
 
 ^ Golikof, vol. viii. ]i. 406. - Jeliaboujski, p. 26. 
 
 ' Ibid., p. 274 (Editor's note). 
 
 ■* Nov. 1st, 1705; March 2n(], 1711 ; Aiij;. 25th and Oct. 2Sth, 1715: Jan. 
 25th, Sept. 26th, and Dec. 24th, 1716; k\m\ i6lh and igih, 1717; Jan. 19th, 
 1718; Ajiril i6lh, 1719; EeL). 9th and July 22nd, 1720; Feb. 19th, 1721 ; 
 Jan. nth, 1722. 
 
PRirJIPLES AND SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 179 
 
 placed on the same spot, were to belong to any person 
 who should give information as to the author of a pamphlet 
 against the Tsar, which had been found in one of the 
 churches within the Kreml. The informer was further 
 promised a gift of land, and a post in the public service. 
 Any man who chose to pronounce the time-honoured 
 formula, Slovo i dielo (literally ' word and action '), and thus 
 to affirm his knowledge or suspicion of any act punishable 
 by the secret police, could call for a criminal enquiry. And 
 a very small thing, an imprudent word or even less, was 
 held to justify suspicion. A peasant was put to the torture, 
 and condemned to hard labour for life, for having, when in a 
 state of intoxication, done obeisance to the Tsar ' in an un- 
 usual manner.' Another shared his fate for not having been 
 aware that the Tsar had assumed the title of Emperor. A 
 priest who had spoken of the sovereign's illness, and had 
 appeared to admit the possibility of his death, was sent as 
 a convict to Siberia. A woman found letters, traced by an 
 unknown hand, and in an unknown tongue, on a barrel of 
 beer in her own cellar. She was examined, could give no 
 explanation, and died under the knout. Another woman's 
 screams and wild convulsions disturbed the service in church. 
 She was blind, and probably epileptic, but there was just a 
 chance that she might have deliberately attempted to cause 
 scandal. She w^as put to the question. A tipsy student who 
 had spoken some unseemly words, was given thirty lashes 
 with the knout ; his nostrils were torn out, and he was sent 
 to hard labour for life. I quote from- official documents, 
 from the minutes of the Russian Star Chamber,^ and, save 
 for the knout, I could easily have mistaken them for the 
 minutes of the Courts presided over b}' Couthon, and St 
 Just. 
 
 Peter was not, indeed, altogether devoid of any idea of 
 clemency. He is superior, in this matter, to the ordinary 
 type of revolutionists, and justifies the idea I have formed of 
 his character. - In 1708, I find him desiring Dolgorouki to 
 treat those members of Boulavin's insurrection, who should 
 willingly make their submission, with indulgence. When 
 Dolgorouki betrays his astonishment, the Tsar insists, 
 pointing out the necessity of distinguishing cases in which 
 severity was indispensable from those in which it ma}' be 
 
 ^ Sitinievski, Glovo i Dido, p. 51. 
 
l8o PETER THE GREAT 
 
 relaxed. lUit Dolgorouki's wonder proves the settled 
 ferocity of tlie rrcneral tendency of Peter's rule. 
 
 This severity lasted till the end of his reign. How came 
 it to have been so long paticntl)' endured ? Surely because 
 it corresponded with the national customs. The whole 
 nation was a party to it. There was no public sentiment of 
 dislike to the person or the act of an informer. A century 
 and a half later, this condition of mind remained almost un- 
 changed. The most popular lines, probably, of the most 
 popular of all the national poets, describe a Cossack's ride 
 across the Steppes, carry an accusation to the Tsar.^ 
 
 IV 
 
 A special characteristic of the great Reformer's methods is 
 his incessant use of threats. When Nieplouief, his Resident 
 at Constantinople, was taking his final leave, he addressed 
 him by the name of Father. The Tsar interrupted him, ' A 
 father I will be to thee if thy conduct is good — if not, I will 
 be thy merciless judge 1'^ He ordered General Repnin to 
 prevent wood, sent from Poland, from being admitted into 
 Riga, adding, ' If a single faggot gets through, I swear by 
 God, thy head shall be cut off!'^ And this was no empty 
 threat. When he wrote to his friend Vinnius, in 1696, in 
 reference to a careless correspondent, ' Tell him I will lay 
 what he fails to put on paper on his own back,' * we feel he 
 used no figure of speech. He would often send for officials, 
 high and low, with whom he had to find fault, into his 
 cabinet, and would there indicate his displeasure by a sound 
 drubbing with his doubiua. This, indeed, was considered a 
 mark of favour — it being the sovereign's will that, on such 
 occasions, fault and punishment alike should be kept secret. 
 The only persons present were such faithful servants as 
 Nartof, and the culprits composed their countenances as best 
 they could, before leaving the Imperial presence, so that no 
 sign of the occurrence might appear. As a general rule, to 
 complete the illusion, the}- were commanded to dinner on the 
 
 ' Poushkin, Poltava, Canto I. (Collected Works, 18S7 edition), vol. iii. p. 118. 
 
 * (jolikof, vo!. viii. p. 132. 
 
 ' 19th May 1705, Writings and Correspon,h'nc(, vol. iii. p. 346. 
 
 * 15th July 1696, Writings an,i Correspondence, vol. i. p. 90. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT i8i 
 
 same day. But occasionally the do7tlnna did its work in 
 public, in the offices of some administrative body, or even in 
 the open street. Sometimes — and this was a great proof of 
 the sovereign's esteem and friendship for the person so com- 
 missioned — a third party was deputed to administer the 
 extra-judicial correction. When Captain Sieniavin took 
 the two first Swedish vessels which fell into Russian hands, 
 he at once became the chief favourite of the moment. Peter 
 sent for him, and said, ' To-morrow you will dine in the house 
 of such a person ; during the meal you will pick a quarrel with 
 him, and you will give him, in my presence, fifty blows with 
 your stick, neither more nor less.' And the sovereign evi- 
 dently considered this participation in the punishment in- 
 flicted by the Imperial will, which chastised one man and 
 rewarded another, as reflecting considerable honour on both.^ 
 During the Persian campaign, another temporary favourite, 
 Wolynski, was accosted one night, close to the Imperial tent, 
 and, without a word of explanation, overwhelmed by a shower 
 of blows. All at once, the Tsar held his hand. The dark- 
 ness and a chance resemblance had misled him ; there had 
 been a miscarriage of justice. All he vouchsafed was coolly 
 to remark, ' No matter ! Thou art sure one day to deserve 
 what I have given thee now ; thou wilt only have to remind 
 me, then, that the debt is paid.' And the opportunity was 
 not long in coming.- 
 
 The Tsar's irascibility, and habitual fits of rage, certainly 
 had something to do with these summary chastisements, but 
 they were also the outcome of a certain deliberate system. 
 Coming one day, unexpectedly, into a naval captain's cabin, 
 Peter noticed an open book, which the officer vainly en- 
 deavoured to conceal. Glancing at the page, he read the 
 following aphorism aloud ; * Russia is like a cod-fish ; unless 
 you beat it constantly, you can do nothing with it.' The 
 Tsar smiled, and departed, saying, ' That is well ! The books 
 you read are useful books. You shall be promoted ! ' ^ 
 
 The doubina, as I have said, was kept for those he loved, 
 and would fain spare ; the rest had to do with a very different 
 form of the judicial power. Uniformity of punishment is one 
 of the chief characteristics of the criminal legislation of that 
 period. The legislator never measured his severity by the 
 
 Memoirs (published by Prince Galitzin, Paris, 1862), p. 133. 
 ' Sclierer, vol. iii. p. 32. ^ Jbid., vol. i. p. 15. 
 
i83 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 degree of culpability inherent to the crimes to be suppressed 
 — all he thought of was his personal interest in their repres- 
 sion. Now as this interest, which was also the interest of 
 the State, admitted of no gradation, neither did the punish- 
 ments to be inflicted admit of any. The civil ukases and 
 regulations were just as ferocious as those applied to military 
 matters. Death to the soldier marching to the assault, who 
 shall give vent to 'wild cries,* or stop to pick up a wounded 
 man, ' even his own father.' Death to the office clerk, who 
 should not complete a given piece of work within the time 
 the law prescribed. Death, in almost every imaginable case.^ 
 
 Towards the end of the reign, the mutual dread and dis- 
 trust had grown so universal, that life in the Tsar's imme- 
 diate circle was really intolerable. He watched every one, 
 and every one watched him, and watched his neighbour, with 
 anxious and suspicious eyes. He concealed his smallest 
 plans, and every one else did the same. Every business 
 matter, whether diplomatic or other, was shrouded in im- 
 penetrable mystery. Conversation was carried on in whispers; 
 correspondence was crammed with ambiguous terms. At a 
 gathering in the house of Prince Dolgorouki, in February 
 1723, Ostermann addressed Campredon, and drew him 
 gradually and cautiously into a window. He had a message 
 for him, he said, for the Tsar. Campredon was all ears, 
 when, suddenl}', the expected disclosure died on the Chan- 
 cellor's lips, and he would utter nothing but commonplaces. 
 A third party had, as he fancied, drawn too near them. Then 
 came the Tsar himself. He made the French Minister sit 
 familiarly beside him, and lavished compliments upon him. 
 ]-}ut when the envoy tried to come to the point, he pretended 
 not to hear him, drowned his voice with noisy exclamations, 
 and then left him, whispering the words, ' I will give orders 
 to have terms arranged with you.' All this fuss was over the 
 marriage of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth with the Duke de 
 Chartres ; and the first appointment to talk the matter over, 
 made subsecjuently by Ostermann with Camjiredon, was 
 fi.xed for six o'clock in the morning, as being more likely to 
 escape observation.^ 
 
 Two years before, in the midst of the negotiations begun 
 
 * Pder I.^s Writings and Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 77. Filippof, Peter the 
 Great and the Penal La'os, page 283, etc. 
 -' Camprcdon's Despatches, Fel). 12, 1723 (I'rcnch Foreign Office). 
 
PRINCIPLES AND SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 183 
 
 in December 1721, to guarantee his own succession, the 
 Tsar's interviews witli Campredun had taken place in the 
 house of Jagoujinski, and without Ostermann's knowledge. 
 The first thing Peter then demanded, was to be enlightened 
 on a point which was of the utmost importance to himself, 
 but which had no relation whatsoever to the subject under 
 discussion. He had, it would appear, during his visit to 
 Paris, begun, and personally carried on, some other negoti- 
 ation, the secret of which had been betrayed. How and by 
 whom? Campredon was desired to send a courier to the 
 Regent, with orders to bring back a prompt reply to these 
 questions. The Regent, according to his wont, carefully sent 
 the despatch on to the King of England, who, quite unmoved, 
 wrote on the margin, ' All this convinces me that the Tsar's 
 ministers, who are endeavouring to destroy each other, have 
 found means to inspire him with suspicions as to some of 
 their number, and that he is dying to find a pretext to have 
 them impaled as soon as possible. I believe this to be the 
 sole reason for his curiosity.' And further on he writes, ' This 
 confirms me in my conviction that the Tsar desires to impale 
 somebody.' ^ 
 
 It is a curious fact, that all the rigorous penalties by 
 which the implacable ruler endeavoured to enforce that 
 universal service, which he desired to impose, on his subjects, 
 did not succeed in preventing numerous and constantly in- 
 creasing desertions. In vain did he answer these by increased 
 severity. A regulation of the War Department, dated 17 12, 
 decreed the use of the brand for military recruits, as well as 
 for convicts. There is even a legend connected with this 
 matter, according to which the Tsar, in his contempt for the 
 ancient faith, marked his soldiers with the sign of Antichrist. 
 The brand chosen was, in fact, a cross, tatooed on the left 
 hand ; the outline was pricked into the skin, and covered 
 with a pinch of powder which was set alight. It is worthy 
 of remark, that one of Peter's letters, with reference to this 
 barbarous custom, is also filled with directions, which prove 
 the greatest solicitude for the comfort of the poor tatooed 
 fellows, during their long marches to rejoin their depots.^ 
 The practical -mindedness of the great Reformer is clearly 
 shown in this contradictory epistle — a practical-mindcdness 
 
 ' Cam])redon's Despatches, Dec. 21, 1721. 
 '^ Russian Archives, 1S73, pp. 2067 and 2296. 
 
 13 
 
iS4 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 sui^i^esting the employment of the most healthy, and there- 
 fore the most payiiif^, methods of trcatinj^ those liimian forces 
 which his merciless eai^crncss led him, at the same time, 
 cruelly to overtax. In ci\"il matters, desertion, as I have 
 already said, was punished with infamy and outlawry. ' If,' 
 so runs a ukase, published in 1722, 'any man should rob one 
 of these deserters, wound him, or kill him, he is not liable to 
 punishment.' The names of the outlaws were made known 
 to the jHiblic by means of lists hung upon gallows. The half 
 of a deserter's goods was promised to the person who should 
 take him alive, even if the ca])turcr was the serf of the 
 captured man. The other half went to the Treasury.^ And 
 still the desertions went on. 
 
 ' Near the Tsar, near death,' says a Russian proverb. 
 Many people preferred safety of any kind. The presence, 
 in Peter's circle, of so many parvenus of low extraction, — 
 Menshikof, Loukin, Troi'ckourof, Vladimirof, Sklaief, Pos- 
 piclof, — is explained, independently of his personal prefer- 
 ences, by this general sanve qui pent amongst the great 
 Russian families.^ And the part played by these parvenus, 
 in the political system of which they formed an integral jiart, 
 made it still more oppressive. Peter's personal government 
 was often the hardest, the most overwhelming, the most dis- 
 quieting of realities. But it not unfrcquenth' became a mere 
 fiction, and the change brought no improvement. In spite 
 of his huge expenditure of labour and of energy, in spite of 
 all his constant goings and comings, the Tsar could not see 
 e\erything with his own eyes, and do everything with his 
 own hands. During his absences with his army, when he 
 was travelling abroad, or through the huge provinces of his 
 own realm, power passed into the hands of Meaishikof and 
 his fellows. They used it, and more frequently abused it, 
 after their own fashion. They were called on, periodically, 
 U) render up an account, which was not unfrequentl}' settled 
 by the executioner. But, li\ing as they did, like every one 
 else, from hand to mouth, subject to the common terror and 
 the universal bewilderment, they took full advantage of their 
 short hours of freedom, and thus increased the overwhelming 
 weight and cruel pressure of the terrible Juggernaut which, 
 sooner or later, was to crush them all. The sx^stem of favour- 
 itism which has cost Russia so much gold, .so many tears, 
 
 ' Golikof, vol. ix. p. 4S. "^ See Strahlenberg, p. 238, etc. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT 185 
 
 and such streams of blood, was not indeed of Peter's own 
 creation. It was a legacy from the past, which he had not 
 courage to repudiate, which indeed he consecrated, and the 
 tradition of which he developed, by his own adherence to it. 
 
 He was, in some respects, even in that economic depart- 
 ment, wherein, at first sight, he would appear to have worked 
 such a radical change, the true heir and follower of his an- 
 cestral traditions. He did away with that system of mono- 
 polies and royal privileges which had made his predecessors 
 the foremost merchants in their country. But, in September 
 17 1 3, having to fetch a sum of money from Lubeck to St. 
 Petersburg, he ordered the cargo of the galliot, which was to 
 be sent on this errand, to be completed with merchandise 
 likely to sell at a good profit in St. Petersburg.^ This is quite 
 in the manner of the old rulers of the Kreml, all of them 
 greedy of every kind of profit, and by no means scorning the 
 very smallest. At a masquerade, during the fetes given at 
 Moscow in 1722, I notice the description of a bearded 
 Neptune who played quite a special part. The Tsar's 
 fiiithful subjects were invited to fasten golden ducats to the 
 hairs of that symbolic beard, which was shortly to fall under 
 the scissors of a barber, — none other than Peter himself A 
 captain of the Guard, accompanied by a clerk, followed the 
 sea-god through the streets, and carefully registered the 
 ducats, and the names of those who gave them.^ 
 
 Even his wonderful knowledge of stage effect was con- 
 nected, in a way, with the spirit of bygone times. 'Whenever 
 the smallest advantage is gained,' observes the Dutch Resi- 
 dent, Van Der Hulst, in 1700, * there is a noise made about 
 it here, as if the whole universe had been overthrown.' Dur- 
 ing the disastrous period of the Swedish war, salvoes of 
 cannon, fireworks, extra promotion lists, and distributions 
 of rewards, followed each other in quick succession. This 
 was an endeavour, no doubt, and a laudable one, to mislead 
 public opinion, so as to prevent discouragement, and also, 
 perhaps, to put heart into the Tsar himself l-Jut it was 
 quite in Sophia's manner, and thoroughly Oriental in spirit. 
 'Ihe English Envoy Whitworth, when at table with the Tsar, 
 in 1705, was confronted with a Russian soldier, who, so he 
 averred, had, with forty-four comrades, prisoners like him- 
 
 ' (Jolikof, vol. V. p. C36. 
 
 ^ Bergliclz, Biischiti^s-Magazin, vol. xx. p. 38";. 
 
l86 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 self, been mutilated b}- the Swedes. Peter made this the text 
 of a loiiL^ sermon on the barbarity of his enemies, which, 
 he declared, far exceeded that of the nation over which he 
 ruled. ' Never,' he vowed, ' had any Swedish prisoner been 
 so treated in Russia, and he would forthwith send these 
 forty-five mutilated men into his different regiments, to warn 
 their comrades of what they had to expect from such a 
 treacherous enemy.' 1 he Tsar's trick failed. Whitworth 
 was conxinced that he was being made game of, all the more 
 as he had naturally not understood a word of the Russian 
 soldier's story.^ But the whole incident is thoroughly 
 Byzantine in its nature. 
 
 This peculiarity it was, in part, which bound the Tsar 
 so closely and so firrhly to the flesh and sjjirit of his 
 people, to their past and to their present, — and which has 
 made him so permanent a factor in their very existence. 
 Had his despotism been more logical, less influenced by the 
 very air of the country he was sent to rule, its results would 
 have been more short-lived. 
 
 ^ Despatch, dated 2nd May 1705. Sbornik, vol. xxxix. p. 79. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 The cottage at St. Petersburg — The pilot's dinner — Katia — Palaces and 
 country houses — The hme tree at Strielna — Peterhof— Tsarkoie-Sielo — 
 Revel. 
 
 A day in the great man's life — His morning work — His table —Private 
 meals and State dinners — Catherine's kitchen — What Peter ate and 
 drank — Court luxury and domestic simplicity — Menshikof's coach and 
 the Tsar's cabriolet — His dress — His roughness and coarse habits — 
 Cockroaches. 
 
 His amusements — Neither a sportsman nor a gambler — The water his chief 
 delight — Winter cruises— All St Petersburg at sea — Animals — Finette 
 and Lisette — A dog's part in politics. 
 
 Social habits— Meeting with the Margravine of Baireuth — In the German 
 suburb — Boon companions — The Tsar's couchcr — His pillow — His 
 intimate circle — The Dienshtchiks — A favourite's marriage — Maria 
 Matvieief. 
 
 In November, 1703, the first merchant vessel, a Dutch galHot, 
 laden with salt and wine from Friesland, entered the mouth 
 of the Neva. The Governor of St Petersburg invited the 
 captain to a banquet, and lavished presents on him and on 
 his crew.^ But before this entertainment took place, he had 
 to accept the hospitality of the pilot, who had directed the 
 course of his ship into harbour. He dined with him and with 
 his wife in a modest cottage on the river bank. The fare con- 
 sisted of national dishes, to which a few dainties, peculiar to 
 his own country, had been added. At dessert, not desiring 
 to be behindhand in politeness and generosity, the worthy 
 captain drew from his wallet, first of all, a delicious cheese, 
 and then a piece of linen, which he presented to the mistress 
 of the house, with the request that he would permit him to 
 kiss her cheek. ' Let him have his way, Katia,' said the 
 pilot, ' the linen is of the finest, and will make }'ou chemises 
 
 ^ Oustrialof, vol. iv. part i. p. 252. 
 
 187 
 
i88 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 better than you ever dreamt of weariiii:; in your youth.' 
 Just at that nioincut the Uutchman, hearing a door open 
 behind him, turned round, and ahnost fainted. A man, 
 evidently an important j)er.sonaj:^e, covered with cjold em- 
 broider}-, and starred with decoration.s, stood on the threshold, 
 and bowed to the ground as he replied to the words of 
 welcome addressed to him by Katia's husband. 
 
 1 am half afraid this story is not true ; in any case, it 
 must have occurred some years later than 1703. Catherine 
 does not appear, at that date, to have taken up her residence 
 with her future husband. But; otherwise, there is an air 
 of likelihood about it. It is very characteristic of Peter's 
 general behaviour, and of his most intimate surroundings. 
 He was always piloting ships, Dutch or others, receiving sea 
 captains at his own table, and taking them in by the extreme 
 simj)]icit\' of his manners and of his surroundings. As for 
 the cottage on the river bank, it may still be seen at St 
 Petersburg. It was built by Dutch workmen, on the model 
 of those seen by the sovereign at Zaandam, in 1697. A 
 framework of roughly - hewn tree trunks supports a low 
 roof, on which the gay, red, Dutch tiles are replaced by 
 wooden shingles. It contains two ground-floor rooms, of 
 very modest proportions, separated by a narrow passage, 
 and a- kitchen, with a garret above. There are only seven 
 windows. The exterior is painted in the Dutch style, red 
 and green. On the apex of the roof, and at its two corners, 
 a martial-looking decoration has been superadded — a mortar 
 and lighted shells, all carved in wood. Within, the walls are 
 hung with white canvass, and the door and window-frames 
 painted with bouquets of flowers. The room on the right 
 hand side was used as a working and a reception room. 
 That on the left served at once for dining-room and bed- 
 chamber.' 
 
 This latter apartment has now been turned into a chapel, 
 where the faithful pvdy, and burn candles, before an image of 
 our Lord, below which l^lizabeth caused the first words of 
 the Lord's Pra\er to be inscribed. I have never seen it 
 otherwise than closely crowded. In the other room a few 
 souvenirs have been collected — wooden furniture made by 
 the great man's own hands, and "done up," alas ! in 1850 ; a 
 
 ' Boulh.ikovski, Pf/er's House (9>t. Peteisbvirp, 1891). Roubane, Topograpkical 
 Dtscription of St, Peteishuro (St. Petersburg. 1799). 
 
PRIVATE LIFE i8g 
 
 cupboard, two chests of drawers, a table, a bench on which 
 he often sat outside his door to breathe the fresh air, and 
 watch his standard floating over the ramparts of the Fetro- 
 pavloskaia KrUpost\ utensils, and tools, which he once 
 used. 
 
 This cottage, small and far from luxurious as it was, hardly 
 measuring more than 18 yards by 6, was very dear to its 
 master. He regretted it deeply, when he felt his duty was 
 to leave it for a palace, itself a very modest one. Though 
 he loved to build towns, he had little taste for dwell- 
 ing in them. In 1708, he began to look about for a more 
 rural residence, in the far from attractive neighbourhood of 
 his chosen capital. His first choice fell on a retired spot on 
 the banks of a cool and rapidly-running stream, the Strielka. 
 Here, in one season, and not unfrequently putting his own 
 hand to the work, he built himself a rather more comfortable 
 dwelling, with two living-rooms and eight bed-chambers. 
 Catherine was with him by this time, and children were 
 beginning to come. No trace of this house remains ; but we 
 are still shown a huge lime tree, in the branches of which an 
 arbour was built, reached by a staircase. Here Peter often 
 sat smoking, and drinking tea out of Dutch cups, to the 
 hissing of a samovar, also brought from Holland — for this 
 utensil, now become so thoroughly national, and known all 
 over Europe under its picturesque Russian name, came, like 
 everything else, from Holland.^ The only change made in 
 its constitution by the Russians was the substitution of 
 charcoal, a far cheaper mode of heating, for the original 
 system of burning spirits of wine. Close by the lime tree, 
 there are some majestic oaks, known as the Tsar's nurselings 
 {Pieirovskiie Piiojii/sy). He planted them himself He 
 also grew, from seed gathered b}- his own hands in the 
 Hartz Mountains, the fir trees which stand at a little dis- 
 tance, and shade the approaches to the castle. For a castle 
 there w.is, at last, in this hermitage at Strielna. When 
 Catherine became an empress, the demands of her new 
 r.uik had, perforce, to be considered, and accommodati' n 
 found for her Court. But Peter soon took a sudden dislike 
 to this country residence. It had grown too closely in- 
 habited, and too noisy for his taste. He rid himself of it, 
 bestowing it on his daughter, the Grand Duchess Anne, 
 
 ^ The meaning of the Russian word samovar is ' that which boils ol itself.' 
 
190 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 in 1702, and departed to Peterhof.^ Alas! the Imperial 
 Court and Courtiers pur-^ucd him, and a yet more sumptu- 
 ous palace, with a park in the French style, and fountains, 
 copied on those of Versailles, soon rose at Peterhof Peter 
 refused, at all events, to live in it himself. He had his 
 Dutch house, which even now bears that name, close by, 
 Thouf^^h a very modest residence, it betrayed a certain 
 amount of Flemish luxury, which removed it very far from 
 the roucjhness of his earliest homes. The walls of the bed- 
 room, a very small one, were covered with well-varnished 
 white tiles, the floor with a flowered waxcloth, and the 
 chimnex^piece was adorned with the most magnificent speci- 
 mens of Delft china. As Peter lay in bed, he could see 
 Kronsloot, and count the vessels in his fleet. A few steps 
 brought him to a little harbour, whence he could go by 
 boat, down a canal, to the mouth of the Neva. 
 
 The number of the Tsar's country houses constantK' in- 
 creased, in consequence of his nomadic habits. He had one, a 
 wooden building, like all the others, at Tsarkoie-Sielo. This 
 contained six rooms, which he occasionally shared with 
 Catherine. According to a somewhat doubtful legend, the 
 name of this locality, since so celebrated, is derived from 
 that of a lady called Sarri, to whose house Peter would 
 occasionally come, and drink a draught of milk. The P^innish 
 name of the place, Saari-viojs, meaning ' high ' or ' raised ' 
 village, would seem a more probable derivation. The Tsar 
 possessed a little wooden hou.se at Revel, before he built the 
 ugly and heavy- looking palace which was erected towards 
 the close of his reign. He always kept clear of palaces, as 
 far as he found that possible. The Revel cottage, which has 
 been preserved, contains a bedroom, a bathroom [bania), a 
 dining-room, and a kitchen. In the sleeping-chamber there 
 is a double bed of somewhat narrow proportions, with a .sort 
 of platform at the foot, on which the three dietishtchiks 
 (orderlies), charged with watching over their master and 
 mistress's slumbers, were permitted to stretch themselves. 
 
 II 
 Peter was never a great sleeper ; he was generally up by 
 
 ^ Pylaief, 'I'hc For<^otten Past of the Neighbourhood of St. Petersburg (Si. Pelers- 
 butg, 1889), p. 210. 
 
PRIVATE LIFE 191 
 
 five o'clock, and even an hour or two before, if he had 
 pressing business — a secret council to hold, a courier to send 
 off in a hurry, or a departing ambassador, who needed extra 
 instructions. When the Tsar left his bed, he would walk 
 about his room for half an hour, wearing a short dressing- 
 gown, which exposed his bare legs, and a white cotton night- 
 cap trimmed with green ribbons. This, no doubt, was his 
 moment for ruminating over, and preparing, the day's work. 
 When he was ready, his secretary, Makarof, appeared, and 
 read him the daily reports of the different heads of depart- 
 ments. Then he breakfasted quickly, but heartily, and went 
 out, — on foot, if it were fine, otherwise in a very modest 
 cabriolet with one horse. He went to the naval dockyards, 
 inspected the ships in course of construction, and invariably 
 wound up by a visit to the Admiralty. Here, he would 
 swallow a glass of brandy, and lunch off a biscuit, and then 
 work on till one o'clock, when he dined. The kitchen of 
 the little palace, which now stands in the Summer Garden 
 at St. Petersburg, is next the dining-room, with a hatch 
 through which the dishes were passed. Peter never could 
 endure the presence of numerous servants during a meal. 
 And this peculiarity was exceedingl}' Dutch. When he 
 dined alone with his wife, as was his usual habit, they were 
 waited upon by a single page, chosen from amongst the 
 youngest in his service, and the Empress's most confidential 
 waiting-woman. If the party was increased by the presence 
 of a few guests, the chief cook, Velten, assisted by one or 
 two dienshtcJiiks, handed the dishes. Once dessert was on 
 the table, and a bottle placed before each guest, all the 
 servants were ordered to withdraw.^ 
 
 These dinners were quite unceremonious ; no others were 
 ever given in the Tsar's house. All State dinners were 
 given in Menshikof's Palace, and he it was who presided 
 over the sumptuous repasts, consisting of as many as 200 
 courses, cooked by French cooks, and served on quantities 
 of gold plate and priceless china. There were two dining- 
 rooms in the great Summer Palace, one on the ground floor, 
 and another on the first, each with its own kitchen beside it. 
 Peter found time, in 17 14, to give his most minute attention 
 to the arrangement of these kitchens. He insisted on their 
 being comparatively spacious, with tiled walls, so, he said, 
 ' Siachlin, p. 109. ISartof, p. 53. 
 
192 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 that the Ihiriatka (mistress of the house) might be able to 
 look after the oven comfortabl\-, and even occasionally pre- 
 pare dishes of her own.^ Catherine, though no cordon bleu — 
 she was supposed to have given most of her attention to the 
 washing', in her former master's household — was not without 
 culinary talents. 
 
 Peter himself was a verj- large cater. At Berlin, in October 
 1 7 12, we find him supping with the Prince Royal, after having 
 already supped with his own cliancellor, Golovkin, and eat- 
 ing, at both tables, with the heartiest appetite. Manteufifel, 
 the King of Poland's minister, in the description of the 
 second of these repasts, gives great praise to the Tsar, who, 
 he declares, ' behaved himself with perfect decorum, so far 
 at all events, as I could see or hear.' And before offering 
 his hand to the Queen, he even put on ' a rather dirty 
 glove.' ^ 
 
 The Tsar carried his knife and spoon and fork about with 
 him. 1 he spoon was made of wood mounted in ivory. The 
 knife and fork were iron, with green bone handles. He liked 
 the simple dishes of his country, such as shtchi and kasha, pre- 
 ferred black bread, and never ate sweet things nor fish, which 
 always disagreed with him. On special Fast days, he lived 
 on fruit and farinaceous foods. During the three last years 
 of his life, he would, from time to time, in obedience to his 
 doctor's entreaties, give up the use, or at all events the abuse, 
 of wine. Hence that reputation for sobriety ascribed to him 
 by certain travellers, who visited Russia at that period, 
 — amongst others by Lang, who accompanied the sovereign 
 during his Persian Campaign. On these occasions, he drank 
 kislyU-shtchi {s,owx kvass) flavoured with English small beer,-* 
 but was never able to resist the temptation of indulging in a 
 few glasses of brandy. But indeed these fits of abstinence 
 never lasted long. He soon went back to his old habits, 
 save that he avoided any mixture of alcoholic beverages, 
 and restricted himself to drinking Medoc and Cahors. At 
 the very end, by the advice of a Scotch doctor, Erskine, 
 who treated him for diarrhoea, he drank Hermiiagc. ■* 
 
 The Tsar's stable arrangements were simple. The palace 
 
 1 r.nlikof, vol. V. p. S70 (note). 
 
 ^ Letter to Count I'l-. niniing, .Sbornik, vol. xx. p. 59. 
 
 • This would appear to be a probable translation of ' baume d'Angletcrre.' 
 
 * btaehlin, p. 272, etc. 
 
PRIVATE LIFE 193 
 
 coach-houses only contained two coaches, with four places 
 in each, for the use of the Empress, and the Emperor's 
 cabriolet, with which we have already made acquaintance. 
 Nothing more. This cabriolet was painted red, and hung 
 very low. It was replaced, in winter, by a small sledge. 
 Peter never got into a coach, unless he was called upon to 
 do honour to some distinguished guest, and then he always 
 made use of Menshikof's carriages. These were magnificent. 
 Even when the favourite went out alone, he drove in a gilded 
 fan-shaped coach, drawn by six horses, in crimson velvet 
 trappings, with gold and silver ornaments ; his arms crowned 
 with a prince's coronet, adorned the panels ; lacqueys and 
 running footmen in rich liveries ran before it ; pages and 
 musicians, dressed in velvet, and covered with gold em- 
 broideries, followed it. Six gentlemen attended it at each 
 door, and an escort of dragoons completed the procession.^ 
 
 Peter never indulged in luxury of this kind. When he 
 was not in uniform, his dress was not unlike that of one 
 of his own peasants. In summer he wore a kaftan, made of 
 stout dark-coloured cloth, manufactured by Serdioukof, one 
 of \\\s proteges, a silk waistcoat, woollen stockings, — generally, 
 as we have already seen, full of darns, — heavy, thick-soled 
 shoes, with very high heels, and steel or copper buckles. 
 His head-covering was a three-cornered felt hat, or a velvet 
 cap. In winter the velvet cap was replaced by one made of 
 sheep-skin, and the shoes by soft deer-skin boots, with the hair 
 turned outwards. A fur lining, — sable in front, and squirrel 
 for the back and sleeves, — was put into his kaftan. His 
 uniform, which he never wore except on active service, was 
 that of Colonel of tiie Preobrajenski regiment of the Guard. 
 The coat was of rather coarse dark green Dutch cloth, 
 lined with silk of the same colour (now faded to a blue 
 shade), edged with narrow gold braid, and with large copper 
 buttons ; with it a thick doe-skin waistcoat was worn. The 
 hat had no lace on it, the sword had an ungilt copper guard, 
 and black sheath, and the stock was of plain black leather. 
 \'et Peter loved fine and well-bleached linen, such as was 
 then made in Holland, and this was the only point on which 
 he could be induced to compromise with the deliberate and 
 determined simplicity of his life, — a simplicity which, I am 
 disposed to believe, was inspired by a very conscientious 
 1 Tylaief, p. 379. 
 
T94 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 feelings for economy. When Catherine showed him the 
 splendid coronation dress to which I have referred on a 
 previous pajije, his first expression was one of extreme 
 annoyance. He laid an angry hand on the silvery em- 
 broidery and shook it so violently, that several of the 
 spangles fell to the ground. ' Look at that, Katinka,' he 
 said, ' tho.se will all be swept away, and they would nearly 
 make up the pay of one of my grenadiers.' ^ 
 
 lie never acquired the Dutch taste for cleanliness and 
 domestic order. At Ikrlin, in 171 8, the Queen caused all 
 the furniture to be removed from the hou.se (Mon liijou) 
 intended for him, and her precaution seems to have been 
 a wise one. He left it in such a condition that it 
 almost had to be rebuilt. ' The desolation of Jerusalem 
 reigned within it,' says the Margravine of Baireuth. In one 
 detail only did an instinctive repugnance clash with the 
 sordid habits which Oriental associations had perpetuated 
 in Russian domestic life. He had a horror of certain 
 parasites, which then, as now, alas ! too often swarmed in 
 Muscovite dwellings. The sight of a cockroach almost 
 made him faint. One day an officer, with whom he had 
 invited himself to dinner, showed him one, which, thinking 
 to give his guest pleasure, he had nailed to the wall in a 
 conspicuous spot. Peter rose from the table, fell on the 
 unlucky wight, gave him a sound thrashing with his doitbina, 
 and made for the door. 
 
 ill 
 
 His pleasures were like his tastes, not over remarkable for 
 elegance. Unlike his ancestors, — all of them great slayers 
 of bears and wolves, and passionate devotees of the art of 
 falconry, — he cared nothing for sport. That imitation of 
 war gave offence to his practical mind ; not that he cared 
 for real war, he only resigned himself to it for the sake of 
 the profit he hoped it might bring him. Once, indeed, and 
 once only, early in his reign, he was induced to go out 
 coursing, but first he made his own conditions. No hunts- 
 man or whipper-in was to put in an appearance. His con- 
 ditions were accepted, and he thus played his friends a .sorry 
 trick, and gave himself the satisfaction of making them feel 
 
 > I'ylaief, p. 379. 
 
PRIVATE LIFE 195 
 
 the conventional nature of their sport. The hounds, bereft of 
 huntsmen and vvhippers-in, became unmanageable, dragged 
 at their leashes, and pulled the riders from their saddles, so 
 that the next moment half the company was lying on the 
 ground, and the hunt came to an end, amidst a scene of 
 general confusion. The next day it was Peter who suggested 
 another coursing party, and the sportsmen, most of them 
 sorely knocked about, and some, indeed, obliged to stay in 
 bed, who demurred to his proposition.^ 
 
 He hated cards, which he called a game for cheats. His 
 military and naval officers were forbidden, under the severest 
 penalties, to lose more than one rouble in an evening. Some- 
 times, to please the foreign sailors, whom he entertained, he 
 would take part in a game of Dutch gravias. He was fond 
 of chess, and played it well. He both smoked and snuffed. 
 At Koppenbrligge, in 1697, he exchanged snuff-boxes with 
 the Electress of Brandenburg. His chief pleasure — his 
 master-passion, in fact — was boating in all its branches. At 
 St Petersburg, when the Neva was three-parts frozen, even 
 when the clear space of water did not measure a hundred 
 feet square, he would go upon it in any boat he could lay 
 his hands on. Often, in mid-winter, he would have a narrow 
 passage cut in the ice, and there indulge in his favourite 
 sport.- Arriving in his capital in 1706, he found the streets 
 flooded, and two feet of water in his private rooms. He 
 clapped his hands like a child.^ He was never really happy 
 except on board a ship. Nothing but serious illness could 
 keep him on shore, if he was near any port ; and, indeed, he 
 averred that, in case of illness, he was better if he went to 
 sea. At Riga, in 1723, in the midst of a violent attack of 
 tertian fever, which had already driven him on shore, he had 
 his bed carried on board a frigate, fought through the illness, 
 and always attributed his recovery to this expedient. To- 
 wards the end of his \\{q, even for his after-dinner siesta, 
 he stretched himself out in the bottom of a boat, which was 
 generally provided for the purpose. 
 
 All the inhabitants of St Petersburg, either following his 
 example, or by his care, possessed means of aquatic locomo- 
 tion. All his chief officials were given a yacht, and two 
 boats, one of twelve and another of four oars. Other officials 
 
 ^ Ciolikof, vol. i. p. 28. - PyLiicf, p.. 379. 
 
 ^ Russian .Vichives, 1875, ^'"'- "• P- 47 
 
196 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 were more modestly provided, according to their tchin. The 
 regulations for the use of these boats were written out b}' his 
 own hand. On certain fixed days, when the Tsar's standard 
 had been hoisted at the four corners of the city, the whole 
 flotilla was expected, on pain of a heavy penalt\', to collect 
 in the neighbourhood of the fortress. At the signal given 
 by a salvo of artillery. Admiral Apraxin led the way on his 
 yacht dressed with red and white flags. The Tsar's boat 
 followed — Peter, in his white sailor's dress, and generally 
 accompanied by Catherine, holding the rudder. Some of the 
 boats, which were richh' decorated, had musicians on board. 
 Thus the procession took its way to Strielna, to Peterhof, 
 or to Oranienbaum, where a banquet awaited the party. ^ 
 
 Peter, like Catherine II., in later days, was a great lover 
 of animals, especially of dogs. In 1708, a poor country 
 priest, of the name of Kozlovski, was put to the torture at 
 the Prtobrajoiski Prikaz^ for having spoken improperly of 
 the Tsar's person. He had been heard to say that he 
 had seen the Sovereign at Moscow in the act of kissing 
 a bitch.'- There was no doubt about the fact. The un- 
 lucky priest had happened to pass down the street just at 
 the moment when the Tsar's favourite dog, Finette, had 
 bounded into her master's carriage, and was rubbing her 
 muzzle against his moustaches without any resistance on his 
 part. P"inette, called Lisette by some contemporaries, who 
 have confused her, doubtless, with a very favourite mare, 
 competed for the Tsar's favour with a great Danish dog, 
 whose stuffed body now has its place amongst the souvenirs 
 so piously preserved in the gallery of the Winter Palace. 
 This honour is shared by the mare, a present from the Shah 
 of Persia — a small animal, but with muscles of steel. I'eter 
 rode her at Poltava. There is a story that Finette once 
 played a part in politics. An edict had been published, for- 
 bidding the presentation of petitions to the Tsar, on pain of 
 death. The friends of an official who had been sentenced 
 to the knout for some breach of trust, fastened an ingeniously 
 drawn-up appeal to the Sovereign's clemency, to the pretty 
 creature's collar. Their stratagem was crowned with succe-s, 
 and their example largely followed. But Peter speedily 
 discouraged all imitators.^ 
 
 ' Pylaief, p. 2io. ■^ Documents of the rreoLrajenskoie Secret Chancery. 
 
 * Scherer, vol. iii. p. 294. 
 
PRIVATE LIFE 197 
 
 IV 
 
 The great man often sought his pleasures and relaxations 
 in very inferior company. It must be admitted that his 
 acquaintance with good society was but limited. The Mar- 
 gravine of Baireuth was a terrible gossip, and owned the 
 worst tongue, perhaps, that ever wagged in the eighteenth 
 century. Yet there must be a certain amount of truth in 
 her rather amusing story of her meeting with the Tsar during 
 that sovereign's stay at Berlin in 17 18. Peter had already 
 met her five j^ears previously. The moment he recognised 
 her, he rushed at her, seized her in his arms, and scratched 
 her face with his rough kisses. She struggled, slapped him 
 in the face, but still he held her tight; she complained, was 
 told she would have to make up her mind to it, and so sub- 
 mitted. But she took her revenge by jeering at the brutal 
 monarch's wife and suite. ' She had with her 400 so-called 
 ladies. Most of these were German servant girls, who per- 
 formed the duties of ladies-in-waiting, serving-women, cooks 
 and laundresses. Almost everyone of these creatures carried 
 a t;ichly-dressed child in her arms, and if any one enquired 
 to whom the children belonged, they answered, with all sorts 
 of Russian salaams, " The Tsar has done me the honour of 
 making me the mother of this child.'" 
 
 The habits and the friendships contracted by Peter in the 
 German suburb, superior as they were to the social level of 
 old Kussia, were not calculated to fit him for the Courts and 
 elegant circles of the West. And with these old associations 
 he never broke. When he was in Moscow, in 1723, he spent 
 his evenings between an old friend of his, the wife of an 
 official named Fadenbrecht, to whose house he had his 
 meals carried, Bidlau, a doctor, Gregori, an apothecary, 
 Tamsen, Konau and Meyer, tradesmen, and a certain young 
 lady of the name of Ammon, barely sixteen years of age, in 
 whose house dancing went on till five o'clock every morning.^ 
 And even this is a somewhat favourable specimen. 
 
 On Easter Day, the 24th of March 1706, Peter causes his 
 letter to Menshikof to be signed, and a postscript added to 
 it, by the friends gathered round him to celebrate that 
 solemn day. In that intimate circle, I notice a private 
 
 ' Bergholz, Biisckings-Magazin, vol. .\xi. p. 183. 
 
198 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 soldier, two Dienshtchiks, and finally a peasant, who, not 
 knowing how to write, replaces his signature by a cross, 
 affixed to an intimation that he had been given leave ' to get 
 drunk for three whole days.'^ 
 
 Peter never slept alone. His bed was generally shared 
 by Catherine, very rarely by a mistress. He sought his couch 
 for purposes of slumber. He was sensual, but not voluptuous, 
 and his love affairs, like all his other affairs, were got 
 through as quickly as possible. 1 have already (page io6) 
 explained his dislike to sleeping alone, and in the absence 
 of his wife, he would avail himself of the company of the 
 first dicnslitchik he could lay his hand en. I'his individual 
 had orders to lie exceedingly quiet, under pain of being 
 well thrashed. Peter generally woke in a bad temper. In 
 the country, when the hour for his daily siesta came, he 
 made one of these dien^Jitchiks lie down on the ground, and 
 used his stomach for a pillow. This man did wisely, unless 
 his digestion was an exceptionally quick and easy one, to be 
 in a fasting condition, for, on the slightest movement, or 
 sound, the Tsar would spring to his feet and fall upon him.- 
 
 All this notwithstanding, he was really exceedingly in- 
 dulgent and easy-going, in all matters connected with his 
 personal service. Nartof has given us the story of the 
 cupboards invented by the Tsar, in which he would lock up, 
 beds and all, certain of his orderlies who, in spite of his 
 reiterated orders and threats, persisted in spending their 
 nights in houses of ill-fame. He kept the keys under his 
 pillow, and used to get up, after midnight, to inspect these 
 dormitory cells. One night he found them all empty. His 
 astonishment and rage were terrible. ' So the rascals have 
 made themselves wings,' he cried, ' I'll cut them to-morrow 
 with my doubina.' But when morning came, and the culprits 
 appeared before him, he contented himself with promising 
 them a better watched and less comfortable prison, if they 
 relapsed into misbehaviour.^ His personal service was per- 
 formed by six dieushtc/iiks, amongst whose names we notice 
 those of Tatishtchef, Orlof, Boutourlin and Souvarof, two 
 couriers to go distant messages, one valet -de-chambre, 
 
 1 Golikof, vol. iii. p. 94. ^ Schercr, vol. ii. p. 81. 
 
 * Mevioirs, p. 36. The personal portion of Narlof's recollections deserves a 
 certain amount of credence, but the remainder of the work is a later compilation, 
 the only value of which, and thai a doubtful one, resides in the various anecdotic 
 sources from which it has been drawn. 
 
PRIVATE LIFE 199 
 
 Polouboiarof, one secretary, Makarof, and two under- 
 secretaries, Tcherkassof and Pamiatin. Nartof also be- 
 longed to the household, in his quality of assistant in the 
 Tsar's ivory and wood-turning, at which he spent several 
 hours a day. The whole household formed an exception to 
 the general rule, according to which every one who had to 
 do with the sovereign, whether closely or not, detested as much 
 as they feared him. Peter the Great, like the great Catherine, 
 was always adored by his personal servants. 
 
 This was far from being the case with his collaborators, 
 who, for a certain period, were generally his favourites as 
 well. With the exception of Menshikof, none of them 
 maintained this last position for any length of time. Where 
 they were concerned, phases of condescension, and even of 
 extreme partiality, invariably led up to a swift veering of 
 the Tsar's humour, and a terrible change of fortune. So 
 long as things went well, they were treated like spoilt 
 children. Peter's care for their health and comfort was 
 unflagging. He even found them wives. When the 
 calamities which overtook the Tsar's unhappy son, brought 
 one of the myrmidons of the law, named Alexander Roumi- 
 antsof, who had been employed to capture him, into high 
 favour, a Boyard ofiered him his daughter, who had a con- 
 siderable dowry, in marriage. Roumiantsof, the son of a needy 
 gentleman, in the Government of Kostroma, was himself a poor 
 rnan. * Hast thou seen the girl } ' asked Peter. * No, but I 
 hear she is a sensible girl.' ' That's something, but I want to 
 see her.' He went that evening to a gathering at which he 
 knew the young girl was to be present, had her pointed out 
 to him as soon as he arrived, shrugged his shoulders, said 
 very loud, as if speaking to himself, ' Nitchaiiou nie byvat !' 
 (no good at all) turned on his heel, and departed. The next 
 day, meeting Roumiantsof, he repeated ' Nilchdinou nie by- 
 vat ! ' adding, ' I will find thee something better, and that 
 by this evening. Be here at five o'clock.' Roumiantsof 
 naturally kept the appointment, and, at Peter's order, seated 
 himself in his cabriolet. He was more than astonished 
 when he saw the carriage stop before the house of Count 
 Matvicief, one of the noblest and richest subjects of the 
 Tsar. Entering, Peter addressed the Count familiarly, kissed 
 him, and said point blank, ' You have a daughter whom you 
 want to marry. Here is a husband.' Without further pre- 
 14 
 
200 PETER THF GREAT 
 
 liminary, Matvit'icf'.s daiii^litor became Roumiantsofs wife. 
 Accordini:; to certain accounts, she had alread)-, at the af]je of 
 nineteen, been the mistress, and the fickle mistress, of her 
 sovereign. Peter, who had lately surprised her in circum- 
 stances which left no doubt of this unfaithfulness, is sup- 
 posed to have selected this means of guardini^ her fragile 
 virtue, having previously, with his own hands, administered 
 healthy correction to the fair lady.^ 
 
 Rut the following chapters will give my readers fuller 
 information as to the most certain and probable facts con- 
 cerning this obscure corner in the Tsar's personal history. 
 
 ^ Pylaief, Old Moscow, p. 52. 
 
BOOK II— THE TSAR'S ASSOCIATES 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 
 
 I. The Aristocracy and the Popular Element — The Dieiatiels — The great 
 Favourites— Komodanovski— The Prince C(Bsar—'Y\\^ Secret Police — The 
 Red Square at Moscow —Old Russia— A bear as house steward — Loyalty, 
 energy, and ferocity— Oriental suppleness — Sheremetief — A poor leader 
 and a fine soldier— Menshikof— The pastry cook's boy— The Tsar's 
 minion — Peter's inditTerence to scandal on some subjects — Alexashka — a 
 Prince— Profusion of titles and functions — Omnipotence — Abuse of power 
 — A military leader — An administrator — Faults and virtues — An apology 
 for theft — Peter's indulgence worn out — Semi-disgrace. 
 
 II. Collaborators of the second rank— Golovin — An Admiral who_ was no 
 sailor, and a Foreign Minister who was no diplomat — Russian sailors and 
 foreign sailors— Apraxin and Cruys — Politicians and police agents — 
 Golovkin — Tolstoi— A high-born Russian Diplomat of the new school — 
 Boris Kourakin— Some great Dieiatiels — Neplouief and Tatishtchef — 
 The Tsar's Confessor, Nadajinski — A match witn the Abbe Dubois' 
 secretary. 
 III. The Agents of a lower order — lagoujinski and Shafirof — Polish Jews — The 
 \'iesselovski— The Pyybyhhtchiks—Y.owxhiL'i.Qi and Solovief— Possoshkof, 
 the first Rus-ian Economist— The fortunes of the Demidofs — Lomonossof. 
 
 IV. Foreign Collaborators — They often did the work, but remained in the 
 shadow — Sheremetief and Ogilvy—Vinnius— James Bruce— Ostermann— 
 Devier, a Portuguese Jew — The invariable close of brilliant careers — The 
 final crash— Frenchm"en—De Yillebois— A scene in the Imperial bed- 
 room — Englishmen — Perry and Fergusson — Poushkins's negro ancestor, 
 Abraham Hannibal. 
 
 V. General summing up — Peter and Leibnitz— The great German's posthumous 
 roU. 
 
 'Alone, or almost alone, our Tsar struggles to raise the 
 country, millions of individual efforts drag it down.' 
 
 When Possoshkof thus picturesquely described Peter's 
 isolation, and the difficulties he met with, in carrying out 
 his reforms, he indulged in a slight exaggeration. The 
 
202 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 very accession of the great reformer was, as I have already 
 shewn, tlic result of a party triLimph. His first revolu- 
 tionary attempts were inspired by those about him, and 
 he certainly would never have been able to compress the 
 work of several centuries into twenty years, unless he had 
 been assisted by a very considerable amount of extraneous 
 energy and intelligence. The country which he ruled so 
 proudly, and which indeed he watered with the sweat of 
 his own brow, yielded a fruitful harvest of effort and 
 capability, rough-hewn, no doubt, but not the less gallant 
 for that. On the heels of the earliest workers — Lefort and 
 the Naryshkin — came others, native or foreign, none of 
 them indeed great leaders, nor very profound politicians, 
 but men of action like Peter himself, like him hastily and 
 superficially educated, yet possessing a remarkable and 
 varied power of initiative, of endeavour, and of resource. 
 When the old aristocracy failed him, and this soon came 
 to pass (the old nobility, alarmed by the boldness of his 
 measures, outraged by the roughness of his manners, and 
 bewildered by the giddy rapidity of his movements, soon 
 began to hang back and even steal awa}-), he went below 
 it, down even into the lowest strata of the populace, and 
 thence took a Demidof and a lagoujinksi, to replace a 
 Matvitl'ief, or a Troubetzkoi. Thus a school of statesmen 
 rose around him, men of peculiar stamp, the prototypes of 
 the DiHaticls (agents) of a later date ; soldiers, diplomatists, 
 or political economists, turn about, with no defined speciality 
 (a trifle amateurish in that matter), who knew neither pre- 
 judice nor scruple, without fear, if not without reproach, who 
 marched straight forward, without a backward glance, always 
 ready for strong measures, wonderfully fitted for the rapid 
 performance of every kind of duty, and for the bold assump- 
 tion of any and every responsibilit}-. They answered Peter's 
 purpose, and the purpose of the work which they were to do 
 with him. He did not, and in that he was right, expect 
 them to be paragons of virtue. In 1722, Camprcdon writes 
 to Cardinal Dubois, — ' I have the honour of pointing out to 
 your Eminence, that unless, with my diplomatic powers, I 
 am provided with means of giving money to the Russian 
 ministers, no success can be expected, however advantageous 
 an alliance with 1-^rance may appear to the Tsar ; for, if his 
 minislc.s do not perceive their own per.sonal benefit in it, 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 203 
 
 their intrigues and secret enmities will foil any negotiations, 
 even those which might be of most service, and bring most 
 credit to their master. I notice proofs of this truth every 
 day of my life.' ^ The ministers here referred to were Bruce 
 and Ostermann, and the proofs, very solid ones, perhaps, 
 of which the French Envoy boasts, had not prevented them 
 in the preceding year, at Nystadt, from outstripping Peter 
 himself in the defence of his interests, and obtaining condi- 
 tions of peace which he had not dared to hope for. 
 
 Three men, Romodanovski, Shercmetief, and Menshikof, 
 tower above all others in the great monarch's personal circle. 
 The two first were the only human beings to enjoy a privi- 
 lege denied to Catherine herself, that of being received by the 
 sovereign, unannounced, whenever they chose to appear in 
 his presence. When he dismissed them, he always con- 
 ducted them himself to the door of his cabinet. 
 
 In the beginning of the eighteenth century, none of the 
 princely families descended from Rourik equalled the Romo. 
 danovski in rank and influence. Yet only a century before, 
 this family held quite a secondary position, inferior to that 
 of the Tcherkaski, Troubetzkoi, Galitzin, Repnin, Ourussof, 
 Shercmetief, and Saltikof, equal to that of the Kourakin, 
 Dolgorouki, Volkonski, and Lobanof families.'^ A younger 
 branch of one of the younger branches of the great Norman 
 house, that of the Princes of Starodoub, it took its name, 
 somewhere in the fifteenth century, from a property called 
 Romodanof in the Government of Vladimir. The prominent 
 rank it subsequently held, was attained in virtue of a kind of 
 hereditary function, which in itself would hardly be looked 
 on as a claim to much distinction. When the Tsar Alexis 
 established an office of the secret police at Preobrajenskoie, 
 with subterranean dungeons and question chambers, all com- 
 plete, its management was confided to Prince George (or 
 louri) Ivanovitch Romodanovski. After his death, his son 
 inherited the post, and finally transmitted it to his own heir. 
 The son of George Ivanovilch was the Prince Casar, with 
 w horn we have already made acquaintance. It was, it seems, 
 ill 1694, and as a reward for a victory gained by him over 
 the mock King of Poland, represented by Boutourlin, that 
 Peter took it into his head to dress Romodanovski up in 
 
 ^ July 24, 1722 (Paris Foreign Office). 
 
 '■^ Kolochihin, Memoirs (St. Petersburg, 1884), p. 25, etc. 
 
204 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 this strange title. It was a mere joke, but we know how 
 whimsically the great man would mint^lc pleasantry with 
 serious matters. It is not ea.sy to understand how such a 
 man as the Prince Feodor lourievitch could consent to act 
 such a farce, his whole life long. There was nothing of the 
 buffoon about him, neither the necessary docility, nor the 
 indispensable love of frolic. Perhaps, in his barbarian sim- 
 plicit)', he ne\er realised the insulting and degrading reality 
 so apparent under the mockery. In Peter's eyes, evidently, 
 he rcj)rcsented a sort of huge compromise with a state of 
 things he himself had doomed to destruction. Therefore it 
 was, that the reformer endured his long moustaches and 
 his Tartar or Polish garments. But, even while Peter set up 
 and worshipped this strange idol, in whose person he seemed 
 to commemorate and atone for the past, he scoftcd at and 
 spurned that hated past itself, and all the ideas and memories 
 he associated with, and Uxitlied in, it. The old Kreml of 
 Moscow, and the semi-Asiastic pomp of the Tsars, the ex- 
 vassals of the great Han, which had crushed his early years 
 — the old Burg at Vienna, and the majesty of the Reman 
 C?Esars, which had crushed him too, in that never-to-be- 
 forgotten moment during his earliest appearance on the 
 European stage, all these things he desired to cover with 
 ridicule, and cast into oblivion. 
 
 The person chosen to play this dubious part, was not 
 devoid of merits of his own. Placed apparently, at all 
 events, above any possibility of attack, he set himself, in all 
 reality and truth, above suspicion. His loyalty was unshake- 
 able ; he was faif-hful, honest, and unswerving. His heart 
 was flint, his hand was iron. Amidst all the intrigues, the 
 meannesses and the cupidity which seethed around the 
 sovereign's person, he stands out, upright, haughty, clean- 
 handed. When an insurrection threatened at Moscow, he 
 cut it short, after his own fashion. He picked 200 rioters, at 
 hazard, from the crowd, and hung them by their ribs on iron 
 hooks on the Red Square (so appropriately named), in the 
 old city. Even in his own house, he had dungeons and 
 instruments of torture, and when Peter, during his absence 
 in Holland, reproached him for some abuse of his terrible 
 power, committed while in a state of drunkenness, he sharply 
 replied, — ' It is only people who have plenty of leisure and 
 can spend it in foreign countries, who can afford to waste 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 205 
 
 their time with IvasJika. Here we have other things to do 
 than to gorge ourselves with wine, we ivasJi ourselves every- 
 day in blood ! ' ^ 
 
 Notwithstanding this, I remark a certain Oriental strain 
 of suppleness in his character. He does indeed thwart the 
 sovereign secretly, and even occasionally goes so far as to 
 censure him openly, so that in 17 13, the self-willed despot 
 himself does not seem to know how to manage ' this devil of 
 a fellow who will do nothing but what he chooses himself 
 Romodanovski appears to have taken his sovereignty 
 very seriously, and never permitted any jesting on the 
 subject. When ^heremetief announced the victory at Pol- 
 tava, he addressed him as Sire and Your Majesty. No one 
 entered the courtyard of his palace except on foot and bare- 
 headed ; even Peter himself left his cabriolet at the outer 
 door. He was surrounded with all the luxuries of an Asiatic 
 monarch, and his personal freaks were quite of a piece with 
 them. When he went out hunting, he was attended by 500 
 persons, and every visitor, of whatever rank, who entered 
 his presence, was forced to empty a huge glass of coarse 
 brandy, seasoned with pepper, served by a tame bear, which 
 growled threateningly. If the brandy was refused, the 
 bear forthwith dropped his tray, and hugged the visitor."- 
 Yet this very same man took good care not to forget that 
 Menshikof was a great lover of fish, and never failed to send 
 him the best in his own fishponds, and he bestowed many 
 a barrel of wine and hydromcl on a BiensJitchik of the name 
 of Pospielof, a great drunkard, and a prime favourite of the 
 Tsar's.^ 
 
 Sheremetief was also, after his own fashion, a representa- 
 tive of former times. At Narva, like everybody else, he lost 
 his head. At Poltava, like the rest, he did his duty bravely. 
 In his will, drawn up in 17 18, he confided his sinful soul to 
 the Tsar.* That one trait describes the man. He was simple, 
 candid, and very ignorant. ' What rank did you hold before 
 you came here ? ' he enquired of a non-commissioned officer, 
 just arrived from Germany. 'Master at arms.' 'Ann, does 
 nut that mean poor, in German ? In your own country you 
 
 ^ /Wif>- /.'s IVn/i/tirs and Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 226, 671. 
 
 ^ Hymrof, Countess Go/oikin and the Times ihe Lived in, p. 76, etc. 
 
 * Dulgoroukof, Memoirs, vol. i. p. 55. 
 
 * Russian Archive-, 1S75. V'^'- '• P- ^6. 
 
2o6 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 were poor; here you shall have the same rank, and be rich 
 into the barcjain.'^ 
 
 But he was a splendid soldier: always in the forefront of 
 the iJattle, tranquil and calm under a hail of bullets, adored 
 by all his men. If he happened to see an\' officer, who had 
 served under him, passing throuf^h the streets of Moscow, 
 he never failed to leave his coach, as richly i^ilt as Men- 
 shikofs own, and clasp his old comrade's hand. Generous, 
 open-hearted, and hospitable, he fed an army of bcs^^i^ars, 
 and kept open house for fifty persons every day. Me was 
 one of the last specimens of the best and most attractive 
 type of the old Russian Boyard. 
 
 Alexander Danilovitch Menshikof was another and very 
 different t}'pe. He opens the long series of great parvenus, 
 the creatures of the Russian Sovereign's caprice. The story 
 goes, that, in his youth, he had been a pastry-cook's boy. Ac- 
 cording to family documents, he should be descended from an 
 ancient Lithuanian family. There ma\' be truth in both these 
 versions. The son of a needy gentleman in the neighbour- 
 hood of Smolensk may very well have sold pastry in the 
 Moscow streets. A knight of St Louis certainly sold cakes 
 at Versailles, in Sterne's days.- In any case, his father never 
 was more than a corporal in the Preobrajenski regiment, 
 and he himself was serving in it as a sergeant, somewhere 
 about 1698. He may have combined his military duties 
 with the sale of pii-ogiii. Even in Peter's newlj'-raised regi- 
 ments a very curious commercial element, the outcome of 
 traditions inherited from the Shrltsy, long survived. I?ut 
 already, at that period, the young man was supposed to stand 
 high in the Tsar's good graces. 'Ihe Sovereign always called 
 him by a pet name (y//c.i77j7//Cv?), and, even in public, la\'ishcd 
 proofs of an almost passionate tenderness upon him.^ My 
 readers will recollect the story of the part he is said by some 
 persons to have played in a violent scene at the house of 
 SheTn, during which Peter had to be recalled to reason.'* 
 According to other stories, his favour was originally due to a 
 different, though an equally salutary and important, inter- 
 vention in the Sovereign's destiny. Peter, we are told, while 
 on his way to dine \\ ith a certain Boj'.ird, was accosied by 
 
 * Rruce's Memoirs {\.ow^ox\, 1782), p. 11^. 
 
 ^ S'li inicrttiil Joiiniev, cliaplcr headed 'The Pastrycook. 
 
 * .See .Soloviet', vol. xiv. p. 267. ■• See ante, p. 1 28. 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 207 
 
 the Pirojnik. Pleased with his countenance, he took him 
 with him, and desired him to stand behind his chair durin^^ 
 the meal. Just as the Tsar stretched out his hand to help 
 himself to a dish, a gesture, and a few low words, from the 
 pastry cook, suddenly checked him. Some hours previously 
 the Pirojnik had been in the Boyard's kitchen, and had 
 observed preparations for an attempt to poison the chief 
 guest. The dish was forthwith given to a dog, the truth of 
 the allegation proved, the Boyard and his accomplices 
 arrested, and thus Alexashkd s astonishing career began. ^ 
 
 Born in 1763, a year before Peter himself, tall, well-built, 
 and handsome, Menshikof, unlike his master and the great 
 majority of contemporary Russians, had a pronounced taste 
 for cleanliness, and even for personal elegance. The repre- 
 sentative part which he was later called upon to play was 
 the result, to a certain extent, of this peculiarity. Yet he 
 was quite uneducated ; he never learnt to read, nor to write, 
 beyond signing his name.^ According to Catherine II., who 
 should have had good opportunities for learning the truth, 
 he never had ' one clear idea on any subject whatsoever.' ^ 
 But, like Peter, though in a very inferior degree, he had a 
 talent for appropriating notions on every subject, including 
 the habits of the great world. He was his Sovereign's 
 shadow ; he was with him under the walls of Azof, and 
 shared his tent ; he accompanied him abroad, and shared his 
 studies there. He took part in the destruction of the 
 Streltsy, and is said to have boasted that, with his own hand, 
 he had shorn off the heads of twenty of the rebels. After 
 having allowed Peter himself to clip his beard, he performed 
 the barber's office on all the members of the Moscow Munici- 
 pality, and then led them into the presence of the Tsar, thus 
 symbolising his future co-operation in the great man's work. 
 As early as 1700, he seems to have performed the duties of 
 major-domo in the Sovereign's house, and to have occupied 
 a quite special place in his affections. In his letters Peter 
 calls him ' Mm Herzenskind' (child of my heart), * Min beslcr 
 
 ^ Hruce's JSIcmoirs, p. 76. 
 
 ^ The instances quoted by Ousirialof (vol. iv. p. 2io) in siniport of his contrary 
 assertion of signatures to which the favourite is saiil to have added such post- 
 scripts as vzial (receise<l). or ptinial i s/'isa/sia (received and answeredji, are not 
 conclusive. Catherine's tcstiriiony is far more convincing See also EssipoPs 
 Bio^iaphy (Russian Archives, 1S75, ^'^1 "■ P- 5^9^ '^"^' Koiirakin (Archives, 
 vol. i. p. 76). ^ Leiter to Grinim, Jan. 20lh, 1776 (Sbornik). 
 
2oS PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Fraut' (my best friend), or even 'J//// Ihudcr] forms which 
 he never used in addrcssini^ any other person. The favour- 
 ite's answers arc couched in etjuall}' famihar terms, and — 
 this detail is very significant — he never adds an}' formula of 
 respect before his signature, although Sheremetief himself 
 alwa}s signed ' Naiposlicdnieishy'i rab tvoV (the lowest of 
 )'our slaves).^ 
 
 According to general contemporary opinion, there was 
 soinething more than mere friendship in this connection. 
 Teter's indiftcrence to imputations of a vicious nature was, 
 and always remained, very singular. A master-at-arms, in 
 the Preobrajenski regiment, convicted, in 1702, of having 
 spoken in the most open manner on this odious subject, 
 was merely relegated to a distant garrison. Such incidents 
 happened several times over.'^ 
 
 Yet the favourite certainly had mistresses — two sisters, 
 Daria and Barbara Arscnief — both of them maids of honour 
 to the Tsarevna Nathalia, the Sovereign's favourite sister. 
 He wrote them common letters, and they may be concluded 
 to have thought it better not to betray any sign of jealousy. 
 Jie ended by marrying the eldest, in connection with whom 
 Peter appears to have had some personal obligation of a 
 doubtful character. When Menshikof led Daria to the altar, 
 he did so in obedience to a sort of order from his august 
 friend, inspired by some mysterious scruple. Here we have 
 an unexplained case of con.science, a confused and darkly- 
 shadowed corner in the Tsar's personal history, full of 
 dubious secrets and strange promiscuities, which tempt and 
 yet repel the enquiring student. In 1703, the two triends, 
 'although unworthy,' — so runs Peter's letter to Apraxin, — 
 were made Knights of St Andrew, on the very same day.^ 
 And then Alexashkds wonderful fairy tale began. 
 
 In 1706, he was a Prince of the Holy P2mpire ; the follow- 
 ing year, after his victory over the Sw-cdish general Marde- 
 leldt, at Kalisz, he assumed the rank of a sovereign Russian 
 prince {Vladictielnyi rousskn Ktiiaz), with the title of Duke 
 of Ijora, and the whole of Ingria as his hereditary appanage. 
 He was also Count of Dubrovna, of Gorki, and of Potchep ; 
 hereditary Sovereign of Oranienbaum and of Batourin ; 
 Generalissimo ; Member of the Chief Council ; Marshal of 
 
 * Wyttiitf^s and Correspjudcnce of Piter the Great, vol. iii. pp. 7S0-7S2. 
 " Russian Archives, 1875, vol. ii. p. 236. ^ Ibid. 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 209 
 
 the Empire ; President of the MiHtary Administration ; 
 Admiral of the Red ; Governor-General of St Petersburg ; 
 Lieutenant-Colonel of the Preobrajenski Regiment, and also 
 of the two regiments of the Body Guard ; Captain of the 
 Bombardier Company ; and Knight of the Orders of St 
 Andrew, St Alexander, the Elephant, the White and the 
 Black Eagle. 
 
 Even this did not suffice him. In 171 1, he was negotiat- 
 ing with the Dowager Duchess of Courland to buy up her 
 title and her Duchy. The next year, being confident of 
 success, he caused the officials of the country to make their 
 subjection to him.^ Though obliged, by the indignation of 
 the Polish Court, to delay taking definite possession of the 
 Duchy, he would not renounce his hope of ultimate success, 
 and revenged himself on the Polish lords, by forcing them 
 to sell him huge tracts of country at an enormous sacrifice. 
 He added enormous wealth to all his other splendours. In 
 the Ukraine he bargained with Mazeppa for the whole dis- 
 trict of Potchep, and even took possession of property there, 
 which actually belonged to Cossack officers. A stake adorned 
 with his arms, set up in any village, equalled a proprietory 
 title. He had no hesitation, in case of necessity, about 
 adding a gallows. He undertook commercial speculations, 
 too, which, backed as they were by his almost absolute 
 power, could not fail to be lucrative. In conjunction with 
 Tolstoi" and the Jew Shafirof, he set up factories, which he 
 endowed with arbitrary privileges.- 
 
 The only limit his power knew, was the Sovereign's 
 periodical repentances, which were always followed by 
 measures of repression directed against the favourite's 
 abuses. With these exceptions, his dictatorship was, in a 
 sense, more absolute than Peter's own, for it was never 
 limited, in Menchikof's case, by any higher considerations. 
 If the Imperial resident, Pleyer, is to be believed, he even 
 went so far as to countermand the Tsar's own orders. He 
 would ill-treat the Tsarevitch in his father's presence, seizing 
 him by the hair and throwing him on the ground. The 
 Tsarevny all bowed down before him.^ 
 
 What was the real value of the man, and how was it that 
 
 ^ Despatch from de Bie to the States General, 26ili April, 1712 (Archives of 
 the Hague). - Karnovitch, Great Knssiun fortunes, p. 120, etc, 
 
 ' Oubtrialof. vol. iv. part ii. pp. 613, 628, 656. 
 
2IO PETER THE GREAT 
 
 he dared and possessed so much? From the military' point 
 of view, he had neither knowiedt^c nor even bravery. ' lie 
 lacked experience, kno\viedt;e, and courage,' to quote W'liit- 
 worth.^ I^ut he showed great endurance in bad fortune, was 
 full of dash when the fickle goddess smiled, and in any 
 case his energy never failed him. ' Active, enterprising,' 
 says Cam[M-edon, adding, ' far from discreet, inclined to 
 falsehood, ready to do an)-thing for the sake of money.' ^ 
 That strange mixture of serious-mindedness and puerilit}', 
 which was so characteristic of Peter, was equally evident in 
 the case of his alter ego. In August 1708, — when just about 
 to cross the Beresina, and to fight a battle, which the Swedes 
 ardently desired, and which he himself desired to avoid, — I 
 find him absorbed in the new liveries for the German ser- 
 vants he was sending to his wife. This matter of detail 
 seems to have had enormous importance in his e}'es. While 
 he measured gold lace and sketched out pocket flaps, Charles 
 XII. manoeuvred in such a manner that the battle became 
 inevitable. Yet, in the result, it was less disastrous for the 
 Russian troops than might have been expected. The steadi- 
 ness with which they resisted the shock gave presage of 
 their future victory. The favourite had pulled himself 
 together. In later years, Patiomkin would appear to have 
 been much of the same school. 
 
 At Poltava he wasted twenty-four hours before under- 
 taking a pursuit, which, if it had followed more immedi- 
 ately on the defeat of the Swedes, would infallibly ha\e 
 left Charles and the remnants of his beaten army in their 
 conqueror's hands. By the tiine he came up with Lowen- 
 haupt on the banks of the Dnieper, the king had reached 
 the other bank, and the favourite, who only had a strong 
 body of cavalry with him, found himself in a somewhat 
 awkward position. But his lucky star and his audacity 
 combined to save him. lie made as though the whole 
 victorious army were close upon his heels. The enemy, 
 already beaten and demoralised, allowed itself to be deceived, 
 and L(")wenhaupt capitulated. 
 
 In the administrative department he chiefly used his 
 talents to enrich himself He was a bold and, for the most 
 part, unchecked thief In 17 14, the excess to which he 
 
 ' Despatch, Sept. 17, 1708 (Sbornik. vol. i. p. 64). 
 ' May 3id, 1725 (French Foreign Office). 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 211 
 
 carried his depredations did, indeed, bring about an enquiry, 
 which drag^ged on indefinitely. But he was crafty. He 
 produced old accounts, according to which the Treasury 
 owed him far larger sums than those claimed from him. 
 And when, after four whole years, he found himself without 
 an answer to a fresh accusation, he betook himself to Peter's 
 presence, and addressed him somewhat after the following 
 fashion : — ' These accusers and examiners of mine, none of 
 them know what they are talking about, nor what they do ; 
 they are making a fuss about trifles. If they choose to call 
 the personal use I may have made of certain sums, of which 
 I had the handling, a robbery, they are out of their reckon- 
 ing altogether. Yes, I stole the 100,000 roubles of which 
 Nieganovski speaks. I have stolen a great deal more, — how 
 much, I do not know myself After Poltava I found con- 
 siderable sums of money in the Swedish camp. I took 
 some 20,000 roubles for my own use. Your steward, Kour- 
 batof, a very honest man, has several times over given me 
 other sums, drawn from your exchequer, both in coin and 
 bullion. At Lubeck I received 5000 ducats, and double that 
 sum at Hamburg ; in Mecklenburg and the German Swedish 
 possessions, 12,000 thalers ; at Dantzig, 20,000, and more that 
 I have forgotten. I have used the authority you gave me 
 after my own fashion. 1 have done, on a large scale, what 
 other men about you do on a small one. If I have been 
 wrong, I should have been warned before.' 
 
 Peter was disarmed. He felt the blame was partly his, 
 and once more he passed the sponge across the slate. But 
 fresh accusations came pouring in. A credit of 21,000 
 roubles, assigned in 1706, for cavalry remounts, had utterly 
 disappeared. The same thief had clone the work. This 
 time the military authorities interfered, and the favourite 
 was condemned to loss of his military rank and functions. 
 Once more Peter forgave him. But the original enquiry 
 went on, and others were added to it, arising out of the 
 Imperial minion's breaches of trust in Poland, in Pomerania, 
 in the government of St. Petersburg, — everywhere, in fact, 
 where he could lay his hand, and there was hardly a pro- 
 vince or an administrative department which escaped 
 it. The Tsar grew weary at last. His favourite's insati- 
 able greed threatened to cause diplomatic friction. The 
 Dutch Resident accused Zotof, the governor of Revel, of 
 
212 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 squeezing the merchants belonging to his country, and 
 dividing the produce of his exactions with Menshikof. 
 Year by year Peter's regard grew colder. Little by little 
 the old familiar intercourse died away. One day at last, in 
 a fit of displeasure, he threatened to send the incorrigible 
 thief back to his old life. That very evening, Menshikof 
 entered his presence, dressed as a pastry-cook, with a basket 
 on his head, calling out, ' I sell fresh-baked piroguis.' The 
 Tsar burst out laughing. The traitor had more than one 
 string to his bow. He had Catherine's constant, unvarying, 
 faithful support. She had been his mistress, and she never 
 forgot it. He also played on the Tsar's passionate affection 
 for his second wife's son, little Peter Petrovitch. He never 
 neglected, during the sovereign's absences, to send him con- 
 stant news of his ' priceless treasure,' telling how he played 
 at soldiers, repeating his childish phrases, and going into 
 ecstasies over his charms. But, above all things, he was the 
 one man on whom, putting integrity apart, Peter could ab- 
 solutely reckon to second him, or supply his place, with a 
 vigour, a resolution, and resourcefulness which never failed. 
 An army sent into Finland, under Apraxin, was in danger 
 of being starved to death. Peter was away. The Senate, 
 when appealed to, came to no decision ; the merchants re- 
 fused to deliver food, unless it was paid for ; and the treasury 
 was empty. Menshikof ordered the stores to be broken 
 open, laid hands on all the provisions he could find, and sent 
 them off to Abo. There was a desperate outcry ; the 
 senators, who were all more or less interested in the corn 
 trade, threatened to have the favourite arrested. He faced 
 the storm bravely, and had no difficulty, when the Tsar re- 
 turned, in justifx'ing his action. His bold stroke had saved 
 the troops in Finland. 
 
 And lastl)', the unworthincss of his accusers was in his 
 favour. One of them, Kourbatof, was himself convicted of 
 fraud in 1 721, and heavily fined. Thus, till the end, Men- 
 shikof held his own, more and more closely threatened, but 
 always contriving to float. In 1723, when for the twentieth 
 time, Catherine ventured to take up the cudgels for him, 
 Peter broke in roughl)', ' Menshikof came into the world just 
 as he has lived, his mother bore him in sin, and he will die a 
 knave. If he does not amend his ways, he will end by hav- 
 ing his head cut off.' The old affection had quite died out. 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 213 
 
 Even the favourite's wit, which had so often wrung the Tsar's 
 forgiveness from him, no longer served him as it once had 
 done. Peter, coming into his palace, saw the walls bare, and 
 the great rooms stripped of furniture. He enquired the 
 reason of this desolation. ' I have had to sell my hangings 
 and my furniture to pay the fines imposed upon me.' ' Well, 
 buy them back, or I will double the fine.' 
 
 The charm was broken. Menshikof was removed from 
 the presidency of the military administration ; he was forced 
 to disgorge the 15,000 serfs he had stolen in Mazeppa's 
 former domains.^ At the time of Peter's death, he was 
 living in semi - disgrace. When Catherine succeeded, 
 he attained to yet greater position and power, saw his 
 daughter on the very steps of the throne, and then, on the 
 eve of that supreme triumph, his fortune crumbled be- 
 neath his feet, and he ended his days in exile, on a daily 
 pittance of a few copecks. I have no concern, in this place, 
 with that latter half of his career; I may perhaps return to 
 h on a future occasion. 
 
 I cannot, whatever may have been imagined and asserted 
 on this subject, accept this collaborator of the Tsar's as a 
 man of great intelligence ; but he must be recognised and 
 appreciated as a force which, — used by Peter, serving as it did 
 the mightiest will known in modern history before Napoleon's 
 time, and so sent whirling across the wild uncultivated steppes 
 of the Russia of those days, to open up that wilderness, — had 
 a special value of its own. It overthrew all obstacles, it 
 broke down all resistance, and, like some fiercely- rushing, 
 muddy river, it carried fruitful germs in its mire-stained and 
 turbid waters. 
 
 The man himself, haughty, brutal, covetous, and cruel, was 
 neither loveable nor loved. When, in 1706, his house at 
 Moscow was burnt down, the whole town openly rejoiced.- 
 Peter did not complain. He always had a secret leaning 
 towards those of his servants who could not rely on any- 
 thing, or any person, save himself. 
 
 ^ For Menshikofs biography see Essipof, Solovief, vol. xvi, p. Z'^i, etc. ; 
 Golikof, vol. vi. p. 407, etc. ; Nartof, p. 47, etc. ; Posselt, vol. i. p. 545, etc. 
 ^ Russian Archives, 1S75, part ii. p. 49 (Esbipof). 
 
SI4 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 II 
 
 I now come to the second order of the Tsar's collaborators. 
 Some of them, and these not the most interesting, belong to 
 the old nobility. Feodor Alcxicicvitch Golovin, who was 
 called, after Lefort's death, to the chief place at the Admiralty, 
 and to the head of the Office of Foreign Envoys {Posolskoi 
 Prikaz), — the Foreign Office of those days, — was neither a 
 sailor nor a diplomat. His only claims to distinction con- 
 sisted in the fact that his brother Ale.xis had married one of 
 Menshikofs sisters, that one of his minions, named lagou- 
 jinski, was later to be specially favoured by the Tsar, and 
 that he wore the distinctive symbol of his naval dignity, a 
 compass, with a most majestic air. Apraxin, who suc- 
 ceeded him as Lord High Admiral, in 1706, possessed more 
 serious qualities, but a great part of his success and superi- 
 ority was due to the presence of the Norwegian sailor, 
 Cruys, at the Admiralty Board. He was heartily jealous of 
 his subaltern, and seized an opportunity of getting rid of 
 him, vv'hich presented itself in 1713, with shameful eagerness. 
 A court martial, presided over by the Lord High Admiral, 
 condemned the foreign sailor to death, in consequence of 
 the loss of a ship caused by some misunderstanding about a 
 signal. This ancestor of a noble family, the aristocratic 
 pretensions of which are, it must be confessed, disputed by 
 many genealogists, was anything but chivalrous ! Cruys, 
 whose sentence was commuted by Peter to one of perpetual 
 banishment, was soon back in St. Petersburg ; nothing went 
 right at the Admiralty after he left it. 
 
 The Presidency of the Posolskoi Prikaz, with the title 
 of Chancellor, passed from Golovin to another mere 
 figurehead, Gabriel Ivanovitch Golovkin. Peter, who in- 
 augurated the system which Catherine H. was largely to 
 develop, had a fondness for separating titles from their 
 functions, and found this an easy means of gratifying his 
 taste for low-born favourites. Having reduced the titular 
 minister to a mere dummy, he caused the actual work of his 
 foreign policy to be performed b\- such men as Ostermann 
 and lagoujinski. Gabriel Ivanovitch, who had been one of 
 the Sovereign's childish playfellows, and later one of his 
 most constant boon companions, and, who, it may be added, 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 215 
 
 was related to him throui^h the Naryshkin, had a fine 
 aptitude for taking his master's tone. He thus addresses 
 him in an official letter — ' Your Majesty has condescended 
 to insinuate that my gout was the result of too much 
 devotion to Venus. I owe it to your Majesty to inform 
 you of the real truth, which is, that in my case the trouble 
 rather arises from excess in drinking.' In the matter of 
 honesty he was no better than his fellows. He was gener- 
 ally supposed to be in Mazeppa's pay, and in December 
 17 1 4, Peter reproached him, before the assembled Senate, 
 with the frauds, of which he had been convicted in conjunc- 
 tion with Menshikof, with regard to military supplies.^ 
 
 Peter found some better servants, as far, at all events, as 
 intelligence went, among the ranks of the old aristocracy. 
 Tolstoi, who belonged to this class, fully justified the Tsar's 
 remark — ' Any one who has anything to do with him had 
 better put a stone in his pocket with which to draw his 
 teeth.' And this other, dropped with a kiss on the for- 
 midable politician's brow, ' Oh ! head, head, if I had not 
 known you to be so clever, I should have cut you off long 
 ago ! ' Tolstoi's services, shameful, some of them, but all 
 of them remarkable in their way, — he acted at one time as a 
 diplomat at Vienna and Constantinople, at another as a 
 spy on the unhappy Alexis, — earned him the blue ribbon of 
 knighthood, a seat in the Senate, and an enormous landed 
 property. His teeth were not drawn until after Peter's death. 
 When he was eighty-two years old, he came into conflict 
 with Menshikof, and ended by tasting the bitterness of exile, 
 on the inhospitable shores of the White Sea.^ 
 
 Another aristocrat, Boris Ivariovitch Kourakin, appears 
 on the threshold of the eighteenth century, — the earliest and 
 already supremely attractive incarnation of the high-born 
 Russian diplomatist, with whom, since those daj's, Europe 
 has grown familiar, — full of Oriental cunning and Slavonic 
 adaptability, — as much in love with literature as a frequenter 
 of the Hotel Rambouillet, — and as passionately fond of 
 every kind of elegance as a Versailles courtier. He entered 
 the Tsar's family by his marriage with Xenia Lapouhin, 
 the sister of Peter's first wife. He contrived to make the 
 most of this relationship, at the favourable moment, and, 
 
 1 De Bie to the States General, Dec. 21, 1714 (Archives of the Hague). 
 
 2 Popof, Stu<iy of 'lolstoi {Old and New Russia), 1875. 
 
 15 
 
2i6 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 later on, to cause it to be fori^otten. lie bec^an his career 
 at a very early age — first of all as the representative of 
 Russia in London, at the Court of Queen Anne, then in 
 Hanover, at that of the future King of England, and finally 
 in Paris, during the Regency, and the early years of Louis 
 XV.'s reign. He died in 1727, before he had reached the 
 age of fifty. In the course of his diplomatic career he strikes 
 us as having been sorely puzzled, more than once, as to his 
 personal behaxiour, but he alwaj's contrived to maintain his 
 own dignity and that of his country, hiding his ignorance 
 and awkwardness under a mantle of pride and charm, which 
 never failed him. 
 
 But I must keep this list within limits. The most interest- 
 ing figure in the group is certain!}- that of Basil Nikititch 
 Tatishtchcf, descended from Rourik, through the Princes of 
 Smolensk, and the progenitor of a race of men as turbulently 
 active as himself. Here we have the diciaticl par excellence, 
 — Peter's best pupil. He was brought up in a school at 
 Moscow, kept by a P"renchman. When he left it, Peter sent 
 him abroad, with Nicplouief, and a number of other young 
 men, to complete his education. Some of these, Nicplouief 
 amongst the number, were already married. Travelling by 
 Revel, Copenhagen and Hamburg, they went to Amsterdam, 
 where they found a whole colony of Russian students. 
 Twenty-seven of their number were forthwith despatched 
 to Venice, where they were to take service with the fleets of 
 the Republic. Thus Nicplouief took part in an expedition 
 against the Island of Corfu. The whole of the Mediterranean 
 and the Atlantic coa t from Cadiz to Genoa was dotted, in 
 those days, with these Russian student apprentices. Special 
 agents, — Beklcmishef for Southern Europe, Prince Ivan 
 Lvof for Holland, and one of the Zotofs for France, — were 
 deputed to overlook and direct their travels, and their work. 
 When they returned home, Peter awaited them in his 
 cabinet, and at six o'clock in the morning, candle in hand, 
 — for it was mid -winter and the sun had not risen — he 
 verified their geographical knowledge, by the map, treating 
 them very roughly, if they did not do themselves credit, and 
 showing them his toil-worn hands, which he had hardened 
 purposely ' as an example to all the world.' ^ 
 
 ' Nieplouiefs Mcmoits, p. 103. Piekarski's Science and Literature in Russia, 
 pp. 141, 142. 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 217 
 
 Thus prepared, Ni6plouief served his country as a diplomat 
 in Turkey, as Chief of the Administration in Little Russia, 
 and as Director of Mines in the Ural. Tatishtchef far sur- 
 passed him in many-sidedness, in the ease with which he 
 applied his powers to every kind of duty, and in untiring 
 activity. He was a model pupil, who spent his whole life 
 reciting his well-learnt lesson. Like his master, he was per- 
 petually on the move, and had his finger everywhere, — in 
 military matters, diplomacy, finance, administration, science, 
 trade and manufactures. Like him, he was an eager worker, 
 deeply sensible of his own responsibility. Like him, he 
 lived a life of perpetual activity, and was perpetually stirring 
 others up to action. Like him, he was universal, superficial, 
 and minute ; like him too, — though bound to the East with 
 bonds that still held him closely, — he deliberately turned his 
 face, and mind, in the very opposite direction. He was 
 present at the taking of Narva in 1704. In 171 1, while 
 accompanying Peter along that fatal road which was to lead 
 them to the banks of the Pruth, he made all sorts of en- 
 quiries and archaeological excavations, in the hope of dis- 
 covering the tomb of Igor, Rourik's legendary son. Then, 
 going abroad again, he spent several years in Berlin, Breslau 
 and Dresden, immersed in fresh studies, and busily collect- 
 ing a library. A little later, I find him peforming diplomatic 
 functions at the Congress of Aland, Then, again, he engages 
 in a huge undertaking — that of preparing a general atlas of 
 the Russian dominions. And later yet, Peter, just starting 
 for his Persian Campaign, is offered a book to peruse on the 
 journey, a 'Chronicle of Mourom,' written by the Diciatlcl, who 
 suddenly appears in the character of a historian. And even 
 this did not suffice. He was sent into the Ural, where the 
 search for copper mines had not been crowned with complete 
 success. He started without delay, reported serious flaws in 
 the local administration, denounced the oppression which the 
 native tribes had suffered at the hands of the agents of the 
 Central Power, founded the town of Ekaterinenburg — destined 
 to play such an important part in the future development of 
 the mining industry — established schools for the people, and 
 yet found time to learn French, with the help of a grammar 
 received during his stay at Aland. 
 
 At the time of Peter's death he was still a young man. 
 He continued to take an active and personal share in affairs 
 
2i8 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 (jf the most varied kind, and at his death, left behind him 
 a considerable Uterary work, which has been pubHshed by 
 Muller. It comprises three volumes of Russian histor)', to 
 which — thanks to a discovery of Pof^odin — two others were 
 later added, and an Encyclopaedic Dictionary, carried up 
 to the letter L. The value of these literary efforts, which 
 was sharply attacked by the ei<^hteenth century historians, 
 led b)' Schlc3zer, has been considerably vindicated since their 
 time. 
 
 Tatishtchef was no exception to the common rule. He 
 was removed from his offices by his master in 1722, in con- 
 sequence of accusations brought against him by Nikita 
 Demidof, and, like so many others, died in exile, though 
 more stoically than most of his fellows. When he was 
 seventy years old, feeling his end approaching, he mounted 
 his horse, rode to the parish church, heard Mass, went on to 
 the grave}-ard, chose his own place there, and bespoke the 
 priest's attendance for the following day. He breathed his 
 last at the very hour he had foretold, just as the last 
 sacraments were being administered to him.^ 
 
 Peter was honoured, and singularl\- fortunate, in having a 
 man of so much real worth and moral character about him, 
 at a period when he was surrroundcd by such beings as 
 Zotof and Nadajinski, that strange Confessor, whose hand 
 he would kiss at the close of Mass, and whose nose he would 
 pull five minutes afterwards ;'- a man whose drinking powers 
 he backed, while in Paris, against those of Dubois' secretary, — 
 also a priest, and a noted toper. When, within an hour, the 
 P'rench Abbe rolled under the table, Peter cast his arms 
 about the victor's neck, and congratulated him on having 
 ' saved the honour of Russia.' This Nadajinski left enormous 
 wealth behind him. Other men, and of a very different 
 stamp, happily, helped Peter to lay the foundations of his 
 country's greatness. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Tatishtchef's character and origin have both earned him 
 a special place in the list of the contemporary 'makers' of 
 the great reign. 
 
 ^ Popof, TalishlchtJ and his Times. IJestoujet-Rioumin, Study in Old and 
 New Russia, 1875. - Pbllnitz's Memoirs, 1791, vul, ii. p. 66. 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 219 
 
 lagoujinski, the son of an organist and schoolmaster, 
 ennployed by the Lutheran community in Moscow, began 
 by performing the functions of a boot-black, to which he 
 added others on the subject of which ' decency,' so Weber 
 puts it, 'forbids' him 'to enlarge.'^ Thus it came about 
 that Count Golovin, one of his employers, bethought him 
 of placing the boot-black in Peter's service, with the object 
 of counteracting Menchikof's influence. The new comer 
 was superior, in one respect, to the old favourite. Like 
 him he was a thief, but he made no secret of his thievery, 
 and kept it, too, within more reasonable limits. When the 
 Sovereign spoke, in his presence, of having every peculator 
 hanged, he made that celebrated answer, ' Does your 
 Majesty desire to get rid of all your subjects?' 
 
 He was faithful, too, after a fashion of his own ; he never 
 betrayed the cause which his protector had sent him to 
 champion. He fought resolutely against Menshikof, and 
 was not afraid to enter into open struggle with the 
 favourite's great protectress, Catherine herself. His cour- 
 age, far exceeding his talents, — which indeed appear to 
 have been very moderate, — was his only claim to his 
 position as Public Prosecutor ; one in which he showed a 
 world of energy, and a severity for other people's weak- 
 nesses, only equalled by the indulgence he claimed for his 
 own. But the great favourite, who felt his own omni- 
 potence encroached on, had his revenge at last, and, after 
 Peter's death, lagoujinski was seen in a state of intoxica- 
 tion — for he practised every kind of excess — stretched 
 upon the newly-closed coffin, tearing the funeral pall with 
 his finger nails, and calling up the avenging shade of the 
 mighty dead. 
 
 Like lagoujinski, Shafirof (Peter Pavlovitch) was of 
 Polish-Lithuanian origin, but his antecedents are more 
 shadowy and obscure. His grandfather, who had settled 
 at Orsha, in the Province of Smolensk, wai^ called Shafir, 
 and bore the surname common amongst his Jewish kindred, 
 down to the present day, of Shaia or ShaToushka. He was 
 a broker, an individual who even now would seem an 
 indispensable adjunct to the surroundings of most Russian 
 country gentlemen. The long greasy gaberdine he wore, 
 unmistakably indicated the functions he performed, and 
 
 ^ H. Hermann, Peier der Grosse unci der Tsarevitch Alexei, 1880, p. 178. 
 
220 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 the race from whence he sprung, Peter Pavlovitch dis- 
 carded the gaberdine, but he preserved all the other dis- 
 tinctive qualities of the type. The Tsar took him out of a 
 shop at Moscow, and bestowed him on Golovkin, to assist 
 him with his correspondence; — all Jews, Polish or otherwise, 
 have a talent for languages. When, after the Battle of 
 Poltava, Golovkin was made Chancellor, his assistant rose 
 with him, and the former cloth-merchant's clerk became 
 Vice-Chancellor. He really directed all the foreign 
 relations of the country. And he did his work well. In 
 that perilous business on the Pruth, his talents worked a 
 miracle, and saved, or something very like it, both the Tsar 
 and his Empire. This put him on the pinnacle of his 
 glory. He had grown rich, of course, — he had been made 
 a baron, — equally of course, — he had married five of his 
 daughters into the greatest families in the countr)', Dol- 
 gorouki, Golovin, Gagarin, Hovanski, and Soltykof 
 Suddenly, there came a gust of wind, — and he was swept 
 away. Menshikof, whose own harvest he had prematurely 
 reaped, the Chancellor Golovkin, whose accession he had 
 too openly coveted, and Ostermann, — himself a parvenu, 
 who desired to stand in the Vice-Chancellor's shoes, took 
 advantage of one of Peter's prolonged absences, to plot his 
 ruin. On the 15th of P'ebruary, 1723, he was actually on 
 the scaffold, his head already laid on the block, and ' the 
 executioner's assistants pulling at his feet, so that his great 
 belly might touch the ground.'^ But he escaped death. 
 One of Peter's secretaries arrived, just in time, with a letter 
 commuting his sentence to perpetual banishment. He 
 attended the Senate for the ratification of this letter, and, 
 according to the testimony of an eye-witness, ' trembling 
 still, and with death in his face,' he received the congratu- 
 lations and hand-clasps of his colleagues, who had un- 
 animously sentenced him to execution. He took measures, 
 of course, which resulted in his not being sent to Siberia, 
 was imprisoned at Novgorod, and there patiently awaited 
 Peter's death. The moment this event took place, he 
 recovered his liberty, re-entered political life, as President 
 of what we should call the Board of Trade, and, by means 
 of new commercial operations, soon recovered his confiscated 
 fortune. 
 
 1 Biischings- Magazin , vol. xxi. p. 195. Solovief, vol. xviii. p. 141. 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 221 
 
 His father's sister married another baptized Jew, who, 
 under a borrowed name, became the progenitor of another 
 family of agents, which played a prominent part in the 
 diplomatic history of the reign, the Viesselovski. 
 
 The P}ybylslitcliiks, — agents specially connected with the 
 Exchequer, and inventors of new sources of revenue 
 {Pryhy/c, profit) — form a class apart in the great category of 
 the Dielatiels. Of this class, Kourbatof was the most 
 eminent representative. His figure, a new one then to 
 Russia, and even to Europe in general, is that of the true 
 modern financier, greedy of gain, but always desirous of 
 preserving a nice balance in fiscal matters. Peter himself 
 could not always rise to the level of this advocate of wise 
 economic formulas, and ended by sacrificing him to the 
 spite of that fierce Inquisitor, Romodanovski, whose 
 sanguinary excesses Kourbatof had ventured to disapprove. 
 The man was certainly not immaculate, and his conduct 
 in the unimportant position of Vice- Governor of Arch- 
 angel, to which he was finally relegated, even appears to 
 have justified his disgrace. None the less, he appears before 
 us as the victim of that struggle between two worlds, 
 two conceptions of the State, and two ideas of social 
 existence, the right side of which the great Sovereign him- 
 self did not always succeed in keeping. 
 
 This struggle is even more sharply and more dramatically 
 defined in the story of the unfortunate Joseph Alexieievitch 
 Solovief, the son of an Archangel merchant, whom Peter 
 first of all appointed a Director of Customs, and afterwards, 
 his commercial agent and banker in Holland. Solovief, 
 whose financial operations had attained considerable im- 
 portance, was involved, in 17 17, in the disgrace which befel 
 one of his brothers, who filled a modest position in Men- 
 shikofs household. He was prosecuted, extradited, given 
 over to the Secret Police, and finally acknowledged 
 innocent. But his legs and arms had been broken in the 
 Torture Chamber, and all his fortune, somewhere about a 
 million of roubles, had utterly disappeared. 
 
 Solovief was but a ' common fellow.' Possoshkof, who 
 shared this disability, gives an amusing, though a sad 
 enough description of the relations of people of his own 
 class with the mighty ones of the day. Here is his own 
 story of his adventures with Prince Dimitri Mihailovitch 
 
222 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Galitzin, from whom he requested permission, in 17 19, to 
 establish a brandy distillery. At that period the Russian 
 Montesquieu, who had some private property, possessed 
 influential relations, and was Kourbatof's partner in several 
 industrial enterprises, had already attained a certain im- 
 portance. Vet no one, to judi^e by the answer his 
 petition received, would dream it. Without a word of 
 explanation, he was laid violent hands on, and cast into 
 prison. At first he was astounded, then he bewailed his 
 fate, and finally, after a week, ventured to recall the fact of 
 his existence to the absent-minded Bo\'ard. ' Why am I 
 in prison ? ' he asked. ' Why the devil is this man in 
 prison?' enquired Galitzin; and as no one could answer 
 the question, he signed an order for Possoshkof's release. 
 
 This love of summary methods, and haughty scorn of 
 individual rights, was equally acceptable to the old Russian 
 spirit, and to the revolutionary tendencies of the modern 
 party. Possoshkof himself was their accomplice. He was 
 a violent partizan, both of Peter's reforms and of the 
 extreme measures he cmploj-ed to ensure their success. He 
 would gladly, even, have increased their merciless severity. 
 In his eagerness to inculcate the theories of that economic 
 school, of which the Prybylshtchiks, led by Kourbatof, were 
 the practical exponents, he would fain have called all that 
 intolerance, over-haste, and excessive zeal, so dear to all 
 sectarians, to his aid. His fate resembled that of most of 
 his fellows. Nothing, he believed, but the iron ploughshare 
 and the devouring fire could suffice to open the soil of his 
 native land, which for ages had lain fallow and briar-grown. 
 The terrible machine he helped to set in motion crushed 
 and destroyed himself How did it come about that, although 
 from one end to the other of his career, and by the solitary 
 effort of a thought which evidently sprang from the same 
 source, he walked, as it were, on Peter's flank, he never 
 succeeded, even temporarily, in entering into close relations 
 with him ? In this respect his case was an altogether special 
 one. He had ideas to dispose of, and Peter seems to have 
 had a settled determination never to accej^t anything of the 
 kind from his own people. Apart from that, the general 
 tendency of the reign was towards equality, and the great 
 Tsar would have had no scruple about taking a inoujik to be 
 his helper, and even his closest companion. Of this the 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 223 
 
 story of the Demidofs gives clear proof. The history of the 
 beginnings of the Demidof fortune — the doubtful anecdote of 
 the pistol marked with the name — in those days a celebrated 
 one — of Kuchenreiter, and confided to a workman at Toula, 
 who had undertaken to mend it, and the Tsar's colloquy 
 with the young gunsmith, — is in common knowledge. 
 
 The Tsar: 'Ah! if we could only make pistols like 
 that.' 
 
 The Gunsmith : ' That's no very difficult matter.' 
 
 The Tsar (with an oath and a box on the ear) : ' Do the 
 work first, rascal, and then you may boast.' 
 
 The Locksmith : ' Look closely first, Batioushka, and see. 
 The pistol you admire is of my making. Here is its fellow.' 
 
 The gunsmith was then known as Antoufief ; his father, 
 Demid Grigorevitch, a serf of the Crown, working as a 
 blacksmith in a village of Parshimo, in the district of 
 Alexin, and province of Toula, had settled in the prin- 
 cipal town of his province towards the year 1650. In 
 1694 — the date usually assigned to this first meeting with 
 the Sovereign, the reputed source of the proverbial riches of 
 the Demidof family, and of the present development of the 
 mineral industry in Russia, — the old blacksmith's son, 
 Nikita, was nearing his fortieth jear.^ He was a married 
 man, and Peter, so we are told, after having duly apologised, 
 invited himself to dinner in his cottage. The meal was a 
 cheerful one, and the Tsar paid the reckoning with a conces- 
 sion of ground in the neighbourhood of Toula, in which an 
 iron mine was to be opened and worked. This was a mere 
 beginning. By degrees the activity and enterprising spirit 
 of Nikita and his .son Akinfy (Hyacinth) were welcomed in 
 all the mines in the Ural. In 1707, Nikita was personally 
 ennobled under the name of Demidof. In 1720 his honour 
 was made hereditary, but he kept to his peasant dress ; and 
 Peter, though he always treated him with the greatest con- 
 sideration, continued to address him by his rustic and 
 familiar name of Demidytch. It was not only as a com- 
 mercial and business man, the founder of numerous works at 
 Shouralinsk, Vynorsk, Viershnietagilsk Nijnictagilsk, and 
 Douhomsk, that the Tsar valued Nikita. His gay and 
 jovial character, his turn for satire, and his biting wit, made 
 
 1 Russian Archives, 1878, vol. ii. p. 120. Karnovitch, Great Russian Fortunes, 
 p. 163, etc. 
 
224 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 him a worthy follower of Lcfort. He died at Toula in 1725, 
 at the at;c of 6S, Icavinc; behind him an immense fortune, 
 and — a prodij^ious and almost unique fact in those surround- 
 ings, and at that period — a reputation for perfect honesty. 
 Russian industry has more reason to congratulate itself on 
 this forefather than the Russian navy on the ancestor with 
 with which it pleased Peter to endow it, in the person of 
 Golovin. 
 
 Another peasant's name, one of the greatest in modern R us- 
 sian history — equally eminent in literature and science, but con- 
 nected also with much industrial endeavour and success — here 
 rises to my memory. When Poushkin asserted that Lomon- 
 ossof — historian, rhetorician, mechanic, chemist, mineralogist, 
 artist, and poet — was ' the first Russian University,' he hardly 
 said enough. The active period of Lomonossofs life (he 
 was born in 171 1) was not actually contemporary with 
 Peter's. Yet he belongs to that great period ; he was its 
 direct outcome and its worthy fruit — the very personification 
 of its genius, with all its civilising virtues, its deficiencies, 
 and its contradictions. His humble origin, though he never 
 forgot it, and rather took pride in it, did not prevent his prais- 
 ing even the lawsof serfdom, the rigour of which the Reformer 
 greatly increased, and from claiming — peasant as he was 
 himself — 200 peasants for the perpetual service of a factory 
 he had founded. Son of the people though he was, the 
 songs and ceremonies and popular legends of his country 
 were nothing to him but a remnant of a distant past, long 
 since gone by, and devoid of any save an historic interest. 
 One of the deepest and most expressive forms of the national 
 poetry, the BjltJics, traces of which may even now be dis- 
 covered in some of the northern provinces, entirely escaped 
 this poet's notice. He had no ear nor soul for anything but 
 the classic poetry of the west, with its strict forms, so soon 
 to fall out of date —the ode, the panegyric, the heroic poem, 
 the tragedy, and the didactic epistle. In literature, as in 
 science, he was very apt to consider his activity as a duty to 
 be performed in the Tsar's service, a kind of official task. 
 The universal process of requisitioning and enrolment, which 
 Peter's s)'stcm tended to carry even into matters of indi- 
 vidual intellect, and activity, is clearly denoted in this 
 peculiarity. 
 
 Yet Lomonossof pla)cd an important part in that swift 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 225 
 
 and general transformation, out of which modern Russia 
 rose. He imparted a powerful and definite impulse to that 
 mighty effort whereby the broken links of a chain which 
 parted in the thirteenth century, were welded afresh, and 
 his native country re-endowed with the intellectual patri- 
 mony common to the whole civilised world.^ 
 
 IV 
 
 Most of Peter's foreign collaborators, — so far, at least, as 
 appearances went, — were mere subalterns. They often did 
 all the work, but they generally remained in obscurity. 
 Peter would never have committed a fault, the crushing re- 
 sponsibility of which the Empress Anne was to assume in 
 later days, — that of putting his country under the direct 
 power of such a man as Buhren. As long as the great Tsar 
 reigned, Ogilvy, the Scotchman, might plan the battles, which 
 ended by checkmating Charles XII., but it was Shercmctief 
 who won them. 
 
 These foreigners, whether Scotchmen, Germans, or Dutch, 
 assimilated themselves to their local surroundings, — became 
 Russianized, in fact, — with the most extraordinary facility. 
 That shifty and eminently porous soil rapidly absorbed all 
 their native originality. The only thing which distinguished 
 Andrew Vinnius, the Russian-born son of a Dutch emigrant, 
 from his Muscovite surroundings, was his superior education. 
 He professed the religion of the country, he spoke its lan- 
 guage, he had even adopted its moral habits. He might be 
 Menshikof's superior in such particulars as the casting of 
 cannon, and the manufacture of gunpowder, — but in the 
 matter of filling his own pocket, he was very little better 
 indeed. And his fellows in the tumultuous stream of foreign 
 adventurers, which Peter let loose upon his country, belonged, 
 as a general rule, to the same order, and betrayed all the 
 defects of their profession. The germs of corruption and 
 degradation, which the Tartar conquest had sown in the 
 national soul, sprang into life, in answer to their touch. 
 
 James Bruce, a Scotchman, who passed at Court for a 
 chemist and astronomer of genius, and was held in the city 
 
 * Biliarski, Materials for Lomonossof s Biography ' (Si. Petersburg, 1865), 
 Lamanski, Lomonossof, Biogaphical Studies (St. Petersburg, 1864). 
 
226 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 for a sorcerer, had none of the qualities of a Newton or of 
 a Lavoisier, but many of the pccuHarities of an ordinary 
 sharper. Endless lawsuits, — for abuse of authority, pecula- 
 tion, dishonesty in the supply of his department (he was at 
 the head of the artillery), — brouc^ht him to loc^c^crheads with 
 justice. The Tsar always ended by forj^ivjnc^ him. There 
 was a certain dilettantism, and self-tauc^ht quality about the 
 rascal's knowledge, which was irresistibly attractive to Peter, 
 and which, in those surroundings, possessed a certain value 
 of its own. A whole legend had grown up round the light 
 which streamed, on long winter nights, from the windows of 
 his laborator}- in the Souharef l"ower. His astronomical 
 discoveries bordered closely on astrolog}-, and his celebrated 
 Calendar, published in 1711, is all moonshine. But it was 
 Bruce who organized and directed the Tsar's schools of 
 navigation, artillery, and military engineering ; he presided 
 over the Board of manufactures and of mines ; he was the 
 real inspirer of the learned correspondence which Peter 
 made believe to keep up with Leibnitz, and, on the occa- 
 sion of the Treaty of Nystadt, he gave proof of remarkable 
 diplomatic powers. 
 
 They were all much alike, ready for anything, doing many 
 useful things indifferently well, and remarkable, especially, 
 for cunning and energy. 
 
 At Nystadt, Bruce, whose success won him the title of 
 Count, and the grade of Marshal, had a colleague, Oster- 
 mann, a Westphalian, whose two years at the University of 
 Vienna had given him a reputation for learning. Campredon, 
 writing in 1725, thus sums up his capabilities: 'He knows 
 German, Italian and French, and thus makes himself indis- 
 pensable ; otherwise, his principal cleverness consists in jDCtti- 
 fogging chicanery, cunning, and dissimulation.' These 
 talents sufficed, — in a country where Golovkin was chan- 
 cellor, — to obtain him the dignity of vice-chancellor, in 
 succession to Shafirof, in 1723. But Campredon overlooks 
 one of his qualities — a most remarkable power of work. 
 Ostermann, to humour his master's suspicious instincts, 
 would c\'phcr and dcci|:)hcr his own despatches, sitting at 
 them whole cla\s and nights, without ever going out of doors, 
 or taking off the red vehct dressing-gown, which he wore 
 even on the i8th of January, 1724, when he ascended the 
 scaffold which his predecessor had mounted before him. 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 227 
 
 Like that predecessor, he was pardoned, and ended his days 
 in exile. 
 
 Beside the PoHsh Jev\^, Shafirof, we perceive the grotesque 
 outh'ne of the Portuguese Jew, Devier. Peter picked him up 
 in Holland, where he was serving as cabin boy on board a 
 merchant ship, in 1697. In 1705, he was an officer in the 
 Guard ; in 1709, he was Camp Commandant. In 171 1, desir- 
 ing to marry well, he fixed his choice on one of Menshikofs 
 sisters, who was both old and ugly. The favourite, looking 
 on his request for this lady's hand as a deliberate insult, 
 ordered his lacqueys to thrash the insolent suitor. Three 
 days later, the little Jew led the betrothed of his choice to 
 the altar. He had got out of the scrape, no one quite knew 
 how, alive, though sorely damaged in person, and covered 
 with blood as he was, had carried his complaint before the 
 Tsar, who promptly avenged him. Yet, crafty, supple, 
 humorous, and intensely servile as he was, he did not suc- 
 ceed in escaping fresh reverses. He was evidently predes- 
 tined to physical chastisement. In 17 18, he was the first 
 holder of a post, — then a new one in St. Petersburg, — of 
 general chief of police, and, in this quality, he had to accom- 
 pany Peter on a tour of inspection through the streets of the 
 capital. A broken-down bridge (Peter had consented to 
 have bridges built over the numerous canals, which he had 
 caused to be cut through the town) stopped the Tsar's 
 carriage. He alighted, and sent for materials with which to 
 repair the breach. He even put his hand to the work him- 
 self, then, when it was finished, laying down his tools, he 
 seized his doiibhia, and, without a word, bestowed a hearty 
 thrashing on the chief of his police. 1 his done, the sove- 
 reign returned to his carriage, beckoned to Devier to take 
 his place beside him, — ' Sadis brat', (sit down, brother), — and 
 quietly took up the thread of a conversation which had been 
 interrupted by the incident. And, yet again, that scarred 
 back was to feel the lash. In 1727, after Peter's death, 
 Menshikof, the Jew's unwilling brother-in-law, was to write 
 his vengeance there in bloody stripes. At the foot of the 
 decree which condemned the former chief of police to exile, 
 he added the words, ' Bit loiontoni', (let him be knoutcd).^ 
 
 My readers will remark the uniform and monotonous 
 
 ' Shoubinski, Historical Sketches, p. 77. Loupakof, Monopa^^h, in tlie 
 journal of the Moscow Polytechnic Exhibition, 1872, No. 99. 
 
228 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 tendency of all these brilliant careers, towards the same final 
 ami inevitable crash, in which some great historical verdict 
 and punishment would always seem to overshadow mere 
 personal revenge and petty spite. Whatever their origin, 
 whatever the line they took, these men, who none of them 
 cared for law or gospel, or for any principle of rule, save 
 that of their own interest and ambition, invariably ended by 
 faUing into the same ab\-ss. 
 
 The)- came from every corner of Europe. Munich, a 
 Bavarian, who began his extraordinary career as the con- 
 structor of the Ladoga Canal, elbowed Francois Guillemotte 
 de Villebois, a gentleman from Lower Brittany, who had 
 begun his career in France as a smuggler. Villebois' 
 Memoirs, which are full of exaggerations, and of assertions, 
 the falsehood of which have been clearly proved, are of little 
 value, either as regards Peter's history or his own.^ Accord- 
 ing to his story, he saved the vessel which carried the Tsar 
 from Holland to England from shipwreck. The Russian 
 Sovereign, ' who loved extraordinary men,' at once engaged 
 his services, and, from the subaltern position he then occu- 
 pied, Villebois, at a bound, became aide-de-camp, and captain 
 in the navy. I will not undertake to follow him too closely 
 through the details of the adventure for which, two years 
 later, he was condemned to the galleys. Having been sent 
 by Peter, during very cold weather, from Strelna to Kron- 
 stadt, with a message to Catherine, and having drunk a great 
 deal of brandy on the road to warm himself, the sudden 
 change of temperature, when he entered the Tsarina's bed- 
 chamber, completely overcame him. At the sight of the dis- 
 ordered couch and of the beautiful woman stretched upon it, 
 he lost his head and all his self-control, and calmly recounts 
 the consequences of his frenzy, which even the Sovereign's 
 screams, and the presence of her ladies in an adjoining 
 chamber, could not avert. Catherine is said to have suffered 
 severely from this outrage. As for Peter, — in spite of his 
 wife's condition, which necessitated careful surgical treatment, 
 — he appears to have taken the catastrophe very philosophic- 
 ally. 'The brute,' he said, 'did not know what he was doing, 
 so he is innocent ; but we must make an example of him, — 
 let him go to the galleys for a couple of years.' 
 
 ' Pul)lished, with certain omissions, in the Revue Retrospective, 3r(l series, 
 vol. xviii. p. 351, etc. The manuscript is in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 229 
 
 The only absolutely certain historical point about this 
 story is the condemnation to the galleys. Yet Villebois 
 does not seem to have stayed there more than six months. 
 At the end of that time he was pardoned, married, by the 
 Tsar's good offices, to the daughter of Gllick, the former 
 pastor of Marienburg, and thus brought into close connection 
 with the Sovereigns. In Elizabeth's reign he was rear- 
 admiral, and commandant of the port of Kronstadt. 
 
 Two other well-born Frenchmen, Andre and Adrien de 
 Brigny, fought beside this Corsair in the ranks of the Tsar's 
 army ; but, brave as they were, they were quite devoid of 
 the spirit of intrigue indispensable, in those days, to success, 
 and never rose to any prominent position. Englishmen, — 
 perhaps on account of the fastidiousness, angular-minded- 
 ness, and lack of adaptability of the race, — were in a minority 
 in the motley crowd of foreigners, through whose means 
 Peter endeavoured to inoculate his subjects with western 
 culture. The celebrated Ferry, who entered the Tsar's 
 service as an engineer, and soon left it in disgust, only spent 
 a few years in the vicinity of his comrade in misfortune, 
 Fergusson. This last had been engaged to direct a mathe- 
 matical school, and never succeeded in getting one kopeck 
 paid him for his services.^ Otherwise every nationality was 
 represented. There was even a negro. 
 
 This dusky henchman of the Tsar, who was born about 
 the year 1696, was carried off from his own country at the 
 age of seven years, and taken to Constantinople, where 
 Count Tolstoi, the Russian ambassador, purchased, him in 
 1705. Through all the course of a singularly active life he 
 was haunted by a painful vision, the memory of his beloved 
 sister Lagane, who had cast herself into the sea, and swum 
 for a considerable distance behind the ship which was bearing 
 him from her. On the shores of the Bosphorus he received 
 the surname of Ibrahim. During the Tsar's visit to Vilna, 
 in 1707, he was baptised, — Peter standing godfather, and the 
 Queen of Poland godmother, — and was thenceforward known 
 as Abraham Petrovitch Mannibal. Me began his Russian 
 life as page to the Sovereign, and, though he made intimate 
 acquaintance with the dotibijui, he gained his master's favour 
 both by his pretty tricks, and his singularly bright intelli- 
 gence. He was a negro prodigy. In 17 16, he was sent to 
 
 ^ Periy, Present Condition of Russia, p. 257, French edilion (Amsterdam, 1718). 
 
230 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Paris to complete his education. lie had already learnt 
 iJutch, and soon won himself a reputation in the I'Vench 
 arm}', in the ranks of which he at once took service. Durin^^f 
 the campaign! against the Spaniards, in 1720, in the course of 
 which he received a wound on the head, he was promoted 
 lieutenant. When he returned to Paris, he found himself a 
 kind of celebrity, much sought-for in drawing-rooms, where 
 he is said to have had considerable success, iiut his serious 
 tastes soon drew him away from frivolous gaiety. He 
 entered the School of Engineering, and did not leave it 
 until 1726, when he returned to Russia, was made lieutenant 
 in the Bombardier Company, which Peter once commanded, 
 and shortly married. His wife, a very beautiful woman, the 
 daughter of a Greek merchant, brought a ftxir-Jiaired child 
 into the world. He forced her to take the veil, had the 
 child brought up with every care, found her a husband, gave 
 her a fortune, but never would see her face. A very jealous, 
 violent, loyal, upright, and exceedingly avaricious man. 
 After Peter's death, he fell out, like everybody else, with 
 Menshikof Like almost everybody else, he was sent into 
 exile, and did not return from Siberia till Elizabeth's time, 
 when he became a full general, and died in 1 781, at the age of 
 eighty-three years. ^ Another glory has added itself, since 
 those days, to his name and history. He was Poushkin's 
 paternal great-grandfather. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the Tsar's circle, whether native or 
 foreign, was almost entirely made up of ' utility men ' and 
 ' lay figures.' We do not find one really great name, or 
 towering figure. The principal actor, and the part he 
 played, probably took up so much room on the stage, that 
 this was inevitable. My opinion is confirmed by what I 
 notice of the sovereign's relations with the only man in the 
 contemporary luiropean world of equal stature with himself, 
 
 ' Helbig, Riissische Giiiist/iiigr (Tiiliingen, 1809), p. 135. Bantich-K.nniicnski, 
 fiiogrophical Dutionary. Zazyk()f, LexiiOi^i aphicnl Encyclo/xedia, 1S38, vol. 
 xiv. p. 289. Longuinif, Russian Archives, 1S64, jip. iSo, iSl. Op;il<nitch, 
 The First H'i/c of Abraham Hanuilhil. A'nssinn Aittli/uitirs, l877i ^'"'- x^iii- 
 p. 69. Poushkin, Gi'nealoi;y of the J'oiishkin and Hanuilhil Fatnilies, collected 
 works (1887 edition), vol. v. p. 14S. 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 231 
 
 with whom he had intercourse. I have already had occasion 
 to mention Leibnitz's first attempts to attract the Tsars 
 attention, and the hopes he built on their success. Yet 
 these relations, when once he succeeded in establishing them, 
 brought no particular good fortune to either party, — both 
 indeed would seem to have somewhat lost dignity by them. 
 
 From the moment when Peter's first journey through 
 Germany revealed him to the eyes of Europe, Leibnitz 
 seemed possessed with a perfect monomania. All his talk- 
 was of Russia and of the Tsar. He was in a state of perpetual 
 excitement, and full of endless plans, all more or less un- 
 reasonable, and all tending to the same object, that of attrac- 
 ting the monarch's attention, and winning his esteem. I'his 
 feverish restlessness may be very naturally explained. The 
 great savant, as is well-known, claimed Slavonic origin, of 
 an ancient and noble nature, common with that of the 
 Polish family of Lubieniecki. He himself inserted, in an 
 autobiographical notice, the following words: — 'Leibnitiorum, 
 sive Lubenecziorum, nomen slavonicum, familia in Polonia.' 
 When he quarrelled with the town of Leipzig, he published 
 the following protest: — 'Let Germany lower her pride! 
 The genius that was born with me is not exclusively 
 Teutonic, it is the genius of the Slavonic race, which 
 woke in my person, in this Fatherland of the Scholastics.' 
 And to this distant bond of consanguinity he appealed, 
 when he first addressed Peter, at Torgau, in 171 1. ' Sire,' he 
 is reported to have said, ' our point of departure is a common 
 one. Slavs, both of us, belonging to a race, the destinies of 
 which no man can foresee, — we are both of us the apostles of 
 future centuries.' ^ This conversation, unfortunately, turned 
 off to other subjects, and the intercourse thus begun, ended 
 by falling to a much less elevated standpoint. In 1697, 
 when Leibnitz was meditating a scientific plan of campaign 
 for Russia, he still kept at a dignified level. But there 
 was a great come-down in this very year, 171 1, when his 
 chief anxiety was to get himself accepted as the Tsar's 
 representative at the Court of Hanover. A taste foi 
 diplomacy was one of his weaknesses, and it increased 
 
 ^ A letter from Count John Lubieniecki, lately published in the 'Kraj.'a 
 Polish review, confirms, by information drawn from family documents, the truth 
 of Leibnitz's Polish origin, which even the German editors of the great savant's 
 works, Klopp, Guhrauer, and Fertz, have not attempted to deny. 
 
 16 
 
232 PETER THE (JREAT 
 
 with age. \Vc see him piliiiLj appHcation on appHcation, 
 and intrijjjue on intrii^ue, — worryinj^ Peter's minister at 
 Vienna, Baron Urbich, — tcjrmenting the Duke of Wolfen- 
 bi.ittel, whose grand -daughter had just been affianced to 
 the Tsarevitch Alexis. All he was able to get was the 
 promise of a tchin and of a pension. The fulfilment of this 
 promise was long in coming, and at Karlsbad, in 1712, 
 he came back to the charge, offering his good offices 
 to reconcile Austria with Russia, a magnetic globe of the 
 world, which he had caused to be constructed for the 
 Tsar, and an instrument to be used in planning fortifica- 
 tions. This time he contrived to obtain the title of Privy 
 Councillor, and a gift of 500 ducats, which satisfied 
 him until 17 14, when a vacancy in the Russian Diplo- 
 matic Service at Vienna once more threw him into a state 
 of agitation. In 1716, he was at the springs of l^rmont, to 
 which the Russian sovereign had betaken himself, — with a 
 bundle of half-scientific, half^political memoranda in one 
 hand, and a wooden apparatus for the Tsar's paralysed arm 
 in the other, — calling out about his pension, which had never 
 been paid, ' although it had been talked of all over Europe,' 
 piling up expressions of admiration and proofs of devotion, — 
 altogether a wonderful, and pitiable, and most insufferable 
 beggar. Peter strikes me as having been almost indifferent 
 always to the brightness of this great intelligence, which 
 never seem.s to have succeeded in coming into contact with 
 his own.^ Within a few months of the visit to Pyrmont, 
 Leibnitz was dead. 
 
 A considerable share in the establishment of the Collegial 
 Administration of Russia has been ascribed to him. A letter 
 on which this organisation was based, was long believed to 
 be his composition. But this is far from being true. The 
 original document, which is preserved in the Moscow 
 archives, is not in his handwriting, and other authentic 
 writings of his do not mention it. Three other documents 
 on the same subject, which have also been attributed to 
 him, are certainly not his work. He never, whatever may 
 be said to the contrary, had anything to do with the founda- 
 tion of the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg. Peter 
 
 ^ See preface of Guerrier's i^/cf/Z^WJ (St. Petersburg, 1873), P- 23, and com- 
 p.nrc Foucher ile Careil on Peter the Great and Leibnitz (Reports of the 
 •Academic dcs Sciences, Morales, et Politiques,' June 1S74). 
 
COLLABORATORS, FRIENDS AND FAVOURITES 233 
 
 requested another German, Christian Wolff, to organise and 
 direct this institution, but met with a curt refusal. Wolff 
 thought the climate of St Petersburg too cold, and the pay 
 offered to the Director of the Academy altogether too small ; 
 besides which, he was all for replacing the Academy by a 
 university. 'Berlin,' he said, 'has an Academy of Sciences, 
 the only thing lacking is the learned men.' ^ He refused to 
 act in the matter, and restricted himself to recommending 
 some of his friends, Bernoulli, Biilfinger, and Martini, to 
 the Tsar. This circle of hardworking, if not transcendently 
 brilliant, men, surrounded the cradle of knowledge in Russia, 
 to the great ultimate advantage of the country. 
 
 The plan finally adopted by Peter for his Academy, was 
 based on a report written by an obscure personage of the 
 name of Fick, a former secretary to the Duke of Luxemburg. 
 1-eibnitz's plans went much too far, they extended beyond 
 the Tsar's line of vision, and also, probably, be}'ond the pos- 
 sibilities of the time and place. Peter never adopted any of 
 the great savant's extreme views. Absorbed as he was, till 
 1 7 16, by the anxieties connected with his struggle with 
 Sweden, all Leibnitz's proposals fell on an inattentive ear. 
 He never went beyond some appearance of intellectual 
 intimacy, and a scientific correspondence, which he kept up 
 with the assistance of Bruce. Perhaps, too, the doubtful 
 and undignified side of his would-be helper's attitude dis- 
 pleased him, and put him on his guard. The man of 
 genius may have been utterly hidden, under the courtier, 
 and the hungry petitioner. 
 
 Yet Leibnitz, that great sower of ideas, did not pass in 
 vain down the furrow traced by the great reformer's plough. 
 The seed he so lavishly cast in all directions, may have been 
 carried away by the winds, and lost in space, — but, in due 
 time, it reappeared. I see fruitful traces of it, in the great 
 work accomplished, at a much later date, under the auspices 
 of the Russian Government, with regard to the study of the 
 Slavonic languages ; and Alexander Humboldt's researches 
 on terrestrial magnetism, carried right across Russia, into 
 Central Asia, were certainly inspired by his illustrious pre- 
 decessor. The influence of such inen as Leibnitz, and Peter 
 the Great, is not measured b}' the limits of their earthly life. 
 
 * Rriefe von Christian WolIT (.St. Petersburg, i860.) Piekarski, History of 
 Science and Literature in Russia, vol. i. p. 33. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE FEMININE ELEMENT 
 
 I. The King's Mistress and the Tsar's — Peter a Don Juan — His indifference to 
 propriety — A daring uncle — The women of his circle — Princess Gaiitzin 
 — BrutaHty and cynicism — Besliahtyand debauchery — Another side of his 
 relations with women. 
 
 11. His marriage— Eudoxia Lapouhin — The honeymoon — Disagreements — 
 An ill-assorted couple — Separation — The cloister — The recluse's romance 
 — ISIajor Glebof — Lovers' correspondence — The investigation — The trial 
 — The lover's fate — ^The mistress' punishment — Catherine's jealousy — 
 Prison — Eudoxia's turn at last. 
 
 11. The earliest favourite — Anna Mons — Peter's liberality — Deception — Con- 
 solations — Menshikof'sgyna^ceum — The Favourite's sisters — TheArseniefs 
 — Catherine Vassilevska. 
 
 V. Maids of Honour — Madame Tchernichof — Eudoxia — Marie Matvi^ief — 
 Terem and Harem — Marie Hamilton — Lover and executioner — ^A lesson 
 in anatomy at the foot of the scaffold^Catherine's last rival, Marie 
 Kantemir — The wife and sovereign triumphs — A friend — The Polish lady 
 — Madame Sieniawska. 
 
 V, The influence of women on Peter's life, and his own influence on the destiny 
 of Russian women — Russian feeling in the seventeenth century — Hatred 
 of women — Causes and effects — The National genius and foreign influ- 
 ences — Byzantium and the East— The current of asceticism — Family 
 life — Marriage — The Domostroi — Barbarous haljits — When woman is 
 sacrificed, man grows vile — The current of emancipation — Peter's reforms 
 — His failures — The importance of his work — A saviour. 
 
 The King : ' Ah, brother, so I hear you too have a 
 mistress ? ' 
 
 The Tsar : ' Brother, My .... do not cost me much, 
 but yours costs you millions of crowns, which might be 
 better spent.' 
 
 This scene, which occurred in 1716, at Copenhagen, whither 
 Peter had gone to visit his ally the King of Denmark, is 
 reported in a grave diplomatic document.^ At first sight, 
 it would appear to give a very fair idea of the part played 
 
 ^ Despatch from Loss to Manteuffcl, Copenhagen, I4lh .^ug. 1716. Sbornik, 
 vol. XX. p. 62. 
 
 234 
 
THE FEMININE ELEMENT 235 
 
 by women in the great Reformer's life. He was too busy, 
 and too coarse, to be a lover worthy of the name — or even a 
 decent husband. He fixed the price of the favours bestowed 
 on his soldiers in St. Petersburg at one kopeck for three kisses ; 
 and, after his first interview with Catherine, the future 
 Empress, he enriched her with a solitary ducat. ^ Not that 
 he was altogether incapable of appreciating the more delicate 
 charm to be found in the society of the fair sex. We must 
 never forget that Russian feminine society was one of his 
 creations. The presence of ladies at the Sloboda gatherings, 
 was the first and most powerful attraction which drew him 
 there. In 1693, when two of the fair guests, at ?ifcte given 
 by Lefort, ventured to leave the company unobserved, he 
 sent his soldiers to bring them back by force.^ In 1701, 
 when his care for his budding navy kept him at Voroneje, a 
 great number of these ladies joined him there, for the Easter 
 festivities, and were most graciously received. When one or 
 two of them fell ill, he gallantly put off his own return to 
 Moscow.^ If the historical interest of this chapter depended 
 on the memory of such gallantries, my respect, both for 
 women and for history, would lead me to suppress it. But 
 there is another question. In such a character as Peter's, 
 — so hugely complex, from the moral point of view, — surprises 
 burst on us at every turn. As far as external matters go, 
 this side of his personality, in spite of his sociableness, 
 stamps him a boor and a cynical debauchee. He has no 
 care for the woman's dignity, or his own, and he is too 
 ill-bred to have the smallest regard for propriety. Observe 
 this anecdote, related by Baron Pollnitz, as to the Sovereign's 
 visit to Magdeburg in 17 17: 'As the King (of Prussia) had 
 given orders that he was to be treated with every imaginable 
 honour, the different State bodies waited upon him with 
 their presidents. When Cocceji, the brother of the High 
 Chancellor, who was at the head of the Regency, went, with 
 his colleagues, to pay his respects to the Tsar, he found him 
 leaning on two Russian ladies, and caressing them in the most 
 familiar manner. This he continued to do during the whole 
 time of Cocccji's address.'^ And here is another, describing 
 his meeting with the Duchess of Mecklenburg, his niece, at 
 Berlin. ' The Tsar rushed to meet the Princess, kissed her 
 
 ' Duclos' Mi/noirs (1839 edition), p. 615. '^ Korb. p. 77. 
 
 ^ Oustrialof, vol. iv. part ii. pp. 555, 562. ■* Memoirs, 1791, vol. ii. p. 65. 
 
236 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 tcnderl)', and drawincj her into an adjoining room, indult^cd 
 in evcr}bo(l)''.s jjrcscncc — even in that of the Duke of Meck- 
 lenburg — in the grossest famiHarities.' ^ Polhiitz, who declares 
 that he received this information both from the King himself, 
 and from two other eye-witnesses, adds many not less ex- 
 pressive details, as to the great man's habitual intercourse 
 with the female element at his Court. ' Princess Galitzin 
 was his doiira, or female fool. Everybody vied in teasing 
 her. She often dined with the Tsar, he would throw the 
 remains of his food at her head, and would make her stand 
 up so tha-t he might pinch her.' According to some other 
 witnesses, the shameful vices of the Princess may have 
 justified, to some e.xtent, the ignominy of the treatment to 
 which she was subjected. A letter from the Prussian 
 Envoy, Mardeficld, contains a curious reference, in this 
 connection, to the French Duchesses and the pages in whom 
 they took such great delight, — congratulating them on their 
 being content with these alone. Princess Galitzin had no 
 page, — I will not go the length of repeating Mardefeld's 
 explanation of how she supplied this want.'*^ 
 
 According to Nartof — generally a fairly reliable witness 
 as to the Tsar's private life — Peter was of a very amorous 
 disposition, but the fit never lasted more than half an hour. 
 He would not, as a rule, force a woman's inclinations, but, as 
 he was apt to cast his choice on servant girls, he very seldom 
 met with any resistance. Nartof mentions one rebel, a 
 laundress; but Bruce relates, in much more dramatic fashion, 
 the story of the daughter of a foreign merchant at Moscow, 
 who, to escape the sovereign's amorous pursuit, was obliged 
 to fly her parents' house, and hide herself in the forest.^ One 
 of the documents published by Prince Galitzin describes 
 the Tsar's struggle with a gardener in Holland, who used his 
 rake to drive away the monarch from the neighbourhood of 
 a garden-girl, whose work he was interrupting. 
 
 These details, to which I refer with much diffidence — 
 believing such reference to be part of a historian's duty — 
 repugnant as they are, are not the worst. The Tsar's inter- 
 course with Menshikof was even more revolting. And 
 Menshikof was not the only favourite. 
 
 ' Memoir Sy 1791, vol. ii. p. 65. 
 
 ^ Herrmann. Fetcr der Giosse und der Tsarnitch AUxri, p. 209. 
 
 ' Memoirs, p. 93. 
 
THE FEMININE ELEMENT 237 
 
 II 
 
 Peter's first beginnings were commonplace enough, — a very 
 early marriage, followed by some years of tolerably happy 
 married life, and then a gradual cooling of mutual affection. 
 The honeymoon once over, the husband and wife saw but 
 little of each other, for the Tsar was almost always away. 
 But the letters which passed between them were fairly affec- 
 tionate, and the pet names in which lovers delight may 
 frequently be noticed on their pages. Lapoiishka, (little 
 hand) was the sobriquet bestowed on Peter, and willingly 
 accepted by him. He was not to be the last person to bear 
 it. Two children came into the world, Alexander, who died 
 in infanc}', and Alexis, born under an unlucky star. After 
 the death of Nathalie in 1694, things began to go wrong. 
 Peter, who then had been married for five years, had already 
 contracted some extra-conjugal intimacies in the Sloboda, or 
 elsewhere. But he had conducted these affairs with a certain 
 amount of prudence. He was a dutiful son, and Nathalia a 
 very vigilant parent. When her influence was replaced by that 
 of Lefort, two female forms, members of the group of beauties, 
 — none of them, probably, over strict in conduct, — which 
 surrounded the young sovereign at the Sloboda gatherings, 
 rose like stars on the horizon of his reign. Both these ladies 
 sprang from the middle class : one was the daughter of 
 Botticher, a goldsmith ; the other, the child of a wine-mer- 
 chant, named IVIons. Political disagreements helped to 
 disturb the harmony between Peter and his wife. Kudoxia 
 belonged to a violently Conservative family ; her relations, 
 who were all inclined to oppose the new order of things, 
 then just coming into existence, soon fell into disgrace, lost 
 their positions at Court, and underwent all kinds of ill-treat- 
 ment. One of them, the Tsarina's own brother, who ven- 
 tured to insult the favourite, was publicly beaten by the 
 Tsar ; another was put to the torture, and horrible things 
 were reported concerning the sufferings he endured. Peter, 
 it was said, soaked his garments with spirits of wine, and 
 then set him on fire. One point, at all events, is certain, — 
 he died in prison.^ When the Tsar started on his first 
 l^uropean tour, Eudoxia's father, and her two brothers, were 
 sent into practical exile, as the governors of remote provinces. 
 
 ' Jeliaboujski's Memoirs, p. 40. Solovief, vol. xiv. p. 6 (annexed matter). 
 
238 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 In the course of his journc\', Peter ceased correspondhig 
 with his wife, and su(ldenl)% while he was in London, two 
 of his confidants, L. K. Nar^'shkin and T. N. Strcshnief, 
 were chart^^ed with a mission which clearly explained his 
 silence. They were to induce Eudoxia to take the veil. 
 This was the usual expedient, at that period, in the case 
 of ill-assorted marriages, and Peter would appear to ha^e 
 set his heart upon it. His intercourse with the West had 
 settled the poor forsaken lad}''s fate. She belonged to a 
 very different world, and was doomed to disappear. 
 
 Yet she was not without a certain amount of charm. She 
 may not have been pretty, — and even on that subject it is 
 not easy to come to any decision. Catherine herself, her 
 future rival — judging by the pictures, flattered, no doubt, 
 which still exist, and which made a very different impression 
 uj)()n Peter — would appear to us a perfect monster of ugli- 
 ness. Eudoxia was certainly not a fool. When she re- 
 appeared at Court, after her merciless husband's death, she 
 struck those who met her as a kind-hearted old lady, fairly 
 well informed on interesting subjects, and not altogether 
 ignorant of State affairs.^ Her correspondence with Glebof, 
 of which some extracts are given on a later page, prove her 
 to have been a tender, passionate, and loving woman. Intel- 
 lectually speaking, she resembled the generality of Muscovite 
 women of that period, who had grown up within the Tcrcni; 
 .she was ignorant, simple-minded and superstitious. And 
 this was the rock on which her fate was to be wrecked. 
 Evidently she was no fit companion for Peter, incapable 
 as she was of understanding him, following his ideas, and 
 sharing his existence. 
 
 When Peter reached Moscow, on his return from his great 
 journey, at six o'clock on the evening of the 26th of August 
 1698, he went to see some of his friends — Gordon, amongst 
 others — and then paid a visit to the Mons household. But 
 he did not see his wife for some days, and then only in the 
 house of a third person, that of Vinnius, the postmaster- 
 general. The sole object of this meeting was to give his 
 verbal confirmation of the decision already announced 
 through Naryshkin and Streshnief. Eudoxia's answer was 
 what her husband might have e.xi^ected — an uncompromising 
 refusal. 'What had she done? ' she demanded, ' to deserve 
 • Lady Rondeau's letters (Letters from an English Lady), 1776. 
 
THE FEMININE ELEMENT 239 
 
 such a fate? What fault had he to find with her?' As a 
 matter of fact, she does not even appear to have been sus- 
 pected of any participation in the poHtical intrigues in which 
 the Tsarevna Sophia and the Tsar's other sisters were impli- 
 cated. The revolt of the Strcltsy, which Peter was then 
 preparing to drown in a sea of blood, broke out without the 
 smallest complicity, moral or otherwise, on her part. But 
 the Tsar's mind was finally made up. If he could find no 
 pretext, he was resolved to do without one. He angrily re- 
 pulsed the Patriarch's intervention in favour of his lawful 
 wife, and, after three weeks of parleying, he cut the Gordian 
 knot. A closed carriage, drawn by two horses, (contem- 
 porary chroniclers lay special stress on this detail, which, in 
 a country where the smallest country gentleman never left 
 his house without the escort of a whole troop of horsemen, 
 cruelly aggravated the injustice and hardship of the whole 
 proceeding) — a hackney coach, in fact, carried the unhappy 
 Tsarina to Souzdal, where the doors of the nunnery of the 
 Intercession of the Blessed Virgin {Pokrovskil Dievitsliyi 
 Mojiastyr) closed upon her. 
 
 Innocent though she was, she was more severely treated 
 than others who had been guilty. When Peter imprisoned 
 her sisters, whose connivance with the rebels had been 
 generally recognised, if not absolutely established, he left 
 each of them an income and a certain household. He gave 
 his wife nothing at all ; she was his wife no longer. She had 
 ceased to be the Tsarina ; she had lost her very name. She 
 was nothing but Helen, the nun, with only one maid to wait 
 on her, and she was forced to appeal to the charity of her 
 own relations, to save her from starvation. She writes to her 
 brother Abraham, ' I do not need a great deal, still I must 
 eat ; I drink neither wine nor brandy, yet I fain would be 
 able to offer . . . .' This last touch is a curious one, elo- 
 quently expressive of one of the most attractive qualities of 
 the old patriarchal mode of life in Russia. Personal suffer- 
 ing was a misfortune of a kind, but inability to show the 
 accustomed hospitality was a supreme distress. The letter 
 continues : ' There is nothing here, everything is rotting 
 away. I know I am a trouble to you, but what can I do ? 
 As long as I live, for pity's sake, give me meat and drink ! 
 Give garments to the beggar ! ' ^ 
 
 ' Oustrialof, vol. iii. p. 1S7, etc. Compare Koib, p. 74. 
 
240 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 She was only six-and-twcnty, and for twenty years yet she 
 was to beat her ani^uish and despair against the walls of the 
 convent cell, where her life and passion had been entombed. 
 When she left it, with her youth blighted and her heart 
 bn:)ken, it was only to endure a still more cruel fate. 
 
 Twenty years later, in 17 18, the trial of the Tsarevitch 
 Alexis quickened Peter's inquisitorial zeal. It occurred to 
 him that Eudoxia's influence might have been one of those 
 which had incited his son to rebellion. Forthwith, he ordered 
 a descent upon the nunnery, and an enquiry. The secret 
 police drew the cover blank, as far as Alexis was concerned, 
 l)ut this disappointment was atoned for by another discovery. 
 Innocent as she was, politically, h^udoxia was first suspected, 
 and then found guilty, of a criminal love affair with iMajor 
 Glebof She had broken down at last. In her downfall and 
 her misery, she had sought for consolation. Major Glebof, 
 who had been sent to Souzdal on recruiting duty, had been 
 touched by her sad fate. She suffered from the cold of her 
 cell : he sent her some furs, and her deeply-grateful letter of 
 thanks paved the way for a dangerous intimacy. He went 
 to see her, to receive her personal thanks, returned again and 
 again, and so they fell in love — she, with an enthusiastic, 
 ardent, and all-absorbing passion ; he, far more cautiously, 
 with ;in affection full of ambiguous reservations. The young 
 man was probably very aml^itious ; he reckoned on some 
 distant change of fortune, thought of changing his own 
 career, and entering the world of politics. He was in money 
 ditliculties too, — he was married, and found his wife a great 
 encumbrance. Eudoxia, poor lady, would have had him 
 leave the service, so that he might remain near her, and be- 
 long to her alone. She was always endeavouring to satisfy 
 his needs, and relieve the straits she more than suspected. 
 She was ever ready to bestow the paltry sums which she 
 contrived to wring from the parsimony or the poverty of her 
 own relations upon him. Who could refuse to help him ? 
 She sent him money. Did he need more, and yet more ? 
 ' Where thy heart is, my batko' (a still more caressing form 
 of BaiiuHshka — Little Father) ' there too is mine ; where thy 
 tongue is, there is my head ; thy will is alwa)-s mine.' 
 
 But, bound by his duties, military or conjugal, and perhaps 
 a little tired of her already, Batkds visits grew rarer. Then 
 came despairing and distracted appeals. Had he forgotten 
 
THE FEMININE ELEMENT 241 
 
 her already? Had she not been able to please him? Had 
 she not done enough? Had not her tears watered his face, 
 his hands, every limb of his body, and every joint of his feet 
 and of his fingers? She has a language of her own, of the 
 most exuberantly pathetic description, which, in the most 
 strange and flowery style, expresses feelings often enough 
 fantastic, and almost incoherent, but always throbbing with 
 evident sincerity, — the brilliant colours of the East, mingled 
 with the rustic tints of her Russian home. ' My light, my 
 batioHshka, my soul, my joy, has the cruel hour of separation 
 indeed struck already ? Rather would I see my soul parted 
 from my body ! U my light ! how can I live on earth 
 apart from thee? How can I endure existence? My 
 unhappy heart had long foreseen this moment : long have I 
 wept over it, and now it has come, and I suffer, and God 
 alone knows how dear thou art to me ! Why do I love thee 
 so much, my adored one, that without thee life has no value 
 for me ? Why, O my soul ! art thou angry with me ? 
 Yes, so angry that thou dost not write to me. At least, O 
 my heart ! wear the ring I gave thee, and love me a little — 
 just a little ! I have had another ring like it made for 
 myself. But what ! it is by thy will that we are parted ? 
 Ah ! it is long since I began to see a change in thy love. 
 But why, O my Batko ! why comest thou not to see me ? 
 Has anything happened to thee .'* Has any one spoken evil 
 of me to thee ? O my friend ! O my light ! my lioubonka ' 
 (from Lioubit, to cherish), 'have pity on me ! Have pity on 
 me, O my lord ! and come to see me to-morrow ! O my 
 whole world, my adored one, my lapoushka ' (it will be 
 recollected that she had originally applied this name to 
 another person), 'answer me, let me not die of grief! I 
 have sent thee a cravat ; wear it, O my soul I — thou wilt not 
 wear anything that I send thee ; is that a sign that I cannot 
 please thee? But forget thy love, — I cannot do it! I 
 cannot live without thee ! ' 
 
 But Batko continues hard-hearted, and her complaints 
 grow more and more distracted. They are like the 
 continuous monotonous cry of a wounded creature. 
 
 ' Who has done me this wrong, poor wretch that I am ! 
 who has stolen my treasure? who has shut out the light 
 from my eyes ? for whom hast thou forsaken me .-' to whom 
 hast thou abandoned me? how is it that thou hast no pity 
 
242 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 for me? Can it be that thou wilt never return to me? 
 Who has parted thee from me, unhappy that I am ? What 
 have I clone to thy wife? how have I harmed her? how 
 have I offended \-ou ? Wherefore, O dear soul ! didst thou 
 not tell me how I had displeased thy wife ? and why didst 
 thou listen to her? Why hast thou forsaken me? 
 Assuredly I would never have separated thee from thy wife. 
 O my light! how can I live without thee? how can I 
 remain in this world ? Why hast thou caused me this 
 anr^uish? Have I been guilty without knowing it? Why 
 didst thou not tell me of my fault? Why not have struck 
 me, to punish me, — chastised me in any way, for this fault I 
 have committed in my ignorance ? In God's name, do not 
 forsake me ! Come to me ! without thee I shall die ! ' 
 
 And some days later : — 
 
 ' W^hy am I not dead ? Would that thou hadst buried 
 me with thy own hands ! Forgive, forgive me, O my soul I 
 do not let me die! I will kill myself! Send me, O my 
 heart ! send me the waistcoat thou hast often worn. Why 
 hast thou forsaken me ? Send me a morsel of bread into 
 which thou hast bitten with thy teeth I How utterly hast 
 thou forsaken me ! what have I done to displease thee, that 
 thou shouldst leave me thus, orphaned, broken-hearted . . . ' 
 
 Nine of these letters were produced at the enquiry. They 
 were not written by Eudoxia herself She had dictated 
 them to a nun named Kaptclina, her confidant, who added 
 postcripts, in which she endeavoured to induce the faithless 
 swain to take pity on the sufferings of the Matonshka. 
 
 But the imprudent lover had endorsed every one of them, 
 * Letter from the Tsarina Eudoxia.' T he two rings were also 
 found in the possession of the guilty couple. The 
 depositions of the nuns and the servants in the Convent, 
 many of whom were examined, were quite conclusive. 
 Glebof had constantly visited the Tsarina, both in the day- 
 time and at night ; they had frequently kissed each other in 
 the presence of witnesses, and were often alone together for 
 many hours. Finally Eudoxia confessed cvcr\-thing. 
 
 And Glebof? I'he popular legend describes him as 
 having behaved like a hero, deliberately, in the midst of 
 the most frightful tortures, taking ever)' other sort of crime 
 upon his shoulders, and even confessing imaginary faults, 
 while steadily refusing to admit an\-thing that could sully 
 
THE FEMININE ELEMENT 243 
 
 Eudoxia's honour.^ But the minutes of the enquiry, which 
 are still preserved in the Moscow archives, prove the exact 
 contrary.^ Glebof was dumb as to all the other matters 
 whereof he was accused. The onl}' absolute confession he 
 seems to have made concerned this love affair, which dated 
 eight years back. Eudoxia was then 38 years old. 
 
 I hasten to say that none of these depositions nor 
 confessions really prove anything. Skorniakof-Pissaref, the 
 Examining Judge sent by Peter to Souzdal, caused fifty 
 nuns, some of whom died under the lash, to be flogged. 
 They said anything and everything he desired. Eudoxia 
 and Glebof were both of them examined in the question 
 chamber. Such frightful tortures were inflicted on the 
 unfortunate officer that it was decided to put him to death 
 on the i6-27th of March, 17 18, — the doctors declaring 
 they could not prolong his life for more than twenty-four 
 hours.^ A story was current, that the poor wretch had been 
 imprisoned in a dungeon, the floor of which was covered 
 with sharp spikes, made of very hard wood, on which he was 
 forced to walk barefoot. The final form of execution selected 
 by Peter was impalement. As there were twenty degrees of 
 frost, the unhappy man was wrapped in a fur pelisse, and 
 given fur boots, and a warm cap, so as to make his torture 
 last as long as possible. It began at three o'clock in the 
 afternoon, and continued till half-past seven o'clock on the 
 evening of the following day.^ A story, which does not 
 appear altogether credible, relates that when the victim had 
 suffered several hours, Peter approached, and endeavoured 
 to draw fresh confessions from him. The only answer Glebof 
 vouchsafed, was to spit in the monarch's face.^ 
 
 Eudoxia escaped with her life, but she was placed in a 
 
 ^ Allainval's Anecdotes, 1745, p. 31. The reports of the foreiqii diplomats 
 resident at Moscow, which echo current opinion, are all in the same sense. 
 Herrmann, Peler der Grosse nttd der Tsa/eTttch Alexei, pp. 135 and 207. Des- 
 patch from De Bie to Fagel, March 28. 1718 (Archives at the Hague). 
 Mc'iiioir'-s et Documents (French Foreign Office), vol. i. p. 129, etc. Manuscript 
 Reports in the Gothn Library, etc., etc. 
 
 "^ Partially published in Ous'.rialof, vol vi. p. 469, etc. 
 
 ' rj)espatch quoted by De Die. 
 
 * Auijiihrliche Beschreibiin^ der in der Haupstadt Moscow . . . volhoj^enen 
 grossen Execution (Riga, 17 18). See also the romantic story of Eudoxia and 
 Glebof, as told by -Sit'-mievski, Eudoxia Laponhin, in the ' Messager Russe,' 
 l8s9, vol. xxi. pp. 219-265. Also, i860, vol. xx.x. pp. 559-599 ; 1859, vol. 
 xxiii. pp. 299-300, Study by Snic'i^ire}. 
 
 ' Dolgoroukof, vol. i. p. 32. Lady Rondeau, p. 32. 
 
244 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 still more lonci}- nunnery, on the sliorcs of Lake Ladofja, 
 where she was yet more closely watched. Accordin<; to 
 one authority, she was condemned, before bein<^ sent to 
 her new prison, to be whipped, by a Court of Bishops, 
 Archimandrites, and other ecclesiastics, and this sentence 
 was carried out by two monks, in presence of the whole 
 Chapter.^ 
 
 W hat can have inspired Peter to brinc^ his consort and her 
 lover to trial, and more especially, to treat them with such 
 ferocity ? We cannot suppose him to have been jealous of 
 the wife he had repudiated and forgotten, and left to grow 
 old in the loneliness of her convent. And his habitual 
 indulgence for weaknesses of that particular nature, — 
 especially in cases which bore no reference to political 
 matters, — is well known. Now political matters do not 
 appear to have had the slightest connection with this 
 business. Eudoxia's correspondence with her lover, which 
 never refers to anything but her love, is a clear proof of 
 their perfect innocence in this respect. The Ex-Tsarina 
 had indeed allowed herself to be tempted to resum.e her 
 worldly garb, and had even permitted those about her to 
 encourage her in the hope of a return, more or less distant, 
 to her former splendours. But there was never more than a 
 hope of this, in any quarter.- May not Eudoxia have been 
 the victim of the jealousy and hatred of a third person ? 
 Let us pass over the next seven years. Peter died at last, 
 and this event, instead of being a happy one for the 
 prisoner, was the signal for a fresh aggravation of her cruel 
 fate. She was dragged from her convent, taken to the 
 fortress of Schlusselburg, and there cast into a subterranean 
 dungeon, which swarmed with rats. She fell ill, and the 
 only person she had to wait on her, was an old dwarf 
 woman, herself in need of service and assistance. Thus two 
 years passed. Who did this thing ? Catherine I., the 
 reigning Sovereign. And here, perhaps, we may find the 
 answer to my question regarding Peter. At the end of the 
 two years, a change came. Suddenly, as though in a 
 dream, the door of the dungeon was thrown open, gentlemen 
 
 ' French Foreign Office, Alhnoires et Documents, vol. i. p. 129. 
 
 - De 15ic tides indeed mention a plot and a cyphered correspondence, the key 
 to which (jlcbof refused to give up ; Ijut liiis is a mere repetition of stories current 
 at the time. 
 
THE FEMININE ELEMENT 245 
 
 in court dress appeared upon the threshold, and bowing to 
 the ground, requested the captive to follow them. Thus led, 
 she entered a luxurious apartment, prepared, so they 
 informed her, for her special use, in the house of the 
 Commandant of the Fortress. A bed, with sheets of the 
 finest Dutch linen, replaced the damp straw pallet she had 
 lately occupied ; the walls were hung with splendid stuffs, 
 the table was covered with gold plate, 10,000 roubles awaited 
 her in a casket, courtiers stood in her antechamber 
 carriages and horses were at her orders. What did it mean? 
 It meant that Catherine I. was dead, and that the new Tsar 
 Peter II., was the son of Alexis, and the grandson of 
 Kudoxia. The poor grandmother, whose hair had whitened 
 in her prison, went to Moscow to be present at the 
 Coronation of the new monarch. There she took precedence 
 of all the other princesses ; she was surrounded with pomp, 
 and treated with the deepest consideration and respect. But 
 it was all too late ; her life was broken, and of her own free 
 will, she went back to her nunnery. She ended her days, in 
 173 I, in the Noi'odievitshyi jMoHas()'r, that refuge for great 
 misfortunes, where Sophia spent her life afier the day which 
 saw all her ambitions crumble into dust. According to 
 another tradition, Eudoxia spent her last years in the family 
 residence of the Lapouhin, at S^rebrianoie, but even there, 
 she had access, by a gallery, to the neighbouring cloister of 
 St. George.^ Her tomb is in the Moscow Monastery, and 
 her memory lives even in the present day, in the popular 
 legends and songs of the country.- In spite of all her down- 
 fall and disgrace, she has kept the sorrowful sympath\- of 
 those humble ones of the earth who are all too well 
 acquainted with bitter suffering. 
 
 HI 
 
 The moment Eudoxia was safely interned in her convent, 
 Peter installed his first ' maitresse en titre.' This positon 
 was occupied by Anna Mons, or Monst, or Munst, — Doniicclla 
 Mo7isui?ia, as Korb calls her. Her father, before he came 
 
 * Russian Archives, 1873, p. 652. 
 
 ^ Memohes of the ' Acadimie des Sciencet^ at St. Petersburg, 1S64, vol. v. book 
 ii. p. 206 (PodsossoQ. 
 
346 I'ETER THE GREAT 
 
 to Moscow, had been a wine merchant, or, as others say, a 
 jeweller, at Mindcn. The family, therefore, was really of 
 W'estphalian orij^in, although, in later years, it tried to boast 
 of Flemish ancestors, and affixed the particle ' de ' before 
 the name it added to its original appellation, — ' Mons,' or 
 ' Moens, de la Croix.'^ The young lady, who began her career 
 as Lefort's mistress, soon forsook the favourite for his master. 
 She accompanied the Sovereign even on occasions of public 
 ceremonial. Neither he nor she shrank fr(jm attracting 
 attention. When he stood godfather to the Danish envoy's 
 son, he desired that she should be godmother.^ He had a 
 fine house built for her in the S/oboda, and the dreary 
 archives of the Preobrajcnski Prikas bear witness to the 
 too loudly expressed astonishment of a German tailor 
 named Flank, concerning the glories of a bedroom which 
 was the chief ornament of the dwelling, and in which the 
 Tsar, as it was well known, frequently appeared.^ In 1703, 
 somewhat unwillingly and remorsefully it must be said, he 
 endowed the lady with a property of considerable extent, 
 called Doubino, in the district of Kozielsk. She was a most 
 barefaced beggar, perpetually soliciting the somewhat un- 
 ready generosity of the Sovereign, in a succession of notes, 
 written by a secretary, to which she added postscripts 
 in bad German. She backs one of these requests by calling 
 on the name of a person whose good offices she could hardly 
 have expected. ' For the love of your son, Alexis I'etro- 
 vitch, give me that estate!' * Now, Alexis, as my readers will 
 recollect, was Eudoxia's child. Her letters were occasionally 
 accompanied by very modest gifts. Thus she sent her lover, 
 then detained at the siege of Azof, four lemons and as many 
 oranges. He had serious thoughts of marrying her, even 
 although he was carrying on doubtful relations with one of 
 her friends, Helen Fademrecht, from whom he received 
 letters, too, addressed, ' To my Universe, — to my little darling 
 Sun, — my beloved, with black eyes and eyebrows of the 
 same colour.' The Mons affair — a very commonplace one, 
 — lasted till 1703, and closed in an equally commonplace 
 fashion. The Saxon Envoy Konigseck, who had only lately 
 
 ' Mordovtsef, Russian Women (St. Petersburg), p. 3, portfolio No. Ixxxvi. 
 in Peter's 'Cabinet.' The documents of the Mindcn Municipality here pre- 
 served give various spellings of tlie name. 
 
 '■* Korb, p. 84. ' Nos. 1 243, 1 258. 
 
 * See extracts from this correspondence in Mordovtsefs work. 
 
THE FEMININE ELEMENT 247 
 
 arrived at the Tsar's Court, was accidentally drowned, at the 
 beginning of a campaign. In his pockets certain notes were 
 found, the writing and the style of which, Peter easily recog- 
 nised. He was simple-minded enough to lose his temper, 
 the Doynicella Monsiana went to prison, and only came out 
 by dint of urgent prayers, and cunning wiles. On recovering 
 her liberty she was forced to content herself with becoming 
 the mistress of Keyserling, the Prussian Envoy, who ended 
 by marrying her. She had a taste for diplomacy, and not 
 sufficient prudence to keep herself out of difficulties. She 
 found herself back in prison, and only contrived to save a 
 few poor remnants of the monarch's former liberality. 
 Amongst these was his portrait, with which she sharply refused 
 to part, on account — some people hinted — of the diamonds 
 in which it was framed. Peter kept his grudge against 
 her for years. The enquiry in connection with this sorry 
 business was still going on in 1707, and Romodanovski 
 had thirty prisoners implicated in it — how, neither they nor 
 he could fairly explain, — under lock and key. A year later, 
 Keyserling, who had already married the lady, took advan- 
 tage of a moment of good humour to intercede with the 
 Tsar in favour of one of her brothers, who was petitioning 
 for employment. His remarks were very ill-received. Peter 
 cut him short roughly, and spoke his mind with his 
 usual frankness. '1 brought up Mons for myself; I meant 
 to marry her ; you have seduced her, and you can keep her. 
 liut never dare to speak to me of her or of her relations 
 again.' When the Prussian would have persisted, Men- 
 
 shikof intervened : ' Your Mons is a ; she has been my 
 
 mistress, and yours, and every one's. Don't let us hear any 
 more about her.' This scene took place, it is only fair to say, 
 after supper, at an entertainment given by a Polish nobleman 
 in the neighbourhood of Lublin. It ended unpleasantly for 
 Keyserling. Peter and Menshikof fell on him with their 
 fists, turned him out of the room, and threw him down stairs, 
 lie made a formal complaint, but the business was decided 
 against him, and ended with excuses, — which he was obliged 
 to make.^ 
 
 ^ Sbornik, vol. xxxix. p. 410 (Whitworth's Despatches). Siemievski, The 
 Et/tpre^s Catherine {?>\.. Petersburg, 1884), p. 33, etc. (Keyscrling's Desp;itclies). 
 Essipof, Life of Menshikof (Russian Archives, 1875). Kostomarof, Knssian 
 History told in Biographies (St. Petersburg, 1S81), vob ii. p. 618. Oushiali)f, 
 vol. iv. p. 145, etc. Soluvief, vol. xvi. p. 67. Lady Rondeau, p. 11. Kusto- 
 
 17 
 
248 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Madame Keyserling, who became a widow in 171 1, in- 
 spired a frosli passion — the admirer, this time, was a Swedish 
 officer named Miller, — but she died only a few years after 
 her husband.^ 
 
 Peter may have been a rancorous, but he was b\- no means 
 an inconsolable lover. Menshikof, who took Lefort's place in 
 his intimate circle, was as skilful as his predecessor in supply- 
 ing his master with consolations. Like Lefort, he had his 
 own female following — his two sisters, Marie and Anne, 
 whom he had placed in the household of Peter's favourite sister 
 Nathalia, and two }-oung ladies, Daria and Barbara Arsenief, 
 who also belonged to the Tsarevna's Court, which Court 
 bore a strong resemblance to a harem. A daughter of the 
 Tolstoif family completed this group, and, about 1703, 
 a sixth recruit appeared, who was to take a place apart in 
 the Sovereign's life, and give quite an unexpected turn to 
 the hitherto trivial history of his love affairs. The real name 
 of this young girl is as uncertain as her origin. In the first 
 authentic documents which mention her, she is sometimes 
 called Catherine Troubatshof, sometimes Catherine Vassi- 
 levska, and sometimes Catherine Mihailof. Menshikof took 
 her for his mistress, while, at the same time, he made love 
 to Daria Arsenief, whose sister had attracted Peter's atten- 
 tion. His plan was to make Barbara Tsarina, and himself 
 thus become the Tsar's brother-in-law. With this object, 
 he gave himself much trouble about the education of the 
 new favourite. ' For heaven's sake,' he wrote to Daria, 
 ' induce your sister to study both Russian and German 
 closely, she has no time to lose.' Villebois describes 
 Barbara as a plain woman, full of wit, and as spiteful as 
 she was clever. He thus relates the beginning of her inter- 
 course with the Tsar, l^eter, who was dining with her and 
 her companions, thus addressed her : ' Thou art so ugly, my 
 poor Barbara, that I do not believe any one has ever thought 
 of making love to thee. But strange exploits are those 
 which please me best, and I will not have thee die without 
 — ' and forthwith he suited the action to the word. The 
 loose morals of the Tsar's circle give us reason to believe in the 
 truth of the story. I have already indicated the ambiguous 
 
 marof comes nearest the truth, though he is mistaken as to the date of Konig- 
 seck's death. (See Peters letter to Apraxin, April I7lh, 1703, in lVrilin_i;s attd 
 CorrespondcHCi;, vol. ii. p. 152.) ' biemievski, ibid. p. 60. 
 
THE FEMIxMNE ELEMENT 249 
 
 nature of the intercourse between these lovers and their 
 mistresses — the strange confusion and community of senti- 
 ments and intimate relations. Peter and Menshikof per- 
 petually appear as taking each other's place, or cumulating 
 rights which might have been held the exclusive property of 
 one or of the other. During their absences, this condition of 
 things is perpetuated in collective messages, which carry 
 tender recollections and endearing words, pell-mell, from one 
 group to the other, frequently accompanied by presents, — 
 cravats, shirts, and dressing-gowns, made by the fair ladies' 
 own hands. Daria Arsenief adds to her signature the words 
 ' the Fool.' Anna Menshikof adds, 'the very thin one.' As 
 for C'atherine, she signs, in 1705, ' with two others,' a sentence 
 explained by a passage in the common letter, ' Peter and 
 Paul salute you, and ask your blessing.' Peter and Paul 
 were the two children she had already borne the Tsar. In 
 1706, the Tsar gathered the whole gay company at Narva, 
 where the Easter festival was spent, and then brought the 
 ladies back with him to St Petersburg, where, as he wrote to 
 Menshikof, ' he was in paradise, in such fair company.' But 
 Menshikof, who was kept in the south with the army, and 
 found it very dull, would gladly have shared that paradise. 
 He wrote to Peter, that as, when he left St Petersburg, he 
 could not well travel about with such a company of ladies, 
 he might as well send them to his friend. Rut Peter decided 
 otherwise. He brought the whole party in his train from St 
 Petersburg to Smolensk, and from Smolensk to Kief, and it 
 was not until the month of AugU5.t that he suffered his 
 favourite to meet him in the latter town, where he had a 
 surprise in store for him. Menshikof had promised marriage 
 to Daria Arsenief, and he was now to keep that engagement, 
 — Peter having decided, on his part, to carry out, at a future 
 date, his own promise to the mother of the ' two others.' The 
 favourite was expected to set him an example, and was not 
 to leave Kief until the deed was done. When the ceremony 
 was over, the common treasure was divided. Peter took his 
 way back to St Petersburg with Catherine Vassilevska and 
 Anisia TolstoY. Menshikof was left at Kief with his wife, his 
 sister Anne, and his sister-in-law Barbara.^ 
 
 ^ Essipof, p, 244, etc., Peter the Great's IVriiings and Corrcspoudaicc, vol. iii, 
 pp. 283, 322, 540, 770, 816, 1058. Solovief, vol. xvi. p. 68. 
 
250 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 IV 
 
 A separate chapter of this work is devoted to Catherine 
 Vassilevska. She must not be confounded with the legion of 
 chance mistresses, who flit across the personal history of 
 Peter the Great. Even after her marriage, and her elevation 
 to the throne, she had a daily struggle with rivals, who 
 sometimes threatened her very existence, as wife and 
 sovereign. This occurred in 1706, during Peter's visit to 
 Hamburg, when, a Lutheran pastor having refused to 
 sacrifice his daughter to the Tsar's passion, the monarch pro- 
 mised to repudiate Catherine, and marry the girl. Shafirof, 
 it is said, actually received orders to prepare the wedding 
 contract. But, unluckily for herself, the too confiding maiden 
 consented to grant her admirer an instalment on account of 
 the promised wedding joys, before the h)'meneal torch was 
 actually lighted, — and was shortly dismissed, with a gift of a 
 thousand ducats.^ The heroine of another and less passing 
 fancy is also currently believed to have approached very near 
 to definite triumph, and corresponding rank. Eudoxia 
 Kjevski was the daughter of one of Peter s earliest partizans, 
 who, in spite of that fact, came of a family which claimed the 
 same ancient and illustrious origin as the Tatishtchef, and 
 was devotedly attached to Sophia and her interests. The girl 
 had been the Tsar's mistress before she was fifteen. At six- 
 teen, Peter married her to Tchernishof, an officer seeking 
 advancement, but this did not interrupt his own relations with 
 her. She had four daughters and three sons by him. He 
 passed, at all events, as their father, but the mother's loose con- 
 duct rendered the paternity of her children more than doubt- 
 ful, and compromised her own chances with the Tsar. Her 
 crowning feat, so the scandal-mongers averred, was to call 
 forth the celebrated order given to her husband by her lover, — 
 who had fallen ill, and was inclined to ascribe his sufferings to 
 her, — ' to go and flog Eudoxia.' The Tsar's usual name for 
 her was 'Avdotia boi baba' (Eudo.xia 'the fighter'.) Her 
 mother was the famous ' Princess- Abbess."^ 
 
 Her case, if it were an isolated one, would be hardly worth 
 relating. Unluckily, — and here comes in the interest, sad as 
 
 ' Report by Count Rabutin, Envoy of llic German Emperor, Rilsching^ 
 Magazin, vol. xi. p. 490. - Dolgoroukof's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 175. 
 
THE FEMININE ELEMENT 251 
 
 it is, of this particular page of history, — she is a typical figure, 
 representing a period, and a state of society. Her story was 
 much the same as that of Maria Matvieief, the daughter of 
 one of the greatest noblemen of that time, who, as I have 
 already said, ultimately became the wife of Roumiantsof. 
 More beautiful than Eudoxia Rjevski, and more loveable, 
 full of wit and charm of every kind, Maria Matvieief, like 
 her, became one of the Empress's maids-of-honour. The 
 position, such an honoured one in our days, almost amounted, 
 at that time, to a vocation of shame. Catherine's female 
 associates had replaced Nathalia's feminine circle. The 
 tereni no longer existed in the Imperial palaces ; the Jiaycni 
 remained, a legacy from the Oriental past. Complaisant 
 husbands had taken the place of complaisant fathers. Shortly 
 after Peter's death, Maria Roumiantsof bore a son, who 
 was to be the hero of the next great reign, the victorious 
 General of Catherine II., — recognised by every one as the 
 son of the great Tsar. 
 
 Peter's illegitimate posterity was almost as numerous as 
 that of Louis XIV. It may, indeed, have been somewhat 
 exaggerated ; there is no historical certainty, for instance, 
 of the illegitimacy of Madame Strogonof's three sons. The 
 mother, a daughter of the house of Novossiltsof, would 
 appear to have been no more to the Tsar than an 
 entertaining, and hard-drinking, boon companion. 
 
 The usual story begins again with another maid of honour, 
 Mary Hamilton. There is no truth whatever, I need hardly 
 say, in the sentimental stories in which certain writers have 
 indulged respecting this lady. She seems to have been a 
 somewhat commonplace being, and Peter's particular style 
 of love-making would not appear to have been unsuited to 
 her. My readers are aware that a branch of the great 
 Scotch family of Hamilton, the rival of the house of 
 Douglas, had settled in Russia at a period considerably 
 preceding the emigration of the seventeenth century, and 
 dating from the reign of Ivan the Terrible. This branch, 
 which had married into several of the great families of the 
 country, was almost completely Russianised, before the 
 )-oung Tsar's accession. Mary Hamilton, the grand- 
 daughter of Artamon Matvieief, Nathalia Naryshkin's 
 adopted father, went to Court, like other girls of her class, 
 and, being a pretty girl, she shared the usual fate. But 
 
252 PETE^ THE GREAT 
 
 Peter's passion for her was of the most ephemeral descrip- 
 tion. He forsook her after the shortest acquaintance. She 
 consoled herself with his Dicnshtc/iiks, and, several times 
 over, she secretly .<jjot rid of the children who were the 
 results of these intimacies. In her desire to keep her hold 
 on one of her faithless lovers, )ounfj Orlof, — a vcr)' sorry 
 fellow, who ill-treated and fleeced her, — she stole the 
 Tsarina's money and jewels. A mere chance brought about 
 the discovery of these crimes, both small and great. A 
 somewhat important document disappeared from the Tsar's 
 cabinet ; suspicion fell on Orlof, who had been aware of its 
 existence, and who had spent the night abroad. When he 
 was brought into the Sovereign's presence, and questioned, 
 he lost his head, fancied that his intercourse with Hamilton 
 was the real object of the enquiry, fell on his knees, crying 
 * Vhiovat' (pardon), and confessed ever}-thing, — both the 
 thefts by which he had profited, and the infanticide at which 
 he had connived. There was a fresh enquiry and a trial. 
 The unhappy girl was convicted, besides her other crimes, 
 (and this last was a mortal one), of having made spiteful 
 remarks about her Sovereign lady, and jokingly referred to 
 the pimples on the imperial countenance Catherine, whatever 
 her faults may have been, showed considerable kindness on 
 this occasion. She interceded for the culprit, and induced 
 the Tsarina Prascovia, who enjoyed considerable credit, and 
 whose intervention was all the more weighty, because, as a 
 rule, she was little inclined to indulgence, to follow her 
 example. According to ancient Russian ideas, infanticide 
 was a crime which circumstances might easily be held to 
 palliate, and the Tsarina I'rascovia was in many respects an 
 old-fashioned Russian. But Peter was inexorable. ' He 
 would not,' he said, 'be either Saul or Ahab, nor violate the 
 Divine Law by an excess of kindness.' Had he then such a 
 mighty respect for Divine Law? My own belief is that 
 he scoffed at it, but— and this, in his eyes, was an unpardon- 
 able fault — he fancied himself cheated of .several soldiers. 
 After having been put to the cjucstion time after time, in the 
 Tsar's own presence, and having stcadil)' refused to give up the 
 name of her accomplice, whose onh' thought had been to clear 
 himself by casting the guilt on her — he was but a poor creature, 
 that ancestor of the great Catherine's future favourite — Mary 
 Hamilton mounted the scaffold, on the 14th .March 1719, 
 
THE FEMININE ELEMENT 253 
 
 dressed, so Staehlin tells us, 'in a white silk gown, trimmed 
 with black ribbons.' Peter, with his love of theatrical effect, 
 certainly had something to do with this last piece of ghastly 
 coquetry. He was present at the execution, and even, — passive 
 he never could be, anywhere, — had courage to play an active 
 part in it. He embraced the condemned woman at the foot 
 of the scaffold, exhorted her to pray, and supported her in his 
 arms when she bent forward, fainting. Then he stepi)ed 
 aside. When she raised her head, the headsman had taken 
 the Tsar's place. Scherer adds some terrible details to the 
 story. The Tsar, according to him, reappeared when the 
 axe had done its work, and picking up the bloody head, 
 which had rolled into the mud, he calmly began an anatomi- 
 cal discourse, drawing the attention of those present to the 
 number and nature of the organs severed by the steel, 
 especially pointing out the section of the spine. When this 
 was over, he touched the pale lips he had so often kissed 
 before, with his own, let the head drop, crossed himself, and 
 departed.^ 
 
 1 am not at all inclined to believe that there is any truth 
 in the assertion that Menshikof thought it wise to push on 
 the prosecution and sentence of this unhappy woman, in the 
 interests of his own protectress, the l:^mpress Catherine. 
 This rival never was a dangerous one. A short time after- 
 wards, the Tsarina had much more serious cause for alarm. 
 In one of Campredon's despatches, dated 8th June 1722, the 
 following lines appear : — ' The Tsarina fears that if the 
 Princess bears a son, the Tsar may be induced by the 
 Prince of Wallachia to repudiate his wife and marry his 
 mistress.' The mistress in question was Maria Kantcmir.^ 
 
 Prince Uimitri Kantemir, who had been one of Peter's 
 allies during the unfortunate campaign against the Turks in 
 171 1, had lost his sovereignty by the treaty of the Pruth. 
 He had been given hospitality at St. Petersburg, and there 
 waited wearily for the compensation he had been given 
 reason to expect. For a considerable time his daughter 
 appeared more than likely to obtain this for him. When 
 
 ^ Sicniicvski, Slovo i Dielo, p. 185- Korobanof, Study in h'tissian Antiqui- 
 ties, 1S71, vol iii. p. 465. Golikof, vol. vi. p. 68. Tatishtchef, Notes on the 
 Soitdichnik (Code) of Ivan Vassilcvilch. Herrmann, Peter Jer Grosse un.-i d(r 
 'J sorcvilch Alexei, p. 207. Mordovtsof, Russian Women, p 57. Sclierer, vol. 
 ii. p. 272 ; the account given by Lubomirski [7'sar, Anhduc/iesses, etc.) is a mere 
 work of imagination. ■^ French Foreign Oflice. 
 
254 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Peter started for his Persian Campaign in 1722. this 
 love affair had ah'cady lasted several years, and seemed to 
 threaten a diiioncnioit which mii^ht be fatal to Catherine's 
 interests. Both the ladies started with the Tsar, but 
 Maria, who was near her confinement, was obliged to stop 
 at Astrakhan. Her contlition increased the confidence 
 felt by her partisans. Since the death of little Peter 
 Petrovitch, in 17 19, Catherine had no son whom Peter could 
 make his heir, and it was generally believed that if his 
 mistress bore him one, during this expedition, he would not 
 hesitate to get rid of his second wife, as he had got rid 
 of his first. Catherine's friends, if Scherer is to be believed, 
 took means to avert this danger.^ When Peter returned, 
 he found his mistress in bed, after a miscarriage, which had 
 seriously threatened her life. Thus Catherine triumphed, 
 and the love affair which had so nearly overthrown her for- 
 tune, ended in the same commonplace manner as so many 
 of its predecessors. A short time before the Sovereign's 
 death, a complaisant individual, belonging to the same class 
 as Tchernishof, and Roumiantsof, was found, ready to be- 
 come the nominal husband of the Princess, who, though still 
 much courted, had forfeited all her ambitious hopes.^ 
 
 Catherine came victoriously out of all her difficulties, and 
 a solemn coronation finally set her above all attack. The 
 mistress, wife, and sovereign, rehabilitated b}^ marriage, the 
 vigilant guardian of the conjugal hearth, who shared all the 
 honours of the supreme rank, won the day at last, and took 
 her place above the mob of female figures in which we see 
 servant-girls elbowing the daughters of Scotch lairds, and 
 Moldo-Wallachian j)rincesses. 
 
 And a yet more unexpected figure now appears in that 
 strange throng — a chaste and respected friend. Yes, even 
 that delicate flower bloomed in the miry slough ! The 
 woman who played this part, was that most seductive of all 
 human creatures — a well-born Pole — Slav by her birth, 
 Latin by her education. I have already described Peter as 
 s{)ending long hours in the Gardens of Jaworow in the 
 company of Elizabeth Sieniawska. They built a boat 
 together, rowed on the water, and tallied endlessly. It 
 
 ^ Vol. iii. p. 259. 
 
 ^ Mhnoires U Documents, vol. i. p. 1 19, etc. (.Ministry fur Foreign Affairs, 
 Palis). 
 
THE FEMININE ELEMENT 255 
 
 was a perfect idyll. This lady, a Lubomirska, who had 
 mairied agreat Court dignitary and eager partisan of Augustus 
 against Leszczynski, flits across the turbulent life of the 
 brutal conqueror, without being assailed by any breath of 
 scandal. It was not so much her beauty, — that was far from 
 remarkable, — which attracted Peter, it was her unusual in- 
 telligence. He delighted in her society, he listened to her 
 advice, not always very convenient, for she supported Lesz- 
 czynski against the Tsar's own protege, and against her 
 husband's master. He talked of his plan for dismissing all 
 the foreign officers in his service ; she forthwith taught him 
 a lesson by dismissing the German leader of an orchestra of 
 Polish musicians, which at once gave forth such discordant 
 sounds that even the Tsar's far from sensitive ear suffered. 
 He spoke of turning the provinces, Russian or Polish, 
 through which Charles XH. would have to pass, to 
 reach Moscow, into deserts ; and she interrupted him with a 
 story of the gentleman who, to disoblige his wife, had him- 
 self made into a eunuch.^ She was a charming woman, and 
 be was swayed, fascinated and tamed by her charm ; he 
 grew nobler in her company, transfigured, as it were, by 
 contact with her pure and delicate, tender, and yet resolute, 
 nature. 
 
 Women played a large and very varied part in Peter's life. 
 But far more important, from the historical point of view, 
 was the part he himself played in the destinies of Russian 
 women in general. In justice to the great man, this part 
 must be summarily described. 
 
 The Tsar Alexis once gave solemn audience, in his castle 
 at Kolomenskoie, near Moscow, to the ambassador of a 
 foreign power. A murmur of soft voices, and a rustling of 
 silken stuffs, coming from a half-open door, attracted the 
 diplomat's attention. The ceremony was being watched by 
 invisible spectators, — the inhabitants of the mysterious tereiii, 
 driven by curiosity into a sort of semi-violation of their 
 retirement. Suddenly, with a violent push, the door flew 
 open, and a handsome, dark-e>'ed woman, blushing and con- 
 fused, with a little boy clinging to her skirts, appeared, and 
 
 ^ Staelilin, p. 1 19, etc. 
 
256 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 straightway vanished, to the courtiers' f:^eneral astonishment 
 and alarm. The dark -haired beauty was the Tsarina 
 Nathalia, and the Httle three-year old boy, so rough and 
 impetuous alrcad\-, that heavy doors flew open at his touch, was 
 one day to overthrow the walls of the tcrein itself. In later 
 years, this picturesque scene was taken to be an omen.^ 
 
 In the seventeenth century, national feeling in Russia was 
 full of suspicion, almost of hatred, of the weaker sex. This 
 is proved by many popular proverbs of the period : ' A 
 woman's hair is long, but her understanding is short. — A 
 woman's mind is like a house without a roof. — A man should 
 flee a woman's beauty, just as Noah tied the deluge. — A horse 
 must be managed by the bit, and a woman by threats. — The 
 woman who is visible is made of copper, the woman who is 
 invisible is made of gold.' 
 
 Modern Russian historians are inclined to hold this 
 peculiarity as one of foreign origin, quite contrary to the 
 natural tendency of the national spirit, which is rather in- 
 clined to proclaim the equality of the sexes. As a matter of 
 fact, Russian legislation and the present habits of the country, 
 are altogether opposed to that subjection of women, which 
 still characterises Western laws and customs. A Russian wife, 
 in the absence of any special stipulation in the marriage 
 contract, has the sole control of her fortune. The ideas in 
 vogue before Peter's accession, and the corresponding 
 institutions and habits, including the terem itself, were prob- 
 ably of Byzantine origin, the outcome of that great current 
 of monkish and religious asceticism, which left such an 
 indelible mark on the intellectual and moral development of 
 the country. The tcrcin was no harcui. The confinement 
 of women within its walls was the result of a very different 
 .sentiment, dictated, not by jealousy, but by the fear of sin 
 and scandal, by a religious conception of human life, 
 according to which the cloistered existence was the ideal 
 one, that which was most pleasing in God's sight. The 
 idea, if not the actual form, of the tercm was absolutely 
 liyzantine." This is my theory. 
 
 But, however that may have been, tlic prison was a 
 prison, and a severe one. Women, young girls especially, 
 
 1 Oustrialof, vol. i. pp. lo and 261. 
 
 ' Zabielin, Private Life of the Kiisaian Tsainas, p. 83, etc. Ko tomarof, 
 Htiiory oj Russia, vol. ii. p. 475. 
 
THE FEMININE ELEMENT 257 
 
 were mere captives; they vegetated, deprived of light and 
 air, in rooms which were half dungeon and half cell, behind 
 windows covered with thick curtains, and heavily padlocked 
 doors. There was no means of separate exit. The only 
 way of getting out was through the father's or the husband's 
 room, and the father or husband kept the keys in his pocket, 
 or under his pillow. On festival occasions, when the guests 
 were at table and the round ' piroguV had made their 
 appearance, the wife of the host stood, for a moment, on the 
 threshold of the women's apartment. Then the men rose 
 and kissed her, but she retired immediately. As for the 
 unmarried daughters, no male eye, not even that of an 
 affianced husband, saw them till they were married. A 
 bride married without ever beholding her husband or 
 being seen by him. A betrothal strongly resembled the 
 game of hot cockles. There was indeed an individual, called 
 the SniotnltcJiitsa, generally a relation of the suitor, who 
 inspected the girl, and reported accordingly,— but she 
 only acted for the suitor. No young girl permitted 
 herself to wonder what her future husband might be like. 
 Her father, when he informed her that her marriage was 
 arranged, showed her a whip, fit emblem of the authority he 
 was about to transmit to her husband, and the only glimpse 
 of him she was permitted, before being led to the altar. She 
 went to church in deep silence, covered with a heavy veil ; 
 not a gesture, not a word, except to answer the priest, and then 
 only, for the first time, the husband heard her voice. At the 
 repast which followed the ceremony, the couple were separated 
 by a curtain. The bride's conjugal existence did not begin 
 until the first part of the feast was concluded. Then her 
 bridesmaids led her to the nuptial chamber, undressed her, 
 and assisted her to bed. There she waited, till the husband 
 was sufficiently drunk. The groomsmen, when they thought 
 this point attained, led him to the bride's apartment, carrying 
 torches, which they planted round the bed, in barrels filled 
 with wheat, barley, and oats. The bed itself was laid on 
 sheaves of rye. Then came the crucial moment. The 
 bride's face was seen at last. To welcome her new master, 
 she rose from her bed, wrapped herself in a furred robe, went 
 several paces towards him, bending respectfully, and dropped 
 her veil. 
 
 A man who ma\- have belie\'ed himself to be marrying a 
 
258 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 beautiful <^\v\, would sometimes see that she was humpbacked, 
 sickl}', or frightful!}' uc^h'. Even if the go-between had done 
 her dut}' conscientiously, there was always the chance of her 
 havin;^ been deceived, by the substitution of another t^irl for 
 the real one ; such cases not un frequently occurred. The 
 husband's only resource, in such an event, was to invite his 
 new-made bride, upon the spot, to rid him of her person by 
 straij^^htway takincj the veil. But beinj^, in all probability, 
 far from sober, he did not look too closely, and this fact 
 probably accounts for the habit of making the bridegroom 
 intoxicated on such occasions. He did not realise his mis- 
 fortune until after the marriage was consummated, and 
 become an accomplished fact. 
 
 The result of such marriages may easily be conceived 
 The chronicles of the scandal-mongers, and the judicial 
 records of the period, teem with information on the subject. 
 Husbands would leave their homes, and take refuge in the 
 peace of the cloister ; wives, driven distracted by ill-treat- 
 ment, would use steel and poison to free themselves from an 
 unendurable yoke. The punishment allotted to such crimes, 
 terrible as it was, did not, as we may judge by the engravings 
 of that period, prevent their frequent occurrence. The 
 guilty woman was buried in the earth up to her waist, 
 and there left till death came to release her. The culprit 
 would sometimes have to wait ten days, before her agony was 
 ended, — tortured all the time by hunger and thirst, and half 
 devoured by worms.^ 
 
 All these customs were cither connected with, or the 
 direct outcome of, a social condition defined by the 
 Doniostrol, a code of laws drawn up, if not actually written 
 out, by the Russian pope Sylvester, Ivan the Terrible's 
 chief confidant, during the closing years of his life. 
 Whether the details owed their origin to Tartar, Byzantine,- 
 or native sources, the same indelible mark, the brand of 
 barbarism, was on them all. Woman was sacrificed, and 
 man thereby debased. To amuse themselves in their 
 cloistered loneliness, ladies ox'" the higher ranks dressed 
 themselves up like idols, painted themselves to their very 
 
 ' See illustrations to Kerb's hook. Also the description given by Weber, in 
 Herrmann's Peter der Grosse, p. 98 (Aujj. Ijlh, 1717). 
 
 2 Accoi<]iiii^ to M. Nckrnssof {Origin of the Doiin'slroi, Moscosv, 1S72), only 
 portions of llic work can be ascribed to Sylvc>lcr. The manusciipt was not 
 l>ui)lished by Golovastof till 1849. 
 
THE FEMININE ELEMENT 259 
 
 eyes, and drank to excess. When an Embassy was sent 
 to Copenhagen, in 1630, to negotiate the marriage of 
 Princess Irene, the daughter of the Tsar Michael Feo- 
 dorovitch, with the Prince of Denmark, the Envoys laid 
 particular stress on the fact that the Tsarevna 'did not 
 drink brandy.' The poorer women, who could not afford 
 to dress up, consoled themselves with drink alone, — and 
 all these wives were the mothers of many children. With 
 this condition of things Peter was resolved to do away. 
 And to have succeeded in that matter, alone, would have 
 covered him with glory. 
 
 Before his time, it is true, a steadily widening breach 
 had been made in the old tradition. Alexis' second marriage, 
 with its touch of romance, proves the existence of a new 
 current of ideas and feeling. Nathalia appears beside the 
 husband whom she had won by her own beauty and 
 grace, in a very different position from that of former 
 Tsarinas, — frozen, all of them, into a traditional attitude, 
 shut up in the dreariness of their lofty isolation. She took 
 a certain share in her husband's external occupations. She 
 sometimes went out hunting with him, and she was present 
 at the performances given by foreign actors, drawn thither by 
 Matvi6ief, under the very walls of the ancient Kreml. 
 She even drove with the Tsar in an open carriage, and 
 thereby almost caused a revolution. Under the rule of 
 Alexis' feeble and sickly successor, the current of freedom 
 ran yet stronger. Feodor's sisters did not fail to take 
 advantage of his weakness, and of the general confusion 
 resulting from it. And then Sophia came into power, 
 and inaugurated an era of feminine government in this 
 stronghold of female slavery. 
 
 Peter did more, and better still, — or tried to, at all events. 
 His Ukases with reference to marriage were directed against 
 an abuse of power, and against defects of domestic organiza- 
 tion, amongst the lower classes, which had grown intoler- 
 able. Until his time, only a few days, — sometimes only 
 a few hours, — had been allowed to elapse between the 
 betrothal and the actual marriage. He decreed an interv-al 
 of at least six weeks, so as to give the betrothed couple 
 time to make acquaintance. This remedy was, of course, 
 neither absolutely, nor immediately, efficacious. Only a few 
 decades before our own time, according to Mielnikofs novel 
 
26o PETER THE GREAT 
 
 '/;/ the Forests, the ancient traditions still survived, and 
 were clung to, in certain circles, with the most unconquerable 
 tenacity. Nevertheless, an immense amount of good was 
 done. According to the laws in existence before Peter's 
 time, the head of the household, father or husband, had 
 absolute power — short of capital punishment, at all events, — 
 over the women of his household, whether wife or daughters. 
 A high-born lady, Princess Saltykof, the sister-in-law of 
 the 1 sarina Prascovia, was driven, after a long martj'rdom, 
 during which she had been beaten over and over again, 
 and tortured by hunger and by cold, to take refuge in 
 the house of her father, a Dolgorouki. Enquiry proved that 
 she had reached it half dead, and covered with wounds, — 
 yet her husband and tyrant claimed her, and all she could 
 obtain, after a long and weary trial, was leave to bury 
 herself, for the rest of her life, in a cloister.- My readers may 
 argue, from this case, as to the condition of things in the 
 lower classes. The strongest resistance of the old Russian 
 party was made on this point. The autocratic and despotic 
 feeling was so profoundly enrooted in the national soul, that 
 Peter himself dared not make any direct attack upon it. 
 Some of the laws, made between March and October 17 16, 
 would seem to betoken his approval of the old-fashioned 
 customs ; but the new spirit which he bore with him, and 
 spread around him, was so utterly opposed to it, that, by 
 degrees, this iniquitous law fell into disuse, was treated as 
 null and void, and finally disappeared from the written 
 code of the country. The Svod Zakonov does not refer to 
 it, and quite latterly, it was utterly abolished, by the Court 
 of Appeal.- 
 
 In the upper classes of society, Peter, so to speak, took 
 women by the hand, led them into the circle of common life, 
 whether in private or in general society, and there gave 
 them their own special and well-defined position. He 
 was resolved the feminine element should be present in 
 all future gatherings. lie would have women show their 
 beauty, talk, dance, and make music. In December 1704, 
 astounded Moscow witnessed an extraordinary sight. On 
 an occasion of public rejoicing, young girls, scattering flowers, 
 and singing odes, took part in a procession through the 
 public streets.^ 
 
 * Mordovstcf, p. 133. ^ 1869, Sokolowski trial. ^ Golikof, vol. ii, p. 512, 
 
THE FEMININE ELEMENT 261 
 
 The Reformer even endeavoured to do as much for his 
 Boyard's daughters, as he was doing for their sons. He 
 would have sent them abroad to complete their education, 
 but he was forced to relinquish this point in face of the 
 parents' fierce opposition. He did his best, at all events, 
 to secure them some teaching, and set the example in his 
 own family. He gave his daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, 
 a French governess. He was occasionally present at their 
 lessons, and took care they should assume a European 
 appearance, and that their dresses and head-coverings should 
 be copied from Parisian fashions. When his sister-in-law 
 Prascovia ventured to criticise these innovations, he told 
 her that ' her house was an asylum for fools and weak- 
 minded persons,' and finally carried her along with him. 
 Tsar Ivan's widow thus ended by personifying a sort of 
 transition type in the history of Russian women, the direct 
 outcome of Peter's reform. She gave her daughters French 
 masters, and she had a German tutor for herself. But she 
 kept her Russian custome, and with it, her savage instincts. 
 She used to beat her maids-of-honour, and one day, — to 
 force one of her servants to plead guilty to some trifling 
 fault, — she poured the bottle of brandy she always kept in 
 her carriage over his head, set it on fire, and then struck the 
 poor wretch with her cane, on the horrible wounds the 
 burning brandy had made.^ 
 
 The road before Peter was too long for him to reach the 
 goal he had, doubtless, set before him. And indeed his 
 native coarseness and depravity did not, it must be ac- 
 knowledged, make him the best of guides. He often forgot 
 himself, lost sight of the real object of his journey, — and such 
 digressions were fatal to his end. He was too apt to behave 
 like a trooper, and a rough one, in the drawing rooms he had 
 called into existence, and before the eyes of the recluses he 
 had released from the bondage of the terem. The moral 
 character of Russian women will long bear traces of the 
 strange fashion in which Peter the Great introduced the sex 
 into social life.- 
 
 The same reproach must be applied to the \\hole of the 
 great man's work, and certainly detracts both from its merit 
 
 ^ Siemievski, The Tsarina Prascovia, p. 151. 
 
 ^ See M. N 's study of Russian Women in the Days of Peter the Great. 
 
 Novosti, 1872, No. 152. 
 
262 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 and his glory. Yet the female world, now- a -days, in its 
 more or less legitimate revolt, not in Russia only, against 
 the injustice and cruelty, real or imaginary, of its fate, must 
 recognise Peter the Great as one of its most effectual saviours, 
 — just as civilization in general must acknowledge him one 
 of its most powerful makers. 
 
 Ikutal and cynical though he was, woman was more to 
 him than mere beautiful flesh. His conception of her part 
 in the family, and in society, was so high as to approach 
 within measurable distance of our modern ideal. And, even 
 if the woman of whom I am now about to speak had never 
 appeared in his feminine circle, this fact, alone, would atone 
 for many faults. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CATHERINE 
 
 Her arrival in Russia — The siege of Marienburg — Her origin — Pastor 
 Gllick's family — Sheremetiefs camp — Menshikofs house — Catherine 
 Troubatshof — Pietioushka^s mother — -The marriage — The servant girl 
 becomes the sovereign. 
 
 Contemporary opinion— Baron Von Pollnitz — The Margravine of Baireuth 
 — Caiiipredon — The portraits in the Romanof Gallery — Neither pretty 
 nor distinguished looking — An active temperament and a well-balanced 
 mind — An officer's wife — Her influence over Peter — She fascinated and 
 tamed him — Their correspondence — Their conjugal intiinacy — Tlie 
 Tsarina's share in politics — Her good actions and her faults — Clouds on the 
 domestic horizon. 
 
 These clouds are dispersed — The steady rise of Catherine's fortune — The 
 death of Alexis — Ihe mother of the heir — She brings in her family — The 
 Riga postilion — The Revel courtesan — The shoemaker — All of them are 
 given titles — The pinnacle of glory — Catherine's coronation — The succes- 
 sion to the crown — On the edge of the abyss — A criminal intimacy — The 
 Chamberlain Mons — The punishment — Inquiries and threats — A dubious 
 reconciliation — Peter's death — and Catherine's triumph — She does not turn 
 it to the best account — Reign of sixteen months — A Comedy Queen. 
 
 At the beginning of the Swedish war, in July 1702, General 
 Shcremetief, whose orders were to occupy Livonia, and take 
 up a strong position in that country, laid siege to Marien- 
 burg. The town was reduced, after a few weeks of gallant re- 
 sistance, to the last extremity, and the commandant resolved 
 to blow himself up with the fortress. He called some of 
 the inhabitants together, and privately warned them of his 
 decision, advising them to decamp forthwith, unless they 
 desired to share his fate, and that of his troops. Amongst 
 the persons thus warned, was the Lutheran pastor of the 
 place. He fled at once, with his wife, his children, and his 
 servant maid, carrying nothing with him but a Slavonic 
 Bible, which he hoped might serve as safe conduct through 
 13 ^^ 
 
264 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 the enemy's lines. When he wns stopped h\- tlie Russian 
 outposts, lie brandished his book, proved his Hnguistic talent 
 by quotin'T several passages, and offered to serve as an inter- 
 preter. The authorities agreed, and undertook to send him 
 to Moscow with his family. But how about the servant 
 girl ? Sheremetief had cast an approving eye on her fair 
 and opulent beauty. With a kno\\ing smile, he gave orders 
 that she should stay in camp, where her society would be 
 more than welcome. Peter had not j'et thought, as he tlid 
 later, of forbidding the presence of the fair sex with his 
 armies. The attack was to be made on the morrow, but in 
 the mean time the troops were taking what pleasure they 
 could find. The new comer was soon seated at table, in gay 
 cornpany : she was cheerful, anything but shy, and was 
 received with open arms. A dance was just about to begin, 
 and the hautboys were tuning up. Suddenly, a fearful ex- 
 plosion overthrew the dancers, cut the music short, and left 
 the servant maid, fainting with terror, in the arms of a 
 dragoon. The commandant of Marienburg had kept his word. 
 Thus it was, — to a noise like thunder, and close clasped in a 
 soldier's embrace — that Catherine I. made her first appear- 
 ance in Russian history.^ 
 
 She was not, at that time, called 'Catherine' at all, and 
 no one knows what name she really bore, nor whence she 
 came, nor how she had reached Marienburg. Roth as 
 regards her family, and the country of her birth, history and 
 legend are at variance. The only point on which docu- 
 ments, more or less authentic, and traditions, more or less 
 worthy of credit, unite in agreeing, is in a general affir- 
 mation that her life and destiny were the most extraordinary 
 to which any woman was ever called — no romance of an 
 empress, some story, rather, out of the Arabian Nights. I 
 will try to relate — not the certainties, for there are hardly 
 any certainties — but the most probable facts, in this unique 
 career. 
 
 She was born in a Livonian village, whether in Swedish 
 or Polish Livonia, no one knows, some say in that of Vyshki- 
 Oziero, in the neighbourhood of Riga, others, at Ringen, 
 
 ' Weber, Memoirs of the Reign of the Empress Catherine, 1728, pp. 605-613; 
 Oustrialof, vol. iv. p. 128, etc. ; Grot, Examination 0/ the Origin of the Empress 
 Catherine, in the Memoirs of the ' Acadt'mie des Sciences'' of St. Petersburg, 1 877, 
 vol. xviii. 
 
CATHERINE 265 
 
 in the district of Derpt (now known as lourief).^ In 171 8, on 
 the nth of October, the anniversary of the capture of Note- 
 burfT, a Swedish town, Peter wrote, — ^ KaterinonsJika, greet- 
 ing ! greeting on the occasion of this happy . day, on 
 which Russia first set foot on your native soil ! ' Yet, 
 Catherine would rather seem to have come of some Polish 
 family. Her brothers and sisters, who appeared on the 
 scene in later years, were called Skov^oroshtchenko or 
 Skovorotski, which for the sake of euphony, doubtless, has 
 been turned into Skovronski.^ We may suppose these 
 emigrants, as they may have been — mere peasants, in any 
 case — to have fled the yoke of serfdom, grown intolerable 
 in their native land, to seek some less oppressive servi- 
 tude elsewhere. In 1702, Catherine was seventeen years 
 old, and an orphan. Her mother is believed to have 
 been the serf, and the mistress, of a high-born Livonian 
 named Alvendhal. Of this connection — possibly a very tem- 
 porary one — Catherine w^as the fruit. Her legitimate father 
 and mother died, her real father disowned her, and when 
 still a mere child, she was received and sheltered by Pastor 
 Gliick. He taught her the catechism, but she did not learn 
 her alphabet. She never could do more, in later years, than 
 just sign her name. She grew up in her protector's house, 
 making herself useful, as she grew older, sharing the household 
 duties, and taking care of the children. Gliick received 
 foreign pupils, and she helped to wait on them ; two of 
 these pupils declared, in later years, that she always stinted 
 them in their bread and butter. This instinct of economy 
 never deserted her. In certain other matters, according to 
 some historians, and from a very early age, she was more 
 than liberal. A Lithuanian gentleman of the name of 
 Tiesenhausen, and other lodgers in the pastor's house, are 
 reported to have enjo)-ed her favours. She is even said to 
 have brought a girl into the world, who died when only a 
 few months old. Not long before the siege, her master 
 thought it best to put a stop to the.se irregularities, by 
 finding her a husband. The husband or the betrothed — 
 
 ^ A paper was published in Westcrmann's Illuslrirtc fl/oiififschnft, in 1857, 
 with the object of proving that Catherine was born at Riga, and belonged to the 
 Badendik family, from which the writer of the paper, Ilerr Tversen, was 
 descended. 
 
 ^ Arsenief, Catherine's Reign, vol. i. pp. 74, 75. Andreief, 7 he Kepresenta- 
 tiz'es 0/ Authority in Russia, after Peter I. (St. Petersburg, 1870), p. 5. 
 
266 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 there is some unccrtaint}- on this point — a Swcdisli Life- 
 gufirdsman named Krusc, disappeared after the capture of 
 the town, having been taken prisoner by the Russians, and 
 sent far away, or, according to a better estabhshed version, 
 he escaped the catastrophe, iiaving been sent towards Riga, 
 with his regiment, either just before, or just after, the con- 
 summation of the marriage. Catherine, after she became 
 Tsarina, sought him out, and gave him a pension.^ 
 
 Meanwhile, she was the joy of that portion of the Russian 
 army which was engaged in the Livonian campaign. She 
 began as the mistress of a non-commissioned officer, who beat 
 her, and finall)', passed into the possession of the general 
 himself, who soon grew weary of her. The question of how 
 she came into Menshikofs household is one on which 
 opinions vary. Some authorities declare she was first 
 engaged to wash the favourite's shirts. She would seem, in 
 one of her letters to Peter, after she had become his wife, to 
 allude to this fact in her past career : ' Though you doubtless 
 have other laundresses about you, the old one never forgets 
 you.' And Teter answers gallantly, 'You are mistaken, 
 you must be thinking of Shafirof, who mixes up his love 
 affairs with his clean linen. That is not my way, and_ 
 besides, I am growing old.' One thing is certain, her 
 original position in her new protector's house was a some- 
 what humble one. When Menshikof wrote, in March 1706, 
 to his own sister Anne, and to the Arscnief sisters, to come 
 and meet him at Witebsk for the Easter festivities, foresee- 
 ing that their fear of the bad roads might prevent them 
 from obeying his call, he begged them, at all events, to 
 send him Catherine Troubatshof and two other girls.^ This 
 name of Troubatshof may be an allusion to Catherine's 
 husband or betrothed, for the Russian word Troiiba means 
 truvipct. 
 
 But an important c\cnt had ahead}- occurred in the exis- 
 tence of the person thus so unceremoniously disposed of. 
 
 ^ Arsenief, Russian Archives, 1875, vl. ii. p. 240. 
 
 '^ Oustrialof refuses to admit that this letter can refer to the future Tsarina, and 
 appeals to the testimony of Gordon, according to whom the girl bore the name 
 of Catherine Vasilei'na until it wrs converted, on her conversion to the Greek 
 Church, into that of Catherine Aiixitievna, but Peter himself, and other con- 
 temporary authorities, give her diflerent and very varied names, in perfectly 
 reliable documents (Oustrialof, vol. iv. part. ii. p. 329. Compare Peter's 
 ' IVritivgs and CorresfonJitice,^ vol. iii. p. 283. 
 
CATHERINE 267 
 
 Peter had seen her, and had proved himself far from indifferent 
 to her charms. There are many different stories as to this 
 first meeting. The Tsar, we are told, paid a visit to Men- 
 shikof, after the capture of Narva, and was astonished by 
 the air of cleanliness visible in the favourite's person and 
 surroundings. He enquired how he contrived to have his 
 house so well kept, and to wear such fresh and dainty linen. 
 Menshikofs only answer was to open a door, through which 
 the sovereign perceived a handsome girl, aproned, and sponge 
 in hand, bustling from chair to chair, and going from window 
 to window, scrubbing the window panes.^ The picture is 
 a pleasing one, but 1 notice one drawback. Narva fell in 
 August 1704, and at that date, Peter had already made 
 Catherine the mother of at least one child. During the 
 month of March, in the following year, she bore him a son, 
 the little Pietroitshka, of whom Peter speaks in one of his 
 letters. Eight months later, she had two boys.^ 
 
 These children were certainly dear to the great man, for, 
 he thought of them even among the terrible anxieties which 
 then devoured him. But he does not appear, as yet, to have 
 cared much for their mother. There has been a world of 
 hair-splitting over the circumstances of Catherine's removal 
 from the favourite's household, to that of the Tsar. All sorts 
 of dramatic incidents have been invented. According to one 
 story, the lady, after an agreement between the two friends, 
 and a formal cession of Menshikofs rights to his master, 
 took up her residence in her new home, where her eye 
 shortly fell on certain magnificent jewels. Forthwith, burst- 
 ing into tears, she addressed her new protector : ' Who put 
 those ornaments here.'' If they come from the other one, 1 
 will keep nothing but this little ring ; but if they come from 
 you, how could you think I needed them to make me love 
 you?' 
 
 In all human probability, matters were arranged after a 
 fa.r simpler fashion. I cannot conceive any such disinterested- 
 ness on her part, nor such prodigality on his. This scene, 
 too, is supposed to have occurred at a period when the fair 
 Livonian and her august lover were already bound together 
 by the existence of two children. During the succeeding 
 
 ^ MSmoires et Documents^ vol. i. p. 163 (Paris Foreign Oflice). 
 '■^See letter signed 'Catherine and two others,' Oct. 1705; also see Writings 
 and Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 283. 
 
268 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 years, I can perceive no evident change in the humble and 
 dubious situation occupied by her in that common harem, 
 where Peter and Mcnshikof were wont, cither turnabout, or 
 together, to take their pleasure. Sometimes she was with 
 the Tsar, and sometimes with the favourite. At St. Peters- 
 burg, she lived, with all the other ladies, in Menshikof's 
 house. She was still no more than an obscure and com- 
 plaisant mistress. Peter had many others, and she never 
 ventured to object. She went so far as to pander willingly 
 to the faults, and even to the infidelities of her female rivals, 
 and made up, by her own unfailing cheerfulness, for their 
 caprices of temper. Thus, slowly, and almost insensibly, 
 she endeared herself to the Sovereign, and above all, she 
 grew into a habit with him. She took root in his heart, 
 entrenched herself there, and ended by making herself 
 indispensable. In 1706, he would seem to have feared, 
 for a moment, that she might slip through his fingers, after 
 the fashion of Anna Mons. He began to consider the draw- 
 backs likely to result from the promiscuity in which, up to 
 that time, he and Menshikof had mingled their pleasures 
 and their rights. I notice a sort of dim uneasiness about 
 him, and pricks of conscience which may have been nothing 
 but hints of unconscious jealousy. He had joked for years 
 over Menshikof's promise to marry Daria Arsenief, and held 
 it null and void. In 1706, he declared it valid and sacred, 
 and wrote to his alter ego, 'For God's sake, for my soul's sake, 
 remember your oath and keep it !' ^ 
 
 Menshikof set him the example, and Peter followed it, 
 though not till much later. Catherine is, indeed, said to have 
 been united to him, at this time, by a secret marriage. After 
 the year 1709, she never left him, and in Poland and 
 Germany, whither she accompanied the Tsar, she was treated 
 almost like a Sovereign. Two other children, daughters 
 both, had bound her still more closely to her lover. But, 
 officially speaking, she was nothing but a mistress. In 
 January 1708, when Peter departed from Moscow to rejoin 
 his army, and take part in what promised to be a decisive 
 campaign, he left this note behind him : ' If, b}' God's will, 
 anything should happen to me, let the 3,000 roubles which 
 will be found in Menshikof's house, be given to Catherine 
 Vassilevska and her daughter. Piter! They had not 
 
 ' Russian Archives, 1875, vol. ii. p. 245. 
 
CATHERINE 269 
 
 travelled very far beyond the ducat bestowed after their first 
 meeting ! ^ 
 
 How then, and when, did Peter finally decide on the 
 apparently wild and impossible folly of making this woman his 
 legitimate wife and Empress? The resolution is said to 
 have been taken in 171 1, after the campaign of the Pruth. 
 Catherine's unfailing devotion, her courage, and her presence 
 of mind at critical moments, had overcome his last hesita- 
 tion. She conquered him, and he, at the same time, per- 
 ceived the means by which the choice of such a partner and 
 such a Sovereign might be excused in his subjects' eyes. 
 The intervention of the former servant girl had saved the 
 Russian army and its leader from irreparable disaster, and 
 inextinguishable shame. Peter, if he led her to the altar, 
 and placed the Imperial diadem on her brow, would only be 
 repaying the common debt. And this was clearly expressed 
 in the manifesto he addressed to his own people, and to the 
 whole of Europe. 
 
 But here, again, alas ! we have nothing but an ingenious 
 hypothesis, contradicted by all the facts and every date. 
 The part played by Catherine on the banks of the Moldavian 
 river, when the Russian army was surrounded by the Turks 
 and the Tartars, dates — if it ever took place at all, and this is 
 very doubtful — somewhere in the month of June 171 1; at 
 that moment she had already, for over six months, been 
 publicly acknowledged as Peter's wife. The Tsar's son 
 Alexis, who was then staying in Germany, had heard the 
 news early in May, and had written his stepmother a con- 
 gratulatory letter.^ 
 
 'i he great reformer was not likely to seek more or less 
 valid excuses for any decision or act of his. Later, it is true, 
 - — ten years later, — on the occasion of Catherine's coronation, 
 he thought fit to recall the already distant memory of the 
 peril she had helped to avert in 171 1. 3ut, it may be fairly 
 believed, that his object in so doing was to indicate the sense 
 and bearing of this unusual ceremony, whereby, failing a 
 direct successor to the Crown, he desired to invest her, in a 
 manner, with his inheritance, and to ensure the execution, 
 after his own death, of a will which, in his lifetime, owed no 
 
 ^ Russian Archives, 1S75, ^'"l- '■• P- S^- 
 
 ^ Oustrialof, vol. vi. p. 312. Juel, J^n A'ej'se tit l!us/a/tJ (Copenhagen, 1S93), 
 p. 422. 
 
270 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 account to any one. It was at this moment that the manifesto 
 to which I have ah'cady referred was published, and by it 
 Peter condescended to reckon with those who mii;ht survive 
 him. 
 
 It is m\' duty to add, that the very fact of this marriajii^e 
 has been denied ; ^ but we possess very reliable testimony on 
 the subject, in the shape of a despatch written from Moscow 
 on the 20th February (2nd March) 1712, by Whitworth, 
 the British envoy. ' Yesterda\', the Tsar publicly celebrated 
 his marriacje with his wife, Catherine Alexieievna. Last 
 winter, about two hours before his C/.arisch Majesty left 
 Moscow, he summoned the Empress Dowager, his sister the 
 Tsarevna Nathalia, and two other half-sisters, to whom he 
 declared this lady to be his empress, and that they should 
 pay her the respect due to that quality, and in case any mis- 
 fortune mic^ht happen to him in the campaign, should allow 
 her the same rank, privileges, and revenue as was usual to 
 the other dowagers, for that she was his real wife, though 
 he had not the time to perform the ceremonies according to 
 the custom of his country, which should be done at the 
 first opportunity. The preparations have been making for 
 four or five da}^s, and on the iSth Mons. Kykin, a Lord of 
 the Admiralty, and Adjutant-General lagusinski, two per- 
 sons in a good degree of favour, were sent about to invite 
 the company to his Majesty's old wedding (for these were 
 the terms they were ordered to use). 'The Tsar was 
 married in his quality of rear-admiral, and for that reason, 
 not his Ministers and nobility, but his sea officers, had the 
 chief employments, the Vice-Admiral Cruys and the rear- 
 admiral of the galleys being the bridegroom's fathers, and 
 the Empress Dowager, with the vice-admiral's lady, were 
 the bride's mothers. The bridesmaids were two of the 
 Empress Catherine's own daughters, one above five, and 
 the other three years old. The wedding was performed 
 privately, at seven o'clock in the morning, in a little chajicl 
 belonging to Prince Menshikof, where no one assisted but 
 those who were obliged to do it through their offices. - 
 
 In spite of this, Whitworth tells us that in the course of 
 the day, there was a great reception at the Palace, a State 
 dinner, a ball, and a display of fireworks. And the Dutch 
 Resident, De Bie, mentions an entertainment given in honour 
 
 ' Dok^oroukofs Memoirs, vol. i. p. 38. - London Records Office. 
 
CATHERINE 271 
 
 of the occasion by Prince IMenshikof.^ Thus the event was 
 marked by a certain amount of publicity. Peter's motives, 
 and the progressive course of ideas and sentiments which led 
 up to the extraordinary denouement of this liaison, would 
 seem to me clearly proved by a comparison of the P^nglish 
 Minister's despatch with those I have already quoted. His 
 evident desire was to ensure the future of his partner and his 
 children, and his duty in this respect appeared to him clearer 
 and more pressing, in proportion, doubtless, to the increase 
 of his affection for his children, and his tenderness and regard 
 for her. Before the campaigns of 1708 and 171 1, he simply 
 endeavoured to set things in order, and clear his own con- 
 science, without any regard to the effect his action might 
 produce. In the first instance, a gift of 3000 roubles appeared 
 to him sufficient ; in the second, he thought it right to ensure 
 Catherine the benefits of a reputed marriage. P'inally, feel- 
 ing himself bound, in honour, — but not until another year had 
 passed away, and until, probably, he had undergone some 
 pressure both from Catherine herself and from some of the 
 persons cognisant of the circumstances of this domestic 
 drama, among whom, doubtless, the ci-devant Livonian 
 peasant had made herself a certain number of friends, — he kept 
 his word, without, however, surrounding the event with any 
 remarkable lustre or display. 
 
 It may be objected that as no ecclesiastical authority had 
 broken Peter's first marriage with Eudoxia, and as the e.x- 
 Tsarina was still alive, this second alliance was radically 
 void. I fully admit it ; but Catherine was accepted, none 
 the less, as a legally married woman. Let us pass on to 
 what her contemporaries thought and said of the new 
 Empress, 
 
 II 
 
 Baron Von Pollnitz, who saw her in 17 17, thus describes 
 her : — 'The Tsarina was in the prime of life, and showed no 
 signs of having possessed beauty. She was tall and strong, 
 exceedingly dark, and would have seemed darker but for the 
 rouge and whitening with which she covered her face. There 
 was nothing unpleasant about her manners, and any one who 
 remembered the princess's origin would have been disposed 
 
 ' Despatch, dated March 5lh, 1712 (Archives at the Hague). 
 
272 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 to think them good. There is no doubt that if she had had 
 any sensible person about her she would have improved 
 herself, for she had a great desire to do well. But hardly 
 anything more ridiculous than the ladies of her Court can 
 well be imagined. It was said that the Tsar, a most extra- 
 ordinary prince, had taken pleasure in choosing out these 
 persons, so as to mortify other ladies of his Court more 
 worthy to fill such offices. ... It might fairly be said that 
 if this princess had not all the charms of her sex she had all 
 its gentleness. . . . During her visit to Berlin, she showed 
 the queen the greatest deference, and let it be understood 
 that her own extraordinary fortune did not make her forget 
 the difference between that princess and herself 
 
 The Margravine of Baireuth, whose recollections date 
 from a year later, shows, as might be expected, less good 
 nature : 
 
 ' The Tsarina was short and huddled up, very much tanned, 
 and quite devoid of dignity or grace. The very sight of her 
 proved her low birth. She was muffled up in her clothes 
 like a German comedy actress. Her gown had been bought 
 in some old clothes' shop, it was very old-fashioned, covered 
 with heavy silver embroidery, and with dirt. The front of 
 her skirt was adorned with jewels, the design was very 
 peculiar. It was a double eagle, the feathers of which were 
 covered with tiny diamonds. She had a dozen orders, and as 
 many portraits of saints and relics, fastened all along the 
 facings of her dress, so that when she walked she jingled 
 like a mule.' 
 
 But the Margravine was a perfect viper. 
 
 Campredon, who is by no means over- disposed to in- 
 dulgence, acknowledges the Tsarina's political instinct and 
 insight. Whether or not she saved the arm\', in the campaign 
 of the Pruth, she certainly served it well during the Persian 
 expedition. The story, as told by the French Minister, is 
 not very flattering to Peter. During the great summer 
 heats, the Tsar gave his troops orders to march, and would 
 then go to sleep himself When he woke, he found that not 
 a man had moved, and when he asked what general had 
 dared to countermand his orders : ' 1 did it,' said the 
 princess, coming forward, 'because your men would have 
 died of heat and of thirst.' ^ 
 
 ' January 6th, 1723. 
 
CATHERINE 273 
 
 I have already said that the portraits of Catherine, pre- 
 served in the Romanof Gallery in the Winter Palace, give no 
 indication of the physical charms which made her fortune. 
 They betray no sign either of beauty or distinction. The 
 face is large, and round, and common ; the nose hideously 
 turned up. She has goggle eyes, an opulent bust, and all the 
 general appearance of a servant girl in a German inn. The 
 sight of her shoes, which are piously preserved at Teterhof, 
 was to inspire the Comtesse de Choiseul-Gouffier with the 
 reflection that the Tsarina's earthly life had been spent ' on a 
 good footing.' ^ The secret of her success must be sought 
 elsewhere. This coarse- looking, and, to us, unattractive 
 woman, possessed a physical organisation, as robust and 
 indifferent to fatigue as Peter's own, and a moral tempera- 
 ment far better balanced than the Tsar's. Between 1704 
 and 1723 she bore the lover, who ultimately became her 
 husband, eleven children, most of whom died in infancy. 
 Yet her physical condition scarcely affected her exterior life, 
 and never prevented her from following the Sovereign whither- 
 soever he went. She was a typical officer's wife — PaJiodnala 
 Ofitserskaiajaia, is the Russian expression — well able to go 
 on active service, lie on the hard ground, live in a tent, and 
 make double or treble stages on horseback. On the Persian 
 campaign she shaved her head, and wore a grenadier's cap. 
 She would review the troops ; she would pass down the 
 ranks, before a battle, dropping cheering words, and be- 
 stowing bumpers of brandy. A bullet struck one of the men 
 in close attendance on her, but she never blenched.'-^ When, 
 after Peter's death, the town of Revel was threatened by the 
 allied squadrons of England and of Denmark, she would herself 
 have embarked on one of her warships to drive them back. 
 
 She was not devoid of vanity ; she dyed her fair hair 
 black, to increase the brilliancy of her high-coloured com- 
 plexion. She forbade the ladies of her court to copy her 
 dresses ; she was a beautiful dancer, a- first-class performer of 
 the most complicated pirouettes, especially when the Tsar 
 himself was her partner. With others she generally con- 
 tented herself with walking through her steps. She was a 
 mixture of subtle womanliness, and of almost masculine 
 
 ^ Rcminiscfuces, 1862, p. 340. 
 
 2 Pylaief, 'J he Forgotten Past, p. 441. Memoires et Documents (Paris Foreign 
 Office), vol. ii. p. 119. 
 
274 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 activity. She could make herself most amiable to those who 
 approached her, and she knew how to control Peter's sava^j^e 
 outbreaks. Her low extraction caused her no embarrass- 
 ment. She never forci^ot it, and frequently spoke of it to 
 those who had known her before her elevation, — to a German 
 tutor, who had been employed by Gllick when she had been 
 a servant in the pastor's house,^ and to Whitworth, — who may' 
 indeed have been carried away by vanity when he insinuates 
 that he had been in her closest intimacy, but whom she cer- 
 tainly invited one day to dance with her, enquiring whether 
 he had not ' forgotten the Katicri)WHsJika of former days.' - 
 
 The very considerable influence which she exercised over 
 her husband was partly due, — according to contemporary 
 o])inion, — to her power of calming his fits of nervous 
 irritation, which were always attended by excruciating head- 
 aches. At such moments the Tsar would pass alternately 
 from a state of prostration to one of fury, not far removed 
 from downright madness, and every one fled his presence. 
 Catherine would approach him fearlessly, address him in a 
 language of her own, half tender and half commanding, and 
 her very voice seemed to calm him. Then she would take 
 his head, and caress it tenderly, passing her fingers through 
 his hair. Soon he grew drowsy, and slept, leaning against 
 her breast. For two or three hours she would sit motion- 
 less, waiting for the cure slumber always brought him. He 
 always woke cheerful and refreshed. 
 
 She endeavoured to curtail the excesses of all sorts, the 
 night orgies and drinking bouts, to which he was addicted. 
 In September, 1724, the launch of a new ship was, as usual, 
 made the pretext for an endless banquet. She went to the 
 door of the cabin in which Peter had shut himself up to 
 drink undisturbed with his boon companions, and called out, 
 ^ Pora doiiioi, batioiis/ika ! ' (it is time to come home, little 
 father), he obey-cd, and dcj^arted with her.^ 
 
 She would appear to have been full of real affection and 
 devotion, although the somewhat theatrical manifestation of 
 her grief after the great man's death, cast a certain doubt on 
 her sincerity. Villcbois mentions two Englishmen, who went 
 every day for six weeks to watch the Tsarina in the chapel 
 
 ' Coxe, Travels, 17S5, vol. i. p. 511. 
 
 -Whitworth, An Aaounl of Russia (I^findnn, 1771), preface, p. XX. 
 
 ' Jtiischin^s-Magazin, vol. xxii. p. 492. 
 
CATHERINE 275 
 
 where the corpse of the Tsar was laid in state ; and he 
 declared the sight touched his own feelings like a per- 
 formance of the Andromache. This sorrow did not pre- 
 vent the Tsarina from claiming her right to inherit from 
 the Tsar, with the utmost vigour, and the most absolute 
 presence of mind. Peter's affection is less dubious. It may 
 have been coarse in fibre, but there is no doubt about its 
 strength. His letters to Catherine, on the rare occasions 
 when they were separated, express the deep attachment of 
 the 'old fellow,' as he was pleased to call himself, for his 
 Katierinotishka — for the friend of his heart {drouh serdesfi- 
 iiioiikii) {sic), for the mother of his dear Shishetika (the little 
 Peter) with most evident sincerity. Their usual tone is cheery 
 and even joking. There are no fine sentences, nothing but 
 heartfelt words ; no passion, much tenderness ; no blazing 
 heat, a gentle, equal warmth, never a discordant note, and 
 always a longing to return, on the first opportunity, to the 
 beloved wife, and, yet more, to the friend and companion, in 
 whose society he feels so happy. He is longing to get back 
 to her, he writes in 1708, 'because he is dull without her, 
 and there is nobody to take care of his shirts.' Her answer 
 expresses her conviction that his hair must be very ill- 
 combed in her absence. He answers that she has guessed 
 aright, but that if she will only come he will find some old 
 comb or other with which to put things in order, and mean- 
 while he sends her a lock of his hair. Frequently, as in 
 former years, his letters were accompanied by gifts. In 
 171 1, there is a watch bought at Dresden; in 17 17, lace 
 from Mechlin ; on another occasion, a fox and two pairs of 
 doves sent from the Gulf of Finland ; writing from Kron- 
 stadt in 1723, he apologises, on the score that he has no 
 money, for sending her nothing. While passing through 
 Antwerp, he sends a packet covered with seals, and addressed 
 to Her Majesty, tJie Tsarina Catherine Alexicicvna. When 
 the box was opened, all SJiisJienkas mother found in it was a 
 slip of paper with these words written in capital letters : 
 'April 1st, 1717!' Catherine too would occasionally send 
 trifling gifts, such as fruit, or a warm waistcoat. In 17 19, 
 one of Peter's letters closes with the expression of a hope 
 that this summer will be the last they will have to spend 
 apart. Some time after, he sends her a bunch of dried 
 flowers, and a newspaper cutting, containing an account of 
 
276 PETER THI-: GREAT 
 
 ail lifted couple, a husband who had reached the age of 126 
 \car.s, and a wife onl)* a year joungcr. In 1724, the Tsar, 
 arriving jn St. Petersburg in the summer season, and finding 
 that Catherine had gone to one of his many country houses, 
 fcjrthwith sent a yacht to bring her back, and wrote, ' When 
 I went into my rooms, and found them deserted, I felt as if 
 I must rush away at once. It is all so cmpt)' without thee ! ' 
 
 Mis absence would seem to have affected her to the same 
 extent. Princess Galitzin, who was in attendance on 
 her at Revel, in July 17 14, addresses the following ex- 
 pressive note to the Sovereign: — 'Sire, my dear Bati- 
 ous/ika, we long for your return at the earliest possible 
 moment, and truly, if your Majesty delays much longer, 
 my life will grow very hard. The Tsarina will never 
 deign to fall asleej) before three o'clock in the morning, 
 and I never leave her Majesty, and Kirillovna stands beside 
 her bed and dozes. From time to time the Tsarina conde- 
 scends to say, "Art thou asleep, TuHousJika?" (little aunt), she 
 answers, " No, I'm not asleep, I'm looking at my slippers," 
 and Maia comes and goes in the room, and makes her bed 
 in the middle of the room, and Matrena walks about the 
 rooms, and squabbles with everybody, and Krcstianovna 
 stands behind the chair and looks at the Tsarina. Thy 
 return will release me from the sleeping chamber ! ' ^ 
 
 The only letters belonging to the first period o{ 'Cd^ liaison, 
 which have been preserved, are those addressed by the 
 Sovereign, in common, to Catherine and to Anisia Kiril- 
 lovna Tolstoi, on whom he bestowed the nickname of Aunt,' 
 Catherine he called ' Mother.' He wrote the Dutch word 
 Mudcr,\x\ Russian characters. Catherine kept that nickname 
 till 171 1, after which Peter speaks of her in more and more 
 familiar, affectionate, and personal terms ; Katicritioushka, 
 Herzeiisfrciindchoi, etc. She did not venture, until much 
 later, to imitate him in this respect. She called him ' Your 
 Majesty' until 1718, and then he too becomes her Hcrzcus- 
 freitndchen, her Batiouslika, or simply i)ici)i Freuud {yny 
 friend). On one occasion she even goes so far as to imitate 
 his waggish ways, and address her letter, in German, to 
 ' His Excellency, the very illustrious and very eminent 
 Prince- General, Inspector- General, and Knight of the 
 crowned Compass and Axe.' 
 
 ' Peter's Caliinct jxipers, porlfnlio ii. Xo. 2CX 
 
CATHERINE 277 
 
 This correspondence never has been, and never can be, 
 published in its integrity. Certain portions of it are far too 
 coarse. Peter unscrupulously indulged in obscenities of 
 thought and language, which are quite impossible in print ; 
 and Catherine followed his example with an air of the most 
 perfect unconcern. ' If you were with me here/ she writes dur- 
 ing one of his absences, ' there would very soon be another 
 Shis/iciika ! ' This is the general tone of the correspondence, 
 but its actual expression is frequently far less modest.^ 
 
 In 1724, when Peter was celebrating the anniversary of his 
 marriage at Moscow, he himself composed the set piece of 
 fireworks, to be lighted under the Empress's windows. This 
 displayed his cypher and hers entwined, within a heart, sur- 
 mounted by a crown, and surrounded by emblems of love. 
 A winged figure, intended to represent Cupid, bearing a 
 torch and all his other symbols, except the bandage across 
 the eyes, shot across the darkness, and ignited the rockets. 
 The special Cupid which would seem to have habitually 
 presided over the intercourse of these two lovers, was a 
 wingless one. But commonplace, and even debased, as their 
 affection would occasionally appear, it still has certain 
 sympathetic and touching qualities. It is replete with 
 artless, full-flavoured good nature. After the Peace of 
 Nystadt, Peter joked his wife about her Livonian origin, 
 saying, ' According to the terms of this treaty, I am to return 
 all prisoners to the King of Sweden ; I don't know what is 
 to become of thee?' She kissed his hand and answered : 
 ' I am your servant, do with me as you will, yet I do not 
 think you are inclined to send me back.' ' I will try,' he 
 replied, ' to settle it with the King ! ' - This anecdote may 
 not be absolutely true, but it certainly typifies the real 
 nature of their relations. Yet there seems to have been 
 some sl)-ness, and a certain amount of feminine cunning, about 
 Catherine. We are assured that when she was staying at 
 Riga with the Tsar, she contrived to show him an old parch- 
 ment, drawn from the archives of the town, containing a 
 prophecy that the Russians would never have possession of 
 that country until a most improbable event — a marriage 
 between a Tsar and a Livonian — had taken place. Often too,as 
 
 ^ See Siemievski, The Empress Catherine, p. 89. Bruckner, Peter's d. Grossen 
 Brief-iveehsel mit Catharina (Raumers Tasclienbuch, 5lh Series). 
 - Oustrialof, vol. iv. p 132. 
 
278 pi:tp:r the great 
 
 1 notice, she would draw his attention to the fact that success 
 never came to him until he knew her, whereas, since that event, 
 he had gone from \ictory to victor}'. This was firm, histori- 
 cal ground, and the fact was much more hkely to impress 
 the Tsar's sturdy mind, than the prophecy above referred to. 
 
 He had no desire, indeed, to send back the prisoner he had 
 taken at Maricnburg. In a thousand ways, she made her- 
 self agreeable, useful, indisj)ensable. As in past years, she 
 watched her lord's amorous caprices with a vigilant, though 
 far from jealous, eye, solely desirous of staving off too serious 
 consecjuences, alwaj-s interposing at the right moment. Nar- 
 tof tells the story of a fellow country-woman of Catherine's, 
 a laundress belonging to Narva, who.se attraction for the 
 Sovereign took on alarming proportions. Peter, to his astonish- 
 ment, beheld the girl, one da)-, in the Tsarina's room. He 
 pretended not to recognise her, and enquired whence she came. 
 Catherine calmly replied, ' 1 heard so much of her beauty and 
 of her wit, that 1 made up my mind to take her into my ser- 
 vice, without consulting you.' The Tsar was dumb, and 
 turned his attention to quite a different quarter. • 
 
 Catherine never aspired to interfering in State affairs, she 
 had no taste for intrigue. ' As for the Tsarina,' writes Campre- 
 don, in 1721, 'although the Tsar is most attentive to her, and 
 is full of tenderness for the Princesses, her daughters, she has 
 no power as regards public business, in which she never inter- 
 feres. She applies herself solely to keeping the Tsar's 
 good graces, to restraining him, to the best of her ability, 
 from those drinking and other e.xcesses which have greatly 
 weakened his health, and to calming his anger when it seems 
 ready to break forth against any particular person.' 
 
 Her intervention in the catastrophe on the Pruth, if it ever 
 did occur, was quite an isolated case. Her correspondence 
 with her husband proves, that though she was aware of his 
 anxieties, her information was of a very general nature. He 
 writes to her about trifling cominissions, such as buying wine 
 or cheese, which he desires to give away, or the engagement 
 of foreign artists or artisans. His tone is frequently very con- 
 fidential, but he keeps to generalities, and very seldom enters 
 into detail. In 1712, he writes: 'We are well, thank God, 
 but it is a hard life ; 1 cannot do much with my left hand, 
 and my right has to hold sword and pen at once. Now 
 thou knowest on how man)- persons I can reckon for help.' 
 
CATHERINE 279 
 
 She took a line, and a:;.sumcd an office, her choice of which 
 proves that this peasant-born woman had a most wonderful 
 and instinctive comprehension of her true position. There 
 is a hint of this, in the French diplomatic document w^hich I 
 have just quoted. She realised that, — beside the great Re- 
 former playing out his part as a merciless judge, to the bitter 
 end, — there was another accessory and necessary role, instinct 
 with pity and mercy, to which she, the humble serf, who had 
 sounded every depth of human misery, was clearly called. She 
 saw that if she did this work, if she strove to win pardon for 
 others, her own sudden elevation would be more willingly 
 forgiven her ; and that if, amidst the spite and hatred raised 
 against the Tsar by the violent nature of his reforms, she could 
 gather a circle of grateful sympathy round her own person, 
 she might one day, if some change of fortu^ne overtook her, 
 find in it a protection and a welcome shelter. She came to 
 need it, and did thus find a shelter, and more than a shelter, 
 after Peter's death. 
 
 Like Lefort, in the old days, but with infinitely more 
 consistency and tact, she constantly interposed in the sanguin- 
 ary conflict which the Tsar's chosen work had roused between 
 himself and his subjects ; — a conflict marked by the daily use 
 of the axe, the gallows, and the knout. Peter was occasion- 
 ally reduced to concealing the punishments he decreed from 
 his wife's knowledge. Unfortunately, as it would seem, she 
 did not continue satisfied with the distant and ultimate re- 
 ward this line of conduct promised. She began, after a time, 
 to seek for more immediate profit. She grew to imagine, or 
 she was made to believe, that she must settle her fortunes on 
 a firm financial basis. She was convinced, or allowed herself 
 to be persuaded, that the day would come when she would 
 need money — and a great deal of money — to pay for 
 necessary co-operation, or anticipate probable failure. And 
 then she began to fleece all those who sought her protection. 
 Any one who desired to escape exile or death, through her 
 intervention, was forced to open his purse. Thus she amassed 
 large sums, which, after Menshikof's example, and probably by 
 his advice, she invested, under assumed names, at Amsterdam 
 and Hamburg. This intrigue soon attracted Peter's atten- 
 tion, and his discovery of it was probably not unconnected 
 with the clouds that darkened the close of their conjugal 
 existence. In 1718, Catherine undertook to save Prince 
 19 
 
28o PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Gagarin, the Governor - General of Siberia, who had 
 been found guilty of enormous jjeculations, from the 
 gallows. He paid her considerable sums, part of which 
 were emplo\-ed in corrupting Prince Volkonski, to whom the 
 enquiry had been entrusted, — a scarred old soldier, who, in 
 spite of his glorious career, was not proof against such vile 
 temptations. When Volkonski was arrested, he defended 
 himself by alleging that he had not dared to repulse the 
 Tsarina's advances, for fear of making a quarrel between her 
 and the Tsar. To this, Peter is said to have made the 
 following characteristic reply : ' Idiot ! you would have made 
 no quarrel between us! I should only have given my wife a 
 sound conjugal {)unishment. She will get it now, and \-ou 
 will be hung ! ' ^ 
 
 III 
 
 The tragic close of the quarrel between the Tsar and his 
 eldest son was, to the stepmother of the unhappy Prince, a 
 crowning victory, a sudden impulse towards the giddiest 
 heights of destiny. She has been accused, and not unnatur- 
 ally, of having had a more or less direct share in bringing 
 about this daioucnicnt. To this point I shall have to refer 
 in a later chapter. It was her own son who thus became 
 heir presumptive to the throne, and another bond was forged 
 between herself and the father of the boy. She even suc- 
 ceeded, to a certain extent, in forcing her family, obscure 
 Lithuanian serfs, upon the Tsar. Chance is reported to have 
 helped her in this matter. A postillion, working on the road, 
 between St. Petersburg and Riga, having been ill-treated by 
 a traveller, loudly comj^lained, and affirmed his close connec- 
 tion with persons in the highest quarters. He was arrested, 
 and the facts laid before the Tsar, who ordered enquiry to 
 be made, and found himself unexpectedly enriched with a 
 whole tribe of brothers and sisters-in-law, nephews and 
 nieces, whom Catherine had somewhat too easily forgotten. 
 The postillion, Fcodor Skovronski, was her eldest brother. 
 He had married a peasant woman, by whom he had three 
 sons and three daughters. Another brother, still a bachelor, 
 worked in the fields. The eldest sister was called Catherine, 
 — the second, who had been raised to the throne under that 
 
 * Dolgoroukof's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 31. 
 
CATHERINE 281 
 
 name, had formerly been known as Martha. The real 
 Catherine, it was said, lived at Revel, and there carried on a 
 shameful trade. A third sister, Anne, was the wife of an 
 honest serf, Michael-Joachim, a fourth had married a freed 
 peasant, Simon-Henry, who had settled at Revel, and worked 
 as a shoemaker. 
 
 Peter caused the postillion to be brought to St. Petersburg, 
 confronted him with his sister, in the house of a dienshtcliik\ 
 named Shepielof, and when his identity had been established, 
 gave him a pension, and sent him back to the country. He 
 took measures to ensure a modest competence to each 
 member of the family, and made a bargain that he was to 
 hear no more of them. The Revel sister-in-law, who was 
 too compromising to be endured, was put under lock and 
 key. Catherine had to wait for the Tsar's death, before she 
 could do anything more for her own people. When that 
 occurred, the ex-postillion, the ex-shoemaker, and all the 
 other peasants, male and female, appeared at St. Petersburg, 
 disguised under new names and titles, and dressed in court 
 apparel. Simon-Henry became Count Simon Leontievitch 
 Hendrikof, Michael-Joachim was called Count Michael 
 Efimovitch Efimovski, and so with the rest. All were given 
 large fortunes.^ A Count Skovronski made a great figure in 
 the reign of Elizabeth, and married his daughter to a Prince 
 Sapieha, a member of an illustrious Polish family, well 
 known in France. 
 
 But meanwhile, Catherine's fortunes rose steadily higher. 
 A collective vote of the Senate and the Synod, given on the 
 23rd of December 1728, endowed her with the title of 
 Empress. Two years later, Peter himself decided on the 
 formal coronation of the ci-deva7it servant girl. This cere- 
 mony was quite a novel one in Russia, and surrounding 
 circumstances imparted considerable importance to it. The 
 history of the country only furnishes one precedent for such 
 a step — the coronation of Marina Mniszech just before her 
 marriage with Uimitri. But the object, in that case, was to 
 give a kind of presumptive consecration to the rights of the 
 haughty daughter of the Polish magnate, imposed on the 
 Russian nation by the victorious policy of the Waza. 
 Dimitri, who was supported by the armies of the Republic, 
 merely as, and because he was, Marina's husband, took quite 
 ^ Karnovilcli, Qteat Russian Fcituius, p. 179. 
 
282 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 a secondai}' jjlace. Since those daj-s, no Tsarina had been 
 more than the Tsar's wife, none had ever received any poH- 
 tical investiture or preroL^^ative. liut the death, in 1719, of 
 the sole heir to the crown, had raised the question of the 
 succession. During the followinc^ years it was constantly to 
 the front. When, in 172 1, the Peace of Nystadt conferred 
 some leisure on the Sovereign, this question became, for 
 a time, his chief anxiety. Shafirof and Ostermann, in 
 obedience to his commands, held several private conferences 
 with Camprcdon, in the course of which they proposed 
 an alliance with France, based on a guarantee as to the 
 succession to the Russian throne to be given by the French 
 king. For whose benefit ? Campredon imagined Peter had 
 chosen his eldest daughter, whom he was supposed to intend 
 to marry to one of his subjects and near relations, — probably 
 to a Naryshkin. This opinion was confirmed by Shafirof^ 
 The most varied suppositions on the subject were current 
 amongst the general public, up to the period of the corona- 
 tion. The novel nature of that event seemed, in the eyes of 
 the majority, to settle the question in Catherine's favour. 
 This idea was finally shared by Campredon himself.- 
 
 The crown, which was specially ordered for the occasion, 
 was far more magnificent than any used by former Tsars. It 
 was adorned with diamonds and pearls ; there was an enor- 
 mous ruby on the top ; it weighed four pounds, and was 
 valued at one and a half millions of roubles. It was made 
 at St. Petersburg, by a Russian jeweller, but the new capital 
 was quite unequal to supplying the Tsarina's dress. This 
 was sent from Paris, and cost 4000 roubles. Peter himself 
 set the crown on his wife's head. Catherine knelt before the 
 altar, weeping, and would have embraced the Tsar's knees. 
 He raised her smilingly, and invested her with the orb, the 
 symbol of .sovereignty [dierjaiui). But he kept the sceptre, 
 the token of power, in his own hand. When the Tsarina left 
 the church, she entered a coach, sent, like her dress, from Paris, 
 richly gilt and painted, and surmounted b}-an Imperial crown.^ 
 
 This ceremony was performed on the 7th — 19th — 
 May. Just six months later, an event took place in the 
 Winter Palace, which set the Tsarina, crowned and anointed 
 
 ^ Campredon's Despatches, Oct. 29, Nov. 17 and 21, 1721 (French Foreign 
 Office). - Despatch, dated May 26th, 1724 
 
 • Biischings-Magazin, vol. .\xii. pp. 447, 463. (Jolikof, vol. x. p. 64. 
 
CATHERINE 283 
 
 as she was, on the very brink of a precipice. Peter, on his 
 return from an excursion to Revel, received warning of a 
 suspicious intimacy which had existed for some time be- 
 tween Catherine and one of her chamberlains. It is curious 
 that this warning should not have reached him sooner, for the 
 Tsarina's liason with young William Mons had, according 
 to reliable witnesses, long been in public knowledge.^ Peter 
 might easily have gathered this fact from a secret examina- 
 tion of the chamberlain's correspondence. He would have 
 found letters signed by the greatest persons in the country, 
 Ministers, ambassadors, and even bishops, who all addressed 
 the young man in terms which clearly indicated the place 
 they believed him to hold in the imperial household.- But the 
 inquisitorial policy of the great Tsar had begun to bear its 
 final fruit, — the consequence and penalty of the excess to 
 which it had been carried. Universal espionage had engen- 
 dered universal watchfulness against possible spies. Men 
 did as they were done by, and Peter paid for his too great 
 eagerness to know the secrets of other houses, by being left 
 in ignorance of what was occurring in his own. 
 
 Mons was the brother of Peter's former mistress. He was 
 one of that race of bold and successful adventurers of whom, 
 so iar as Russia was concerned, Lefort was the historical an- 
 cestor. His education was of the most scanty description, 
 but he was intelligent, shrevv^d, a gay companion, and, occa- 
 sionally, something of a poet. He was very superstitious, 
 and wore four rings : one of pure gold, one of lead, one of 
 iron, and the last of copper. These were his talismans, and 
 the gold ring stood for love. One of his sisters, Matrena, 
 had married Fcodor Nikolaicvitch Balk, who belonged to a 
 branch of the ancient Livonian house of the Balken, which 
 had been settled in Russia since 1650. This Balk held the 
 rank of Major-General, and was Governor of Riga, and his 
 wife, who had gained great favour with Catherine, had been 
 one of her ladies of honour and her closest confidant, ever 
 since the coronation. Matrena looked after her brother's 
 interests, and arranged the meetings between the lovers. 
 Nor was this all. She had contrived, with the assistance 
 of Anna Fcodorovna loushkof, another great favourite of 
 the Tsarina's, of Princess Anne of Courland, and of some 
 
 ^ Caniprcd(in's Despatch, Dec. 9th, 1724 (I"'aris Foreign Office). 
 "^ .Sicmievski, The Euiprcss Catherine, \>. 109. 
 
284 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 other ladies, to set up a kind of camarilla, and little by little 
 the Tsar had been hemmed in with moviiiL^ quicksands of 
 jobber}' and intriL;ue, of hidden influences, and obscure 
 machinations. Weakened as he was by illness, and harried 
 by haunlin,L( suspicion, his actions were literally |)aral)'sed. 
 William Mons was the soul of this circle, and himself took 
 a woman's name to veil his correspondence with a certain 
 lady named Soltykof, who was one of its members.^ 
 
 Female i;()vernnient was already beginning to take up its 
 place in Russia. 
 
 Peter's powers, both as judge and as inquisitor, failerl him 
 here, completely and simultaneously. He long remained in 
 ignorance of what he ought to have known, and even when 
 he was warned, he could not strike, and mete out just punish- 
 ment for the most unpardonable offence which could have 
 been offered him. The first intimation reached him from an 
 anonymous source. A long-prepared trap was laid, so some 
 people assert. Catherine is supposed to have dallied, one 
 lovely moonlight night, within an arbour in her garden, be- 
 fore which Matr^na Balk mounted guard, and there Peter 
 discovered her.- I regret to have to point out that this 
 summer scene is at variance with the season of the year 
 imposed by historical accuracy, — the month of November, 
 and, in all probability, at least twenty degrees of frost. 
 According to official documents, Peter learnt the fact 
 on the 5th of November. The informer, a subordinate 
 of Mons, who was quickly discovered, was at once 
 arrested. The Tsar held a hasty enquiry in the torture- 
 chamber of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, but, con- 
 trary to the general expectation, he failed to act with his 
 usual lightning rapidity. Though both his honour and his 
 life were affected, — for the informer had spoken of a plot, 
 and intended attempt on his life, — he seemed to hesitate. 
 He concealed his rage. It almost looked as though this 
 man, — impatient and impulsive beyond all others, as a rule, 
 — were .seeking to gain time. On the 20th of November, he 
 returned to the palace without a sign of perturbation on h's 
 countenance, supped as usual with the Empress, and held a 
 long and familiar conversation with Mons, who, like every- 
 one else, felt quite reassured. At a somewhat early hour he 
 complained of weariness and enquired the hour. Catherine 
 
 ^ Mordovtsef, p. 130. - .Sclierer, vol, iv. p. 78. 
 
CATHERINE 285 
 
 consulted her repeating watch — the one he had sent her 
 from Dresden — and replied, ' Nine o'clock.' With a sudden 
 flash of anger — his first — he took the watch, opened the case, 
 gave the hands three turns, and, in the well-known tone 
 which no one ever dared to answer, he replied, ' You arc 
 quite mistaken ! It is midnight, and every one will go to 
 bed ! ' 
 
 The lion was awake again, with his mighty roar and cruel 
 claws, — the tyrant who claimed to rule every one and every- 
 thing, and even time itself! 
 
 The company separated, and, a few moments later, Mons 
 was arrested in his own room, Peter himself, so we are told, 
 acting as his jailor and his examining judge. But through- 
 out all the examination, Catherine's name was never men- 
 tioned. He deliberately put her outside the question. The 
 enquiry resulted in the culprit's conviction of other guilty 
 practices, — of abuse of influence and criminal traffic, in which 
 Matrena Balk was also involved. For two successive days, 
 on the 13th and 14th of November, a crier passed through 
 the streets of St. Petersburg, calling upon all those persons 
 who had paid bribes to declare them, under pain of the most 
 heavy punishment. But Mons himself gave full information. 
 In later years, he was described, like Glebof, as having stoic- 
 ally poured forth every other sort of avowal, in his desire to 
 protect his mistress's honour. Such heroism, had it really 
 existed, can scarcely have been of the finest temper. Even 
 in Peter's reign, there was less risk for the man who acknow- 
 ledged embezzlement, than for him who posed as the Tsar's 
 rival in love. This fact had been proved by Glebofs terrible 
 end, and William, handsome as he was, seems to have had 
 nothing of the hero about him. According to the minutes 
 of the official enquiry, he fainted away as soon as he was 
 arrested and brought into the Tsar's presence, and he ended 
 by confessing whatever he was desired to confess. There 
 cannot possibly have been any difficulty about drawing in- 
 formation from him, for, as we are significantly informed, he 
 was never put to the question. As fur Matrciia Balk, she 
 made some resistance at first, but the first blow from the 
 knout quite broke it down. 
 
 Mons was beheaded on the 28th of November, 1724, The 
 Saxon Resident in St. Petersburg declares that, before the 
 execution, Peter went to see him, and expressed his great 
 
286 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 rcfjret at being obliged to part with him. The young man 
 went bravely to the scaffdld. The great Tsar's reign, like 
 another and later reign of terror, at all events taught men 
 how to die. The stor\' that the guilty man begged his e.\e- 
 cutioner to take a miniature framed in diamonds from his 
 pocket, to destroy the picture (Catherine's portrait) and to 
 keep the setting, is an evident and clumsy invention.^ We 
 may take it for certain that prisoners, in those days, were 
 searched within their prisons. Matrcna Balk was given 
 eleven blows with the knout, did not die under them (which 
 proves that she was tough), was sent for life to Siberia, and 
 returned after Peter's death. Nothing was perpetual at that 
 period. Once a culprit escaped with life, he or she had a 
 fair chance of rising again, even out of the darkest depths. 
 Around the place of execution, placards, bearing the names 
 of ail the persons with whom Mons and his sister had done 
 business, were fixed on posts. The whole hierarchy of 
 Russian official life, headed by the High Chancellor Golov- 
 kin, was there represented, coupled with the names of 
 Prince Menshikof, the Duke of Holstein, and the Tsarina 
 Prascovia Feodorovna.^ 
 
 Catherine behaved, all through this ordeal, with a courage 
 which is almost terrifying. On the day of the execution, she 
 affected the greatest cheerfulness. In the evening, she sent 
 for the princesses, summoned their dancing - master, and 
 practised the minuet with them. Ikit in one of Campredon s 
 despatches I find these words : ' Although the Princess hides 
 her grief, as far as that is possible, it is clearly written on her 
 countenance ... so much so that all the world wonders 
 what is going to hap[)en to her.' ^ 
 
 On that very day, she had a somewhat disagreeable surprise. 
 A ukase written by the Tsar's own hand, and addressed to 
 all the Administrative Hodies, forbade them, in consequence 
 of the abuses which had arisen ivithout the Tsarinas knozi'- 
 Icdgc, to obey any order or recommendation of hers in future. 
 At the same time the offices through which her private 
 affairs were directed, were laid under an interdict ; her 
 fortune was taken from her, under j)retext of its being 
 managed for her, and she found herself so pinched for 
 money, that when she wanted to give a thousand ducats to a 
 
 1 Cniscnst ilpe. Dc- A'tfs'u/it' //,>/' {]]nmhm\i, 1857). p. 68. 
 
 2 MdtilovtsL-f pp 48,49. •' Si. rclcislnirj,', Dec. 9tli, I7.?4 (I'orci n OOicc). 
 
CATHERINE 287 
 
 dienshtchik, named Vassili Petrovitch, who was in possession, 
 for the moment, of the Tsar's ear, she was obh'gcd to borrow 
 it from her ladies.^ 
 
 And the next day brought her fresh misery. The Tsar, 
 we are told, took his wife out with him in a sledge, and the 
 Imperial couple were seen to pass close to the scaffold on 
 which Mons' corpse still lay exposed. The Tsarina's dress 
 brushed the dead body. Catherine never turned her head 
 nor ceased to smile. Then Peter went further. The dead 
 man's head, enclosed in a vessel of spirits of wine, was placed 
 in a prominent position in the empress' apartment. Cathe- 
 rine endured its horrible proximity, and preserved her ap- 
 parent calm. In vain the Tsar raged. He broke a magnifi- 
 cent Venetian glass with his fist, saying, — ' Thus will I treat 
 thee and thine!'- She answered, quite unmoved, 'You have 
 destroyed one of the chief ornaments of your dwelling. Do 
 you think you have increased its charm ? ' She contrived 
 thus to subdue and control him, but their relations 
 continued strained. On the 19th of December, 1724, Lefort 
 wrote in a despatch, * They hardly speak to each other ; they 
 no longer eat nor sleep together.' And at the same time, 
 public attention was generally attracted to Maria Kantemir. 
 Peter was with her every day. Then it was, so the world 
 believed, that he learned the truth of what had happened at 
 Astrakhan, where, as my readers will recollect, the hopes of 
 the Princess, and, it may be, of her lover as well, had been 
 overthrown by a mysterious miscarriage. The doctor who 
 had attended the young girl, a Greek named Palikala, had 
 been bribed ; ' By whose hand ? ' he enquired — and the 
 answer rose of itself to the outraged husband's lips. 
 
 Catherine, according to general opinion, was utterly lost. 
 Villebois declares that Peter planned a trial, modelled on 
 that of Henry VHI., and only temporised so as to ensure 
 the future of his children by his unfaithful wife. He hurried 
 on the marriage of his elder daughter, Anne, with the Duke 
 of Holstein, and caused overtures to be made for the union 
 of the second, Elizabeth, with a French prince, or even with 
 the King of France himself But this plan, which seemed to 
 be taking shape, and was irresistibly attractive to the Tsar, 
 furnished an all-powerful argument for sparing Catherine. 
 
 ' fiuschin<^s- Magazin, vol. xi. p. 494. Description sent by the Emperor's 
 
 Envoy, Rahuiin. 
 
288 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 ToIstoY and Ostcrmaiiii, who were in negotiation with 
 Campredon, laid the strongest stress upon it. The King of 
 France, they said, would never be induced to marry the 
 daughter of a second Anne Boleyn ! ^ 
 
 But Catherine's lucky star was to carry her through. On 
 the i6th of January, 1725, signs of a reconciliation, only 
 skin-deep, perhaps, and somewhat ungracious, on Peter's 
 side, but yet significant enough, were generally observed. 
 Lefort writes, ' The Tsarina has made a long and ample 
 Fuss/all (genuflection) before the Tsar, to obtain remission 
 of her faults. The conversation lasted three hours, and 
 they even supped together, after which they parted.' Less 
 than a month afterwards, Peter was dead, and carried with 
 him to his tomb, the secret of his anger, and of the venge- 
 ance which he may have been nursing, and preparing in 
 secret. I must not, in this place, dilate upon the political 
 use Catherine made of this event. Her subsequent private 
 life justified, only too clearly, the jealous anxiety which 
 poisoned the last days of the great Tsar. We must suppose 
 that after twenty years of continuous efifort, and never- 
 ceasing watchfulness, during which all her faculties were 
 incessantly concentrated on, and strained toward?, the one 
 end and aim, which she at last attained, there was a sort 
 of suddc-i weakening of the moral spring, and a simultaneous 
 leaping up of her long repressed taste for coarse sensuality, 
 love of vulgar debauch, and vile instincts, physical and 
 moral. She, who had done so much to restrain her husband 
 from nocturnal orgies, ended by drinking all night long, and 
 till 9 o'clock in the morning, with her casual lovers, — Loewen- 
 walde, Devier, and Sapieha. Her reign, which, happily for 
 Russia, only lasted sixteen months, was a mere casting 
 of the sovereign power to Menshikof, and to short-lived 
 favourites, who scrambled with him for every morsel of 
 profit. The whilom devoted, helpful, and even heroic 
 partner of the great Tsar, became a mere Comedy Queen, 
 a base-born peasant, carried by some improbable chance up 
 to the throne, and there taking her pleasure after her own 
 low fashion. 
 
 ' See for all this episode, Solovief, vol. xviii. p. 245 ; Scherer, vol. iv. p. 18, 
 etc. ; Sbornik, vol. lii. p 90(Lep()rt); Busi/iiHi;s-AJa!^'iiznt, vol. xi. ]>. 490, etc. 
 (Rabutin) ; Villebois' Mimoirs (manuscript, in the Bibliolheque Nalionale, 
 Paris). 
 
PART III 
 HIS WORK 
 
BOOK I— EXTERNAL STRUGGLE— WAR 
 AND DIPLOMACY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 170O-I709 
 
 I. Traditional Policy, internal and external — Peter begins with the outside — 
 Russian ambition and enterprise oscillated between the North and the 
 South — The Emperor's refusal drives Peter to choose the North — The 
 interview at Rawa — Intercourse with Augustus — The quadruple alliance 
 
 — Patkul — Peter resolves to make common cause with Saxony and 
 Denmark against Sweden, but awaits the signature of peace with Turkey 
 — The Treaty of Preobrajenskoie^News from Constantinople — On the 
 march to Narva — Arrival of Charles Xii. — Peter's flight — The catastrophe. 
 
 II. The Tsar's pusillanimity and distress — Charles' advance on Poland gives him 
 time to collect himself, and drives him into closer alliance with Augustus 
 — More war preparations — The interview at Birze — Fresh reverses and 
 earliest successes — -Peter at the mouth of the Neva — 'The Key of the 
 Sea '—St. Petersburg — Peter takes possession of Ingria and Livonia, and 
 Augustus loses Poland — Preparations for the decisive struggle. 
 
 II. A Diplomatic Campaign — Search for a Mediator — Prince Galitzin at 
 Vienna — Matvieief at the Hague and in Paris — -Prince Dimitri Galitzin 
 at Constantinople — An alliance negotiated at Berlin — Patkul's career and 
 death — The Swede triumphs over the Livonian — Arved Horn — 
 Altranstadt — The defection of Augustus — Diplomatic duplicity — The 
 Battle of Kalisz — The two Sovereigns attempt to obtain a separate peace 
 
 — Aurora von Koenigsmarck in the camp of Charles xil. — Peter's 
 Envoys and Emissaries to European Courts — A negative result — Peter is 
 left alone to face Charles — He resolves to fight on his own ground. 
 
 ;v. Charles xii.'s Plan of Campaign — Mazeppa — The first obstacle — The Het- 
 man hesitates — Loeuenhaupt's march delayed — The summer goes by — 
 Prospect of a winter Campaign. 
 
 V. Chnrles marches southward — Victory at Holovtchin — Loewenhaupt's 
 disaster at Liesna — Famine — Mazeppa makes up his mind — Too late ! — 
 He loses the Ukraine — The Siege of Poltava — Victory or death — 
 Demoralisation of the Sweetish army— Charles wounded — Peter increases 
 his chances of victory — The encounter — Defeat of the Swedes — Its 
 consequences — The ruins of the past, and the Russia of the future. 
 
 Peter the Great was the heir and the follower of 
 
 predecessors whose merit has been too easily forgotten. He 
 
292 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 was certainly, and incomparably, their superior, although, in 
 certain respects, he lacked completeness. From these 
 predecessors he inherited a double programme of internal 
 reform, and external expansion. He first turned his 
 attention to the latter. 
 
 My readers will readily understand that I have not 
 allowed myself to be wholly swayed, in the arrangement of 
 this book, by a desire for chronological exactness. The 
 greater number of the reforms which changed the whole 
 face of eighteenth century Russia, politically, economical!}-, 
 and socially, belonged to the last )'cars of Peter's reign. 
 This does not alter the fact that their importance, from the 
 historic point of view, far outweighs that of the victory of 
 Poltava and the Conquest of the Baltic. The foremost place 
 in this work is not occupied by the general minutiae of dates. 
 Quite a different consideration has inspired me. I do not at 
 all believe that the long succession of battles and negotia- 
 tions, which, until 1721, almost entirely absorbed the Re- 
 former's activity, were the preliminary condition which 
 must necessarily have preceded his reforms. I am, on the 
 contrary, convinced, and I will endeavour to prove it, that 
 they were the indirect, but inevitable, or, as some may prefer 
 to say, the providential, outcome of that struggle. In other 
 words, the existence of the reforms did not depend on the 
 war. But without them, the war could not have been 
 carried on. Thus, all I have done is to put the plough 
 behind the oxen. 
 
 From the year 1693, to 1698, Peter, whether in Holland 
 or in P^ngland, at Voroneje or Archangel, had turned his 
 first endeavours to becoming a first-rate seaman, a thorough 
 pilot, carpenter, and artillery man. And wh)- .-• P'irst and 
 foremost because it amused him. This is clear. He pla)ed 
 at being a soldier and a sailor, but, by degrees, a more 
 serious idea, — the consciousness of his ancestral traditions 
 and the duties they imposed upon him — was combined with 
 mere amusement, and, in the end, reality won the day. But 
 this reality was actual war. PVom 1700 to 1709, his one 
 object, — and he had no time to think of any other, — was to 
 vanquish Charles XII., or die fighting him. From 1709 to 
 1721, his life was one ceaseless struggle, as much to obtain 
 an advantageous peace, as to extricate himself from the 
 fresh difficulties and dangers into which his own presump- 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700-1709 293 
 
 tuousness, and over-confidence, had thrown him. And here 
 we see the result. The Tsar, in the pursuance of the course 
 on which he had so thoughtlessly entered, was driven to call 
 upon his country for an amount of assistance far beyond 
 anything that Russian resources, in their then condition, 
 political, economic, or social, were capable of furnishing. 
 The ancient foundations of the Muscovite edifice snapped 
 and crumbled, weighed down on one side, and undermined 
 on the other, by the huge weight cast on them, and the 
 enormous effort demanded. Thus an abyss opened which 
 had to be instantly filled, no matter how, — for war brooks 
 no delay. So it came about, that, wellnigh uncon- 
 sciously, and in spite of himself, the warrior grew into an 
 organiser and reformer. His reforms were the makeshift 
 ammunition with which he loaded his cannon, when the 
 contents of his artillery waggons were exhausted. 
 
 I shall later dwell more fully on this point of view — an 
 all-important one for the due understanding of the great 
 Tsar's work. 
 
 I possess no knowledge of the art of war, and shall not 
 attempt to bring ridicule on myself, by pretending to give a 
 complete picture, or a reasoned criticism, of those campaigns 
 which, between 1700 and 172 1, robbed Sweden of her position 
 in Europe, and gave Russia hers. And the intended scope 
 of this work would not, indeed, permit it. My sole endeavour 
 will be to point out the historical bearings of the well-known 
 events which mark this epoch, and so to cast a clearer light 
 on the object of this special study of mine — I mean the 
 personal features of the great man, as I have sketched them 
 in the preceding pages, and those of his reign, which I shall 
 now proceed to consider. 
 
 It would appear that it was not till Peter's visit to Vienna, 
 in 1698, that he conceived the idea of attacking Sweden. 
 Up till that time, his warlike impulse had rather been 
 directed southwards, and the Turk had been the sole object 
 of his enmity. But, at Vienna, he perceived that the Emperor, 
 whose help he had counted on, had failed him, and forthwith 
 the mobile mind of the young Tsar turned to the right-about. 
 A war he must have of some kind, it little mattered where, to 
 give work to his young army. The warlike instincts and the 
 greed of his predecessors, tempted sometimes b}- the Black 
 Sea, sometimes by the Baltic, and the border provinces of 
 
294 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 I'oland, had, indec 1, always su'iiiifT and turned back and 
 forward, between the south and the north. These alternate 
 impulses, natural enough in a nation so full of youth and 
 strength, have, since those days, been most unnecessarily 
 idealised, erected into a doctrine, and dignified as a work of 
 unification. It must be acknowledged that every nation has, 
 at one time or the other, thus claimed the right to resume 
 the national patrimony, at the expense of neighbouring 
 peoples, and Peter, by some lucky fate, remained, in -this 
 respect, within certain bounds of justice, of logic, and of 
 truth. Absorbed and almost exhausted, as he soon became, 
 by the desperate effort demanded by his war in the North, 
 he forgot or imperilled much that the conquering ambition 
 of his predecessors had left him in the South and West. 
 He clung to the territory already acquired on the Polish 
 side, retired from the Turkish border, and claimed what he 
 had most right, relatively speaking, to claim, in the matter of 
 resumption, on his north-western frontier. 
 
 On that frontier, the coast country between the mouth of 
 the Narva, or Narova, and that of the Siestra, watered by 
 the Voksa, the Neva, the Igora, and the Louga, was really 
 an integral part of the original Russian patrimony. It was 
 one of the five districts {piatin)') of the Novgorod territory, 
 and was still full of towns, bearing Slavonic names, such as 
 Korela, Ojcshek, Ladoga, Koporic, I amy, and Ivangrod. 
 It was not till 1616, that the Tsar Michael Fcodorovitch, 
 during his struggle with Gustavus Adolphus, finally aban- 
 doned the sea coast, for the sake of keeping his hold on 
 Novgorod. But so strong was the hope of recovering the 
 lost territory, in the hearts of his descendants, that, after 
 the failure of an attempt on Livonia, in Alexis' reign, a 
 Boyard named Ordin-Nashtchokin set to work to build a 
 number of warships at Kokenhausen, on the Dvina, which 
 vessels were intended for the conquest of Riga.^ Peter had 
 an impression, confused it may be, but yet powerful, of these 
 historic traditions. This is proved by the direction in which 
 he caused his armies to march, after he had thrown down the 
 gauntlet to Sweden. He strayed off the path, swaj'ed, as he 
 often was, by sudden impulses, but he always came back to 
 the traditional aim of his forefathers, — access to the sea, a 
 ]ialtic port, ' a window open upon Europe^ 
 
 ^ Vicssit^lago, Sttmmary of a History of the Russian Fleet, vol. i. p. 7, 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700-1709 295 
 
 His interview with Augustus ll. at Rawa definitely settled 
 his wavering mind. The /yac^a co-ivoita, signed by the King 
 of Poland when he ascended his throne, bound him to claim 
 the territories which had formerly belonged to the Republic, 
 from the King of Sweden. For this end the help of Denmark 
 could be reckoned on. The Treaty of Roeskilde (1658), 
 which had been forced on Frederick III., weighed heavily on 
 his successors, and the eager glances fixed by the neigh- 
 bouring states on Holstein, after the death of Christian 
 Albert, in 1694, threatened to end in quarrel. There were 
 fair hopes, too, of the help of Brandenburg. When Sweden 
 made alliance with Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon, 
 that country abandoned its historic position in Germany to 
 Prussia. But Sweden still kept some footing, and was looked 
 on as a rival. The Elector had offered his services at the 
 Konigsberg meeting. Further, Augustus had a personal 
 charm for Peter, sufficient, in itself, to prove how much 
 simplicity, inexperience, and boyish thoughtlessness still 
 existed, in that half polished mind. The Polish sovereign, 
 tall, strong, and handsome, an adept in all ph)'sical exercises, 
 a great hunter, a hard drinker, and an indefatigable admirer 
 of the fair sex, in whose person debauch of every kind took 
 royal proportions, delighted the Tsar, and somewhat over- 
 awed him. He was more than inclined to think him a 
 genius, and was quite ready to bind up his fortunes with 
 his friend's. At the end of four days of uninterrupted 
 feasting, they had agreed on the division of the spoils of 
 Sweden, and had made a preliminary exchange of arms and 
 clothing. The Tsar appeared at Moscow, a few weeks later, 
 wearing the King of Poland's waistcoat, and belted with his 
 sword.^ Yet, so far, there was no actual plan, either of 
 alliance or of campaign. The two friends and future allies 
 had, each of them, too much to do at home to be able to seek 
 adventures abroad. Augustus had more than enough trouble 
 with his ungovernable Poles, and had not yet settled his 
 account with the partisans of the Prince de Conti. There 
 was headsman's work for Peter to do. The Strcltsy had 
 chosen that moment to break into open revolt. 
 
 Neither monarch was to give the final summons to arms. 
 Neither was to have the merit of giving shape to the 
 triple or quadru[)le coalition, which, for the ne.xt two }-cars, 
 
 ^ Oiislrialof, vol. iii. p. 622. 
 20 
 
296 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 was to rise up tlircatenini^ly before the drawn sword of 
 Charles XII. 1 liis was to be the work of a Swede, or at all 
 events of a Swedish subject. The Rawa interview took place 
 in AuL,nist 1698, and, in October, John Reinhold Patkul 
 appeared upon the scene. This Livonian ij^entlcman, who 
 came into the world, in 1660, in a |)rison cell (his father, in 
 consequence of the cession of Wolniar to the Poles, had been 
 arrested, and, with his mother, imprisoned at Stockholm, on 
 a charc^c of high treason), would seem to have been marked 
 from birth for some tragic destiny. Bold and ambitious, 
 passionate and eager, he had all the qualities of a tragedy 
 hero. A rivalry in some love affair early set him at variance 
 with the Swedish Governor of his province, Hclmersen. 
 Soon afterwards, goaded partly, no doubt, by personal 
 spite, he became the champion of the Livonian aristocracy 
 against Charles XI. He was a man who could dress his 
 passions up, and then deceive himself as to the reality of 
 the disguise. He was prosecuted, condemned to death by 
 default, in 1696, and took refuge at Prangins, in Switzer- 
 land, whence F"leming, Augustus' favourite minister, attracted 
 him to Warsaw. There he arrived, with his coalition plan 
 ready drawn up ; he proposed that Brandenburg, Denmark, 
 Russia, and Poland should ally themselves against Sweden, 
 and that the price of Poland's adhesion should be the 
 Province of Livonia. Russia was to be rewarded with the 
 possession of other provinces on the coast, and the Livonian 
 had taken good care minutely to circumscribe the allotted 
 territory. Then, and always, he mistrusted Muscovy, and 
 advised that her 'hands should be firmly tied, lest she should 
 devour the morsel we have cooked.' ^ 
 
 Augustus was easih' enticed. Frederick IV. of Denmark, 
 whose eyes were fi.xed on Holstein, only needed a little 
 encouragement. The Primate of Poland, Radziejowski, was 
 bought over with the sum of i(X),ooo ducats ; and matters 
 soon began to move. A secret article of the Treaty, signed 
 by Patkul, in the name of the nobles of his country, guaran- 
 teed the possession of Livonia to ^Augustus and his heirs, even 
 in the case of their losing the Polish throne. This article 
 was not communicated to Radziejowski.- The Saxon General, 
 Karlowicz, was sent to Moscow, to arrange matters definitely 
 
 ^ Patkuh Berichte (Berlin, 1802); Bernoulli, Memoranda dated Jan. i and 
 Ap. 7, 1699. - iSzujski, History of Poland, vol, iv. p. 169. 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700 1709 297 
 
 with the Tsar, and Patkul accompanied him, under a feigned 
 name. At Moscow they fell in with the Ambassadors of the 
 new King of Sweden, Charles XII., who had come to obtain 
 confirmation of the Peace of Kardis (1660). They had been 
 well received by Peter, who, however, dropped some com- 
 plaints, now officially formulated for the first time, as to the 
 ill-treatment of his Ambassadors during their temporary 
 stay at Riga. Clearly he was even then seeking a pretext 
 for a rupture, and was only waiting to secure himself on the 
 Turkish side, before throwing off the mask. The Treaty of 
 Karlovitz, which, in spite of the efforts of the French P^nvoy, 
 Chateauneuf, had been signed on the 26th of January 1699, 
 and which had reconciled the Porte with the Empire and 
 with Poland, had gained nothing for Russia, beyond a two 
 years' amnesty. The Tsar had sent Oukraintsof as his 
 plenipotentiary to Constantinople, to endeavour to convert 
 this amnesty into a definite peace. On the nth November 
 1699, Peter, confident of the success of this negotiation, called 
 the Polish and Danish Ministers to his little country house 
 at Preobrajenskoie, and there signed, with them, a secret 
 treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive. In this Treaty, 
 Augustus only figured as the P^lector of Saxony. But the 
 Tsar continued to fondle the Swedes, for Oukraintsof worked 
 but slowly. In the beginning of i/OO, Augustus and Freder- 
 ick, faithful to their engagement, went to war ; but Peter, 
 bound though he was to follow their example, neither moved 
 nor stirred. Frederick was beaten, his very Capital was 
 threatened. So much the worse for him ! Augustus seized 
 on Dunamlinde, but utterly failed before Riga. All the 
 better for the Russians ; Riga was left for them ! Another 
 Saxon General, Langen, came hurrying to Moscow. The 
 Tsar listened coolly to his reproaches, and replied that he 
 would act as soon as the news from Constantinople permitted 
 it. The negotiations were proceeding satisfactorily, and he 
 hoped shortly to fulfil his promise, and to attack the Swedes 
 in the neighbourhood of Pskof. This was a point on which 
 Patkul had laid great stress, and Peter had studiously avoided 
 contradicting him. It was quite understood between them 
 that the Tsar was not to lay a finger on Livonia.^ At last, 
 
 ^ Oustrialof, vol. iii. pp. 375-377. Van der Ilulst, Dutch Resident at Moscow, 
 to the Registrar of the States-General, 3rd Aug., 8th Sept., 1700 (Archives 
 at the Hague). 
 
298 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 oil the 8th of Aui^aist 1700, OukraTiitsof's courier arrived with 
 the loni:^ccl-for despatch. Peace with Turkey was siL,Mied at 
 last, and that very day the Russian troops received their 
 marchini; orders. But they were not sent towards I'skof. 
 They marched on Narva, in the very heart of the Livonian 
 country. 
 
 Peter's war manifesto dwells, with superb impudence, on the 
 grievances with which his visit to Ki^^a had armed him. 
 Three weeks later, Matvicief, his Envoy in Holland, who had 
 not yet had time to receive the necessary warnin<^, was still 
 assuring the States General that the Tsar had no idea of 
 taking armed vengeance for the humiliations imposed on his 
 Ambassadors} It would now appear that it was the Tsar 
 himself, in spite of his incognito, who had been insulted, and 
 that the Sovereign was going to war to avenge the ill-treat- 
 ment of Peter Mihailof ! 
 
 The army destined to lay siege to Narva consisted of 
 three divisions of novel formation, under the orders of three 
 Generals, Golovin, Weyde, and Repnin, with 10,500 Cos- 
 sacks, and some irregular troops, — 63,520 men in all. Rep- 
 nin's division, numbering 10,834 men, and the Little Russian 
 Cossacks, stopped on the wa}-, so that the actual force at 
 disposal was reduced to about 40,000 men.^ But Charles XII. 
 could not bring more than 5300 infantry, and 3130 cavalry, 
 to the relief of the town. And, being obliged, when he neared 
 Wesemburg, to which point Shcrem^tief's cavalry had already 
 advanced, to throw himself in flying column across a country 
 which was already completely devastated, and, consequently, 
 to' carry all his supplies with him, his troops arrived in 
 presence of an enemy five times as numerous as themselves, 
 worn out, and completely exhausted, by a succession of 
 forced marches.^ 
 
 Peter never dreamt that he would find the King of Sweden 
 in Livonia. He believed his hands were more than full 
 enough, elsewhere, with the King of Denmark ; he was quite 
 unaware that the Peace of Travendal, which had been signed 
 on the very day of the departure of the Russian troops, had 
 been already forced upon his ally. He started off gaily at the 
 head of his Bombardier Company, full of expectation of an 
 
 ^ Memoranda, Sept. 2, 1700 (Dutch Arcliiv <.'.■). 
 
 2 Oustrialof, vol. iv, p. 9. 
 
 • Hansen, Geschichte dcr Stadt Nanva (Dorpat, 185S), p. 144. 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700- 1709 299 
 
 easy victory. When he arrived before the town on the 23rd 
 of September, he was astounded to find any preparations for 
 serious defence. A regular siege had to be undertaken, and 
 when, after a month of preparations, the Russian batteries at 
 last opened fire, they made no impression whatever. The 
 artillery was bad, and yet more badly served. A second 
 month passed, during which Peter waited and hoped for some 
 piece of luck, either for an offer to recapitulate, or for the 
 arrival of Repnin's force. What did happen was, that on 
 the night of the 17th of November, news came that within 
 twent}^-four hours the King of Sweden would be at Narva. 
 
 That very night, Peter fled from his camp, leaving the 
 command to the Prince de Croy. 
 
 None of the arguments brought forward by the Sovereign 
 and his apologists, in justification of this step, appear to me to 
 hold water. The necessity pleaded for an interview with the 
 Duke of Poland, — the Tsar's desire to hasten on Repnin's 
 march, — are mere pitiful excuses. Langen and Hallart, the 
 Generals sent by Augustus to observe the military operations 
 in Livonia, gravely reported that the Tsar had been obliged 
 to go to Moscow to receive a Turkish Envoy, — who was not 
 expected for four months ! The Emperor's Envoy, Pleyer, 
 is nearer the mark, when he says the Sovereign obev-ed the 
 entreaties of his advisers, who considered the danger too 
 great for him to be permitted to remain.^ And Hallart him- 
 self, speaking of these same counsellors, whether ministers or 
 generals, does not hesitate to declare, in his rough, soldierly 
 Language, that 'they have about as much courage as a frog 
 has hair on his belly.' ^ The Russian army, disconcerted by 
 the unexpected resistance of the Swedes, ill-prepared for 
 resistance, ill-commanded, ill-lodged, and ill-fed, was already 
 demoralised to the last extent. The arrival of Charles caused 
 a panic, and from that panic, Peter, the most impressionable 
 of men, was the first to suffer. The orders he left with the 
 JVince de Croy give all-sufficient proof of the disordered 
 condition of his mind. They enjoined him, in the first place, 
 to await the arrival of the artiller}- ammunition, lacking at 
 the moment, before he attempted to assault the town ; and, 
 /// tJie second, to endeavour to seize the place before the arrival 
 of the King of Sweden, of the imminence of which he must 
 
 ' Ouslrialof, vol. iv. p. 34. 
 
 * HLrniian, Geschichlc Rmslands, vol. iv. p. 116, 
 
300 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 hav^e been well aware, since that it was w hich drove him into 
 flight ! 1 
 
 Prince Charles I-lugene de Croy was far from hcinL,^ a poor 
 commander. He had served fifteen j-ears in the l^m|)i-ror"s 
 armies, had won the grade of Lieutenant Field- Marsh. il 
 under Charles of Lorraine; had taken part, in 1683, in the 
 relief of Vienna under Sobieski, and thus lacked neither 
 experience nor authority. But he had only just reached 
 the Russian camp with a message from the King of Poland, 
 he knew nothing of the army which was put into his hands, 
 he had no acquaintance with its leaders, and could not even 
 s[3cak their language. The one fault that can be laid to his 
 charge, is that he ever accepted the command, and that fault 
 was expiated by his death at Revel two years later, a 
 pri-soner, and stripped of everything he posses.sed. 
 
 The startling rapidity with which Charles had rid himself 
 of the weakest of his three adversaries, under the very walls 
 of Copenhagen, would have been less astonishing to Peter 
 if the young sovereign had better realised the conditions 
 under which he and his allies had begun a struggle in which, 
 at first sight, their superiority appeared so disproportionate. 
 King Frederick had reckoned without the Powers which 
 had guaranteed the recent Treaty of Altona, by which the 
 safety of Holstcin was ensured, — without the Hanoverian 
 troops, and those of Liineburg, which at once brought suc- 
 cour to Toeningen, — without the Anglo-Dutch fleet, which 
 forced his to seek shelter under the walls of Copenhagen, 
 and thus permitted the King of Sweden to cross the Sound 
 unmolested, and land quietly in Zealand ; and finally, he 
 reckoned, and for this he may well be excused, without that 
 w'hich was soon to fill all Europe with terror and amazement, 
 — the lucky star, and the military genius, of Charles XII. 
 
 This monarch, — born in 1682, ten }-ears after Peter, who 
 had slain bears when he was sixteen, and, at eighteen, 
 was a finished soldier, greedy for glory, and battle, and 
 blood, — was the last representative of that race of men, who, 
 between the si.xteenth and seventeenth centuries, held all 
 Central Europe in their iron grip ; — fierce warriors, who 
 steeped Germany and Italy in fire and blood, fought their 
 way from town to town, and hamlet to hamlet, giving no 
 truce, and showing no mercy, who lived for war, and by war, 
 
 ' Oustrialuf, vol. iv. p. 35. 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700-1709 301 
 
 grew old, and died in harness, in a very atmosphere of carnage, 
 with bodies riddled with wounds, with hands stained with 
 abominable crimes, but with spirits calm and unflinching to 
 the last. Standing on the threshold of the new period, he 
 was the superb and colossal incarnation of that former one, 
 which, happily for mankind, was to disappear in his person. 
 Count Guiscard, who, as envoy from the King of France, 
 accompanied him on his first campaign, describes him thus : 
 ■ — ' The King of Sweden is of tall stature, — taller than 
 myself by almost a head ; he is very handsome, he has fine 
 eyes and a good complexion, his face is long, his speech a 
 little thick. He wears a small wig tied behind in a bag, 
 a plain stock, without cravat, a very tight jerkin of plain 
 cloth, with sleeves as narrow as our waistcoat sleeves, a 
 narrow belt above this jerkin, with a sword of extraordinary 
 length and thickness, and almost perfectly flat-soled shoes 
 — a very strange style of dress for a prince of his age.' '• 
 This description is too hasty, and only skin-deep. That 
 of the English Envoy, Stepney, written some years later, is 
 more expressive : — ' He is a tall and well-built monarch, but 
 somewhat slovenly. His manners are the roughest imagin- 
 able, in so young a man. In order that the exterior of his 
 quarters may not belie their interior, he has chosen the 
 clirtiest place, and one of the gloomiest houses, in all Saxony. 
 The cleanest and neatest part of it is the courtyard in front 
 of the house, where every one must get off his horse, and 
 immediately sink up to his knees in mud. In this court are 
 all his own horses, merely fastened with halters, with sacks 
 over them instead of horse-cloths, and without either racks 
 or mangers. They have staring coats, round bellies, heavy 
 hind quarters, and badly kept tails, with the hair all of differ- 
 ent lengths. The groom who takes care of them is no better 
 dressed nor fed than his horses ; one of these is always kept 
 ready saddled for the monarch, who will constantly jump 
 on its back, and rush off at full gallop before any one can 
 follow hiin. He will sometimes ride ten or twelve German 
 miles, which equal forty-eight or fifty English, in a day, 
 and this even in the winter, when he comes in as muddy as 
 any postillion. He wears a blue coat with \'ellow copper 
 buttons, the corners of his jerkin are turned back in front and 
 behind to show his waistcoat and his leather breeches, which 
 
 * Despatch, Aug. 19, 1699 (French Forcii^n Office, SwLcien). 
 
302 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 arc frequently very greasy. His cravat is made of a piece of 
 black crape, but the collar of his overcoat buttons up so 
 hij^h that no one can see whether he wears a cravat or not. 
 His shirt aiul wristbands are generally very dirty, and he 
 never wears cuffs or gloves, exccj)t on horseback. His hands 
 are the same colour as his wristbands, so that yc)U can hardly 
 tell one from the other. His hair is light brown, very short 
 and greasy, and he never combs it, except with his fingers. 
 He sits down, without the smallest ceremony, on any chair 
 he finds in the dining-room ... he eats very quickly, never 
 spends more than a cjuarter of an hour at tabic, and never 
 says one word during the meal . . he never drinks anything 
 but small beer ... he has no sheets nor canopy to his bed, the 
 mattress beneath him serves also to cover him, he rolls it 
 round him . . . beside his bed, there is a very handsome gilded 
 Bible, the only thing about him that is the least showy.' ^ 
 
 This time, the figure stands out clearly enough. Stern, 
 fierce, and wild. 
 
 The landing in Zealand was a piece of boyish temerity. 
 Guiscard, imprudent as he thought it, did not dissuade 
 the monarch, and even threw himself into the water with 
 him, so as to reach the shore more quickly. 'Your Majesty 
 would not have me leave your Court on this, its greatest 
 day ! ' 
 
 The descent on Livonia, regardless of the fact that bad 
 weather had prevented the landing of some of the Swedish 
 regiments, was held by the French Diplomat, intrepid though 
 he was, as an act of madness. ' There is great reason 
 to fear the King will not survive it,' he wrote.- In order 
 to reach Narva with his 8000 men, Charles, after having 
 crossed a tract of desert country, was obliged, at a place 
 called PyhaToggi, to cross a narrow valley, divided by a 
 stream, which, if it had been fortified, must have stopped 
 him short. The idea occurred to Gordon, but I'eter would 
 not listen to him, and it was not till the very last moment 
 that he sent Shcrcmctief, who found the Swedes just de- 
 bouching into the vallc\-, received several volleys of grape 
 shr»t, and retired in disorder. 1 he mad venture had suc- 
 ceeded. But Charles's further advance involved the playing 
 of a risky game. His men were worn out, his horses had 
 
 * L;inil)crly's Af. woirs {The Il.iyiic, 1724), vol. iv. ji. 4;S. 
 - Nov. 2, 1700, from JvL'Vcl (French l-'oiciyii < XIrc, .Swtdcii). 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700- 1709 303 
 
 not been fed for two whole days.^ Still he went on ; he 
 reached Narva, formed his Swedes into several attackinp^ 
 columns, led one himself, and, favoured by a sudden 
 hurricane, which drove showers of blinding snow into his 
 adversaries' faces, threw himself into their camp, and mas- 
 tered the place in half an hour. The only resistance he 
 met was offered by the two regiments of the Guard. All the 
 rest fled or surrendered. A few Russians were drowned in 
 the Narva. 'If the river had been frozen,' said Charles dis- 
 contentedly, ' I do not know that we should have contrived 
 to kill a single man.' 
 
 It was a total breakdown ; the army had disappeared, and 
 the artillery. The very sovereign was gone, and with him, 
 the country's honour. That had sunk out of sight amidst 
 the scornful laughter with which Europe hailed this un- 
 dignified defeat. "^ The Tsar was in full flight. All Peter's 
 plans of conquest, his dreams of l-luropean expansion, and 
 of navigating the Northern Seas, his hopes of glory, his 
 faith in his civilising mission, had utterly faded. And he 
 himself had collapsed upon their heaped-up ruins. Onward 
 he fled, feeling the Swedish soldiers on his heels. He wept, 
 he sued for peace, vowing he would treat at once and sub- 
 mit to any sacrifice, he sent imploring appeals to the 
 States-General of Holland, to England and to the Emperor, 
 praying for mediation.^ 
 
 But swiftly he recovered possession of his faculties. 
 Then, raising his head, — through the golden haze with 
 which his insufficient education, the infatuation inherent to 
 his semi-oriental origin, and his inexperience, had filled his 
 eyes, through the rent of that mighty catastrophe and that 
 cruel lesson, — he saw and touched the truth at last! He 
 realised what he must set himself to do, if he was to become 
 that which he fain would be. There must be no more play- 
 ing at soldiers and sailors, — no more of that farce of power 
 and glory, in which, till now, he had been the chief actor, — no 
 more aimless adventure, undertaken in utter scorn of time 
 and place. He must toil, now, in downright earnest, — he 
 must go forward, step by step, — measure each day's effort, 
 calculate each morrow's task, let each fruit ripen ere he 
 
 * S.irauw, Die Feldziige Karh XII. (Leipzig, iSSi), p. 551 ; Ou>tiialof, 
 vol. iv. p. iSi. 
 
 * Ouslrialof, vol. iv. p. 77 
 
304 PETER THE (iREAT 
 
 essayed to pluck it, learn patience, and dofjged perseverance. 
 He did it all. lie found means within him, and about him, 
 to carry out iiis task. The strong, long-enduring, long- 
 sufifcring race of which he came, endowed him with the 
 necessary qualities, and gave him its own inexhaustible and 
 never-changing devotion, and .self-sacrifice. 
 
 Ten armies may be destroyed, he will bring up ten others 
 to replace them, no matter what the price, llis people will 
 follow him, and die beside him, to the last man, to the last 
 morsel of bread snatched from its starving jaws. A month 
 hence, the fugitive from Narva will belong to a vanished, 
 forgotten, almost improbable past, — the future victor of 
 Poltava \vill have taken his place. 
 
 II 
 
 Of the Russian army, as it had originally taken the field, 
 about three and twenty thousand men remained, — a certain 
 number of troops,— the cavalry under Shcrcmetiefs com- 
 mand, and Repnin's division. The Tsar ordered fresh 
 levies. He melted the church bells into cannon.' In vain 
 the clergy raised the cry of sacrilege ; he never faltered for a 
 moment. He went hither and thither, giving orders, and 
 active help, — rating some, encouraging others, inspiring every 
 one with some of his own energy,— that energy which his 
 misfortunes had spurred and strengthened. Yet, Byzantine 
 as he was by nature, he could not resist the temptation to 
 endeavour to mislead public opinion. Matvieief was given 
 orders to draw up his own special description of the Battle 
 of Xarva and its con.sequenccs, for the benefit of the readers 
 of the Gazette de Hollandc, and of the Memoranda which 
 he himself addres.sed to the States General. The Swedes, 
 according to this account, had been surrounded by a superior 
 force, within the Russian camp, and had there been forced 
 to capitulate ; after which event, certain Ru.ssian officers, 
 who had desired to pay their respects to the King of Sweden, 
 had been treacherously .seized, by his orders.- Europe only 
 laughed, but in later years this pretended capitulation, and 
 the supposed Swedish violation of it, was to .serve Peter as a 
 pretext for violating others, to which he himself had willingly 
 
 » Solovief, vol. xiv. p. 327. ^ Laml.erty, vol. i. p. 263. 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700-1709 305 
 
 consented.^ At Vienna, too, Count Kaunitz listened with a 
 smile, while Prince Galitzin explained that the Tsar 
 ' needed no victories to prove his military glory.' Yet, when 
 the Vice-Chancellor inquired what conditions the Tsar 
 hoped to obtain from his victorious adversary, the Russian 
 Diplomat calmly claimed the greater part of Livonia, with 
 Narva, Ivangrod, Kolyvan, Koporie, and Derpt,- — and future 
 events were to prove that he had not asked too much. 
 
 Before long, this boldness began to reap its own reward. 
 To begin with, Charles XII. made no immediate attempt to 
 pursue his advantage on Russian soil ; Peter had the joy of 
 seeing him plunge into the depths of the Polish plains. The 
 King of Sweden's decision, which, we are told, did not tally 
 with his Generals' opinion, has been severely criticised. 
 Guiscard thought it perfectly justifiable, so long as the king 
 had not rid himself of Augustus, by means of the peace 
 which this prince appeared more than willing to negotiate, 
 through the mediation of Guiscard himself. But Charles 
 turned a deaf ear to the French Diplomat's prayers and 
 remonstrances. He feared, declares Guiscard, ' he might run 
 short of enemies,'^ and as he could not advance on Russia, 
 and leave the Saxons and Poles in his rear, he desired, — and 
 here doubtless he was right, — first of all to ensure his line of 
 communication, and of possible retreat. Thus, by his own 
 deed, he strengthened and cemented an alliance which had 
 already been shaken by common defeat. Augustus, repulsed 
 by the Swedish king, threw himself into Peter's arms, and in 
 February 1701, the common destinies of the Tsar and the 
 King of Poland were once more bound together. A fresh 
 treaty was signed at the Castle of Birze, close to Diinaburg. 
 
 The Castle, now a mere ruin, then the property of the 
 young wife of the Count Palatine of Neuburg, a Princess 
 Radziwill, was a very magnificent residence. The allies' first 
 care was to renew the delights of their meeting at Rawa. 
 Peter, though beaten in the forenoon as an artillery marks- 
 man (see page 81, ante), took his revenge at the even- 
 ing bancjuet. Augustus drank so much wine that it was 
 impossible, next morning, to rouse him and get him on 
 his feet, in time for Mass. Peter attended it alone, listened 
 
 * Lamberty, vol. vi. p. 288. 
 
 ' Oustrialof, vol. iv. p. 84. 
 
 ' Despatch dated June i, 1701 (Fiench Foreign Office, S\^eden). 
 
3o6 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 devoutly to the service ('which was Cathohc, of course, beint^ 
 in Poland), and manifested his usual curiositj' concernin^Lj 
 liturgical details. Then, Aui;ustus having slept himself 
 sober, the orgy began again, and lasted three whole days. 
 Yet, even while carrying on the competition of skill and 
 strength inaugurated by their target practice, the sovereigns 
 contrived to give a thought to politics. Augustus, ob- 
 serving the silver plate in front of him was not a clean 
 one, rolled it in his fingers like a piece of paper, and 
 threw it behind him. Peter forthwith followed suit, and 
 the whole service of plate might have been treated in like 
 manner. But the Tsar was the first to hold his hand, with 
 the remark, that the king of Sweden's sword must be treated 
 after the same fashion.^ On the fourth day, at last, he con- 
 ferred with the Polish Vice- Chancellor Szczuka on the 
 subject of the co-operation of the Republic in the forth- 
 coming campaign. The conditions were not satisfactorily 
 settled, and the Republic took no final share in this arrange- 
 ment, but the personal concord of the two monarchs was 
 settled on the 28th of February. 
 
 The year 1701 was a hard one for Peter. The junction 
 between the army, which he had contrived, after some fashion, 
 to put on a war footing, and the Saxon troops of Augustus, 
 only resulted in the complete defeat of the allied forces under 
 the walls of Riga, on the 3rd of July. In the month of June, 
 the Moscow Kreml caught fire ; the State offices {Prikaz) 
 with their archives, the provision stores, and palaces, were all 
 devoured by the flames. The bells fell from the tower of Ivan 
 the Great, and the heaviest, which weighed over a hundred 
 tons, was broken in the fall.- But, in midwinter, Shcrcmetief 
 contrived to surprise Schlippenbach with a superior force, 
 and defeated him at Erestfer (29th December). Peter's 
 delight, and his \\'ild manifestations of triumph, may easily 
 be imagined, lie did not content h.imself with exhibiting 
 the few Swedish prisoners who had fallen into his hands at 
 Mo.scow, in a sort of imitation Roman triumph ; his practical 
 mind incited him to make use of them in another way, and 
 Cornelius Von Bruyn, who had lived long enough in the 
 country to be thoroughly acquainted with its cu.stoms, calmly 
 reports that the price of war captives, which had originally 
 
 ' NarlnPs Recollectiotn, p. 26. 
 ^ Oustrialof, vol. iv. j), 99. 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700- 1709 307 
 
 been three or four florins a head, rose as hij^h as twenty and 
 thirty florins. Even foreigners now ventured to purcliase 
 them, and entered into competition in the open market.^ 
 
 On the 1 8th of July, 1702, Sheremetief won a fresh 
 victory over Schlippenbach, — 30,000 Russians defeated 8000 
 Swedes. According to Peter's official account of the battle, 
 5000 of his enemies were left dead on the field, while 
 Sheremetief only lost 400 men.^ This report made Europe 
 smile, but the Livonians found it no laughing matter. 
 Volmar and Marienburg fell into the hands of the victor, 
 who ravaged the country in the most frightful fashion. The 
 Russians had not, as yet, learnt any other form of warfare, 
 and, as we may suppose, the idea that he might ever possess 
 these territories had not yet occurred to Peter, His mind, 
 indeed, was absorbed elsewhere. His old fancies and whims 
 were strong upon him, and he left Apraxin to rage on the 
 banks of the Neva, in Ingria, on the very spot where his 
 future capital was to stand, while he himself gave all his 
 time and strength to the building of a few wretched ships at 
 Archangel. It was not till September, when the ice had 
 driven him out of the northern port, that he returned to the 
 west and took up his former course. He reached the Lake of 
 Ladoga, sent for Sheremetief, and the end he was to pursue 
 for many a long year seems at last to have taken firm root 
 in his hitherto unstable mind. He laid siege to Noteburg, 
 where he found a garrison of only 450 men, and on the i ith 
 of December 1702 he rechristened the little fortress he had 
 captured, by a new and symbolic name, Schlusselburg (Key 
 of the Sea). 
 
 Next came the capture of Nienschantz, at the very mouth 
 of the Neva, in April 1703, a personal success for the Captain 
 of Bombardiers, Peter Miha'iiof, who there brought his bat- 
 teries into play. A month later, the artilleryman had be- 
 come a sailor, and had won Russia's first naval victory. 
 Two regiments of the guard manned thirty boats, surrounded 
 two small Swedish vessels, which, in their ignorance of the 
 capture of Nienschantz, had ventured close to the town, 
 took possession of them, and murdered their crews. The 
 victor's letters to his friends are full of the wildest and most 
 childish delight, and there was, we must admit, some reason 
 
 * 7V(2Z'c/f (Amsterdam, 1718), vol. i. p. 52. 
 
 * Solovicf, vol. xiv. p. 346. 
 
3o8 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 for this joy.^ He had reconquered the historic estuary, 
 through which, in the ninth centur\', the first X'arej^s had 
 passed southward, towards Grecian skies. On the i6th of the 
 following; May, wooden houses began to rise on one of the 
 neighbouring islets. These houses were to multiply, to grow 
 into palaces, and finally to be known as St. Petersburg. 
 
 Peter's conquests, and newly-founded cities, disturbed 
 Charles XI I. but little. ' Let him build towns ; there will be 
 all the more for us to take ! ' Peter, and his arm}-, had, so 
 far, where Charles was concerned, only had to do with small 
 detachments of troops, scattered apart, and thus foredoomed 
 to destruction. The Russians took advantage of this fact to 
 pursue their advantage, strengthening and entrenching them- 
 selves, both in Ingria and Livonia. In July 1704, Peter was 
 present at the taking of Derpt. In August he had his re- 
 venge for his disaster at Narva, and carried the town, after a 
 murderous assault. Already, in November 1703,3 longed- 
 for guest had appeared in the mouth of the Neva, a foreign 
 trading vessel, laden with brandy and salt. Menshikof, the 
 governor o{ Piterburg, entertained the captain at a banquet, 
 and presented him with 500 florins for himself, and thirty 
 crowns for each of his sailors.- 
 
 Meanwhile, Charles Xll. tarried in I'olancl, where 
 Augustus' affairs were going from bad to worse. A Diet 
 convened at Warsaw, in February 1704, proclaimed his 
 downfall. After the disappearance of James Sobieski, 
 whose candidature was put a stop to by an ambuscade, 
 into which the dethroned king lured the son of the 
 deliverer of Vienna, Charles, who was all-powerful, put 
 forward that of Stanislaus Leszczynski. Though he gave 
 little thought, just then, to Russia, and to the Russian 
 Sovereign, the Tsar was beginning to be alarmed as to 
 the consequences which the Swedish king's position in 
 Poland, and in Saxony, might entail on himself Charles 
 was sure to end by retracing his steps, and an encounter 
 between Sheremetief and Locwenhaujjt, at Ilemauerthorf in 
 Courland (15th July, 1705), clearly proved that the Russian 
 army, unless in the case of disproportionate numerical 
 superiority over the enemy, was not yet capable of resist- 
 ing well-commanded Swedish troops. On this occasion, 
 
 ' .Solovief, vol. xiv. p. 349. 
 
 2 Moscow Gazette, Dec. 15, 1703. 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700-1709 309 
 
 Sheremetief lost all his infantry, and was himself severely 
 wounded.^ 
 
 What then was Peter to do? He must work on, increase 
 his resources, and add to his experience. If Sheremetief 
 and his likes proved unequal to their task, he must find 
 foreign generals and instructors, technical and other, he must 
 keep patience, he must avoid all perilous encounters, he must 
 negotiate, and try to obtain peace, even at the price of 
 parting with some of the territory he had conquered. The 
 years between 1705 and 1707 were busy ones for him. 
 Within the borders of his country he was absorbed by his 
 mighty efforts at military and economic organisation. 
 Without them, and even in the farthest corners of Europe, 
 he was carrying on an eager and active diplomatic cam- 
 paign. I shall refer, later, to the first portion of this 
 strenuous task. A few words as to the second must 
 follow here. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Russian diplomatists of that period found their task 
 a most ungrateful one. The European Cabinets of the day 
 were still in the frame of mind with which the shameful defeat 
 at Narva, in 1700, had inspired them. Prince Peter Galitzin, 
 overwhelmed with mortifications, cried out to be released 
 from his post at Vienna. Matvieief, who was only given 
 2CK)0 roubles a year, and expected to make a good figure as 
 the Tsar's Ambassador to the Hague, and who, consequently, 
 complained bitterly of his poverty, received orders to nego- 
 tiate a loan in exchange for a body of troops to be employed 
 against France. He was immediately asked whether the 
 troops he was empowered to offer ' were those that had forced 
 the King of Sweden to capitulate ' ? Besides, the Dutch, — 
 a practical and far-seeing people, — viewed the establishment 
 of Russia on the Baltic coast with marked disfavour. In 
 1705, Matvieief ventured on a journey to Paris, — at which 
 place, since the year 1703, the Tsar had only kept a Resident, 
 who carried no particular weight, named Postnikof, — and 
 frankly admitted that he could not induce any one there to 
 
 ^ Adierfeld, Histoire Militaire de Charles XII. (Paris, 1741), vol. ii. p. 522; 
 Oustrialof, vol. iv. p. 376. 
 
310 PKTER THE GREAT 
 
 take him seriousl}-.^ Since 1701, Dimitri Galitziii had been 
 striving;" to L^ain the confirmation of the treaty ne<;otiatcd by 
 OukraVntsof at Constantinople, and further, demandint^ the 
 rii^ht to free navigation of the Black Sea. But the Turks 
 woukl not even permit the Russian Envoys to arrive at Con- 
 stantino[)le by 'their water.' Yet, and for the first time, 
 they agreed to receive a permanent Russian Minister at 
 Adrianople. Ikit Peter ToIstoY, who was aj^pointed to this 
 post, vainh- endeavoured to induce them to make a diversion 
 in the cHrcction of Germany. All that could be said was, 
 that, for the moment, no danger threatened Peter from that 
 side. 
 
 Towards the end of 1705, he began to think of acquiring 
 that third ally on whom Patkul had relied for his original plan 
 of combination. And he despatched the Livonian to Berlin. 
 This strange and enigmatic personage has been made the 
 subject of a poet's verse. Gutzkow has turned the Land- 
 junker into the heroic champion of his race, and even history 
 does not appear to me, so far, to have done him full justice."^ 
 When Patkul first comes upon the scene, he does certainly 
 appear as the defender of the rights of his country, or, at all 
 events, cf his caste, against the encroachments of Charles 
 
 XI. But, even then, he gives us the impression of a man 
 who plays a part, rather than of one who fulfils a mandate. 
 We see no mandatories ; he does, indeed, treat with Augustus, 
 in the name of the Livonian nobility, but his powers appear 
 far from regular, and he is left forsaken in his exile. Even 
 at the very summit of his short political career, he keeps all 
 the outward appearances of an adventurer. 
 
 And fate was against all his enterprises. An appeal to 
 Poland was part of the national tradition of his country, but, 
 in the present condition of that republic, divided and torn by 
 contrary factions, the only means of reaching the State was 
 
 * Solovief, vol. XV. pp. 44-69. 
 
 * Yet see Forster, Die Hc/e u. die Cahinttte Europds, vol. iii. ; .ind larochowski, 
 PatkitCs Ausi^atig (Ascites Archiv fiir Sachsische G.), which seem to me to 
 approach most nearly to historical accuracy ; comji. Bcrnouilli, _/(?//. A', von 
 PatkiiFs Berichte ; Otto v. Vv'ernich, Der Livlander, J. K. von Patkul ; 
 C. Shirren, l.ivl. Antwort, 1869 ; Fr. Bieneniann, Aiis baltischer Vorzeit, vol. vi. 
 1870 ; Otto .Sjofjren, /. R. Patkul ; C. Schirren, Uebcr F. F. Carlsotii Carl 
 
 XII. (Gutting. Gel. Aiiz., 1883): E. Rodcmann, I.eii>nitzeit^s Plan, etc., 1883; 
 C. Schirren, Patkul uiid I.eibuitz; Mittlt. aus d. UtI. G., vol. xiii. , 1S84) ; G. 
 Mcltit;, /. A', von Patkul (Nordische Rundiihau, vol. iii., 1885); 11. v. lirui- 
 ningk, PatkuUana (Mitt/ieil a. d. l.ivl. G., vol. .\iv., 18S6). 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700-1709 311 
 
 through its lately chosen chief, and that chief, under the 
 most seductive of appearances, hid what was probably the 
 vilest and most corrupt nature in the whole of Europe. 
 Patkul's moral sense, never of the highest, could not stand 
 against this intercourse, and the result was soon evident in 
 the disfigured and degraded condition of his mission. The 
 patriot dwindled into a mere vulgar intriguer, and the defence 
 of Livonia was lowered, in his hands, to an odious traffic in 
 the most vital interests of the country. The period, alas ! 
 was only too favourable to such transmutations. Patkul's 
 story is on a par with those of Goertz and Struensee. 
 
 The Livonian adventurer did not even possess the qualities 
 necessary for his undertaking. He could not control his 
 nerves. He was restless and impatient, sarcastic and violent, 
 and, in spite of great intelligence and knowledge, he was both 
 frivolous and superficial. He could not govern his tongue, 
 still less his pen, and thus disobliged the Polish nobih'ty, 
 whom he treated with disdain, and fell out with the Saxon 
 Ministers and Generals, on whom, by means of pamphlets, 
 which he scattered broadcast, he threw the responsibility of 
 faults which, if not absolutely personal to himself, were, at 
 all events, common to him and others. Let me add, for the 
 honour of his memory, that he was incapable of entirely 
 identifying himself with the part he tried to play. Thus, in 
 1704, he travelled to Berlin, bearing a proposal for the 
 division of the Polish provinces between Prussia and Russia. 
 Yet that very same year, one of his letters, addressed to the 
 Chancellor Golovin, makes a strong appeal to his own 
 national traditions, as against Russia, and for Poland.^ Con- 
 sequently, he ended by having no firm standing at all. He 
 was the confidant of Augustus, whose character he professed 
 to despise, and the close adviser of Peter, whose despotism, 
 so he declared, ' infinitely displeased him.' He floundered 
 in an inextricable confusion of machinations, and political 
 attempts, all of them more or less perilous. In 1703, he 
 conspired to ruin the Saxon Chancellor, Count Beichlingen, 
 and all he attained by that Minister's fall was to make more 
 enemies for himself In 1704, he commanded the auxiliary 
 troops of the Tsar quartered in Saxony, and was well beaten, 
 with them, under the walls of Thorn. He agreed to go to 
 Berlin to negotiate an alliance, and after he had departed 
 
 * Zaluski, vol. iv. p. 285. 
 21 - 
 
312 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 empty-handed, he wrote to the rrussian Ministers, ' that he 
 was weary of the affairs of the King of Poland, and was 
 ready to make his peace with the King of Sweden.' ^ Wearied 
 at last by all these comings and goings, perceiving thc\' had 
 brought him nothing, and only (jj)cned an ab)-ss beneath his 
 feet, sick at heart, and threatened on every side, he lingered 
 in Dresden, because he desired to marry a beautiful widow, 
 Sophia Von Rumohr, Countess Von Einsiedel, the richest 
 match in Saxony. It was the second occasion on which a 
 woman was to have a fatal influence upon his destiny, and 
 this time the influence hurried him to his end. 
 
 The announcement of his marriage fanned the hatred and 
 jealousy of his enemies. On the 15th of December 1705, in 
 virtue of the powers conferred on him by Peter, and not 
 exceeding, though he may, perhaps, have somewhat strained 
 them, Patkul signed a Convention with Count Stratmann, 
 whereby all the Russian auxilliary troops under his orders 
 were taken into the Emperor's paj'. This treaty was by no 
 means against the interests of the King of Poland. The 
 Emperor undertook never to recognise Stanislaus, so long as 
 Augustus lived, and even to support the Saxon party in 
 Poland, — and the troops in question were dying of hunger in 
 Saxony. But the possible pretext furnished by Patkul's 
 interpretation of his powers, was seized forthwith, and within 
 four days of the signature of the treaty, the ' Tsar's commis- 
 sioner' was arrested. 
 
 Peter intervened, but very half-heartedly, in his defence. 
 Menshikof, his chief adviser, had been won over by the 
 Saxon Ministers.^ Then came long months of discussion; 
 the Tsar's protests were measured and discreet ; those of 
 Patkul far more violent, and supported by pamphlets, which, 
 imprisoned though he was, he found means to publish and 
 disseminate. At last Augustus, defeated over and over 
 again, tracked and hunted, reduced to despair, as regards 
 military matters, by Charles XII., beaten on the diplomatic 
 field by a Swedish prisoner named Arved Horn, was induced, 
 on the 24th of September 1706, to sign the ignominious 
 peace of Altranstadt, the iith Article of which stipulated 
 that Patkul should be given up. The King of Poland has 
 
 ^ Dresden Archives, Docii incuts (oniiectcd with the arrest of General Patkul^ 
 No. 3516; C'tipenhafjen t\xc\\\\&%, JessetCs Reports^ 1703-S- 
 "^ Herrmann, Geschiehtt Kusslands, vol. iv. p. 20t. 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700-1709 313 
 
 been credited with the intention of allowing the prisoner to 
 escape, after the signature of the treaty. There are no 
 grounds for supposing hitn capable of such generosity, nor 
 the slightest mention of anything of the kind in the Dresden 
 archives. Nothing but a note from the Sovereign, ordering 
 the betrothal ring found on the prisoner's person, to be given 
 to the Countess Von Einsicdel, which evidently proves that, 
 in the king's mind, he was a doomed man. In vain did the 
 Grand Treasurer of Poland, Przebendowski, venture to 
 remind him that, at the Peace of Karlowitz, the Turks them- 
 selves refused to deliver up Rakoczy ! ^ 
 
 Augustus' behaviour, on this occasion, was of a piece with 
 his whole life. Peter's casts a blot upon his glory. Patkul 
 was made over to the Swedes during the night of the 5th 
 April 1707 ; was dragged, for some time, wherever Charles 
 XII. was pleased to go, was finally tried and condemned by 
 a court-martial, and, on the loth of October, was broken on 
 the wheel at Kazimierz in Poland. He was struck fifteen 
 times with an unshod wheel by a peasant who performed the 
 executioner's office, and all the time he cried, 'Jesus, Jesus ! ' 
 After four more strokes his groans were silenced, but he still 
 had strength to crawl to the block prepared for another 
 execution, and to murmur, ' Kopf ab ! ' (Cut off my head ! ) 
 Colonel Waldow, who was in charge of the execution, 
 granted this final request, but four blows from the axe were 
 requisite to put the poor wretch out of his pain.'^ 
 
 Diplomac)/, as we have seen, served Peter but ill, and 
 Arved Horn's triumph over Patkul, clenched as it was by 
 the defection of Augustus, imperilled the safety of the 
 Russian armies. In the beginning of 1706, when they were 
 shut up in Grodno, where Menshikof and Ogilvy were 
 squabbling for the chief command, they ran the narrowest 
 risk of being captured by Charles. The sudden breaking up 
 of the frozen Niemen, which prevented the King of Sweden 
 from crossing the river, permitted the Russians to beat a 
 precipitate retreat, leaving their artillery and baggage behind 
 them. Peter, who on this occasion, once agaiii, avoided 
 sharing the fortune of his troops, caused cannon to be fired 
 at Kronslot in honour of the victor}'!'^ In the beginning 
 
 ' Dresden Archives, I'ook 3617. 
 
 ^ PalkuFs Berhhte, vol. iii. p. 300 ; Forstcr, Die Hofe, vol. iii. p. 404 ; Lvir.d- 
 blad, vol. i.'p. 40S ; Theatncn Etiropsum (1707), p. 281. 
 * Ouslrialof, vol. iv, p. 475. 
 
314 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 of October, a more t^ciiuine triumph had given him some 
 prestige, and would appear to have crowned his alHancc 
 with tlie King of Poland with its first success. With 
 Menshikof, who, Hke himself, was ignorant of what had 
 happened at Altranstadt five days previously, and carrying 
 his faithless ally, who still carefully concealed his treachery, 
 with him, he had defeated the Swedish troops under 
 Martlefeldt, before the walls of Kalisz. But the news of 
 Augustus' defection shortly transpired, and Peter was left 
 alone to face the formidable adversary, whom Menshikof 
 and his soldiers were quite unable to resist. 
 
 Peter's relations with the King of Poland betray an evident 
 lack of foresight in the first instance, and, eventually, an 
 equal absence of tact. For several years the charm which 
 bound these two men, really so unsuited to each other, had 
 ceased to work. Peter had perceived all the meannesses 
 which the Polish monarch concealed under his brilliant 
 exterior, and Augustus had become aware that when he had 
 accepted an annual subsidy, raised, in 1703, to the sum of 
 300,000 roubles, as the price of his alliance, he had been 
 duped. Two clays after the signature of the Treat)- which 
 ensured him this remuneration, Charles took possession of 
 Elbing, and raised, from that one city, a contribution of 
 200,000 crowns. And the Tsar's subsidy, always very 
 irregularly paid, ended by failing altogether ; for Peter ran 
 short of money. Hence it came about that, from the year 
 1702, Augustus, with his usual unrcliableness and dishonesty, 
 began to enter into various independent negotiations. In 
 the month of January, his former mistress, Aurora Von 
 Koenigsmark, the mother of the great Maurice de Saxp, 
 appeared in Charles XII. 's camp on the frontiers of Courland ; 
 she gained nothing by her journey, for the hero obstinately 
 refused to receive her, and she was driven to console herself 
 by rh)'ming the following verses: — 
 
 ' D'ou vient, jeune Roi, qu'avcc tant de meiite 
 Vous ayez peu de vrai bonheur,' 
 
 following on which sentiment, and still in verse, she proceeded 
 to lavish her consolations on Augustus himself, assuring 
 him that the friendship of so virtuous a monarch as the King 
 of Sweden was worth far more than the throne of Poland.^ 
 
 ' Laniberty, vol. iv. p. 292. 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700- 1709 315 
 
 Peter was well aware of this attempt on Augustus' 
 part, and of several others which followed it, and did not 
 hesitate to take similar measures of his own. After having 
 offered the Polish crown to James Sobieski, he fell back on 
 Rakocz}', with whom his plenipotentiaries signed a formal 
 treaty.^ Then, through the intervention of the Dutch, and, 
 when they retired, through Great Britain, he endeavoured to 
 make his separate peace with Sweden. Matvicief was sent 
 from the Hague to London, in 1706, with orders to buy over 
 Marlborough and Godolphin. Marlborough refused all 
 pecuniary offers — he may have had doubts as to the Tsar's 
 solvency — and, on his expressing his preference for landed 
 property, he was invited to choose between Kief, Vladimir, 
 or Siberia, with a guaranteed income of 50,000 crowns. This 
 matter fell through, on the conditions of peace insisted on 
 by Peter — the possession of the mouth of the Neva, and the 
 adjacent sea-coast. Then came the turn of France, then 
 that of Austria. Desalliers, an agent employed by F'rance 
 in Transylvania, appeared at Versailles, and offered the 
 services of a whoH Russian army, to be used according to 
 the will of the most Christian king. Baron Huissen, a former 
 tutor to the Tsarevitch Alexis, was sent to Vienna, with an 
 offer of a body of Cossacks, to be employed against tlie 
 Hungarian insurgents. But wheresoever he applied, the 
 Tsar's demands were thought too exacting, and besides, 
 the prospect of any intercourse between the Cossacks and 
 the Servian neighbours of Hungary, was far from pleasing 
 to the Emperor. Two other attempts, made simultaneously 
 — one at Berlin, where Ismailof, Peter's envoy, tempted 
 Count Wartemberg with a promise of 100,000 crowns — and 
 the other at Copenhagen, where the same messenger was 
 commissioned to offer Narva and Derpt to the Danes, met 
 with no better success.- 
 
 But Peter, in spite of all these efforts, and the com- 
 promising negotiations in which, like his ally, he indulged, 
 flattered himself he was to keep both his ally and his 
 alliance, and enjoy all the advantages therefrom accruing. 
 The Treaty of Altranstadt took him b)- surprise, and found 
 him quite unprepared. He soon made good his mistake, 
 took a swift decision, and adopted the course which was 
 
 ' Kotirakin Papers, vol. v. pp. xviii, 14. 
 * Solovief, vol. XV. p. 198, etc. 
 
3l6 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 infallibly to briiii; him final victory. lie evacuated Poland, 
 retired backward, and, pushiiiL]^ forward the preparations 
 which Charles's long sta)- in Saxony had j)crmitted him to 
 carry on with great activit)', he resolved that the battle should 
 be fought on his ground, and at his chosen time. He took 
 fresh patience, he resolved to wait, to wear out his adversary, 
 to draw back steadily, and leave nothing but a void behind 
 him. Thus he would force the enemy to advance across the 
 desert plains he had deliberately devastated, and run the 
 terrible risk, which had always driven back the ancient foes 
 of his country, whether Turks, Tartars, or Poles. — a winter 
 sojourn in the heart of Russia. This was to be the final 
 round of the great fight. The Tsar, as he expressed it, was 
 to set ten Russians against every Swede, and time, and 
 space, and cold, and hunger, were to be his backers. 
 
 IV 
 
 Charles, the most taciturn General who ever lived, never 
 revealed the secret inspiration which drove him to play his 
 adversary's game, by marching afresh on Grodno. During 
 the preceding j'ear, he had seemed to give the law to 
 Europe, from his camp in Sa.xon^^ France, which had been 
 vanquished at Hochstadt and Ramillies, turned a pleading 
 glance towards him, and the leader of the victorious allies, 
 Marlborough himself, solicited his help. I see no likelihood 
 that the great leader was actuated by a desire to take 
 advantage of the revolt amongst the Bashkirs, which, at that 
 moment, was giving Peter some trouble. In February 1708, 
 the insurgents were only thirty versts from Kazan. But 
 Kazan was a long way off, and Peter possessed many 
 resources in that quarter. He soon contrived to embroil the 
 rebels with their Kalmuk neighbours. On the Don, where, 
 almost at the same moment, a second Razin made his 
 appearance, the Tsar was equally successful. Prince George 
 Dolgorouki, who had been sent into that country, in 1707, 
 to check the emigration of the local population, which had 
 taken on alarming proportions, — every one moving towards 
 that Eden guarded by the cataracts of the Dnieper, called 
 the Zaporoje, — came into collision with some Cossack troops, 
 coinmandcd by an individual named l^oulavin, and perished 
 with all his men. But immcdiatel>- afterwards, the victors 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700- 1709 317 
 
 fell out amongst themselves, were beaten piecemeal, and 
 Boulavin blew out his brains.^ 
 
 Charles may have had an idea of making Grodno his base 
 for a spring attack on the Tsar's new conquests in the 
 North. This supposition would seem to have been the one 
 accepted by Peter, if we may judge by the orders given, just 
 at this time, to ensure the safety of Livonia and Ingria, by 
 completing their devastation ; and these very orders may 
 have induced the King of Sweden to abandon his original 
 design, in favour of another, the wisdom of which is still 
 contested by experts, but which, it cannot be denied, was of 
 noble proportions. Charles, too, had found an ally, to set 
 against those natural ones with which Russia had furnished 
 the Tsar, and he had found him within the borders of the 
 Tsar's country. The name of this ally was Mazeppa. 
 
 The stormy career of the famous Hetman, so dramatic, 
 both from the historic and domestic point of view, — from 
 that adventure with the pan Falbowski, so naively related 
 by Pasek, down to the Romance with Matrena Kotchoubey, 
 which coloured the last and tragic incidents of his existence, 
 — is so well known that I will not narrate it here, even in the 
 concisest form. Little Russia was then passing through a 
 painful crisis, — the consequence of Shmielnicki's efforts at 
 emancipation, which had been warped and perverted by 
 Russian intervention. The Polish Lords, who formerly 
 oppressed the country, had been replaced by the Cossacks, 
 who not only ground down the native population, but railed 
 at, and quarreled with, their own chief The Hetmans and 
 the irregular troops were at open war, the first, striving to 
 increase their authority, and make their power hereditary, 
 the others defending their ancient democratic constitution. 
 The Swedish war increased IVIazeppa's difficulties. He 
 found himself taken at a disadvantage between the claims 
 of the Tsar, who would fain have his Cossacks on every 
 battlefield in Poland, Russia, and Livonia, and the resistance 
 of the Cossacks themselves, who desired to remain in their 
 o\\ n country, l^eing himself of noble Polish birth, brought 
 up by the Jesuits, having served King John Casimir of 
 Poland, and sworn allegiance to the Sultan, he saw no 
 reason for sacrificing his interests, much less his life, for 
 Peter's benefit. The approach of Charles XII. made him 
 
 ' Solovief, vol. XV. p. 259. 
 
3i8 rETP:R THE GREAT 
 
 fear he mic^ht, like his predecessor Nalevaiko, be deserted 
 by his own followers, and f^iven up to the Poles. He declined 
 offers made him by Leszczynski, in 1705, not without 
 rcinindincj the Tsar that the temptation, thus honestly 
 resisted, was the fourth which had been offered him.' Then 
 he began to reflect. His Cossacks' complaints were growinc^ 
 louder and louder. Peter had gone so far as to try to send 
 two of their regiments into Prussia, to learn German drill. 
 Mazcppn, having been invited by Prince Wisniowie^ki, a 
 Wolhynian Polish magnate, to stand godfather to his 
 daughter, met the Prince's mother, Princess Dolska, in his 
 house, and formed an intimacy with her. In spite of his age 
 (according to Prokopovitch, he was then 54, while Kngel 
 makes him 60, and Nordberg 76), he was still an ardent 
 lover. Madame P'albowska, who, like himself, had been 
 vilely treated by her fiercely jealous husband, had been 
 succeeded by many other mistresses. In the early days of 
 Mazeppa's intercourse with Princess Dolska, she pretended 
 to plead no cause but that of Leszczynski, for whom she 
 greatl}' desired the Tsar's support. Then she showed her 
 hand, — her real object was that Leszczjmski and his 
 victorious protector should be supported through thick and 
 thin, even against Peter himself Mazeppa's first impulse 
 was one of anger against the ' baba' (gossip). But she was 
 a clever woman. A few remarks, carelessly dropped, made 
 him prick his ears. She had been at Leopol, where she had 
 met the Russian Generals Sheremetief and Ronne, and had 
 heard them foretell the early deposition of the Hetman, and 
 Menshikof's succession to his position. The idea did not 
 appear altogether improbable to Mazeppa, who knew that 
 Peter's collaborators panted to establish Russian officialism 
 in the Ukraine. The favourite himself had even dropped 
 a hint one day, at Kief, and in his cups, upon the subject, 
 and was already taking upon himself to send the Cossack 
 regiments hither and thither, without reference to Mazeppa. 
 Princess Dolska was backed by Zalenski, a Jesuit, the 
 mouthpiece of Leszczynski and of Charles, and not a word 
 of this fresh temptation was breathed by the Cossack leader 
 to the Russian Tsar. 
 
 My readers know the story of the Hetman's final love 
 affair, which brought about Peter's acquaintance with the 
 
 ^ Solovief, vol. XV. p. 289. 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700-1709 319 
 
 facts of this negotiation. Mazeppa had seduced the 
 daughter of Kotchoubey, a Cossack Chief, and the father, 
 out of revenge, denounced him to the Tsar. Unhappily for 
 himself, the proofs he furnished were not conckisive. The 
 Tsar,^relying on his own constant i^indness to the Hetman, 
 and obstinately regarding him as representing his personal 
 authority, in opposition to the traditional insubordination of 
 the Cossacks, — allowed himself to be deceived by Mazeppa's 
 protestations, and delivered his accuser up to him. Twenty 
 times in the past twenty years, he had been denounced, and 
 had contrived to clear himself. He caused Kotchoubey and 
 his confidant, Iskra, to be beheaded, but still he was uneasy, 
 — on the watch for a possible return of the peril lately past. 
 The appearance of Charles on the Russian frontier forced 
 him to a definite resolution, and, in the spring of 1708, his 
 emissaries appeared at Radoshkovitse, south-east of Grodno, 
 where Charles had established his head-quarters.^ 
 
 The King of Sweden's idea, at that decisive moment, 
 would seem to have been to take advantage of the Hetman's 
 friendly inclination, to find his way into the heart of Russia, 
 using the rich Southern Provinces as his base, to stir up, 
 with Mazeppa's help, the Don Cossacks, the Astrakhan 
 Tartars, and, it may have been, the Turks themselves, and 
 thus attack the Muscovite Power in the rear. Then Peter 
 would have been forced back upon his last entrenchments, 
 at Moscow or elsewhere, while General Luebecker, who was 
 in Finland with 14,000 men, fell on Ingria and on St. 
 Petersburg, and Leszczynski's Polish partisans, with General 
 Krassow's Swedes, held Poland.^ 
 
 It was a mighty plan, indeed, but, at the very outset, it 
 was sharply checked. Mazeppa insisted on certain condi- 
 tions, and these conditions Charles thought too heavy. The 
 Hetman agreed that Poland should take the Ukraine and 
 White Russia, and that the Swedes should have the 
 fortresses of Mglin, Starodoub, and Novgorod-Sievierski, 
 but he himself insisted on being apportioned Polotsk, 
 Vitebsk, and the whole of Courland, to be held in fief. 
 Thus the negotiations were delayed. Meanwhile Charles, 
 perceiving that he was not strong enough to make a forward 
 movement, made up his mind to send for Loewcnhaupt, who 
 
 ' Moscow Archives, Little-Russian Affairs, 170S. 
 ' Sarauw, p. 238, 
 
320 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 was in Livonia, and who was to bring him i6,ooo men and 
 various stores. But the Swedish hero had not reckoned 
 fairl\- with distance, and with time. Many precious dajs, 
 the best of the season, fled b)-, before his orders could be 
 obcN'cd. And, for the first time, he showed signs of un- 
 ccrtaint}' and irresolution, which were all too quickly- 
 communicated to those under his command. Loewenhaupt 
 grew slower than usual. Luebecker slackened his activity, 
 and Mazeppa began to play his double game again, — 
 prudently preparing his Cossacks to revolt, in the name of 
 the ancient customs, national {privileges, and church laws, 
 which Peter's reforms had infringed, — fortif)ing his own 
 residence at Batourin, and accumulating immense stores 
 there, but still continuing to pay court to the Tsar, wearing 
 the German dress, flattering the Sovereign's despotic taste 
 by suggesting plans which would have annihilated the last 
 vestiges of local independence, and accepting gifts sent him 
 by Mcnshikof.^ 
 
 And so the summer passed away. A winter campaign 
 became inevitable, and the abyss which Peter's unerring eye 
 had scanned, began to gape. 
 
 It was not till June that Charles XII. left Radoshkovitsc, 
 and marched eastwards to l^orisov, where he crossed the 
 Berezina. Menshikof and Shcrcmctief made an attempt to 
 stop him, on the 3rd of July, as he was crossing a small river 
 called the Bibitch, near Molovtchin. A night manoeuvre, 
 and a wild baj'onet charge, led by the king himself, carried 
 him once more to victory. The town of Mohilef opened its 
 gates to the Swedes, but there Charles was forced to stay, 
 and lose more time yet, waiting for Loewenhaupt. He 
 marched again, early in August, in a southerly direction, 
 and his soldiers soon found themselves in the grip of one 
 of Peter's allies. They were driven to support themselves 
 by gathering ears of corn, which they ground between two 
 stones. Sickness began to thin their ranks. Their three 
 doctors, so the fierce troopers said, were ' brandy, garlic, and 
 death'! Loewenhaupt had reached Shklof, and was sepa- 
 
 ^ Engel, Geschichte dcr Ukraine (Halle, 1796), p. 303,010.; Prokopovitch, 
 Hiitory of Peter the Great (in Russian), p. 17S, etc. 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700-1709 321 
 
 rated from the invading army by two streams, the Soja and 
 the Dnieper, between which Peter had taken up his position. 
 The Swedish general, after having successfully passed the 
 Dnieper, was met at Licsna, on the 9th of October, by a 
 force three times as large as his own, and Peter was able, on 
 the following day, to report a complete victory to his friends : 
 '8500 men dead on the field, without mentioning those the 
 Kalmuks have hunted into the forest, and 700 prisoners!' 
 According to this reckoning, Loewenhaupt, who could not 
 have brought more than 11,000 troops into action, should 
 have been left without a man ; as a matter of fact, he reached 
 Charles with 6700, after a flank march which all military 
 experts consider a marvel. But, not being able to find a 
 bridge across the Soja, he was forced to abandon his artillery 
 and ali his baggage, and he led his starving troops into a 
 famine-stricken camp. 
 
 There was bad news, too, from Ingria, where Luebecker 
 had also been defeated, losing all his baggage and 3000 
 first-class troops. Charles grew so disconcerted that he is 
 reported to have confessed to Gyllenkrook, his Quarter- 
 master-General that he was all at sea, and no longer had any 
 definite plan.^ On the 22nd of October, he reached Moko- 
 shin on the Desna, on the borders of the Ukraine, where he 
 had expected to meet Mazeppa. Hut the old leader broke 
 his appointment. He still desired to temporise, and was 
 loath to take any decisive resolution. He was driven to 
 take one, at last, by the Cossacks about him, who were 
 alarmed at the idea of the Russians following the Swedes 
 into the Ukraine. It would be far better, so they thought, 
 to join the latter against the former. One of these Cossacks, 
 Voinarovski, who had been sent by the Hetman to Menshikof, 
 had returned with most terrifying news. He had overheard 
 the German officers on the favourite's staff, speaking of 
 Mazeppa and his followers, say, ' God pity those poor 
 wretches ; to-morrow they will all be in chains!' Mazeppa, 
 when he heard this report, 'raged like a whirlwind,' hurried 
 to Batourin to give the alarm, and then crossed the Desna 
 and joined the Swedish arm)-. 
 
 It was too late. '1 he popular sentiment, on which both 
 he and Charles had reckoned to promote an insurrectionary 
 movement, confused by the tergiversations and the am- 
 
 ^ Lundblad, vol. ii. p. 49. 
 
32a PETER THE GREAT 
 
 biguous actions of the Ilcliiian, had cjiiitc gone astray, and 
 lost all consistency. All Mazeppa could reckon upon was 
 a body of 2000 faithful troops : not enough even to defend 
 Batourin, which Menshikof snatched from him a few days 
 later, — thus depriving the Swedish army of its last chance 
 of revictualling. When the fortresses of Starodoub and 
 Novgorod - Sicvierski closed their gates against him, the 
 whole of the Ukraine slipped from the grasp of the turn- 
 coat chief, and his new allies. His effigy was first hung, and 
 then dragged through the streets of Glouhof, in Peters pre- 
 sence ; another Hctman, Skoropadski, was appointed in his 
 place, and then came winter — a cruel winter, during which 
 the very birds died of cold. 
 
 By the beginning of 1709, Charles's effective strength had 
 dwindled to nearly 20,000 men. The Russians did not dare 
 to attack him as yet, but they gathered round him in an 
 ever-narrowing circle. They carried his advanced posts, 
 they cut his lines of communication. The King of Sweden, 
 to get himself mere elbow room, was driven to begin his 
 campaign in the month of January. He lost 1000 men 
 and 48 officers in taking the paltry town of Wespjik (6th 
 January). By this time the game, in Mazeppa's view, was 
 already lost, and he made an attempt to turn his coat again, 
 — offering to betray Charles into I'eter's hands, if Peter 
 would restore him his office. The bargain was struck, but 
 a letter from the old traitor, addressed to Leszczynski, 
 chanced to fall into the Tsar's hands, and made him draw 
 back, in the conviction that Mazeppa was utterly unreliable.^ 
 In the month of March, the near approach of the Swedish 
 army, then advancing on Poltava, induced the Zaporoje 
 Cossacks to join it. But the movement was a very 
 partial one, and Peter soon put it down, — by means of 
 a series of military executions, mercilessly carried out by 
 Menshikof, and of various manifestoes against the foreign 
 heretics, 'who den}' the doctrines of the true religion, and 
 spit on the picture of the Blessed Virgin.' The capture of 
 Poltava thus became the last hope of Charles and his army. 
 If they could not seize the town, they must all die of hunger. 
 
 The fortifications of the place were weak, but the besieging 
 army was sorely changed from that which had fought under 
 the walls of Narva. It had spent too long a time in fat 
 
 * Solovief, vol. XV. p. 361. 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700- 1709 323 
 
 quarters, in Saxony and Poland, to be fit to endure this 
 terrible campaign. Like the Russian army at Narva, it 
 was sapped by demoralisation, before it was called on to do 
 any serious fighting. Even amongst the Swedish staff, and 
 in the king's intimate circle, all confidence in his genius, and 
 his lucky star, had disappeared. His best Generals, Rchns- 
 kold, and Gyllenkrook, his Chancellor, Piper, and Mazeppa 
 himself, were against any prolongation of the siege, which 
 promised to be a long one. ' If God were to send down 
 one of his angels,' he said, ' to induce me to follow your 
 advice, I would not listen to him ! ' ^ An ineradicable illu- 
 sion, the fruit of the too easy victories of his early career, 
 prompted him to undervalue the forces opposed to him. He 
 knew, and would acknowledge, nothing of that new Russia, 
 the mighty upstanding Colossus, which Peter had at last 
 succeeded in raising up in his path. According to some 
 authorities, Mazeppa, in his desire to replace Batourin by 
 Poltava, as his own personal appanage, encouraged him in 
 this fatal resolution.'- But it may well have been, that retreat 
 had already become impossible. 
 
 It was long before Peter made up his mind to intervene ; 
 he was still distrustful of himself, desperately eager to in- 
 crease his own resources, and with them his chances of 
 victory. On his enemy's side, everything contributed to this 
 result. By the end of June, all the Swedish ammunition was 
 exhausted, the invaders could use none of their artillery, and 
 hardly any of their fire-arms, and were reduced to fighting 
 with cold steel. On the very eve of the decisive struggle, 
 they were left without a leader. During a reconnaissance 
 on the banks of the Vorskla, which ran between the hostile 
 armies, Charles, always rash, and apt to expose himself un- 
 necessarily, was struck by a bullet. ' It is only in the foot,' 
 he said, smiling, and continued his examination of the 
 ground. But, when he returned to camp, he fainted, and 
 Peter, reckoning on the moral effect of the accident, at once 
 resolved to cross the river. A report, as a matter of fact, 
 ran through the Swedish camp, that the King, convinced of 
 the hopelessness of the situation, had deliberately sought 
 death." 
 
 Yet ten more days passed by, in the expectation of an 
 
 ^ Fryxell, vol. ii. 158. - Lundblad, vol. ii. p. 104. 
 
 =» Ibid., p. 118. 
 
324 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 attack which the Russians did not dare to make. It was 
 ("harlcs who took action at last, informing his Generals, on 
 the 26th of June (7th July) that he would give battle on the 
 following morning. He himself was still in a very suffering 
 condition, and made over the command to Rehnskold, a 
 valiant soldier, but a doubtful leader, for he did not possess 
 the army's confidence, and, according to Lundblad, 'hid his 
 lack of knowledge and strategical powers under gloomy 
 looks and a fierce expression.' After the event, as was so 
 commonly the case with vanquished generals, he was accused 
 of treachery. The truth would seem to be, that Charles's 
 obstinate reserve, and habit of never confiding his plans and 
 military arrangements to any third person, had ended by 
 gradually depri\ing his lieutenants of all power of inde- 
 pendent action. In his presence they were bereft of speech, 
 and almost of ideas. All Rehnskold did was to rage and 
 swear at every one. Peter, meanwhile, neglected nothing 
 likely to ensure success. He even went so far as to dress 
 the Novgorod regiment — one of his best — in the coarse 
 cloth {sii-yjiiiaga) generally reserved for newly-joined recruits, 
 in the hope of thus deceiving the enemy. This stratagem, 
 however, completely failed. In the very beginning of the 
 battle, Rehnskold fell on the regiment, and cut it to pieces.^ 
 The Russian centre was confided to Sheremetief, the right 
 wing to General" Ronne, the left to Menshikof. Bruce com- 
 manded the artillery, and the Tsar, as usual, retired modestly 
 to the head of a single regiment. But this was a mere dis- 
 guise ; in real fact, he was everywhere, going hither and 
 thither, in the forefront of the battle, and lavishing effort 
 in every direction. A bullet passed through his hat, another 
 is .said to have struck him full on the breast. It was miracu- 
 lously stopped by a golden cross, set with precious stones, 
 given by the monks on Mount Athos to the Tsar ?Y'odor, 
 and which his successor habitually wore. This cross, which 
 certainly bears the mark of some j^rojectile, is still preserved 
 in the Ouspienski Monastery, at Moscow. 
 
 The heroism, and sovereign contempt of death, betrayed 
 by Charles, were worthy of himself Unable to sit a horse, 
 he caused himself to be carried on a litter, which, when it 
 was shattered by bullets, was replaced b>' another made of 
 crossed lances. But he was nothing but a living standard, 
 
 ^ Golikof, vol. xi. p. 202. 
 
FROM NARVA TO POLTAVA, 1700-1709 325 
 
 useless, thouc^h sublime. The once mighty military leader 
 had utterly disappeared. The battle was but a wild con- 
 flict, in which the glorious remnants of one of the most 
 splendid armies that had ever been brought together — 
 unable to use its arms, leaderless, hopeless of victory, and 
 soon overwhelmed and crushed by superior numbers — 
 struggled for a space, with the sole object of remaining 
 faithful to its King. At the end of two- hours, Charles 
 himself left the field of battle. He had been lifted on to the 
 back of an old horse which his father had formerly ridden, 
 and which was called Brandklepper (run to the fire), because 
 he was always saddled when a fire broke out in the city. 
 This charger followed the vanquished hero into Turkey, was 
 taken by the Turks at I^ender, sent back to the king, taken 
 again at Stralsund in 171 5, returned to its owner once 
 more, and died in 17 18 — the same year as his master — 
 at the age of forty-two.^ Poniatowski, the father of the 
 future King of Poland, who was following the campaign as 
 a volunteer (Charles had refused to take any Polish troops 
 with him on account of their want of discipline), rallied one 
 of Colonel Horn's squadrons to escort the King, and re- 
 ceived seventeen bullets through his leather kaftan while 
 covering the royal retreat.^ Field-Marshal Rehnskold, Piper, 
 the Chancellor, with all his subordinates, over 150 officers, 
 and 2000 soldiers, fell into the victor's hands. 
 
 The Russians' joy was so extreme that they forgot to 
 pursue the retreating enemy. Their first impulse was to 
 sit down and banquet. Peter invited the more important 
 prisoners to his own table, and toasted the health of his 
 ' masters in the art of war.' The Swedes, who still numbered 
 13.000 men, had time to pause for a moment in their own 
 camp, where Charles summoned Loewenhaupt, and, for the 
 first time in his life, was heard to ask for advice, 'What was 
 to be done ? ' The General counselled him to burn all 
 \vaggons, mount his infantry soldiers on the draught horses, 
 and beat a retreat towards the Dnieper. On the 30th of 
 June, the Russians came up with the Swedish army, at Perevo- 
 lotchna on the banks of the river, and, the soldiers refusing 
 to fight again, Loewenhaupt capitulated ; but the king had 
 
 ^ Lundhlad, vol. ii. p. 137. 
 
 ^ Kantecki, Biography of Sia/u'slas Pofiiatowski (Posen, iSSo) (in Polish), 
 vol. i. p. 26. 
 
326 I'ETER THE GREAT 
 
 time to cross to the other side. Two boats lashed together 
 carried his carriaj^e, a few officers, and the war-chests which 
 he had filled in Saxon\'. Mazeppa contrived to find a boat 
 for himself, and loaded it with two barrels of t;old.^ 
 
 At Kief, whither Peter proceeded from Poltava, a solemn 
 thanksgiving was offered up in the church of St Sophia, and 
 a Little- Russian monk, PY-ofan Prokojjovitch, celebrated the 
 recent victory, in a fine fiight of eloquence : ' When our neigh- 
 bours hear of what has happened, they will say, it was not 
 into a foreign country that the Swedish army and the 
 Swedish power ventured, but rather into some mighty 
 sea ! They have fallen in, and disappeared, even as lead is 
 swallowed up in water!' 
 
 The Sweden of Gustavus Adolphus had indeed disap- 
 peared. Charles Xii. was, ere long, to be a mere knight- 
 errant at Bender. The Cossack independence, too, was a 
 thing of the past. Its last and all too untrustworthy repre- 
 sentative, was to die in Turkey, before many months were 
 out — of despair, according to Russian testimony — of poison 
 voluntarily swallowed, according to Swedish historians. 
 The poison story has a touch of likelihood about it, for 
 Peter certainh' proposed to exchange Mazcppa's person for 
 that of the Chancellor Piper.'- The cause of the Leszczynski, 
 too, was dead. It was to be put forward again by France, 
 but for the benefit of France alone. And with the Leszczyn- 
 ski cause, Poland itself had passed away, and lay a lifeless 
 corpse, on which the vultures were soon to settle. Out of all 
 these ruins rose the Russian power — its Northern hegemony, 
 and its new European position, which henceforward were daily 
 to increase, and reach immense, immoderate proportions. 
 ICurope played a special part in the festivities which graced 
 the return of the victors to Moscow, a few months later. 
 European ideas, traditions, and forms, appeared in the 
 triumphal procession, and served as trappings for the 
 trophies of victory. Peter, pla)'ing the part of Hercules, 
 and conquering a Swedish Juno, in a cortege in which 
 Mars figured, attended by Furies and by Fauns, was a fit 
 symbol of the alliance of Russia with the Greco-Latin 
 civilisation of the West. Old Muscovy — Eastern and 
 Asiatic — was numbered with the dead. 
 
 ^ Soluvief, vol. XV. p. 37S. ^ Ibid., vol. xvi. p. 42. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 
 
 The victory of Poltava does not bring peace to Russia — A policy of general 
 expansion — The origin of PansLavism — European alliances — The Tsar's 
 Diplomacy — His awkwardness and blunders — Peter, in his eagerness to 
 reach the West, forgets the South — Diplomatic struggle at Constantinople 
 — Charles Xil. wins — Weighty arguments — Declaration of War. 
 
 Peter's Plan of Campaign — Its weakness — lie forgets the lesson of the 
 past — The march on lassy — He makes the same mistake as Charles — 
 Another Ukraine and another Mazeppa — The Tartars cut the Russian 
 communications — The Tsar and the Russian army hemmed in on the 
 banks of the Pruth — A desperate situation — Peter flinches again — His 
 letter to the Senate — -'The throne to the worthiest ' — Doubtful authenti- 
 city of the document — Catherine's action — The future Tsarina's diamonds 
 — Salvation — The Vizier consents to treat — The influence of Backsheesh 
 — Unhoped-for conditions — Azof is given up — Peter soon recovers from 
 his fright, and consoles himself for his losses — ' Matchless acquisitions' — 
 The triumph of obstinacy — The skirmish at Bender — Charles XII. a 
 prisoner. 
 
 The allies prevent Peter from obtaining peace with Sweden — Quarrels 
 and rivalries — The Siege of Stralsund — Attempted understandings with 
 England and Prussia — Peter always succeeds better when he acts inde- 
 pendently — The Conquest of Finland — The Tsar's German victories 
 only profit Prussia — The capture of Stettin, and the Treaty of Sequestra- 
 tion — Charles XII. reappears at Stralsund — Goertz appears on the 
 scene — The capture of Wismar — Peter has served the King of Prussia 
 again — Plan for a Russo-Danish Expedition. — Naval demonstration at 
 Copenhagen — Peter in command of the allied squadrons of Denmark, 
 Holland, England and Russia — The expedition fails — Peter is blamed — 
 His intervention in German affairs rouses universal anger — English irrita- 
 tion — Plan to seize the Tsar's person and sink his squadron — Peter's 
 disgust with his allies. 
 
 ^ Goerlz's idea' — Plan for a separate understanding between Russia and 
 Sweden — French origin of this view— It attracts Peter — His journey to 
 France — Secret interview with Goertz — Treaty of Amsterdam, between 
 Russia, France and Prussia — Acceptance of French mediation — The 
 Congress of Aland — The death of Charles xil. puts an end to the 
 negotiations — The execution of Goertz. 
 
 Renewal of negotiations at Aland — The Swedes resist — Coercion — Russian 
 descent on Sweden — P'ngland intervenes in Sweden's favour — A useless 
 naval demonstration — Diplomatic intcrvcniicin by France — Campre<K)n — 
 The peace of Nystadt — The joy of triumph — The Imperial title — Admiral, 
 and Emperor of all the Russias — The benefits of peace— War atzain. 
 o, 327 
 
328 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 VI. The Eastern frontier — The road to India — Failure of early efforts in this 
 direction — P'resh military and diplomatic action with rc-j^ard to Persia — 
 \'c)lynski — The ^reat expedition of 1722— Led by Peter in person — The 
 taking of Derhent — A forced retreat — Turkey and P^n^land inter- 
 vene — A temporary ajrreenient — The Armenians claim the Tsar's protec- 
 tio!i--The Eastern Christians — A fresh attempt to reach the far East — 
 The Madagascar Expedition — The natural direction and limits of Russia's 
 colonising powers. 
 
 The victory of Poltava shed a glory on Peter, on his 
 army, and on his subjects, which extended far beyond 
 the great Tsar's reign, and even be^-ond the eighteenth 
 century itself. Yet it did not give the victor the reward 
 which he may be reasonably supposed to have most desired 
 — peace. Twelve more years — full of extreme effort and 
 fresh sacrifice — were to elapse before this happy result 
 was attained. With this fact Peter himself, his intellectual 
 deficiencies, and the weaknesses of his character, had much 
 to do. At the moment of his Poltava victory, his natural 
 and logical line of conduct lay clear before him, and his per- 
 sonal will should have been humbly submitted to it. In 
 default of any possible agreement with the conquered foe, 
 he should have pursued him, strengthened the advantages 
 already gained, completed the conquest of Livonia, taken up 
 a firm footing in Finland, and, having thus secured all he 
 could hope for from the struggle, he should never have given 
 a thought to anx'thing else, neither to the Saxon ally, who 
 had deceived him, nor the Danish all)', who had been the 
 first to relinquish the conflict. But logic, and the natural 
 procession of things, and the influence of surrounding cir- 
 cumstances, were all overwhelmed, in Peter's case, by one 
 of those instinctive and unreflecting impulses which he was 
 so incompetent to quell. And he cast himself, without any 
 plausible motive, and certainly without any clear and well- 
 thought-out plan, into a career of adventure, and a wild out- 
 burst of universal expansion, in which Russia, at that 
 moment, was incapable of following him, and in which his 
 only visible guide was a blind and thoughtless need of 
 activity, and of using, and abusing, his own strength. The 
 Eastern coast of the Baltic no longer sufficed him ; he must 
 lay hands on Mecklenburg. He claimed the right to lord it 
 over Poland, and establish order in that country, by uphold- 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 329 
 
 ing its anarchical constitution. He gave a foretaste of the 
 Slavophil and Panslavist policy of future years, attract- 
 ing Servians and Montenegrins beneath the shadow of his 
 Protectorate, and sending them books and professors, who 
 would have been far better employed at Moscow, which 
 lacked both schools, and money to keep them up. He ended 
 by risking all the fruits of his efforts and his former successes, 
 on the banks of the Pruth, and even incurred the danger of 
 casting his own fortunes, and those of his people, into a yet 
 deeper abyss than that which had swallowed up Charles XII. 
 Hardly had he escaped, as by a miracle, from this catastrophe, 
 before he began afresh. Without any necessity, — swayed by 
 the mere desire of attracting attention, making a figure in 
 Europe, having a finger in everything, and being associated 
 with every one, — he plunged into a network of doubtful 
 intrigues, and ambiguous arrangements, negotiating, bar- 
 gaining, meddling in all directions, running the risk, once 
 more, of being swallowed up in that slough which for ten 
 long years he trampled hopelessly, going up and down, 
 between Berlin, Copenhagen and Amsterdam, — struggling 
 with the rival ambitions and greed, which his blunders had 
 roused. 
 
 He lacked everything necessary to enable him to move, 
 and maintain his dignity, on the huge chess-board whereon 
 he thus ventured to expose his own military power, and his 
 newly Europeanised diplomacy. He had no sufficient 
 knowledge, either of the various interests with which he had 
 to do, or of the general routine of business, and he possessed 
 neither tact nor moderation. Everywhere, at almost every 
 step, he stumbled against some obstacle. He was caught in 
 traps, and blundered into dark holes, which he neither per- 
 ceived nor knew how to avoid. He was astounded that 
 an alliance between himself and the Elector of Hanover 
 should be unwelcome to that sovereign in his quality as King 
 of England, and wondered that Austria was offended, when 
 he had thought to .serve German interests, by helping the 
 King of Prussia to square his territory at the expense of the 
 King of Sweden. He celebrated his daughter's wedding at 
 Dantzic, in order to please his Polish friends, levied a con- 
 tribution of 150,000 crowns on the town for the occasion, 
 and betrayed great astonishment when the cit}' appeared to 
 care more for the money he had taken, than for the honour 
 
330 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 he had conferred. He interfered in the quarrels between 
 the Polish Catholics and Uniates, and the Orthodox 
 Catholics, and all he gained was to drive the Orthodox 
 monks themselves into flat rebellion against his Commis- 
 sioner, Roudakovski, whom they beat, and threw into prison, 
 crying, 'Away with the Muscovites ! ' ^ At the very moment 
 when he was pestering Holland with requests for a loan, 
 Rear-Admiral Cruys, commanding one of his squadrons, 
 burnt five Dutch merchantmen in the Port of Helsingfors, 
 murdered some of the crews, and carried off the rest. An 
 explanation was demanded, and he declared that all the 
 blame must be laid on the Swedes, who held Helsingfors, 
 and whose artillery was so heavy that the Admiral had not 
 dared to attack them. Wherefore, not choosing to retire 
 without having performed some warlike feat, he had fallen 
 on the Dutch ships ! - 
 
 The Tsar's Ministers and Envoys to foreign courts were 
 much like him, — either obsequious or arrogant, but always 
 in extremes. '1 he journal of the Danish Resident, in 1710, 
 contains this passage : ' Victory has so completely turned 
 the heads of the people here, that they are quite beside 
 themselves. They think of nothing but having honour paid 
 to them, and not returning it.' ^ They, too — most of them 
 professional adventurers, drawn, like Menshikof and lagou- 
 jinski, from the stable or the servants' hall, or snatched, like 
 Kourakin, from the delights of patriarchal existence, from 
 the habits of the doniostroi and of the tcrem, — waded hither 
 and thither in the slough. Their blunders, their awkwardness, 
 and their boorishness were never-ending. In one place they 
 were imprisoned for debt, in another they were turned out of 
 doors like ill-behaved servants ; everywhere, they contrived 
 to complicate the business of wTiich they held the threads. 
 The whole political history of the reign, from the triumph 
 of Poltava down to the peace of Nystadt, is one long chaos 
 and confusion. The lucky star of Russia, the heroic patience 
 of the nation, and, — it is only just to admit it, — the vigour 
 and i)erscverancc of the Tsar, carried them through at last, 
 but the process cost very dear, and brought but little profit. 
 
 1 Solovief, vol. xviii. p. 86. 
 
 ' Konrakin's Memor.inda to the St.-ites-Gener.il, Aiifj. 7, 1713, and Jan. 31, 
 1714; He Hie's Despatch to Kagcl, Oct. 14, 1713 ; Dutch Archives. 
 » State Papers, Copenhagen. 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 331 
 
 From Kief, whither Peter had gone from Poltava, he pro- 
 ceeded to Poland, where the nobles of the country, headed 
 by the Hetman Sieniawski, welcomed him triumphantly, as 
 the victorious champion of Polish liberty ! In October he 
 met Augustus, — who had long since repented him of his 
 secession, — at Thorn. The faithless king had not waited for 
 Charles's final defeat, to seek a reconciliation with his 
 adversary. After a very undignified freak, during which he 
 and his son Maurice appeared under the walls of Lille as 
 mercenaries, attached to a body of 9000 men, hired by the 
 allies against France, he had thought better of it ; sent 
 General Goltz to St Petersburg ; induced King Frederick 
 IV. of Denmark to visit him at Dresden ; travelled himself 
 to Berlin ; and so, by the beginning of July 1709, found 
 himself once more possessed of three allies. His defensive 
 and offensive treaty with Russia, against Sweden, secured 
 him the Polish throne, and a decree from the Pope released 
 him from the obligations contracted at Altranstadt, including 
 that of obedience to Leszczynski.^ Leszczynski himself had 
 been forced to follow the fortunes of the Swedish army, and 
 eventually retired into Pomerania with Krassow's troops. 
 
 Thus the quadruple coalition, which had been Patkul's 
 dream, took shape at last. It had gathered together to 
 divide the spoil, and Peter was its natural head. While he 
 was at Thorn, Denmark sent him an envoy extraordinary, 
 Count Rantzau, with proposals of direct alliance. This 
 same alliance had formerly been eagerly solicited by the 
 Tsar's INIinister at Copenhagen, Dolgorouki, who had offered 
 considerable subsidies to obtain it — 300,000 crowns at the 
 outset, 100,000 every following year, besides materials for the 
 fleet, sailors, and other advantages. But that moment was 
 quite gone by. The friendship of Russia had risen in the 
 European market. ' I have given nothing, not a man, nor a 
 copper coin,' writes Dolgorouki, in October, when he forwards 
 the announcement that the treaty is signed.^ 
 
 As regards military operations also, Peter was, at first, 
 eminently successful. Riga, which he besieged in person, in 
 the month of November, — throwing the first three bombs 
 with his own hands, — did, indeed, hold out. But the follow- 
 
 ^ HeiTmann, Geschichte Russlands, vol. iv. p. 2^7 ; Boettiger, Geschichte 
 Saxens (Hamburg, 1830), vol. ii. p. 250. 
 ^ Solovief, vol. XV. p. 391. 
 
332 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 ing year, in the month of June, Wibor<; was simultaneously 
 attacked by sea and land, — the Tsar this time performing 
 the duties of rear-admiral, — and was forced to capitulate. 
 In Jul)', Riga surrendered, at last, to Shcremctief One after 
 the other, Kexholin, Pernau,,Arensberg, and Revel, opened 
 their gates, or were carried by assault. Carelia, Livonia, 
 and Esthonia were conquered, and Courland voluntarily 
 surrendered to the victors, — the reigning duke, Frederick 
 WilHam, suing for the hand of one of the Tsar's nieces, Anna 
 Ivanovna. 
 
 Rut suddenly, alarming news came from the south. Charles's 
 diplomacy' in Turkey, armed with the most weighty of argu- 
 ments, had defeated Tolstoi's. After Mazcppa's dcatii, the 
 Swedish king had grown rich. Voi'narowski had lent him 
 80,000 ducats, drawn from the well-filled barrels which the 
 Hetman had carried with him in his flight. 100,000 crowns 
 had been sent to him from Holstein ; he had raised 200,000 
 more by a loan granted by the Brothers Cook, of the British 
 Levant Company, and 400,000 came from the Grand Vizier Nu- 
 man Kuprioli. He had thus been able to strengthen the hands 
 of his two agents, Poniatowski and Neugebauer. This last, 
 a turncoat, a former tutor of the Tsarevitch Alexis, had been 
 driven, by ill-treatment, into desertion. The Tsar's Minister, 
 who claimed the surrender, or demanded, at all events, the 
 arrest, of the King of Sweden, could only lay his hand on 
 20,000 ducats and a few sable furs, wherewith to tempt the 
 Turkish Mufti ! Tolstoi ventured, at last, to deliver an ulti- 
 matum, and on the 20th November 17 10, at a solemn meet- 
 ing of the Divan, war was formally declared, and the Russian 
 Minister was imprisoned in the Seven Towers. 
 
 To Peter, — absorbed with his great political combinations 
 in Central Europe, — this blow was uttcrK' unexpected, and 
 he was ill-prepared to meet it. The allies he had secured 
 could be of no service to him. The Danes had been already 
 disabled by a complete defeat, which had cost them 6000 
 men (February, 17 10), and England had taken advantage of 
 this fact, to renew her previous attempts to bring about an 
 agreement between Denmark and Sweden. Peter had no 
 Minister in London at that moment, for I\Litvicicf had been 
 driven away by his creditors, after a most discreditable dis- 
 turbance, in July 1708. Prince Kourakin had indeed 
 succeeded, in the spring of 17 10, in making arrangements 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 333 
 
 for a defensive alliance with the Elector Geori^e Louis of 
 Hanover, but this treaty, by which the Tsar bound himself 
 not to attack the Swedes in Germany, unless they attacked 
 his allies, was looked on as treason of a kind.^ The Polish 
 subjects of Augustus were no better pleased with their king's 
 new understanding with the Tsar, and, early in 171 1, Wollo- 
 wicz appeared at Moscow, to complain of the exactions and 
 the violence inflicted by the Russian armies on the Poles. He 
 demanded, in their name, the immediate evacuation of the 
 country, by the Tsar's troops ; the payment of an indemnity 
 for the excesses committed ; and the restitution of Livonia, 
 and of all the Polish territories on the right bank of the 
 Dnieper, both in the Ukraine and in Lithuania.^ 
 
 All this constituted a perilous state of things, and on 
 this most threatening horizon, to the north and west of 
 Europe, the Tsar was forced to turn his back, when he 
 faced southwards. Slow as he was to foresee events, Peter 
 realised them very clearly when they were close upon him, 
 and once again, under these dark clouds, his soul was dark- 
 ened, and his mind distressed. Before leaving St Petersburg, 
 in April 171 1, he took measures to ensure the future of 
 Catherine and the children she had borne him, and when 
 Apraxin, who was on the Don, wrote for instructions, he 
 replied (24th April 171 1) that 'ill and despairing as he was, 
 he had no orders to give him.'^ In this frame of mind he 
 entered on his Moldavian campaign, where he was to learn, 
 in his turn, what is entailed by offensive warfare, carried on 
 in an unknown country, with insufficient resources, and 
 against an enemy whose strength has been undervalued. 
 
 II 
 
 The Tsar's plan of campaign, on this occasion, seems to 
 have been entirely of his own conception. Its chief flaw is 
 evidently clear even to a non-professional observer. The 
 great man's predecessors did wisely, when, after having 
 undertaken to make common cause with the Poles and 
 the Imperial forces against the Turks, they invariably 
 concentrated their attentioti on the Tartars. The Khanate 
 
 ^ Solovief, vol. xvi. p. 62. 
 
 ' Moscow State Papers, Poland, 171 1. 
 
 ' .Solovief, vol. xvi. p. 71. 
 
334 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 of the Crimea, — the last remnant, and a formidable one, of 
 the mighty Mongol power, — then constituted the advanced 
 guard of the Ottoman army. It was so placed as to bar all 
 access to Constantinople, eastward. Firmly established, and 
 half hidden, as it were, in its natural fortress of Pcrckop, it 
 was certain to take any invader, who attempted to move 
 through the Danubian provinces, by the western road, in 
 the rear, cutting all communications, and removing all 
 possibility of retreat. The realisation of this fact accounts 
 for the great Catherine's desperate efforts to destroy the 
 Khanate, and that Peter himself understood it is proved by 
 the circumstance that his original attack on Turkey was 
 made by way of Azof, whence he could alwa}'s retreat up 
 the river. But a fresh attack on Azof was impossible with- 
 out a fleet, and the fleet which had been built for this object 
 at Voroneje was useless, for the water was so shallow that 
 it could not be moved. Peter therefore marched by lassy, 
 reckoning on the Hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia, 
 Kantcmir and Brancovan, and on the resources of their 
 provinces, just as Charles had counted on those of Mazeppa 
 and the Ukraine. He had an army of 45,000 men, and a 
 huge camp -following, with numberless useless mouths. 
 Catherine accompanied him, with a numerous suite of 
 ladies, and most of his officers, especially the foreigners, 
 had brought their wives and children with them. There 
 were to be daily gatherings of these ladies about the 
 future Tsarina, in which the cares of war were to be swiftly 
 forgotten.^ 
 
 But they were not forgotten for long. Kantemir received 
 his guests with open arms, but he had no food to give them. 
 ])rancovan began by hesitating, and ended by siding with 
 the Turks. 'Ihe stores of provisions which Peter had 
 ordered to be collected, had been overlooked in the haste 
 of departure, and there was no chance, now, of repairing the 
 error, for the Tartars had appeared on the Russian rear, and 
 all communication with the north was completely cut. The 
 Tsar learnt that the Turks had formed a depot of su[)plics at 
 Braila on the Scret, and, more concerned already about feed- 
 ing his troops, than giving battle, he detached General Ronne 
 and a corps of cavalry, with orders to seize it, and meet him 
 on the banks of the Pruth, the course of which river he him- 
 
 ^ Brasey de Lyon's Memoirs (Amstcrd.Tm, 1716), vol. i. p. 33. 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 335 
 
 self was to follow in the same direction. But another en- 
 counter awaited him : an unavoidable meeting this, foreseen 
 by every one but himself, — for his staff is said to have realised, 
 and warned him, of its likelihood. On the evening of the 
 7th (iSth) of July 171 1, his army, reduced by Ronne's de- 
 parture to about 38,000 men, was surrounded by the Turks 
 and Tartars, whose troops, five or six times as numerous as 
 Peter's, held the two banks of the river, while a strong force 
 of artillery guarded the neighbouring heights. No retreat 
 was possible. The only apparent issue was captivity, or 
 death. 
 
 According to one writer, Peter's first thought, on this occa- 
 sion again, was to save his own person, and he summoned a 
 Cossack, Ivan Nekulcze, who, so he thought, might be able 
 to pass him, with Catherine, through the enemy's lines.^ 
 Others, — and these, though contradicted in more than one 
 particular, are numerous, and in complete agreement, — de- 
 scribe him as having given way to despair, and utter moral 
 prostration. He shut himself up in his tent, refused to give 
 any order, or listen to any advice, and left Catherine to make 
 a final effort for the common weal.^ The famous letter which 
 the sovereign is said to have addressed, at this tragic moment, 
 to the Senate, is doubtless known to many of my readers : 
 ' I give you notice, that without any fault on our part, and 
 simply in consequence of the false information supplied to 
 us, I have been hemmed in, with my whole army, by a 
 Turkish army seven times as strong as our own, — so that all 
 means of bringing up supplies are cut off, and that unless 
 God bestows some special help upon us, I can foresee no- 
 thing but a complete defeat, or that I shall fall into the hands 
 of the Turks. If this last should happen, you are not to 
 consider me as your Tsar and Master, nor to execute any 
 commands I may give you, even written with my own hand, 
 so long as I am not amongst you in person. But if I should 
 perish, and you should receive certain news of my death, you 
 will choose one of your own number, more worthy than my- 
 self, to succeed me.' Although this document was, at a later 
 
 ' Kotchoubinski, Selections from the Aloldo-lVallachian Archives, p. 64. 
 
 ^ Coxe's Travels, vol. i. p. 499; Rrucc's Metnoirs, p. 44; Rousset's 
 (Nestesouranoy) Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 161 ; Zinkeisen, Geschichte des Osman- 
 ischen Keichs, vol. v. p. 424 ; La Motraye, Voyages, vol. ii. p. 19 ; Marais, 
 Journal, vol. iii. p. 157. Marais refers to the Cki-ouiqiie Contemporaine. See 
 also Baron Korffs letter in the Bulletin du Bibliophile, Jan. 15, 1S61. 
 
336 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 period, placed amonij^st the ofilcial records, its authenticity 
 is more than doubtful.^ The ori<^inal is not in existence. 
 How can it have disappeared ? The first known edition of 
 the text is to be found in Staehlin's anecdotes, and he 
 quotes it as having been verbally given him by Shcre- 
 mctief It is well known that the 'Collected Laws' 
 {Po/?ioic Sobranit' Znkonov, iv., 712), which include this 
 letter, were drawn up from information obtained from 
 the same source. The style is Peter's style, and so too 
 is the radical fashion in which he solves the numerous 
 questions his captivity, or death, might be expected to 
 raise. But how are we to account for his forgetfulness of his 
 natural heir, at a period when his quarrel with Alexis was so 
 far from being complete, that he was looking about for a wife 
 for him, so as to secure the succession to the throne? How 
 are we to account for the choice of a person ' more worthy 
 than himself from the Senatorial ranks, to which the Tsar's 
 favourite collaborators, Apraxin, Golovkin, and Menshikof, 
 did not belong? Not to speak of other points of im[)roba- 
 bility, as, for instance, that in several other letters, written 
 in the course of the next few days, and the authenticity of 
 which is undeniable, Peter makes no reference to this all- 
 important communication, while, in one of them, he frankly 
 refers to the faults which have placed him and his army in 
 such desperate straits.'^ 
 
 As to Catherine's supposed share in these events, we are 
 forced to choose between Peter's own testimony, which is not 
 altogether reliable, and that of certain secondary actors in 
 the drama. Most of these do not seem to be aware of her 
 having played any active part. Poniatowski merely says 
 that Peter ventured to send a flag of truce to the Turkish 
 camp.'* lirasey de Lyon, who was serving as a brigadier in the 
 Russian army, and whose wife, who was much appreciated 
 and admired in the Tsar's circle, was, according to Weber, 
 at that time very intimate with the future Tsarina, gives the 
 following details, — ' His Majesty, General Janus, Lieutenant 
 General liaron Von Osten, and the Field-Marshal (Shereme- 
 
 ' See Bielof's paper in Russia, Old and New (1S76) vol. iii. p. 404 ; Solovief, 
 vol. xvi. p. 89, etc., argues on both sides, but docs not come to any decision. 
 
 "•^ Oustrialofs paper in the Anmtal of the Acndnnie des Sciences, 1859; Wit- 
 berg's paper in Russia, OH and New (1875), vol. iii. p. 256, etc. 
 
 * Report addressed to Leszczynski. French Foreign Office, Me moires et 
 Documents (Kus ia), vol. ii. p. 121. 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 337 
 
 ticf), had a long secret conference. They gathered round 
 General Von Hallart, who was obliged to remain in his 
 coach on account of his wounds, and there — between the 
 General's carriage and that of the Baroness Von Osten, in 
 which the wife of Major-General Bouche was seated — it was 
 arranged that the Field-Marshal should write a letter to the 
 Grand Vizier, and ask for a truce.' ^ Hallart's journal, which 
 is confirmed by that of the Danish minister, Juel, who had 
 the story from the General's own lips, is explicit in the same 
 sense.- According to Juel, there was no truth even i.i the 
 story that Catherine had stripped herself of her jewels, in 
 order to increase the bribe offered to the Grand Vizier. All 
 she did was to distribute them amongst the officers of the 
 Guard, with the idea of placing them in safety, and they 
 were ultimately returned to her. 
 
 Somehow or other, the catastrophe was averted. The 
 Vizier, after sending back the first flag of truce without 
 an answer, finally agreed to treat, and Shafirof was sent by 
 the Tsar, to propose conditions quite in keeping with the 
 respective positions of the two armies, viz. : — The surrender 
 of all the strong places taken from Turkey in preceding wars, 
 the restitution of Livonia, and even of the other coast terri- 
 tories, except Ingria and St Petersburg, to Sweden ; (Peter 
 was willing, if that was necessary, to give Pskof, and even 
 other towns in the very heart of Russia, for the sake of keep- 
 ing St Petersburg), the re-establishment of Leszczynski ; a 
 war indemnity, and gifts to the Sultan. He returned bring- 
 ing peace, and at an almost infinitesimal price. Azof was to 
 be evacuated : some small fortresses in the neighbourhood 
 were to be razed : Peter was to engage not to meddle more 
 in Polish affairs, and the King of Sweden was to be granted 
 a free return to his own country. According to Hammer, 
 who has consulted the Turkish records, the backsheesh re- 
 ceived on this occasion, by the Vizier, and divided by him 
 with the Kiaia, did not exceed the sum of 200,000 roubles.^ 
 The German historian accepts the story of Catherine's inter- 
 vention, and of the effect produced by her diamonds ; for a 
 ring which had belonged to the future Tsarina was found, in 
 later years, amongst the belongings of the Kiaia : But 
 
 * Afemoirs, vol. i. p. 79, etc. 
 
 * Juel's Travels (Copenhagen, 1893) p. 422. 
 
 ' Geschichte des Osmanisdien Reichs (Pcblh, 1S28) vol. vii. p. 157. 
 
338 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 surely the Vizier and the Kiaia m\<j;ht have taken everything, 
 — the persons of Peter and his wife, and his whole army ! 
 
 The explanation of this event must be sought in the 
 general history of Turkish warfare. The Ottomans always 
 betrayed great eagerness to return to their own country, 
 and gladly accepted a trifling advantage, so as to escape the 
 necessity of further effort. Their best troops, and the Janis- 
 saries in particular, were capricious and undisciplined. In 
 the circumstances we are now considering, they probably 
 thought that the victor of Poltava would sell his life and 
 liberty very dearly, and Shafirofs attitude and language would 
 confirm that conviction. Russia was an adept in the tradi- 
 tional arts of deception, which had originated in Byzantium, 
 and which a long apprenticeship to misfortune had taught her 
 to develop. The Turkish troops, caring little, at that moment, 
 for any more complete triumph than the easy one lying 
 within their grasp, and utterly indifferent to the fate either of 
 Leszczynski or of Charles xil., showed small inclination for 
 fighting. The Vizier, knowing what it would cost him to 
 disoblige them, bowed to their will, and peace was signed.^ 
 
 On this, as on every other occasion, Peter recovered from 
 his past terrors, and took fresh heart for the future, with 
 the most extraordinary swiftness. Writing to Apraxin, that 
 very day, he does indeed acknowledge that he had never 
 been in such a distressing position, ' since he had begun to 
 serve,' but he hastens to add that ' the losses we have en- 
 dured on one hand will serve to strengthen the matchless 
 acquisitions we have preserved elsewhere ! ' At the same 
 time, he took good care not to relinquish any oppor- 
 tunity, dishonest or not, which offered, to counterbalance the 
 severity of fortune. When he gives orders to raze the forti- 
 fications of Taganrog, he insists that the foundations should 
 not be touched, 'as circumstances may change,' and he re- 
 fuses to hear of surrendering Azof, or evacuating Poland 
 before Charles XII. has left Turkey. In vain it was pointed 
 out to him that the Porte was under no obligation as to this 
 last point ! Shafirof, and young Shcremctief, whom he had 
 sent to Constantinople as hostages, went in peril of their 
 lives ; but the Tsar cared not a jot, and in October 17 12, he 
 allowed them to be imprisoned in the Seven Towers, with 
 Tolstoi' himself. He did not give in, and then only partly, 
 
 ' Solovief, vol. xvi. p. 104. 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 339 
 
 until the Turks directly threatened a renewal of hostilities. 
 He then surrendered Azof, and consented to a fresh rectifi- 
 cation of the frontier, demanded by the Porte. But he 
 continued to deceive it by false reports as to the number of 
 troops he had kept in the neighbourhood of Warsaw, and 
 finally, he gained the point he had most at heart. 
 
 Wlien Charles, after that wild and legendary freak of his, 
 [que Ton soitj refused to depart from Bender, he was seized 
 and imprisoned in the Castle of Timourtach, a property 
 of the Sultan's, in the neighbourhood of Demotica. His 
 adventure had cost the heroic warrior four fingers, the tip of 
 his ear, the end of his nose, and all possibility of stirring 
 up warlike feeling in Turkey. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Peter now believed himself to be in a position which would 
 enable him to bring the war with Sweden to a speedy close. 
 The exhausted condition of his country, and the disorder 
 reigning in his own finances, imperiously called for such a 
 step. But he had reckoned without the allies he himself 
 had chosen. The Siege of Stralsund, undertaken in common 
 with them, in September 1712, brought forth nothing but 
 European indignation. Russians, Danes and Saxons spent 
 their whole time quarrelling amongst themselves, and 
 devastating the neighbouring country. The War of the 
 Spanish Succession was drawing to a close, and there was 
 reason to fear that Great Britain, Holland and Austria might 
 intervene in the North. Peter sent Prince Kourakin to the 
 Hague, with orders to ask a guarantee for his Swedish con- 
 quests, in return for his assistance against France. The 
 Ambassador was coldly received. '1 he conduct of the 
 allies in Pomerania had not been of a nature to tempt other 
 countries to make common cause with them. The year 
 closed with a complete defeat of the Saxo-Danish army, 
 which had followed Stenbock's troops, — the only Swedish 
 corps still able to keep the field, — into Mecklenburg. 
 
 The following j-ear was no more prosperous. Peter, 
 noticing the disposition of France and England to draw 
 together, at the Congress of Utrecht, went into Hanover, to 
 win over the Elector to his own interests, but got nothmg 
 but fair words. He fell back on Prussia, where the King, 
 
340 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Frederick I., had lately died. Prussia, up to this point, had 
 worked on a s)-stem which may be summed up in the follow- 
 ing^ manner: she never did anythint^. of any sort, without 
 tr\in<; to i^ain somcthint:^, however small ; she left others to 
 fight, and took advantage of the confusion to snatch some 
 part of the booty. Thus, when Elbing was offered her, 
 she gave nothing in exchange, beyond the vaguest promises. 
 Her ultimate object was no less than an anticipation of the 
 great Frederick's work — the immediate partition of Poland.^ 
 Peter's visit to the new king, Frederick William, soon con- 
 vinced him that the change of ruler had by no means 
 modified the national policy. 
 
 He returned to St. Petersburg in March 1713, and resolved 
 to strike a great blow with his own hand. He would attack 
 Finland, which he called 'the nursing mother ' of Sweden.^ 
 The event proved that he always succeeded best when he 
 did his own work. The chief town of the country, Abo, 
 opened its gates, almost without resistance, in August. In 
 October, Apraxin and Michael Galitzin defeated the 
 Swedes at Tammerfors. But in Germany, on the other 
 hand, the campaign of 17 13 brought no good fortune to 
 any one but Prussia ; and Prussia's greed was the only 
 force she expended in it. Stenbock, who had been shut up 
 in Tonningen, was forced to capitulate to Mcnshikof and 
 the allies, on the 4th of May, and the surrender of Stettin 
 soon followed. But the victors fell to quarrelling over the 
 spoils, Prussia, who had refused to send artillery to help 
 the besiegers to take the town, generously agreed to reconcile 
 them by {placing a Pru.ssian garrison in the fortress, and the 
 Treaty of Sequestration, which brought this windfall to 
 Frederick William, included Rligen, Stralsund, Wismar and 
 the whole of Pomerania ! The king, in return, was good 
 enough to declare himself ready to 'shed his blood for the 
 Tsar and his heirs ! '^ 
 
 Denmark, ill -pleased with this compensation, protested 
 loudly, claimed to be j^rotected against the ambition of 
 Prussia, Russia, and Ilolstein, and proved her ill-temper by 
 refusing to take part in an arrangement with Hanover, 
 according to which I'ctcr had hoped, — when Oueen Anne 
 
 ^ Droysen, GeschichU dcs Pieussischen Politik, Part IV. .Sect. i. \>. 340. 
 " Lclicr to A|jiaxin, (Jet. 30, 1712. Cabinet Papers, Sect. i. 14. 
 ^ SoloviiT, Vdl. xvii. p. 24. 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 341 
 
 was dead, and the Elector George had succeeded to the 
 British throne, — to have secured the support of the latter 
 Power. 
 
 During. 17 14, the Tsar made war alone, both by sea and 
 land, and fortune continued to smile upon him. After the 
 taking of Neuschlot, which completed the conquest of Fin- 
 land, he personally defeated the Swedish fleet, between 
 flelsingfors and Abo, on the 25th of July, took Rear- 
 Admiral Erenskold prisoner, seized on the island of Aland, 
 and returning to his 'Paradise' in full triumphal progress, 
 was rewarded by the grade of Vice-Admiral, duly conferred 
 on him by the Senate. 
 
 But in the month of November, Charles Xll. unexpectedly 
 appeared at Stralsund. Here he was joined by the Admini- 
 strator of Lubeck, who ruled the Duchy of Holstein, during 
 the minority of Duke Charles Frederick. This prince, who 
 was Charles XII.'s sister's son, was accepted, at that time, 
 as presumptive heir to the crown of Sweden, l^ut the 
 Danes had taken possession of his Holstein inheritance, and 
 gave no sign of yielding it up. Charles Xll. was the only 
 person who seemed likely to force them to do so. His 
 sudden appearance at Stralsund was a fresh complication 
 in the long-drawn-out and seemingly interminable Northern 
 crisis. In the company of the Administrator came his 
 Minister, who soon became the Swedish hero's counsellor 
 and favourite. The how and why of this is not easy to 
 explain, — for the man himself was far from attractive. His 
 exterior appearance was gloomy and threatening, and he was 
 generally believed to be guilty, or capable at all events, of the 
 most abominable crimes. When, just a little later, we shall 
 find him mixed up in the great negotiations which were to 
 bring peace to F^urope, we shall hear the French Minister at 
 the Hague, Chateauneuf, bewailing the fact that he is forced 
 to treat with a man ' whose loyalty may be more than 
 fairly suspected.' Stanhope declared he was ' a rascal,' and 
 openly accused him of having sold himself to the Emperor. 
 The Baron Von Goertz, disliked and suspected by every one 
 about him, roused distrust and alarm wherever he went. 
 
 Early in 1715, the affairs of the allied Powers seemed, for 
 a moment, to be taking a favourable turn. Denmark agreed 
 to make over Bremen and Verden to Hanover, and King 
 George, seeing that Prussia was inclined to accept the media- 
 
342 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 tion of France between herself and Sweden, had been induced 
 (as Elector of Hanover) to declare war against the Swedes. 
 But soon fresh complications arose, and everything went 
 wrong. Denmark claimed the co-operation of the English 
 fleet, which the Elector neither could nor would promise, and, 
 as the English vessels stayed in port, the Danish army re- 
 mained in quarters. In May, Prussia joined the all'ance, with 
 the sole object of laying hands on Stralsund, from which 
 place Charles XII. slipped away before the capitulation, on 
 the 1 2th of September. Peter, who had been detained in 
 Poland, and had not taken part in the siege, was sorely 
 displeased. He endeavoured to retrieve matters by settling 
 his niece, Catherine Ivanovna, in Germany. He married 
 her to Charles Leopold, Duke of Mecklenburg, promising, as 
 her dowr)', the Mecklenburg towns of Wismar and Warne- 
 mlinde, which he proposed to take from the Swedes. 
 Wismar did indeed capitulate to the allies in April 1716. 
 But they refused to allow Repnine, who commanded the 
 Russian troops, to take possession of the town ; yet once 
 again, Peter had worked for the benefit of the Prussian 
 King! 
 
 In the course of the following summer, his vanity was 
 salved in a very flattering manner. In the month of 
 August, and from the deck of a ship of his own building, the 
 * Ingcrnianland' he revieu'ed the Russian, Danish, Dutcli and 
 English squadrons lying in the roads of Copenhagen, under 
 his own command. The appearance of England and Holland 
 on this occasion was purely formal, but an agreement had 
 been come to for common action in Scania by the Russian 
 and Danish fleets, and the mere presence of the two 
 other squadrons, as a matter of demonstration, was valu- 
 able in the sense of its giving a powerful moral support to 
 the allies. The imderstanding fell through, unfortunately, 
 just at the very moment when active co-operation became 
 necessary. Suspicions rose on both sides, and there were 
 mutual accusations of designs far removed from the pro- 
 jected enterprise. In vain did Peter lavish activity and 
 energy, — hurrying to Stralsund, to hasten the arrival of the 
 Danish transports, which were lacking, and venturing on the 
 most dangerous reconnoitring expeditions, under the fire of 
 the hostile batteries. A shot actually passed through his 
 boat, the Princess. But the month of September came, and 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 343 
 
 no advance had been made. Then the Russian staff unani- 
 mously declared the expedition should be put off, till 
 the following year. A general outcry immediately arose 
 amongst the allies. Peter, they declared, had cast aside the 
 mask, — he had agreed with the Swedes on the division of 
 Pomerania and of Mecklenburg, — he had come from Ger- 
 many on purpose, — he might even have designs on Copen- 
 hagen ! The Danish capital was forthwith placed in a state 
 of defence, and arms were distributed to all the burghers. 
 Hanover, — which had looked with such a jealous eye on the 
 establishment of a Russian Princess on German ground, as 
 to offer the Tsar the friendship of England, and the active 
 co-operation of the English fleet, in return for his renuncia- 
 tion of the Mecklenburg marriage, — was the bitterest of all. 
 King George, we are told, went so far as to give Admiral 
 Norris, who commanded his ships in Danish waters, orders 
 to seize the person of the Russian sovereign, and sink his 
 squadron.^ Stanhope, to whom the message was confided, 
 gave the angry king time to cool down, under pretext of 
 the necessity of referring it to his Ministerial colleagues. But 
 Peter was disgusted with all his allies. He ordered his 
 troops to evacuate Denmark, and retire to Rostock. Shere- 
 metief established himself in Mecklenburg, with the bulk of 
 the Russian army, and the Tsar betook himself to Amster- 
 dam, attracted thither by Goertz, and by the fresh horizons 
 he unfolded before his gaze. 
 
 IV 
 
 Baron Von Goertz had been the Duke of Holstein's 
 Minister before he had served Charles XII., and had endea- 
 voured to save his first master's interests, at a moment when 
 these seemed likely to be engulfed in the misfortunes of the 
 Swedish king. He had entered into negotiations with Russia, 
 Prussia, and the King of Poland, to gain some share of the 
 spoils snatched from the vanquished warrior, — and with the 
 Tsar, to obtain the Duke of flolstcin's marriage with a 
 Russian princess, and his subsequent accession to the throne 
 of Sweden. Thus he had betrayed his future master before- 
 hand, and gained nothing, beyond the worst diplomatic 
 
 * Mahon's History of Ens^land, vol. i. p. 338 ; Droyscn, Gachiclite des 
 Preussischen Politik, p. 174 ; Solovicf, vol. xvii. p. 64. 
 23 
 
344 TETER THE GREAT 
 
 reputation in Europe. Yet he was perfectly sincere, when, 
 after the allies had curtly dismissed him, and the Danes had 
 occupied Holstein without a shade of opposition, he turned 
 his eyes on the Swedish hero, then just returned from 
 Turke)'. He had conceived a fresh plan, — that of finding 
 Holstein's salvation in the triumph of Charles XI I., and 
 with this object, he desired to lessen the number of Sweden's 
 enemies, to isolate Denmark, to get George of Hanover into 
 difficulties with the Pretender, and then to treat directly 
 with the Tsar, or even, if that were possible, with IVussia, 
 through French mediation. 
 
 When Peter reached Holland, where Goertz had been 
 established since the month of May, 1716, he was already 
 well inclined to give ear to his suggestions. Erskine, a 
 Scotch doctor, and partisan of the Pretender's, whom Goertz 
 had contrived to place about the Tsar, had already influ- 
 enced him in that direction. The assistance of France 
 seemed quite assured ; the plan Goertz favoured was indeed 
 no more than the formulation of the leading idea of the last 
 Franco-Swedish treaty, signed on the 13th of April 171 5. 
 France had undertaken, by its provisions, to support Charles 
 XII. in his efforts to recover his trans-Baltic dominions, and 
 to push the claims of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. As 
 may have been observed, Goertz's idea bore a French brand, 
 and a good one, — that of Louis XIV. and Torcy.^ The great 
 King and his Minister had desired to avert the complete ruin 
 of that s}'stem of alliances, which had, for centuries, estab- 
 lished the position of PVance in Central Europe, as opposed 
 to that of the Emperor. The gradual weakening of Poland 
 and Turke}', and the blows struck by Russia at Sweden, had 
 r;apped the foundations of this edifice. The idea of recon- 
 structing it with other materials, to be supplied by Russia 
 itself, was not ripe, and a long period was to elai^se before 
 the spirit of routine, and a more legitimate attachment to 
 old and venerable traditions, could be overcome. In the 
 meanwhile Goertz's plan offered a fairly suitable expedient. 
 
 From the month of July to that of November, 17 16, the 
 Hague became the scene of busy negotiations. Goertz him- 
 self, the Swedish Minister in Paris, Haron Sparre, General 
 Ranck, another Swede, in the Hessian service, and Ponia- 
 towski, Charles XII. 's devoted follower and friend, opened 
 
 ' .Syvelon, as already quoted (1895), p. 418. 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 345 
 
 communications with Kourakin, with Dubois, — whom the 
 Regent had sent from Paris, — and with Pensionary Heinsius.^ 
 Petter was less and less well inclined towards his German 
 allies. Catherine, who was to have followed him to Amster- 
 dam, had been obliged to stop at Wesel, where, on the 2nd 
 of January 1717, she bore a child, the Tsarevitch Paul, who 
 only lived a few days. This unfortunate event was attri- 
 buted by her husband to the manner in which she had been 
 treated, during her journey through Hanover. Her coach- 
 man had actually been beaten ! But Dubois had come to 
 Holland for a very different purpose from that of supporting 
 Goertz. Louis xiv. was dead. The direction of P'rench 
 policy had slipped from Torcy's grasp, and the Regent had 
 sent Dubois to meet Stanhope, and come to an understand- 
 ing with Great Britain, on a subject which, for some years, 
 was to take precedence of all other considerations and 
 political combinations — the coveted succession to the throne 
 of the ' Grand Monarque.' 
 
 This fatal coincidence brought about the ruin of Goertz's 
 plan. When France failed him, Peter endeavoured to come 
 to an understanding with England. But, in February 1717, 
 Gyllenborg, the Swedish Minister in London, was arrested 
 on suspicion of having a secret understanding with the Pre- 
 tender, and the Russian Resident, Viesselovski, was impli- 
 cated with him. He contrived to exculpate himself, and the 
 Tsar despatched Kourakin to the rescue, with orders to pro- 
 pose a very favourable commercial treaty, as a preliminary to 
 a political alliance. But another preliminar)', the evacua- 
 tion of Mecklenburg, was at once demanded, on the British 
 side. Peter was forced to acknowledge that he need 
 expect nothing from that quarter, — the King of England and 
 the Elector of Hanover being evidently agreed to drive him 
 away from Germany and the Baltic ! Once more he fell 
 back on P^rance, and in March 1717, he resolved to try his 
 fortune there in person. Pie had recci\ed favourable news 
 from Berlin ; Prussia seemed inclined to act as mediator, 
 and even to share in any agreement arrived at. 1 shall 
 speak, in a later chapter, and in some detail, of the Tsar's 
 residence on the banks of the Seine, and of the partial 
 
 ^ Ulilenberg, Researches among the Kussian Stale Papers, for the History 
 of the Kelations between Russia and the Low Countries (The Ila^iie, 1S91), 
 J). 192 ; Scheltenia, Russia and the Low Countries, vol. iii. p. 323, cic. 
 
346 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 success which crowned his personal attempts at diplomacy, 
 partial though they were. But when his Ministers, Golovkin, 
 Shafirof, and Kourakin, returned to Amsterdam from Paris, 
 whither they had accompanied their master, they signed a 
 treaty, — with Chateauneuf for France, and Cnyphausen for 
 Prussia, — the essential condition of which was the accept- 
 ance of French mediation to put an end to the Northern 
 War. Thus Goertz's scheme won the day. 
 
 The unattractive diplomatist had won the Tsar's personal 
 favour, Peter agreed to meet him privately at the Castle of 
 Loo, and at once entered into his plans. He charged him 
 with proposals for a separate peace with Charles, himself 
 undertaking to remain quiescent for a period of three months, 
 and Goertz proceeded, with Russian passports, to Revel, 
 whence he was to rejoin his master in Sweden. The results 
 of this new diplomatic complication soon became evident. 
 Early in January 171 8, attention was roused in the political 
 world of St Petersburg by the sudden departure of General 
 Bruce, Master of the Ordnance, and of Ostcrmann. Whither 
 were they bound? The Dutch Resident, De Bie, observed 
 that Bruce had taken ' new and rich clothes and silver plate * 
 away with him. As he was known to be very stingy, these 
 pre[)arations looked suspicious, and the rough words and 
 angry outbursts with which Ostermann replied to certain 
 discreet questions put by Weber, the Hanoverian Resident, 
 — as.serting that he was merely going on a tour of inspection, 
 — were considered far from reassuring.^ In the month of 
 May, the whole of Europe knew what it meant. Bruce and 
 Ostermann, as representing Russia, with Goertz and Gyllen- 
 borg for Sweden, had met at Aland, to treat for peace. To 
 cut short all quarrels as to precedence, the partition between 
 two rooms was thrown down, and the conference table was 
 set in the middle, half in one room and half in the other. 
 The real object of the meeting was more difficult of attain- 
 ment. Goertz demanded the statu quo ante, and the surrender 
 of everything which had been taken from Sweden. Peter 
 would only agree to evacuate h'inland. The Tsar, it must 
 be said, showed him.self dispo.sed, in other matters, to be more 
 than liberal. He offered Sweden any equivalent her King 
 chose to take, amongst the King of England's German po.s- 
 sessions. He expected Charles Xll. to keep whatever he 
 
 ' De Hie to Heinsius, J.in. 21, 17 18. Dutch Stale Papers. 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN ' 347 
 
 might lay his hands on without help from him, but he was 
 willing to assist him in his conquest, and would even, if 
 necessary, support the Pretender in England with that object. 
 As the bwedes appeared to see little attraction about these 
 proposals, the Tsar desired his plenipotentiaries to try what 
 corruption would do. Gyllenborg, he opined, was not 
 likely to despise a gift of rich lands in Russia. But the 
 Hanoverians, he was informed, had already bought over the 
 Swedish Minister, Miller, and the ingenuous Sovereign was 
 very much annoyed.^ Yet more serious obstacles, — reports 
 as to a popular insurrection in Russia, resulting from the 
 trial of the Tsarevitch Alexis, which roused Charles Xll.'s 
 hopes and made him stubborn, — the difficulty of recovering 
 Stettin, which the Swedish King refused to cede to Prussia, 
 — arose, and prevented a final arrangement. At last the 
 catastrophe of Frederickshald, where Charles was killed, on 
 the /th September 171S, cut the negotiations short. Goertz, 
 accused by Ulrica-Eleonora, Princess PVederick of Hesse- 
 Cassel, who succeeded her brother, of conniving with Russia 
 against Swedish interests, was imprisoned, condemned, and 
 sent to the scaffold. Thus the mighty Northern crisis entered 
 on yet another phase. 
 
 The Aland negotiations were re-opened. Goertz was 
 replaced by Baron Lilienstadt, and Peter sent lagoujinski, 
 with more tempting proposals, including the cession of 
 Livonia. Bnt even these did not suffice, and the Tsar 
 betook himself to strong coercive measures. In July 1 7 19, 
 a huge Russian fleet, numbering 30 warships, 130 galleys, 
 and 100 smaller craft, descended on the Swedish coast, and 
 Major-general Lascy marched into the country, and burnt 
 130 villages, besides mills, stores, and factories, without 
 number. A troop of Cossacks actually advanced within a 
 league and a half of the Capital. But the shadow of the 
 heroic king still hovered over his country. The Swedish 
 Government and people came gallantly through the trial. 
 When Ostermann made his appearance at Stockholm, with 
 the object of parleying, the Prince of Hesse-Cassel, and 
 Kronhelm, President of the Senate, told him they were 
 
 ' LcUcr to Kouiakiii, ti.itcd Sept. 27, 1718. Aouia/.iii J'a^crs, vol. i, p. 4. 
 
348 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 ready to give every facility for the disembarkation of the 
 Russian troops in Sweden, so as to bring about such a 
 decisive battle as would finally settle the matter. Mean- 
 while Ulrica-Eleanora, by ceding Bremen and Werdcn to 
 Hanover, had won the su])p(>rt of Groat l^ritain, and the 
 Court of Vienna — already on bad terms with that of St. 
 Petersburg, on account of the trial of Alexis, and jealous of 
 Prussia, — showed a still stronger inclination to support 
 Sweden. In June 1720, the London Cabinet brought about 
 a reconciliation between Sweden and Denmark ; the former 
 paying an indemnity of 600,000 ducats, and surrendering 
 the ric^ht of collecting tolls on the Sound, while the latter 
 ceded all the places taken from Sweden, both in Pomerania 
 and in Norway. Kourakin, at the Hague, was reduced to 
 seeking the help of Spain, and the F'rench Resident, La Vie, 
 writes from St. Petersburg : ' The Tsar's uneasy movements 
 and fits of rage betray the violence of the passions which 
 disturb him . . . The natural functions are interrupted by 
 constant sleeplessness, and the peoi)le about him, in their 
 desire to conceal the real subject of his anxiety, which is all 
 too visible, declare he is haunted by ghosts.'^ The subject 
 of anxiety referred to, was the fesult of twenty years of 
 effort, which Peter now saw imperilled by the defection of 
 allies he himself had imprudently associated with his 
 victorious arms, whose sole object was, to snatch the prize 
 of his own exertions from his grasp. The bodies and 
 souls of his people, worn out and exhausted by this endless 
 war, cried out to the Sovereign, in the horror of his sleepless 
 nights. To this his alliances with the great European 
 Powers, his attempts at pla\'ing a bold political game, and 
 all the showy diplomac)' lie had borrowed from the tradition 
 and practice of other nations, had brought him at last! 
 
 Happily for him, the Great Powers, though they would 
 gladly have made him pay dear for his im [prudence and 
 presumption, lacked the means of forcing him to it. A 
 British Squadron, commanded by Norris, threatened Revel 
 in May 1720. The English Admiral successfully joined the 
 Swedish fleet, but, after some attempts at intimidation, all 
 that was done was to burn an isba and a baiiia (bath) built 
 by some labourers on a neighbouring islet. While this was 
 going on, a Russian Detachment led by Mengden had made 
 
 ' June 6, 1 7 19 (French Foreign OfTicc). 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 349 
 
 a fresh descent on Sweden, and burnt 1026 peasants' houses. 
 * The loss inflicted on your Majesty by the allied fleets in 
 the Isle of Nargin,' writes Menshikof, 'is a very serious one ; 
 but on the whole we must make up our minds to it, and 
 leave the isba to the Swedish fleet, and the bauia to the 
 British ! ' 
 
 France now appeared upon the scene, but this far more 
 successful intervention was purely pacific, and equally 
 salutary to both countries, which ardently desired peace. It 
 resulted in a fresh meeting of Russian and Swedish pleni- 
 potentiaries, at Nystadt, in April 1721. The way had been 
 prepared by Campredon, who shortly before, and with the 
 Tsar's consent, had travelled from St Petersburg to Stock- 
 holm. The only point on which Sweden now insisted was 
 that the Duke of Holstein, with whom Peter had again 
 made rash engagements, should be entirely put out of the 
 question. This prince had, by the death of his uncle, really 
 become the legitimate heir to the Swedish throne, and 
 Peter desired to support and make use of his rights, for the 
 benefit of the Russian policy. He had invited Charles 
 Frederick to St. Petersburg in June 1720, had received him 
 in the most flattering manner, and had promised, and almost 
 offered, him, the hand of his daughter, the Tsarevna Anna; 
 while Catherine, we are told, had publicly assured him ' that 
 she should be happy to become the mother-in-law of a 
 Prince, whose subject she might have been, if fortune had 
 not played Sweden false.' ^ 
 
 The Russian sovereign, we know, held himself little fettered 
 by any promise, and he finally, without a tinge of scruple, 
 threw the unlucky Duke overboard, with all his rights, and 
 ambitions, and hopes. On the 3rd of September 172F, a 
 courier from Wiborg brought the Tsar news that peace was 
 signed. Russia was to pay an indemnity of 2,000,000 
 crowns, and definitely acquired possession of Livonia, 
 Esthonia, Ingria, part of Carelia, the town of Wiborg, and 
 a portion of Finland. Great Britain and Poland were 
 both parties to the treaty, the former on Sweden's side, the 
 latter on that of Peter, — but the Duke of Holstein's name 
 did not appear at all. 
 
 The great evolution of the Muscovite power, the end of 
 the Oriental and Continental period of Russian history, the 
 
 ' Solovief, vol. xvii. p. 269. 
 
350 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 commencement of its western and maritime phase, were thus 
 accomplished. A new factor, and one of constantly increas- 
 ing importance, had taken its place in European politics. 
 The end of Peter's rouij^h toil and terrible apprenticeship had 
 come at last. He was free, now, to listen to the delighted 
 acclamations of his subjects, who, worn-out, exhausted, and 
 terrified as they had finall)- been, had, in spite of all, followed 
 him to the bitter end, and now shared his overflowing joy 
 and intense relief liack he went, straightway, to St. Peters- 
 burg, sailing up the Neva, with flourishes of trumpets and 
 salvoes from the three cannons of his yacht. The populace 
 rushed to the landing-stage of the Troitsa. The Tsar ap- 
 peared in the distance, standing on the poop, waving a hand- 
 kerchief, and shouting 'Mir! mir ! ' (peace); he bounded 
 ashore, as active and eager as in his youthful days, and 
 hurried to the Church of the Trinity, where a thanksgiving 
 service was celebrated. Meanwhile a wooden stage was 
 hastily built on the square before the sacred edifice. Barrels 
 of beer and brandy were piled upon it ; Peter, when he had 
 rendered thanks to God, mounted the platform, spoke in 
 heartfelt terms of the great event, and then, empt)'ing a glass 
 of brandy, gave the signal for the triumphal libations.^ The 
 officers of his navy came to congratulate him, and requested 
 him to accept the rank of full admiral — a consecration this, 
 of the new position conquered by the country on the 15altic, 
 and the new part its ruler was, in consequence, to play. The 
 Tsar consented willingly. Then the Senate proffered him 
 three new titles, ' Eather of his Country — Peter the Great — 
 Emperor.' This time he hesitated. Both he himself, and 
 his predecessors, had been tempted in this quarter. The 
 pretension to claim that the word Tsaj- was equivalent to 
 desar, or Kaiser, had arisen, in Russia, in the seventeenth 
 century, simultaneously with the tendency, — natural in a 
 power which inclined to European forms, — to repudiate its 
 Asiatic origin. The word, which was originally used to 
 describe the Tartar Princes of Kazan, corresponds to the 
 Persian Sar, the English Sir, and the P^-ench Sire. In a 
 treaty between the Emj)eror Maximilian, and the Grand Duke 
 Vassili Ivanovitch, the Imperial title had been somewhat 
 carelessly bestowed on the Muscovite Prince, and on that 
 equivocal recognition, the dignity had hitherto rested. But, 
 
 ^ Choubinski, Historical Descriptions, p. 31, etc. 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 351 
 
 in 171 1, Kourakin had thought himself obliged to erase the 
 word Tsarian added to the title of Majesty, in the letter 
 sent by Queen Anne to his lord and master. Peter himself 
 had appeared indifferent, and almost hostile, to the idea of 
 claiming such dignity, and explained his personal repugnance 
 by a phrase at once energetic and picturesque. ' It smells 
 musty ! ' In 172 1, he waived his objections, but imposed one 
 change. He would call himself Emperor of all the Kussias, 
 not Emperor of the East, as the senators had proposed. He 
 clearly recognised the difficulty with which Europe would 
 be brought to acknowledge this change of title. As a 
 matter of fact, France and Holland were at first the only 
 countries which would recognise him. Sweden did not 
 consent to do so till 1723; Turkey ten years later; Great 
 Britain and Austria in 1742; France again, and Spain, in 
 1745 ; and Poland, the most interested of all, not until 1764, 
 at the accession of Poniatowski, and on the eve of the first 
 partition. 
 
 Thus the Russia of ' all the Russias,' including the pro- 
 vinces which the Polish hegemony had carried over, five 
 centuries before, to European civilisation, made a final and 
 definite entrance into history. 
 
 The Emperor himself lighted the fireworks at the festivi- 
 ties held in honour of the proclamation of this new title — the 
 person who had been specially trusted with this duty being 
 discovered to be dead drunk. 'Ihe sovereign, too, drank 
 freely, and amused himself, in fact, more than all his subjects 
 put together. But on the morrow, he was afoot early, as 
 usual, and back at his work. Peace was not to mean idle- 
 ness for him ; beside, and even beyond, its immediate benefit, 
 he desired to endow his people with a moral one, of much 
 larger, nay, of indefinite scope. Those twenty years of 
 struggle were, so he held, to be above all things a school, 
 ' with lessons of triple and most cruel length,' as he him- 
 self says, in one of the letters written to his friends, to an- 
 nounce the happy event. Knowledge in itself counted 
 for nothing. They must profit, and at once, from what they 
 had learnt. What was to be done? Make war again? 
 Why not "> He felt no weariness himself, and soon forgot 
 the weariness of those about him. Yet another military 
 enterprise tempted his fancy : one with yet wider horizons 
 than those which ' the window open upon Europe,' on the 
 
352 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Baltic side, had spread before his eyes. The very historian 
 who essays to follow the Tsar through this mighty under- 
 taking, feels his breath fail him. 
 
 VI 
 
 Even (luring his struggle to increase his empire, and his 
 influence towards the West, Peter did not lose sight of his 
 eastern frontier. As early as 1691, the Burgomaster of 
 Amsterdam, Nicholas Witsen, had drawn his attention, 
 through the Dutch Resident at Moscow, to the important com- 
 mercial relations which might be established between Russia 
 and Persia. The journey of Isbrand, a Danish traveller, into 
 China, in 1692, brought about some acquaintance with that 
 country. One of Peter's most devoted assistants in the 
 building of ships and the making of canals, John Perry, had 
 studied the Caspian coast, where, after the middle of the 
 seventeenth century, Astrakhan had grown into an im- 
 portant mart of commerce between Armenia and Persia. 
 Repeated attempts to gain possession of the markets of 
 Pekin, where a Russian Church was actually built, met 
 with no success. Colonel Ismai'lof, sent there as Am- 
 bassador, in 1 7 19, found himself forestalled by the Jesuits, 
 who were already firmly established.^ The only result of 
 this disappointment was to strengthen Peter's determination 
 to open himself some other road towards the far P'ast. If 
 China failed him, he would try India. The idea of meeting 
 England there, and checking her, certainly never entered 
 his head. His only object was to secure a share in that 
 great mine of wealth, which had enriched almost every 
 P.uropean Power. He first turned his eyes on Khiva and 
 Bokhara, the earliest stages on the Oxus route, by which he 
 hoped to reach Delhi, whence the English had not }-et dis- 
 lodged the Great Mogul. This road had already been ex- 
 plored by Russian merchants. After the unlucky campaign 
 of 171 1, the temptation to make up eastward, on the Casj:)ian, 
 for what had been lost on the south, towards the Black Sea, 
 became more urgent. In 17 13, the reports brought to 
 Moscow by a Turcoman Hodja, roused the Tsar's covetous- 
 
 * Baer, Peters Verdietiste um die Ernseili-runs; dcs Geoi^raphischen Ketttnisst 
 Beitrage zitr Keiitniss des Kussischen Keichs (St. Pclersburg, 1S72), vol. xvL 
 pp. 12-32. 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 353 
 
 ness. There was gold, this man said, for the finding, on 
 the banks of the Amu-Daria (Oxus), and this river, which 
 had formerly fallen into the Caspian, and which the Khivans, 
 in their fear of the Russians, had turned aside into the Sea 
 of Aral, might easily be brought back to its original bed. 
 The Swedish war prevented the despatch of any important 
 expedition, but Peter's longing was too strong for him, and 
 he began a system of small detachments, which has since 
 been fatal to other conquerors in distant lands, and which 
 served him little better. The first detachment, a very weak 
 one, which took the field in 17 14, under the command of 
 Bergholz, a German officer, moved towards Siberia, found its 
 way barred by the Kalmuks, and beat a retreat. In 17 17, 
 Prince Alexander Bekovitch Tcherkaski, with a stronger 
 body, numbering 4000 infantry, and 2000 Cossacks, pushed 
 as far as Khiva, sometimes negotiating, and sometimes fight- 
 ing. But he was finally massacred with all his followers.^ 
 
 Other attempts simultaneously made, in the direction of 
 Persia, met with more success. In 17 15, Artemi Petrovitch 
 Volynski was sent to the Shah's Court, and returned with a 
 treaty of commerce, and a project for an expedition on a 
 grand scale. In 1720, he was appointed Governor of Astra- 
 khan, and never ceased to preach, and prepare for, this Persian 
 Campaign. This project it was, which, on the morrow of the 
 Peace of Nystadt, once more roused Peter's warlike activity, 
 and snatched him from the delights of his ' Paradise.' The 
 condition of things in Persia at that moment seemed to call 
 loudly for armed intervention. After the incursions of the 
 Lesgians and the Kazykoumyks, which ruined the Russian 
 factories, — costing one merchant alone, named levreinof, 
 170,000 roubles during the course of the year 172 1, — the 
 Afghans found their way as far as Ispahan. If the Tsar did 
 not hurry himself, there was every fear of his being out- 
 stripped by Turkey, whose intention to re-establish order in 
 the Shah's dominions was openly declared. Peter, then, 
 decided to take advantage of these propitious circumstances, 
 and, in response to the Governor of Astrakhan's eager call, 
 to take the field with a whole army, and personally 
 command it. 
 
 He started from Moscow on the 13th of May 1722, v/ith 
 
 * H. Sutherland Edwards, Russian Projects against India (London, 1885), 
 pp. 1-30. 
 
354 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Tolstolf, Apraxin, and his inseparable companion, Catherine. 
 On the i8th of July he sailed from Astrakhan, with 23,cxxD 
 infantry. His cavalry, numbering some 90CXD men, was to 
 travel by land, followed b\' a cloud of irregular troops, — 
 20,000 Cossacks, 20,000 Kalmuks, and 20,000 Tartars, — and 
 to meet him on the road to Uerbent. \\ hat was the Tsar's 
 object in marshalling this body of 100,000 men.'' His 
 plans have never been made clear. More than probably, 
 he allowed himself to be carried away by a desire to 
 counterbalance the excessive weakness of his former demon- 
 strations. And once more, on this occasion, we notice the 
 strange lack of seriousness which accompanied the more 
 solid qualities of his mind and character. On the 23rd of 
 August, after a trifling skirmish with the troops of the Sultan 
 of Outemich, he made a triumphal entry into Derbent, and 
 there received the congratulations of the Russian Senate, 
 which urged him to ' press forward in the footsteps of Alex- 
 ander.' Hut this new Alexander was soon obliged to stop 
 short. His soldiers, like his army in Moldavia, ten years 
 before, were in serious danger of starving to death. The 
 transports which were to hav^e carried them sujiplies had 
 been wrecked while crossing the Caspian. Within a very 
 few days, his cavalry was dismounted, — there was no forage, 
 and the horses died in thousands. He left a small garrison 
 in Derbent, laid the first stone of a Fort, to be called the 
 Holy Cross, at the confluence of the Soulak and the Agrahan, 
 and retired, in pitiful pomp, to Astrakhaii.^ 
 
 i^ut yet, once again, the guiding quality of his nature, his 
 stubbornness, was to atone for his faults. He went back to 
 the system of small detachments, sent Colonel Shipof, during 
 the course of the following year, with a small body of troops, 
 to occupy the l^ersian town of Riashtchi, while Major-General 
 Matioushkine, at the head of another, took possession of 
 Baku, which the Russian staff held to be the key of the posi- 
 tion in those localities. At the same time, he had recourse 
 to diplomacy. Colonel Abramof was ordered to use all his 
 powers to ex{)lain to the Persians at Ispahan, that the Tsar's 
 only desire was to come to their assistance against the in- 
 surgent tribes, and, on the 12th of September 1723, a Treaty 
 was signed at St. Petersburg, by Isman Be}', for the Shah 
 whereby the whole of the longed-for coastline of the Caspian 
 
 ' Solovicf, vol. xviii. pp. 40-50. 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 355 
 
 with Derbent, Baku and the Provinces of Gilian, Mazanderan, 
 and Astrabat, were ceded to Russia, in exchange for a vague 
 promise of help against the insurgents. In the month of 
 May, in the foHowing year, Peter was already betraying his 
 anxiety to make the most of these new acquisitions, and 
 drew up detailed instructions to Matioushkine, to despatch 
 the local products, — such as petroleum, sugar, dried fruits, 
 and lemons, — to St. Petersburg. 
 
 But this was somewhat premature. Prince Boris Mesh- 
 tcherski, who went to Ispahan in April 1724, to ratify 
 the Treaty, was actually fired upon ! The Turks, on their 
 side, egged on by England, protested loudly, demanded 
 immediate evacuation of the territory occupied by Russia, 
 claimed part, at least, for themselves, and requested the 
 French Envoy, the Marquis de Bonac, to arrange the par- 
 tition. De Bonac, in the course of his efforts to arrange 
 matters, fell out with the Russian Minister, Nieplouief, who 
 accused him of betra}'ing Russian interests, after having 
 accepted 2000 ducats to defend them. The insolent Russian 
 was forthwith turned out of the Frenchman's doors ; but 
 stubbornness was again to win the day.^ In June 1724, a 
 Treaty of Partition was signed at Constantinople, and though 
 the limits thus determined were both precarious and illusory, 
 Russia set her foot firmly in those countries, and in the long 
 run, by hook or by crook, she was to make her influence felt 
 there. 
 
 Alexander Roumiantsof, who was sent to Constantinople 
 to exchange the ratification of this arrangement, met an 
 Armenian deputation on its way to St. Petersburg, to solicit 
 the Tsar's support against the Turks. 
 
 The movement then begun was to be an unceasing one, 
 and the problem thus set, was to threaten the future of 
 Europe, even at the close of the following century. 
 
 These first Armenian Deputies were, as may readily be 
 imagined, received with open arms. Peter, with most re- 
 markable political insight, at once made up his mind to 
 use the protection of the Christian populations, whether 
 /\rmenians, or Georgians, as the basis of his action in the 
 countries he disposed to dispute with the Turks and Persians. 
 But he was never able to carry out his programme. Already 
 
 ' Soiovief, vol. xviii. p. 58> etc. Ue Don.ic does not refer lo this incident in 
 bis leporls. 
 
356 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 his days were numbered, and those who came after him 
 imperilled the work he had designed, by losing sight, for a 
 time, of that road to India which he had sketched out. But 
 the landmarks he had set up, remained. The Eastern 
 Question was opened in the direction he had given it ; his 
 seal was on it. 
 
 He never ceased, during all the rest of his life, to give his 
 attention to the Oriental Christians. At the same time, — 
 impatient as he alwaj's was, and incapable of any quiet 
 waiting, — he endeavoured, groping somewhat in the dark, to 
 find some other road, by w liich he might reach the distant 
 and mysterious East. 
 
 In the course of the year 1723, the Port of Rogerwick was 
 all astir. Two frigates were being prepared, in greatest haste, 
 and the profoundest secrecy, to start for some unknown 
 destination. They set sail on the 12th (24th) of December, 
 were overtaken by a tempest, and obliged to take refuge 
 in the Port of Revel. A report spread, that they were 
 bound for ^Madagascar, and were to take possession of that 
 island, — destined, for two centuries yet, to tempt the colonis- 
 ing ambition of the European Powers. This idea, like many 
 of Peter's, was drawn from a Swedish source. Charles XII., 
 a short time before his death, had entered into relations 
 with an adventurer named Morgan, the son, probably, of 
 that famous British buccaneer, Henry John Morgan (1637- 
 1690), who died in Jamaica, after a stormy career, in 
 the course of which he took possession of the Isthmus 
 of Panama, and ruled it, for some time, with despotic 
 authority. Morgan boasted his power of ensuring the 
 Swedes a footing in Madagascar, where, he averred, immense 
 treasure was to be had, with very little trouble. Queen 
 Ulrica-Eleonora reopened negotiations with him in 17 19, 
 and had even begun preparations to send an expedition. 
 Then it was that Peter, warned by his agents in Stockholm, 
 determined to outstrip his neighbours. But Madagascar, to 
 his ardent imagination, was, like l^aku, to be a mere stage. 
 The Commandant of his expedition, vAdmiral Wilster, after 
 having occupied the island, and established a Russian Pro- 
 tectorate over it, was to pursue his course eastward, to the 
 fabled country ruled by the great Mogul. 
 
 It was only a dream. Peter, with his usual eagerness and 
 overhastc, had not even given himself time to acquire the 
 
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE CASPIAN 357 
 
 most elementary information as to the country he proposed 
 to conquer. He did not take the trouble to read the docu- 
 ments which had been abstracted, for his benefit, from the 
 Stockhohn Chancery, and he drew up a letter, quite at hap- 
 hazard, to the King (whom he supposed to reign over the 
 distant Island) pointing out that at that moment a Russian 
 Protectorate would be far more advantageous to him than a 
 Swedish one ! The Swedes were far better informed, lie 
 had pitched on the two first frigates he could lay his hands 
 on, without any consideration as to whether they were fit to 
 face such a long voyage, and fell into a fury when he heard 
 how useless the two frail vessels had proved. He flew at 
 Wilster and his officers, he stormed and threatened, he would 
 not hear of the plan being given up. He suggested a sheath- 
 ing of felt and boards, to be placed over the submerged 
 timbers, and compensate for their inferior quality, and he 
 commanded the Admiral to lie low at Rogerwick, under a 
 feigned name, and to start as soon as possible. It was all in 
 vain ; the frigates w'ere useless, no felt sheathing was to be 
 had at Revel, and, early in 1724, the expedition was formally 
 deferred to a later date.^ It was never attempted again 
 during the great Tsar's life. After his death, his country, 
 once it had shaken off the fumes of his maritime intoxica- 
 tion, came to a better understanding of the resources, 
 direction, and natural limits, of the Russian colonising power. 
 The part thus pla)'ed has been brilliant enough ! 
 
 ^ Golikof, vol. ix. p. 300, etc. ; vol. x. p. 370, etc. ; Russian Naval Review, 
 March 1894. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE APOGEE — FRANCE 
 
 Peter's first plan for a joi:rncy into France, and its failure — The Tsar's dis- 
 pleasure — Attempted agreement — France takes the initiative — Du Meron— 
 Baluze — Matvieiefs journey to Paris — Rupture of diplomatic relations — 
 A non-poliiical agreement — Frenchmen in Russia, and Russians in France 
 — Two currents of emigration — The French colony in St. }*etershurg — A 
 Strange parish — P'ather Cailleau — Fresh negotiations — Lcfort — Comte de 
 la Marck — Peter's unsatisfactory pfisition in Germany induces him to seek 
 fresh support — He resolves to go to I'aris. 
 
 Arrival at I'unkirk — The Tsar's incognito — A suite of 85 persons — An ex- 
 acting Sovereign — The sorrows of Monsieur de Lilxiy — The Comte de 
 Mailly-Nesle — Tne CahrioleL — A strange mode of transport — The Tsar s 
 supper at Beauvais — His arrival in Pans— Apartment in the L<;)uvre — A 
 billet on the French Academy — The Motel Lesdiguicres— Three days im- 
 prisonment — The Tsar insists on receiving the King's visit before he goes 
 out — Ceremonious rece|jtion — Fti()uelte forgotten— In the Tsar's arms — 
 Peler recovers his liberty — A tourist — His curiosity — His huffiness and 
 stinginess — An evening at the opera — The Regent waits on the Tsar — 
 Displeasure of the piinces and princesses — The Duchesse de Rohan's 
 mishap— The Tsar softens — A visit to St. Cyr — History and legend— A 
 letter from Madame de Maintenon — Visits to scientific institutions — 
 Serinus occupations and amusements — The reverse of the medal — Oigies 
 at the I rianon — The return from Fiintaincbleau — Departure — Final gener- 
 osity — The Tsar pays his reckoning — On the way to Spa. 
 
 Political results— Non-existent at first — Performances on the diplomatic slack- 
 rope— No one but the Tsar has any sirious desire to negotiate — The 
 Congress of the Hague — A Pl.itonic treaty — The diplomats representing 
 both sides are not worthy — H.iron von Schleinitz, and tellamare— Fresh 
 advances from the Tsar — 'I heir secret reason — He desires to marry his 
 daughter to a French prince — 1 he Tsarevna Ehzabclh — Louis xv. or 
 the Hue de Chartres —These overtures coldly received in France — 
 Dubois' silence— His reasons— Secret differences — France desires a i>oli- 
 tical, and Russia a family alliance — No room for an understanding — Ihe 
 alliance of the future. 
 
 Peter's journey into France, following as it did on his 
 briiliiint appearance at the head of the four sqLiadron.s united 
 under his command, in the roads of Copenha<,^en, marks the 
 most glorious point in his reign. In sj^ite of his triumph at 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 359 
 
 Nystadt, subsequent events, his political disappointments 
 and domestic troubles, his rupture with the allies he had 
 bought too dearly, the trial of the Tsarevitch, and the Alons 
 affair, strike us as reverses of fortune, — his star had begun to 
 decline. 
 
 Since 1701, not a year had passed during which the Tsar 
 had failed to cross the frontiers of his empire. He had 
 travelled, incessantly, up and down Europe, now to visit his 
 chosen allies in their various capitals, and then to seek the 
 re-establishment of his steadily failing health at Carlsbad or 
 at Pyrmont. In 1698, during his first great journey, he had 
 turned longing eyes towards Paris. He had expected, and 
 even tried to obtain, an invitation, but had failed.^ He soon 
 consoled himself ' The Russians,' so he was heard to say, 
 ' need the Dutchmen on the sea, and the Germans on land, 
 but they have no need of Frenchmen anywhere.' Yet rela- 
 tions between the two countries, undeveloped as they were, 
 suffered from the wound inflicted on the Russian Sovereign's 
 vanity, and the interests of Frenchmen in the north were 
 equally affected. But this fact was treated in France with 
 an indifference which certainly equalled the Tsar's openly 
 expressed scorn. The war of the Spanish Succession ab- 
 sorbed the French mind. To the most Christian king, as to 
 the majority of his subjects, Russia was a very distant object, of 
 very doubtful interest. And her ruler, in their eyes, was an 
 exotic, whimsical, obscure, and, — taking him all in all, — a far 
 from attractive figure. Until 17 16, the name of the victor of 
 Poltava was not even included in the list of European 
 Sovereigns printed yearly in Paris ! 
 
 Yet Peter had talked, — at Birze, in 1701, — with the French 
 Envoy to the King of Poland, and the intercourse thus 
 begun, through Du H^ron, was continued through the 
 Russian Envoy to the Court of Augustus, through Patkul, and 
 other intermediaries. Unfortunately a cardinal misunder- 
 standing at once arose. The French King considered himself 
 to be dealing with a second-rate power, who was greatly 
 honoured by his notice, and was therefore likely to be far 
 from exacting — a second Poland, in fact, more distant, less 
 civilised, and yet more likely to be easily secured to his 
 service, by a modest salary, and a few smooth words. The 
 Russian Tsar expected to treat with F'rance as her equal. 
 
 ^ Oustrialof, History of Piter the Great, vol. iii. pp. 135 and 4S9. 
 24 
 
36o PETER THE GREAT 
 
 One of the most essential forces of modern Russia — I refer 
 to that hiy^h opinion of her importance and power, which she 
 never failed to assert, even before it was evidently justified — 
 was splendidly exemplified on this occasion. \\ hen Du 
 Hdron spoke of an ai^recment between the two countries, his 
 Russian interlocutor replied, that 'a union and intimate 
 alliance between the two heroes of the century (Louis XIV. 
 and Peter) would assuredly rouse the highest admiration 
 throughout the whole of Europe!'^ This compliment, coming, 
 as it did, on the very morrow of the defeat of Narva, must 
 have been doubtfully welcome to France! 
 
 In 1703, Balu/.e, Du Heron's successor in Poland, journeyed 
 to Moscow, and returned somewhat crestfallen. He had 
 expected to receive overtures from Peter, and all he had 
 received was a dry request to make overtures himself Up 
 to the }-ear 1705, the Russian agent in Paris was an unim- 
 portant individual, named Postnikof, whose chief occupation 
 appears to have been to translate and publish the official 
 reports cf the more, or less, authentic victories, won by his 
 master over the Swedes. If the truth must be told, former 
 Muscovite Embassies had left far from pleasant memories be- 
 hind them on the banks of the Seine. The Embassy, headed 
 by the Princes Dolgorouki and Mcshtcherski, in 1667, had 
 very nearly caused a sanguinar}- scuffle. These gentlemen 
 hacl claimed the right to introduce a whole cargo of saleable 
 merchandise into the French dominions, without paxing 
 duty, and had even offered armed resistance to the Custom 
 House officials.^ 
 
 In 1705, Matvieief went from the Hague to Paris, and was 
 obliged at once to struggle with public prejudice, with re- 
 gard to the Russians and their Sovereign. ' Is it true ? ' he was 
 asked, 'that during the Tsar's visit to Holland, he broke his 
 glass when he saw it had been filled with French wine .^' 
 ' His Majesty delights in champagne ! ' ' And is it true that 
 he ordered Menshikof one day to hang his own son ? ' ' W hy, 
 that is a story of Ivan the Terrible's days!'' Put these 
 apologetic remarks bore little fruit, and the poor diplomat, 
 to enhance his discomfort, was charged with a (ar from 
 
 ^ flolovin. Minister for Foreign Affairs, to du Heron, Dec. 27, 1701 
 (French Foreign Office). 
 
 * French Foreign Office, Mi'nioires el Documents, Russia, v<jl. iii. p. 21, etc. 
 
 * Solovief, vol. XV. p. 72, 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 361 
 
 agreeable mission, relating to two Russian ships, which had 
 been seized by the Dunkirk Corsairs. He could get no 
 satisfaction. His remonstrances, like his historical recti- 
 fications, were politely received, — but the ships were not 
 returned. 
 
 A new attempt at an understanding took place after the 
 victory at Poltava, and this time Peter took his revenge. 
 The position was changed ; the advances now came from the 
 P^rench side, and it was the Tsar's turn to look scornful. 
 Baluze, who had sore difficulty in catching him up, during 
 his constant journeys hither and thither, and who could not 
 get speech with him till May 171 1, — on the very eve of the 
 campaign of the Pruth, — offered him the mediation of France 
 between himself and Sweden. He was given an ironical reply. 
 The Tsar, he was told, was quite willing to accept P'rench 
 mediation, but only in .so far as to arrange matters between 
 himself and the Turks ! He was made to feel he was 
 looked on as a bore, and systematically kept out of the 
 Sovereign's presence. He was reduced to seeking the Tsar 
 secretly, in the gardens at laworow ; and, when, after Peter's 
 unlucky campaign, he returned to the charge, the Tsar 
 simply refused to listen to him.^ 
 
 Events had altered circumstances. The Powers allied 
 with Peter against Sweden were those the war of the Spanish 
 Succession had marshalled against France ; and the desire 
 to snatch ' the most powerful weapon she possesses in Ger- 
 many'— the support of Sweden — from that country, was a 
 natural bond between the Tsar and his allies. 
 
 Kourakin, personally, was anything but anti-French. His 
 high-born instincts, and his quickly acquired habits as a man 
 of the world, had given him too strong a taste for Paris, and 
 especially for Versailles. He privately entered into an 
 obscure and somewhat shady negotiation with Rakoczy, 
 the head of the Hungarian insurgents, which was con- 
 cealed from the Tsar, and carried on in a special cypher. 
 The object of this negotiation was to put an end to the 
 War of the Spanish succession, at the expense of Austria, 
 Russia playing the part — conceived even in those early days, 
 — of the 'honest broker,' for the benefit of France. Rakoczy 
 himself appeared at Utrecht in April 1712, in the hope of 
 carr}-ing this matter through, but he was met by a courier 
 ^ Baluze to the King, Warsaw, Sept. 11, 171 1 (French Foreign Office). 
 
362 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 from Shafirof, who brought news of the conclusion of an 
 aclvanta;j;c()iis peace with Constantinople, which peace 'he 
 had succeeded in obtaininc^, in spite of the intrij^ues of the 
 French luivoy, who had behaved worse to Russia than any 
 Swedes, or Polish or Cossack traitors.' This cut the ground 
 from under Kourakin's feet, and he made no further attempt 
 to carry out his project.^ 
 
 Yet, insensibly, and by the mere force of circumstances, the 
 gulf between the two countries narrowed, year by year. 
 Russia, when she entered the European family, uncon- 
 sciously made a great step towards this end. A current of 
 natural and inevitable relations was slowly established, and 
 developed, between the two peoples, even while their Govern- 
 ments remained apart. Russians went to France and settled 
 there. Frenchmen, in still greater numbers, established them- 
 selves in Russia. Postnikof had already been desired to 
 engage artists, architects, engineers and surgeons, in Paris, 
 and at first he found it very difficult. ' The French,' he said, 
 'ask a thousand crowns a year, and think that to go to 
 Moscow, is to go to the other end of the world.' Yet, little 
 by little, the tide of emigration swelled. Guillemotte de 
 Villebois, a Breto'n whose services Peter had personally 
 engaged, during his visit to Holland, in 1698, and Balthazar 
 de rOsiere, a Gascon, who had fought, in 1695, under the 
 walls of Azof, in the ranks of the Muscovite army, formed 
 the centre of a budding P'rench colony in Russia. And 1 
 note the name of an engineer-officer, Joseph Gustave Lam- 
 bert de Guerin, who took an active part in the sieges of 
 Noteburg and Nienschantz, and who, in later years, advised 
 the Tsar as to the choice of the site on which St. Petersburg 
 was built.^ 
 
 After the battle of Poltava the tide rose yet higher. Two 
 French architects, Merault and De la Squire, were employed, 
 in 1712, in building the new capital. In 1715, Peter took 
 advantage of the death of Louis XIV. to secure, and at a 
 cheap rate, the services of a whole flight of artists, who had 
 been thrown out of work, — such as Rastrelli, Legcndre, 
 Leblanc, Uavalet, and Louis Caravaque. In the following 
 year, the direction of the ship-building establishments on the 
 Neva was intrusted to the Baron de St. Hilaire. A certain 
 
 ' fCourakiii Papers, vol. v. pp. i, etc., 171, etc., 178, 184, 197, 209. 
 ' BarilicliKamciiski, Historical Selections (Moscow, 1S14), i)p. 66, 67. 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 363 
 
 Comte de Launay was made one of the gentlemen of the 
 Tsar's bed-chamber, and his wife was chief Lady of Honour 
 to the young daughters of the Sovereign, A French Chapel 
 was founded on the Island of St. Basil at St. Petersburg, and 
 the chaplain, Father Cailleau, a Franciscan, assumed the title 
 of ' Almoner to the French nation.' It must be admitted 
 that neither the chaplain, nor his parish, reflected great credit 
 on themselves. He was an ill-conducted priest, who, before 
 leaving France, had contrived to get himself appointed 
 Chaplain to Marsillac's regiment, and had been discharged 
 for misconduct. He was perpetually quarrelling with his 
 St. Petersburg flock ; he tried to force his way into the 
 house of Francois Vasson, a smelter in the Tsar's service, 
 and, when the way was barred, he called his wife a ' thief,' 
 and ' an ill-conducted woman,' and treated her so roughly 
 that she was forced to take to her bed. He thundered 
 public excommunication against the painter Caravaque, and 
 declared his marriage null, because the banns had been 
 published elsewhere than in the \'assili-Ostrow Chapel. He 
 ordered the bride to separate from her husband, and, when 
 she refused, he persecuted her with a variety of coarse and 
 defamatory songs, which formed the subject of an action 
 brought against him, under the auspices of the French Con- 
 sulate. In his defence, the h'ranciscan boasted openly, that 
 he could speak with full knowledge of the private failings of 
 the lady, 'having had an intimate acquaintance with them, 
 prior to her illegal marriage.' ^ 
 
 Independently of all this internal disorder, the condition 
 of the colony was, in many respects, far from enviable. Lam- 
 bert de Gucrin, after serving three years and receiving no 
 reward, pecuniary or otherwise, beyond the Cross of St. 
 Andrew, was forced to sell everything he possessed, to save 
 himself from starvation, and pay his way back to France. 
 He wrote to the Duke of Orleans, in 1717, ' I think myself 
 ver)' happy to have escaped safe and sound from the States 
 of that Prince (Peter I.), and to find myself back in the 
 most flourishing kingdom in all the world ; it is better to 
 have bread and water here, than to own the whole of 
 Muscovy.' And this was no isolated case, for, in a despatch 
 sent to Dubois, in 1718, by the commercial agent, La Vie, I 
 
 ' Records of the French Consulate at St. Petersburg, July 1720 (French 
 Foreign Office). 
 
364 PETER THE tiREAT 
 
 find the folUiwincj lines : — 'The condition of a cjrcat number 
 of I'Vcnclinicii who settle in this country (Russia) seems to 
 me so sad, that 1 feel it my duty to inform your Eminence 
 of it. Twenty-five, who were formerly in the Tsar's pay, 
 have been dischari^ed, in spite of the a^rreements made with 
 thorn in Paris by the Sieur Lefort, the Prince's a^ent. ... A 
 still larijer number who were not formally engaged, and who 
 had been promised funds, to be sent from Paris, to help them 
 to establish themselves, are in a state of the greatest poverty, 
 owing to the agent's failure to execute this promise.' ^ One 
 officer, named De la Motte, even went so far, when he 
 returned to his own country, as to publish a warning to the 
 public on this subject, which made a very great stir.- 
 
 Yet the impulse had been given, and, from year to year, 
 the number of French immigrants into the new Northern 
 capital increased, at such a rate as to arouse the alarm of 
 the diplomatic agents of other Powers. The Dutch Kesident, 
 De Bie, made a perfect outcry.^ Meanwhile, in Paris, Lefort, 
 a nephew of lector's early friend, endeavoured, with the help 
 of the Chancellor, Pontchartrain, to form a P"ranco-Russian 
 Trading Company, but, just as it seemed on the e\e of success, 
 this business fell through, — -Lefort was arrested for debt. 
 A sort of fate seemed to hang over the modest beginnings 
 of the understanding which was destined to such a brilliant 
 future. Lefort's successor was a certain Ilugueton, who 
 called himself Baron von Odik, and whom the French 
 Ministry recognised as a inalefactor, 'a London bankrupt 
 whom the King would have hanged, and justly, if the King 
 of I'lngland would have paid attention to the requests made 
 for the possession of the wretch, who had taken refuge in 
 London.' Then came an unsuccessful attempt on the 
 French side. The Due d'Orlcans sent the Comte de la 
 i\Larck on a secret mission to the Tsar, at the springs of 
 Pyrmont, in 17 16, with directions to test the strength of the 
 engagements which bound him to the King's enemies.* This 
 fresh messenger of peace made great diplomatic preparations, 
 drew up memoranda and preliminary plans, and, by the 
 time he was ready, Peter had left Pyrmont. 
 
 > St. Petersburg, Jan. 3, 1718 (French Foreitrn Office). 
 
 ' Cologne, 1704. This pamphlet t;ave rise to ,1 ))nilonged discussion in print. 
 
 • Despatches, dated Aug. 3 and 6, 1714 (l)ulch State Tapers). 
 
 * • Instructions,' d.ittd June 18, 1716 (French Foreign Office). 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 365 
 
 The hope of any understanding seemed as far off as ever, but 
 the logic of events ended by bringing the two countries 
 into regular intercourse, and triumphed over the incon- 
 sistency and weaknesses of their various diplomats. While, 
 in France, the Government began to recognise the insuffi- 
 cient value it had set on the new factor in European politics, 
 Peter too, began to realise, more clearly, the inconveniences 
 and dangers which the enterprises he had so thought- 
 lessly undertaken had raised about him, in the heart of 
 Germany. Early in 1717, Prussia, whose interests he had 
 specially served, threatened to abandon the over-venturous 
 Sovereign. Alarmed at the attitude taken up by a coali- 
 tion which she had joined, at the outset, under prudent 
 reservations, — startled by the Tsar's conferences with Goertz, 
 which had come to her ears, she thought it prudent to 
 ensure her own safety, by means of a Secret Convention 
 with France, signed on the 14th of September 17 16. She 
 accepted the mediation of the latter Power, and undertook to 
 break off hostilities, in return for the surrender of Stettin. 
 Peter had no resource left him but to follow this example, 
 and his journey to France was forthwith decided. His 
 arrival there was preceded, in February 171 7, by that of 
 twenty gentlemen, belonging to the best Russian families, — 
 Jcrebtsof, Volkonski, Rimski-Korssakof, loussoupof, Salty- 
 kof, Poushkin, Bezobrazof, Bariatinski, Bielossielski, — who 
 had received permission to enter the King's Garde Marine. 
 The hour had come for Russia and her Sovereign to make 
 a fresh stride, — the greatest of all, — in that intercourse 
 with the European world, which had become a law of their 
 destiny. 
 
 Catherine did not take part in this journey, and that 
 fact, in itself, indicates its nature and scope. Peter very 
 seldom parted from this beloved companion. She had 
 appeared beside him in every Court in Germany, and he 
 had never given a thought to the effect her presence might 
 produce. He did not think fit to try the experiment in 
 Paris. Clearly, he felt that the new elements of culture and 
 refinement he was there to meet, authoritatively demanded 
 a greater display of decenc)-, and propriety. 
 
366 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 II 
 
 More than one difficulty cropped up during the journey. 
 Peter reached Dunkirk on the 2ist of April 1717, attended 
 by fift>'-seven persons. This numerous suite was, at first, 
 a somewhat unpleasing surprise to his entertainers. The 
 Tsar had i^iven out that he was travellin<^ in the strictest 
 incof^nitn, and the arrai\c[cmcnts and outlay for his reception 
 had been calculated on this basis. Fate willed that the 
 earliest discussions between the august traveller's ministers 
 and Monsieur de Liboy — the gentleman of the king's 
 household who had been sent to receive him — should turn 
 on a pitiful question of money. Would not his Imperial 
 Majesty^ it was inquired, agree to receive a fixed sum for 
 his maintenance, during whatever time he elected to remain 
 in France ? The French Government was ready to give as 
 much as I5<X) livrcs a day. The expenses of hospitality 
 were, at that period, always defray^ed in this manner, in the 
 case of foreign envoys to Russia, so the proposal in itselt 
 was not unbecoming. Yet Kourakin made a great outcry, 
 which reduced de Liboy to silence, and likewise to despair — 
 for his credit was strictly limited, and he perceived the waste 
 in the Tsar's household to be something enormous. ' The 
 chief cook, under pretext of the two or three dishes .sent up 
 to his master, every day, filches the value of a table that 
 would suffice for eight people, both in food and wine.' 
 De Liboy tried to economise, by cutting off the suppers, but 
 this aroused a general outcry among the Russian gentlemen 
 and their servants. And the suite steadily increased in 
 number — soon there were eighty of them. Fortunatel)', 
 the authorities at Versailles changed their minds, and 
 the Regent sent fresh instructions, which gave his agent 
 more elbow-room. Expense was not to be considered, so 
 long as the Tsar was pleased. But it was not very easy to 
 please the Tsar. De Liboy declared his nature ' betrayed 
 some seeds of virtue,' but ' of the wildest.' He rose very 
 early, dined towards ten o'clock, took only a very light 
 supper, when he had dined heartily, and went to bed at nine 
 o'clock at night. But, between diimer and supper time, he 
 consumed an extraordinary quantity f)f brandy flavoured with 
 aniseed, beer, wine, fruit, and every kind of food. 'He al- 
 ways has two or three dishes, prepared by his own cook. 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 367 
 
 standing ready to his hand. He will leave a magnificently- 
 ordered table, and go and eat in his own room, has his beer 
 brewed by one of his own men, considers the beer we give 
 him detestably bad, and complains of ever^'thing.' He was 
 a Gargantua, and a sulky one ! The gentlemen of his suite 
 were just as difficult to please, 'they like all good things, 
 and thoroughly understand good cheer,' from which we may 
 conclude that they had left a good deal of their savagery 
 behind them. 
 
 But the table arrangements were a mere trifle, compared 
 to the trouble of the transport service. The Tsar insisted on 
 reaching Paris in four days, which seemed an impossible 
 matter, with the relays at de Liboy's disposal. Kourakin 
 glanced scornfully at the coaches offered him, and said, ' No 
 gentleman had ever been seen driving about in a hearse'; he 
 demanded bcrlijies. As for the Tsar, he suddenly declared 
 that nothing should induce him to travel either in a herline 
 or a coach — he would have a two-wheeled cabriolet, 
 like those he was accustomed to use at St. Petersburg. 
 No cabriolet was to be had, either at Dunkirk or at 
 Calais, and when, at last, the officials had utterly worn them- 
 selves out, to provide what he wanted, he changed his mind, 
 so that de Liboy was driven to acknowledge, with bitterness, 
 that ' this little Court is very changeable and irresolute, and, 
 from the throne to the stables, greatly addicted to fits of bad 
 temper.' The Tsar's will, and his plans, varied perpetually, 
 from one hour to the other. There was no possibility of 
 laying out a programme or arranging the smallest thing 
 beforehand. 
 
 At Calais, where a stay of several days was made, the 
 Sovereign grew a little more reasonable. He reviewed a 
 regiment, inspected a fort, went so far as to be present at a 
 hunting party given in his honour, and ended by becoming 
 so gracious, that de Liboy appears to have felt some alarm 
 for the virtue of Aladauie La Fresidciitc, to whom the duty 
 of doing the honours of the town to the travellers had been 
 allotted. But the question of transport came to the front 
 again, and grew so bitter, that de Liboy thought the journey 
 would have been broken off. At one time, nobody knew 
 how long the Tsar intended to stay at Calais, nor whether 
 he would decide to go any farther. At that moment — it 
 already was the 2nd of Ma)- — de Liboy was reinforced by a 
 
368 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 notable coadjutor, the Marquis de Mailly-Xesle. A story 
 was current in Paris, at the time, that this young nobleman 
 had gone to meet the Muscovite Sovereign, without any 
 formal commission from the authorities, under pretext of 'an 
 ancient prerogative, which gave his family the right to meet 
 all foreign kings who might enter France through Picardy.* 
 And it was further declared, that, ruined as he was, he had 
 contrived to borrow looo pistoles so as to carry on the tradi- 
 tion. A correspondent of the Due de Lorraine's, who re- 
 peats these stories, adds certain details which give curious 
 proof of the ideas then current in Paris concerning the ex- 
 pected guest. De Mailly, he declares, endeavoured to enter 
 the Tsar's coach, wherepon Peter ' fell on him with his fists, 
 and threw him out.' And on another occasion, the Muscovite 
 Sovereign's sole reply to some casual observation was a 
 heart)' box on the ear.^ 
 
 The Marquis, as a matter of fact, had been duly and 
 formally commissioned by the Regent, and all the public en- 
 tertainment at the young man'sexpense, was pure and gratui- 
 tous spite. ]kit the part he was called upon to play proved 
 most ungrateful. He made a bad beginning, for he arrived 
 during the Russian Master, and the Tsar's suite, being all of 
 them dead drunk, were quite unable to offer him a suitable 
 reception. The only person able to keep his feet, and in 
 something like his normal condition, was the Sovereign him- 
 self 'Although,' as de Liboy tells us, 'he had gone out, at 
 eight o'clock in the evening, incognito, to drink with his 
 musicians, who were living in a tavern.' But the tavern and 
 the compan\' he found there had left him little inclination to 
 accept the Marquis' complimentary remarks. Even on the 
 following days, when he was sober, he found fault with him 
 for being too elegant. Though he may not have actually 
 fallen on him with his fists, he certainly launched epigrams 
 at his head, and openly expressed his astonishment at seeing 
 a man change his clothes every day. ' Cannot that young 
 man find any tailor to dress him to his fancy?' The Tsar's 
 temper had changed again, and for the worse. He had indeed 
 given some sign, at last, of desiring to continue his journey, 
 but he had pitched on a new style of locomotion. He would 
 have a sort of litter, on which the body of an old phaeton, 
 
 * Sergent's Letters, Bibliothi^que Nationale, Lorraine Collection, vol. 574 
 ($6 s. s. ). 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 369 
 
 found amongst some disused carriages, was to be fixed. 
 And this was to be carried by horses. In vain it was pointed 
 out that he would endanger his own neck by travelling in 
 this strange fashion, to which the horses must necessarily be 
 quite unaccustomed. 'Most men,' writes de iMailly, 'are led 
 by reason, but these — if indeed the name of man can be given 
 to persons who have nothing human about them — never 
 listen to it' The litter was arranged as best it could be man- 
 aged, — the great point was to get away. De Mailly speaks 
 more strongly even than de Liboy on the subject, adding, ' I 
 do not know, as yet, whether the Tsar will lie at Boulogne 
 or at Montreuil, but it is a great thing that he should start 
 at all. I would with all my heart he were safe in Paris, 
 and even that he had left it. When his Royal Highness has 
 seen him, and he has spent several days in the city, I am 
 persuaded, if I may dare say it, that he will not be sorry to 
 be rid of him. None of the ministers, except Prince Koura- 
 kin, whom I have not seen to-day, can speak French . . . 
 no commentary is possible on the strange antics of the others, 
 who are truly a strange set.' ^ 
 
 The start was made on the 4th of May. The Tsar left his 
 litter before entering the different towns, drove through them 
 in his coaeh, and then returned to his chosen mode of pro- 
 gression. This enabled him to get a good view of the 
 country he passed through. Like another traveller, fifty 
 years later, Arthur Young, he was struck by the wretched 
 appearance of the country people he met. IMatviciefs im- 
 pression, twelve }-ears earlier, had been very different ; but 
 the last years of a ruinous reign had done their work.- 
 
 The night was spent at Boulogne, and a start was made 
 the next day, with the idea of sleeping at Amiens. But half 
 way thither, the Tsar changed his mind, and insisted on going 
 as far as Beauvais. It was pointed out to him that there 
 were no horses ready. He replied with a volley of abuse. 
 The lutcndaut of Beauvais, M. de Bernage, who was hastily 
 warned, made desperate efforts, and collected the sixty 
 horses necessary. He and the Bishop prepared a supper, 
 
 ^ This letter, dated May 3, 17 17, did not appear in the 'Collected Docu- 
 ments,' relative to Peter's visit to France, included in the thirty-fourth volume of 
 the great work published by the Im])erial Russian Historical Society, which had 
 access to the Records of the I'Vench Foreign Office : and this omission is not the 
 only one. 
 
 - Solovief, vol. xvii. p. 88 ; compare vol. xv. p. 71. 
 
370 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 and a concert, in the Ejiiscopal Palace, with illuminations 
 and fireworks. He adorned the Palace with the I'sar's arms, 
 and his bedroom with portraits, — hardly, I should imagine, 
 very like the originals, — of former Grand Dukes of Muscovy. 
 Suddenly he learnt that the Tsar had entered the zealous 
 Intoidaui's coach, hurried across the town, climbed back into 
 his litter, and settled himself some quarter of a league off, in 
 a snrr}' tavern, 'where all he spent was eighteen francs for his 
 own food and that of thirty of his people, — drawing a nap- 
 kin from his own pocket, and using it as a tablecloth,' Poor 
 de l^ernage was reduced to making his wife give a ball in 
 the Bishop's Palace, at which the guests were consoled for 
 the Tsar's absence, b}' the thought that the preparations 
 made for his reception had not been utterl\- wasted.^ 
 
 At last, on the evening of the loth of Ma\-, Peter entered 
 Paris, escorted by 300 mounted Grenadiers. He had been 
 offered, and had accepted, the Queen-Mother's lodging in 
 the Louvre, and there, till the very last moment, he was 
 expected. Coypcl had received orders to clean the paint 
 and gilding. Sergent tells us that the beautiful bed-hangings 
 which ' Madame de Maintenon had caused to be made for 
 the king, and which were the richest and most magnificent 
 in the world, had been put up.' In the great liall of the 
 Palace, two tables, each for sixty persons, had been prepared, 
 in the most magnificent style. As the Louvre did not seem 
 sufficiently spacious to accommodate the whole of the 
 Sovereign's suite, the Hall of Assembl}-, belonging to the 
 French Academy, had been requisitioned by the authorities. 
 This illustrious body, in answer to the formal notification of 
 this fact, sent by the Due d'Antin, who had charge of all 
 buildings belonging to the Crown, thanked him for his 
 'politeness,' and lost no time in removing itself into the 
 neighbouring apartment, the Hall of the Acadcmie des 
 Sciences, where it remained till the 24th of ALay." 
 
 Nevertheless, advised by Count TolstoT, who had preceded 
 his master, the Regent had taken the precaution of preparing 
 another, and less sumptuous lodging, in the Hotel Lesdi- 
 guieres. This fine house in the Rue de la Cerisaie, had been 
 
 ^ Correspondence between the Bishop of Heauvais .ind tlie Agents of the Due 
 d'Orlcans, French Foreign Office, Mny 17 17. See .nlso, for this part of Peter's 
 Journey, Leniontey, llistoiic de la A'ri^titre (Paris, 1S32), vol. i. p. I13. 
 
 * Kecords 0/ the Fieitch Academy, 1895, vol. ii. pp. 26-29. 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 371 
 
 built by Sebastian Zamet, and bought from the heirs of the 
 celebrated financier by Francois de Bonne, Due de Lesdi- 
 guieres. It belonged, in 1717, to the Marshal de Villeroi, 
 who himself had rooms in the Tuileries, and therefore was 
 willing and able to lend his private residence. Here too 
 great preparations were made ; the Royal tapestries were 
 brought under contribution, and all the other houses in the 
 street were taken up, to provide additional accommodation.^ 
 Peter, with his unfailing knack of foiling every expectation, 
 went first to the Louvre, entered the apartment in whi ;h he 
 was expected to sup, glanced carelessly at the sumptuous 
 preparations made for his special behoof, called for some 
 radishes and a piece of bread, tasted six varieties of wine, 
 swallowed two glasses of beer, caused the numerous candles, 
 — the profusion of which offended his sense of economy, — to 
 be put out, and departed. He had made up his mind to 
 stay at the Hotel Lesdiguieres.^ 
 
 l^ven here, the apartment prepared for him was too fine, 
 and, above all, too spacious, for his taste, and he had his 
 camp bed placed in a closet. Fresh tribulations awaited 
 the persons appointed to replace de Liboy and de Mailly 
 about the Sovereign's person. St. Simon asserts that he 
 suggested Marshal de Tesse to the Regent for this office, 'as 
 being a man who had nothing else to do, who had all the 
 habits and speech of good society, whose journeys and 
 negotiations had accustomed him to deal with foreigners. . . . 
 It was just the work for him.' But the Tsar's preference 
 was at once bestowed on the person associated with the 
 Marshal, a certain Comte de Verton, Maitre d' Hotel to the 
 King of France, ' a sensible fellow, fairly well born, fond of 
 good cheer and high play.' The Tsar gave worry and 
 trouble to both these functionaries. 
 
 To begin with, he shut himself up for three whole days 
 like a prisoner within the hotel. My readers will imagine his 
 curiosity as to the wonderful sights of the French Capital, 
 and the impatience natural to such an extraordinarily 
 turbulent and constantly eager nature. Vet he contained 
 himself, and did violence to his own feelings, because he 
 insisted that the King should begin by coming to him. 
 
 ^ Buvat, Journal de la l\egence (Paris, 1865), p. 269. A commemorative 
 tablet has been recently affixed to No. 10 Rue de la Cerisaie. 
 '^ Sergent, Letter, dated May 10, 17 17. 
 
372 PETER THE ('.RE AT 
 
 This pretension was quite unforeseen. On former occasions 
 he had always been more accommodating, or perhaps more 
 careless, and little inclined to stand on ceremony. At 
 lierlin, in 17 12, he had gone straight to the Roj-al Castle, 
 and found the King in his bed. At Copenhagen, in 17 16, 
 he had literal!}' forced his way into Charles IV. 's chamber, 
 through the double row of courtiers who had opposed his 
 entrance, on account of the late hour selected by him for 
 this irruption. But his behaviour in both these Capitals had 
 all been of a piece, — familiar, cavalier, and, occasi(jnall)-, 
 even somewhat improper and uncouth.^ He would aj^jiear 
 to have taken it into his head that the widest difference 
 existed between the Courts he already knew so well, and 
 that he now approached for the first time. And he himself 
 was quite different, — very much on his guard, apt to take 
 offence, and rigidly and fastidiously observant of an 
 etiquette, the laws of which he himself claimed the right to 
 dictate. 
 
 'J he morning after his arrival, the Regent came to greet 
 him. He took a few steps forward to meet his visitor, 
 embraced him, according to St. Simon, ' with a great air of 
 superiorit}',' pointed to the door of his cabinet, entered it 
 first, ' without further civilit)^,' and seated himself ' at the 
 upper end.' 
 
 This interview, which lasted an hour, and during which 
 Kourakin acted as interpreter, took place on the Saturday. 
 It was not till the follovv-ing Monday that the Regent made 
 up his mind to respond to his Russian Majesty's demand, 
 and send the little King to visit him. This time Peter went 
 as far as the courtyard, received the Royal child at the door 
 of his coach, and walked on his left hand, to his own apart- 
 ment, where two State chairs had been prepared, that on the 
 right for the King. Compliments were exchanged for a 
 quarter of an hour, Kourakin still acting as interpreter, and 
 the King took his leave. Then, with one of those sudden 
 impulses which swept away all thought of etiquette, and 
 brought back his natural simplicity, the Tsar took hold of 
 the child, lifted him up in his strong arms, and kis.sed him 
 as he held him. According to St. Simon, ' The King was 
 not at all frightened, and got through the business very 
 well.' Peter wrote to his wife, ' I give }'ou notice that, last 
 
 ' Sbornik, vol. xx. jip. 57-63. 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 373 
 
 Monday, I received a visit from the little King of this 
 country, who is a very little taller than our Lucas ' (a 
 favourite dwarf) ; ' the child is exceedingly charming, both 
 in face and figure, and fairly intelligent for his age.' 
 
 The visit was returned the next da}', with the same 
 ceremonies, all of which had been minutely discussed and 
 arranged beforehand. Then the Tsar felt free to go and 
 come. He took full advantage of his freedom, and forth- 
 with began to go about the town as a private tourist, and in 
 the simplest dress. He wore, according to 15uvat, ' a quite 
 plain overcoat of rather coarse grey barracan, a waistcoat of 
 grey woollen stuff with diamond buttons, no cravat, no cuffs, 
 and no lace on the wristbands of his shirt.' To this was 
 added ' a black wig in the Spanish fashion, the back of 
 which he had caused to be clipped, because he thought it too 
 long, and without any powder . . . His overcoat had a 
 small cape, like that of any ordinary traveller . . . and round 
 his waist, outside the overcoat, was a silver laced belt, on 
 which hung a cutlass, after the manner of the East.' This 
 style of dress was the fashion in Paris, for a time, after the 
 Sovereign's departure, and was called ' habit du Tsar,' or 
 du Farouche.' Peter inspected public institutions, and 
 went about in the shops, striking every one who had to do 
 v.ith him by the familiarity of his manners, which, neverthe- 
 less, had a certain touch of grandeur about them, — the 
 suddenness of his movements, — his insatiable curiosity, — his 
 uncertain temper, — his complete absence of shyness, — and 
 his extreme stinginess. He frequently went out without 
 informing anybody about him, would get into the first coach 
 he came across, and have himself driven whithersoever his 
 fancy listed. Thus one day, when Madame de Matignon 
 had driven up close to the Hotel Lesdiguieres, ' to gape,' as 
 St. Simon puts it, he carried off her coach to Boulogne, and 
 she was obliged to go home on foot. De Tesse, poor man, 
 spent his life running after the Sovereign, and never knew 
 where to find him. 
 
 On the 14th of May, Peter went to the Opera, where the 
 Regent did him the honours of the Royal box. During the 
 course of the performance he asked for some beer, and 
 aj)peared to think it quite natural that the Regent should 
 offer it to him, standing, with the salver in his hand. He 
 took his time about emptying the glass, asked for a napkin 
 
374 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 when he had drunk, and received it with ' a civil smile and a 
 slight inclination of his head.' The public, according to St. 
 Simon, was more than a little astonished at the sight. The 
 next da\', the Tsar climbed into a hack coach, inspected 
 various workshops, went to the Gobelins, plied the workmen 
 with questions, and left a single crown amongst them when 
 he went away. On the 19th of May, he gave 25 sols, to the 
 turncock at the Menagerie ; he paid ready money to the 
 tradesmen who crowded his house, but he was a hard 
 bargainer, and after having, as we have seen, maltreated a 
 splendid wig, made by the greatest hairdresser in J^iris, he 
 gave the artist 7 livres and 10 sols., for what was worth at 
 least five-and-twenty crowns ! ^ 
 
 He showed not the slightest regard for the rank and 
 precedence of other people : took no more notice, as St. 
 Simon says again, of the Prince and Princesses of the Blood, 
 than of the chief nobles of the Court, and jjaid the former no 
 more respect than the latter. When the Princes refused to 
 wait on him, until they were sure he would return the 
 civility to the Princesses, he sent them word they might 
 stay at home. The Duchesses de Berry and d'Orleans sent 
 their equerries to pay him their compliments, and he 
 condescended to visit these two ladies at the Luxembourg 
 and the Palais Royal, but still ' with an air of great superior- 
 ity.' The other Princesses only saw him as sightseers, and 
 from a distance. The Comte de Toulouse was the only one 
 of the Princes who was presented to him^ and this only 
 when he received him at P'ontainebleau as Master of the 
 Royal Hounds. The Due du Maine appeared at the head 
 of the Swiss Guard, and the I'rince de Soubise commanded 
 the Gendarmes, at a Review to which the Tsar was invited, 
 and at which 3000 coaches, filled with sightseers, male and 
 female, surrounded the parade ground. But he did not offer 
 the slightest civility, either to them or to any of the officers 
 present. 
 
 On the 21st of May, he went to see Pajot d'Onsen Bray, 
 the Director of the Posts, at Grand Bcrc}', and spent his day 
 inspecting his curious collections, accompanied by the 
 celebrated Pere Sebastien, a gifted ph}-sician and mechanic, 
 whose real name was Jean Truchet. lie showed all kintis 
 of attentions to Carme, a Savant, but wlicn the Duchesse de 
 
 ' Scrgent, Lclter of igtli Juno 1717. 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 375 
 
 Rohan, who Happened to be at her house at Petit Bercy, 
 w^aited upon him, she retired utterly disconnfited, and 
 complained to her husband that the Tsar had not treated 
 her with the slightest civility, ' And why, Madame,' replied 
 the Duke — (loud enough to be heard by one of the Russian 
 gentlemen, who happened to understand French, and 
 retorted very sharply) — ' Did you dream of expecting any 
 civility from that brute ? ' ^ 
 
 St. Simon saw the Sovereign in the house of the Due 
 d'Antin, and watched him at his leisure, having specially 
 requested not to be presented to him. He struck him as 
 being ' rather talkative, but with the air of considering him- 
 self the master everywhere.' He remarked the nervous con- 
 vulsion which suddenly contracted his features, completely 
 altering their expression. De Tesse told him that this 
 would happen several times a day. The Duchesse d'Antin 
 and her daughters were present at the festivity, but the Tsar 
 * walked past them proudly,' with a mere bend of his head. 
 An excellent picture of the Tsarina, which d'Antin had con- 
 trived to procure, and which he had hung over one of the 
 chimney-pieces, pleased Peter greatly. He spoke very 
 politely on the subject, and his lack of courtesy would really 
 appear to have been some remnant of timidity and shyness, 
 for he certainly improved, by degrees, in this respect. To- 
 wards the end of his stay, he went from house to house, 
 accepting all invitations, and ended by behaving delightfully 
 even to the ladies. At St. Ouen, where he went to visit 
 the Due de Tresmes, and where a great number of fair sight- 
 seers were assembled, he forgot his pride, and took pains to 
 make himself pleasant. One of the lady guests, his host's 
 daughter, the Marquise de Bethune, was presented to him, 
 and he invited her to sit at table with him. Paris had ended 
 by civilising the Tsar. 
 
 Whatever may be said to the contrary, he was fairly well 
 behaved, if not over-gallant, when he went to see Madame 
 de Maintenon at St. Cyr. St. Simon's description of this 
 visit, which has been so frequently repeated, is universally 
 known. According to him, the Tsar burst unexpectedly 
 into the lady's apartment, and subjected her to a silent and 
 even brutal scrutiny. Auger, in the biography which he has 
 added to Madame de Maintenon's letters, published by 
 ^ Sergent, LeUcr, dated May 29, 17 17. 
 
376 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Santreau de Marsy, confirms these details, and even declares 
 that the Tsar's unseemly curiosity extended to the niece of 
 the lady who had been the great King's wife. 'He noticed 
 her (Madame de Caylus) one day at a festive gathering, and, 
 learning who she was, he went straight to her, took her b\' the 
 hand, and looked at her long and intently.'^ The most 
 unlikely legends need not surprise any historian, but it is 
 somewhat astonishing that Auger does not appear to have 
 read the following letter from Madame de Maintenon, which 
 is included in the collection to which his biography of her 
 is affixed. The letter in question is addressed to Madame 
 de Caylus. ' M. Gabriel has just come in, and told me 
 that M. Bellegarde gives me notice that he (that is to 
 say, the Tsar) desires to come here after dinner, if I 
 will permit it. I dare not refuse, and shall await him 
 in my bed. I have been told nothing more. I do not 
 know whether I am to give him a ceremonious recep- 
 tion, whether he desires to see the house and the young 
 ladies, whether he will go into the choir. I am leaving 
 everything to chance. . . . The Tsar arrived at seven o'clock 
 in the evening, he seated himself beside my bed, and asked 
 me if I was ill. I replied that I was. He then caused 
 me to be asked what was the matter with me. I answered, 
 "great age, and a somewhat weak constitution." He did not 
 know what to say to me, and his interpreter did not appear 
 to hear what I said to him. His visit was very short. He 
 is still in the house, but where, I know not. He caused the 
 curtains at the foot of my bed to be opened, so that he might 
 look at me ; you may imagine I gave him his way ! ' ^ 
 
 On the I ith of June, the date of this interview, and after 
 a month in Paris, Peter was no longer the extraordinary 
 person he has been described as having been on this occasion. 
 But he still felt more at ease, when far from the elegance and 
 ceremony of Courts and drawing-rooms. He was quite 
 happy, for instance, at the Invalides, where he treated the 
 pensioners in the most friendly manner, tasted their .soup, 
 and patted them familiarly on the back. At the Mint, 
 
 ^ I. ccx.xxvi. 
 
 ^ June II, 1717, vol. V. p. 205. .See also, for confirmation, the Memoirs of 
 Mame. de Cie'/uy, niece of Marshal de Tesse (vol. ii. p. 9). But these memoirs 
 are of somewhat d<nil)iful authenticity. Danyeau (vol. xviii. pp. loi and 104) 
 declares every detail of the Tsar's visit to St. Cyr was discussed and arranged 
 beforehand. 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 377 
 
 where he saw a medal struck to commemorate his stay in 
 France ; at the Royal Printing works ; at the College des 
 Quatre Nations ; at the Sorbonne — where advantage was 
 taken of his presence to discuss the reunion of the Greek and 
 Latin Churches ; — at the Observatory ; — at the house of 
 Delisle, the geographer, and that of the great English 
 oculist, Woolhouse, who performed an operation for cataract 
 in his presence, he struck observers as being too nervously 
 and strangely curious, perhaps, but full of intelligence, greedy 
 of knowledge, and not altogether discourteous. He replied 
 politely and modestly to the doctors of the Sorbonne, that 
 he knew too little about the matter they discussed to speak 
 of it, being more than occupied with the task of ruling his 
 Empire, and bringing his war with Sweden to a close. But 
 that he should be glad to see them enter into correspondence 
 with the bishops of his Church. He graciously received the 
 memorandum finally remitted to him on the subject, to which, 
 some three years later, the Russian clergy sent a curious 
 reply, beginning with a paneg}-ric on the Sorbonne, and end- 
 ing with an acknowledgment of their own impotence. The 
 Russian Church, maimed by the suppression of the Patri- 
 archate (one of Peter's reforms), was quite incapable of 
 taking part in such a discussion.^ 
 
 Art was less attractive to the Russian Sovereign. When 
 he was shown the Crown jewels in the Louvre, valued at 
 30.000,000, he pulled a wry face ; the mone}-, in his opinion, 
 might have been better spent. When Marshal de Villeroi, 
 who superintended this exhibition, suggested that a visit 
 should be paid to ' the greatest treasure in France,' the Tsar 
 had some difficulty in realising that the treasure referred to 
 was the little king.^ 
 
 It was not till the 19th of June, on the eve of his depar- 
 ture, that he went to the Institute. No warning having been 
 sent to the Academy of France, onl)' two or three of the 
 members were present to receive him. The)' showed him 
 nothing but their Hall of Assembly, which fiad been prepared 
 as a dormitory for some of his own officers, explained the 
 
 ^ This reply, which was drawn up by the head of the old ecclesiastical patty 
 in Russia, Iavt)rski, reaclu-d its destination through an indirect channel. I'eter 
 had already forwarded other objections, put into oflicial shape by Prokopovitch, 
 who had assisted the I sar's reforming work in Church matters. See P. Pierling, 
 The Sorbonne and Russia (1S63), p. 50, etc. 
 
 ' Sergent, May 29th, 1717. 
 
378 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 natureof their deliberations, and exhibited their picture of the 
 King. He was better treated at tiie Acadcmie des Sciences, 
 where all the members were assembled, not, I suspect, with- 
 out some complicity on Peter's part. The curiosities of the 
 Dictionar\' of the Academy cannot have had much charm 
 for him, but at the Academic des Sciences, he saw M. la 
 I-'aj'c's machine for raising water ; M. Lemery's * Arbre de 
 Mars,' the screw-jack invented by M. Delesse ; and M. Le 
 Camus' coach, — and thanked the company for his reception, 
 in a letter written in Russian.^ 
 
 He was present on the same day, in a private galler}% at a 
 sitting of the Parliament, held in full-dress, and great cere- 
 mony. The Due do Maine and the Comte de Toulouse 
 were prevented by his presence from bringing forward their 
 protest against the decision of the Regency, as to the rights 
 they claimed.^ 
 
 It was a full, almost an overwhelming programme, but 
 Peter, — though he took every advantage of it, observing 
 everything, putting endless questions, and cramming his 
 note-book, which he opened perpetually and unconcernedly 
 wherever he might chance to be, at the Louvre, at church, 
 or in the street, — did not deny himself any of the pleasures, 
 extravagances, and excesses to which he was addicted. And 
 here the worst side of his visit to Paris appears. At the 
 Trianon he astonished French society by turning the water 
 of the fountains on to the onlookers for his own amusement. 
 But at Marly he did not content himself with such undigni- 
 fied pranks. This was the place chosen by him, so a con- 
 temporary relates, * to shut himself up with a mistress whom 
 he has taken here, and with whom ... in Madame de Main- 
 tenon's a[)artment.' He then dismissed the girl with a couple 
 of crowns, and boasted of his performance in presence of the 
 Due d'Orleans in terms which the above-mentioned contem- 
 porary only ventures to reproduce in Latin. Dixit ei se saliita- 
 visse quenidani ineretriceui dccies nocte in una, et, Jiuic datis pro 
 tanto labore tantibn diiobus numniis, tunc illam exdamavisse: 
 Sane, Doniine, tit vir viagnificc, sed parcissinic ut inipcrator 
 meciini cgisti? The news of the orgies with which he dis- 
 graced the royal residences reached Madame de Maintenon's 
 
 ' Bulletin du Bibliof>hile {1859), p. 61 1, etc. 
 2 Mamis' Memoirs (Paris, 1865), vol. i. \>. 207. 
 * Louville's Memoirs (I'aris, iSiS), vol. ii. p. 24I. 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 379 
 
 ears in her retreat, and she wrote of them to her niece : ' I 
 have just heard that the Tsar takes a low mistress about 
 with him, to the great scandal of Versailles, of the Trianon, 
 and of Marly.' ^ At the Trianon he had to be attended by 
 the Paris doctors ; at Fontainebleau he seems to have shown 
 little interest in the coursing, but he supped so freely that 
 the Due d'Antin thought it prudent, on the return journey, 
 to slip away from him, and get into another carriage, which 
 action, according to St. Simon, was justified by the event, for 
 at Petit Bourg, where the Tsar stopped for the night, two 
 country women were sent for, to clean up his Majesty ! 
 
 The general impression, influenced by incidents of this 
 nature, — exaggerated, doubtless, in the telling, — was some- 
 what doubtful, but rather unfavourable than otherwise. ' I 
 remember hearing from Cardinal Dubois,' writes Voltaire, 
 ' that the Tsar was nothing but a wild fellow, born to be 
 boatswain of a Dutch ship.'- This was much the same 
 opinion as that of Burnet, twenty years previously, during 
 Peter's visit to London. St. bimon himself, — so decided 
 otherwise in praise or blame, — seems doubtful on the subject. 
 The famous ' Memoirs ' contradict the ' Additions to Dan- 
 geau's Journal' The ' Memoirs,' being the more spontaneous, 
 strike me as being also more sincere, and they are certainly 
 far from laudatory. Even in the ' Additions,' which are 
 more conventional and affected, I find mention of ' indecent 
 orgies ' and of ' a strong tinge of ancient barbarism.' ^ 
 
 When Peter took leave of the King, he would accept no 
 gift but two splendid Gobelins hangings. He refused, for 
 some reason of etiquette, 'a sword splendidly mounted with 
 diamonds,' and he gave the lie, in the most unexpected 
 fashion, to those stingy habits which had so largely contri- 
 buted to make him unpopular in the capital. I read in a 
 letter from Sergent, ' The Tsar, who has been so much re- 
 proached, during his stay here, for his lack of generosity, gave 
 most brilliant proof of it on the day of his departure. He 
 left 50,000 lizn-es to be distributed amongst the officers who 
 have served his table since he entered France ; 30,000 livres 
 for his guard ; 30,000 livres to be divided among the Royal 
 manufactories and workshops which he went tosce ; his por- 
 
 ^ Letter quoted above. 
 
 " LeUer to Chauvelin, Oct. 3, 1760, General Correspomhnce, vol. xii. p. 123. 
 
 ' Dangeau, vol. xvi'. p. 81. 
 
38o PETER THE GREAT 
 
 trait, set in diamonds, for the Kinp^, another for Marshal dc 
 Tesse. another for the Due d'Antin, another for Marshal 
 d'Estrees, another for M. de Livry, and another, worth 6000 
 livres, to the King's Mcxitre cV Hotel \\\\o attended him. He 
 has also distributed a great number of gold and silver meiials, 
 bearing the principal actions of his life, and incidents of his 
 battles.' 
 
 Thus, having never lost an occasion of showing off his 
 whims and freaks of temper, he ended by paying his score 
 right rojally. The shabby gratuities distributed during his 
 stay were bestowed by the private individual he professed 
 to be, even though, from time to time, the incognito was cast 
 aside. At the moment of departure, the Sovereign allowed 
 his true personality to appear. 
 
 In Paris, as we have seen, his incognito was never taken 
 seriously, and, from first to last, he was given Royal 
 honours. All along the road to Spa, where Catherine awaited 
 him, the Provinces vied with the Capital in gorgeous hospi- 
 tality. At Rheims, where Peter only spent a couple of hours, 
 and looked at nothing but the famous 'shaking pillar' 
 in the Church of St. Nicaise, the Municipality spent 455 
 livres and 13 sols on the collation offered to him. It cost 
 the town of Charleville 4327 livres to entertain the Sovereign 
 for one night There a richly-decorated barge, adorned with 
 his colours, waited to carry him by the Meuse to Liege, 
 and a whole cargo of provisions was shipped — 170 lbs. of 
 meat at 5 sols a lb., i roe deer, 35 chickens or capons, 6 large 
 turkeys at 30 sols each, 83 lbs. of Mayence ham at 10 sols, 
 200 cray-fish, 200 eggs at 30 sols a 100, i fifteen-pound 
 salmon at 25 sols, 2 large trout, and 3 casks of beer.^ 
 
 The Regent, on his i)art, pushed his courtes}- so far as to 
 desire Rigaud and Nattier to paint him two portraits of the 
 Russian Sovereign. 
 
 Let us now proceed to examine the practical results of 
 this first and last appearance of the victor of Poltava, amidst 
 the declining splendours of the Prcnch Monarchy, 
 
 III 
 
 Two stumbling-blocks stood in the way of the political 
 and commercial alliance which Peter had hoped to secure b\' 
 
 ' Archives of the town of Chalons. See Revue Contemporaine, 1865 
 (Barth^lemy). 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 381 
 
 his visit to Paris ; — the Treaty, signed in April 171 5, which 
 bound France to Sweden until 17 18, and ensured the latter 
 country a quarterly subsidy of 150,000 crowns; and the 
 personal ties existing between the Regent and the King 
 of England, r^egotiations were opened as soon as the Tsar 
 arrived, but Marshal de Tesse, — to whom they were confided, 
 in conjunction with Marshal d'Uxelles, — soon perceived that 
 the only object of his own Government was ' to dance on the 
 slack rope,' thus amusing the Russian Sovereign until his 
 departure ;^ while, at the same time, English Statesmen being 
 kept on the alert, the friendship of England was to be 
 secured, and Sweden, tamed by the prospect of a French 
 understanding with the Tsar, was to be rendered yet more 
 manageable. In vain did Peter boldly and frankly take the 
 initiative. He straightforward!}' offered to replace Sweden 
 in that system of alliances which had, hitherto, guaranteed the 
 balance of power in Europe. He would follow that country's 
 example, make 'diversions,' and accept subsidies. So far, 
 so good. But figures had to be discussed, and on this pre- 
 liminary point the agreement dragged for weeks. When 
 that was settled, Prussia demanded, through Baron de Cnyp- 
 hausen, her Minister in Paris, to be included in the Treat)'. 
 This again was very welcome. France and Russia under- 
 took to guarantee her the possession of Stettin, but it became 
 necessary to alter the prearranged form of the projected alli- 
 ance. Peter stirred up his plenipotentiaries and his secre- 
 taries, and the Regent, having private information from 
 Berlin which set his mind complete!}^ at rest regarding this 
 vast expenditure of ink, let him work his will. When the 
 Treaty had been duly drawn up, and only awaited signature, 
 it became evident that the whole labour had been in vain, 
 for Cnyphausen had no powers from his Government. And 
 the Tsar was forced to depart empty-handed. 
 
 The Regent laughed at the Muscovite Sovereign, but De 
 Tesse was not free from anxiety as to the possible and more 
 distant result of Peter's discomfiture. Might not the Tsar, 
 mortified and discouraged, be driven to throw himself into 
 the Emperor's arms, or to treat directly with Sweden ? But 
 no ! Prussia, the only strong footing left him in all German)-, 
 held him firmly. A meeting at Amsterdam, to recommence 
 negotiations, was brought about the following month, at the 
 ' l)c Iciscs Memoirs (Paris, 1806), vol. ii., p. 319, 
 
382 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 prcssinjT instance of the Tsar. The Regent agreed, but his 
 resolution not to take any serious action was unshaken, and 
 all he did was to change his tactics. Cnyphausen had been 
 provided, b\' this time, with full powers, but the pretensions 
 of France had suddenly altered. When, on the 2nd of ^cp- 
 tember, and largely owing to the eagerness of the Tsar, a 
 new Treaty was drawn up, duly provided with 'public' and 
 with 'secret' articles — as was only pro[)er in the case of a 
 diplomatic document fresh from the hands of the represen- 
 tatives of three great Powers — another matter was arranged 
 — a platonic hope and desideratum. According to the 
 public articles, the mediation of the King of France for 
 peace in the North was acccjited, but subject to the definite 
 rupture of the engagements absolutely binding his Mf)st 
 Christian Majesty to Sweden. The secret articles stipulated 
 for a defensive alliance, on the basis of the Treaties of Baden 
 and Utrecht ; but any definition of the reciprocal duties of 
 the allied Powers, resulting from it, was deferred to some 
 future negotiation, France did indeed undertake not to re- 
 new her Treaty of Subsidies with Sweden, at its expiration, 
 but this undertaking was merely verbal. The King's pleni- 
 potentiaries had so insisted on this point that Peter mis- 
 trusted them : and the event proved him right. 
 
 Nothing was done, in fact. There was not even a begin- 
 ning of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The 
 individuals selected to represent each side were, moreover, 
 most unfortunately chosen. Peter had expressed a desire 
 to see M. de Verton, whose character and qualities pleased 
 him, as PVench Envoy at St. Petersburg. M. de Verton was 
 duly appointed, received his instructions, and was on the 
 point of starting, when he was arrested and thrown into 
 prison by his creditors. The representation of French in- 
 terests on the banks of the Neva remained in the hands of 
 La Vie, who could hardly pay the postage of his letters. 
 Russia, too, was represented in Paris by Baron von Schlcinitz, 
 whose experiences were no less unpleasant. 
 
 The emptiness of the Treat}- of the 2nd of September soon 
 became apparent. In the following year, 1718, — while Schlci- 
 nitz was ccjnferring wilh Cellamare, — France, with England, 
 Holland and the hjnperor, entered into quadruple alliance 
 against Spain, and the four allies vowed each other mutual 
 support until the end of the Northern war. The Comte de 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 383 
 
 Rotembourg, French Envoy at Berlin, was labourin(T to con- 
 clude a Treaty between Prussia and Kngland, which was to 
 end in a separate peace between Prussia and Sweden, in re- 
 turn for the surrender of Stettin. Meanwhile, at Stockholm, 
 Campredon was quietly negotiating for the renewal of the 
 Treaty of 171 5 ! 
 
 Thus Russia and France were in open opposition. Both 
 countries, it is true, shrank from any idea of declared 
 hostilities. Each acted cautiously, and there was even a 
 certain exchange of civilities. Peter's eyes were turned on 
 Constantinople, where the Emperor's Envoy was soliciting 
 the Turk's alliance against Russia, and the Kegent, on his 
 side, aware of the possibility that Goertz's plan might be 
 realised independently of France, authorised De Bonac, who 
 had great influence at the Porte, to stand by Prince Dashkof, 
 The Tsar begged the King to stand godfather to his 
 daughter Nathalia, and the Regent replied to this courtesy 
 by assuring Schleinitz that Campredon should be disowned. 
 But the discovery of Cellamare's conspiracy, and of the 
 letters of Schleinitz, amongst the imprudent Minister's 
 papers, threw more cold water on the Russo- French rela- 
 tions. And the Regent's indignation at the complicity of 
 the Russian Minister — offensive enough, in all good truth — 
 was likely to be increased by the fact that all fear of Goertz 
 was now a thing of the past. The headsman had settled his 
 account. But the Tsar's conciliatory attitude, and an early 
 peace with Spain, gradually brought things back to their 
 former condition. Peter had set his heart on emerging from 
 his state of isolation, and, in January 1720, Schleinitz was 
 again at work, bombarding the Regent with requests for 
 F"rcnch mediation. All he claimed was a written declaration 
 that the King was bound by no engagement incompatible 
 with the impartiality indispensable to a mediator. But the 
 Due d'Orlcans took a high stand : declaring he had already 
 said Campredon was disowned, and that his word was worth 
 all the documents in the world. The Tsar gave in at last, 
 on every point, even on the association of England with 
 P^rance in the matter of mediation, although he had consider- 
 able grievances against the former country.^ 
 
 This prompt agreement and obsequiousness had their real 
 
 ' Letter from ihe T.>ar to the Due d'Orlcans, May 29, 1720 (Paris Foreign 
 Office). 
 
384 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 foundation in another reason — a secret one, which was to 
 sway the policy of the Russian ruler in all his future 
 negotiations with the Regent and with France. In July 
 17 19, poor La Vie made a heroic effort to send a special 
 desj^atch to Paris, with a sensational piece of intelligence. 
 The Tsar had taken it into his head to marry his second 
 daughter — ' very handsome and well proportioned, and who 
 would be taken to be a perfect beauty, if the colour of her 
 hair were not a little too fiery' — to the young King of France. 
 The Lad}' in question was the Princess Elizabeth. Peter at 
 first thought of finding lier a husband in the person of the 
 King of PLngland's grandson.^ When this request was 
 denied, he turned, with all his usual swiftness and eagerness, 
 to the idea of a French alliance. But, once again, his Diplo- 
 matic representative in Paris failed him. Hardly had 
 Schlcinitz emerged from the unpleasant predicament into 
 which his intercourse with Cellamare had brought him, 
 before he found himself accused, by the Regent, of having 
 betra)ed the secret of the negotiations in which he had 
 taken part. The F"rench Government refused to treat with 
 him. He was recalled, but was unable to return, being 
 detained, like de Verton, by his creditors, and all his fortune 
 having disappeared in Law's speculations, he was soon 
 reduced 'to the last extremity of misery.'- Peter was 
 obliged to fall back on La Vie's good offices, but the 
 wretched commercial agent's communications were but 
 coldly received at Versailles. The Tsar, it was replied, 
 would have to begin by making his peace with Sweden. 
 The Tsar was willing enough, and, to that end, accepted the 
 assistance of Campredon, who spent the Spring of 1721 
 travelling backwards and forwards between Stockholm and 
 St. Petersburg. But, when that clever diplomatist had 
 successfully concluded his pacific mission, after having 
 lavished all his skill, showered compliments on the Tsar, and 
 whispered promises of ducats to his Ministers, Dubois,^ who 
 then held the reins of French politics, as soon as the Treaty 
 of Nystadt was safel\' signed, put forward fresh demands. 
 Before France went aii)' further, her mediation between Russia 
 and England must be accepted. This was the Regent's great 
 
 * Kouiakin Papers, vol. ii. p. 121. 
 
 ' \'illeroi to Duliois, Au(t. 13, 1721 (French Foreign Office). 
 
 • Campredon's De>patch, dated March 23rd, 1721 (French Foreign Office). 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 385 
 
 object, and his Minister's. The Tsar agreed to discuss the 
 proposal, but he, too, was longing to introduce another 
 subject, and hardly knew how to set about it. His plans 
 had undergone a change. Dolgorouki, who had replaced 
 Schleinitz in Paris, had heard the King was affianced to a 
 Spanish Princess. But France was so richly endowed with 
 Princes that a suitable husband for the Tsarevna might yet 
 be found within its borders. In November 1721, Tolstoi' 
 flattered himself he had at last found means of broachini; 
 the subject. With an innocent air, he showed Campredon a 
 copy of the Gazette de Hollande, which announced the 
 nomination of the Marquis de Belle-Isle as the King's 
 Ambassador Extraordinary to St. Petersburg, charged to 
 request the hand of the Tsar s eldest daughter, for the Due 
 de Chartres.^ Campredon knew his business too well to be 
 deceived as to the origin of this false news. But he was some- 
 what taken aback at the extent of the political combinations 
 which the Tsar desired to attach to this new plan. Russia 
 was to guarantee the status quo ; the King of Spain was to 
 renounce his claim to the French Crown, in favour of the 
 Kegent; there was to be a mutual guarantee between Russia 
 and PVance, ensuring the Russian succession to the future 
 Duchesse de Chartres, and, meanwhile, the Duke de Chartres 
 was to be elected King of Poland. All these points, and 
 many others, were contained in a memorandum drawn up 
 in January 1 722, which the luckless Schleinitz, lifted 
 temporarily out of his beggary, by mean^ of a few thousand 
 roubles, was charged to present to the Versailles Cabinet, — 
 Dolgorouki's official intervention appearing both inadvisable 
 and risky to the Tsar.^ Campredon, too, was requested to 
 bring forward these proposals and requests, and to solicit 
 instructions to reply to them. 
 
 These instructions were long in coming, but I am inclined 
 to think Dubois has been unjustly blamed for the prolonged 
 silence in which he is said to have taken refuge. The 
 Cardinal Minister, and his Representative at the Russian 
 Court, are described as having been in complete conflict 
 over the matter. The Diplomat, half distracted b)- a delay 
 which compromised the success of his negotiation, and 
 
 ^ Campredon's Despatch, Nov. 24, 1721. 
 
 ^ Memorandum presented by Schleinitz, Fe'\ 10, 1722. Secret instructiors 
 addressed to him, Dec. 1721, flench Foreign Office {Russia, vcl. xi. p. 420). 
 
386 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 imperilled the interests of his country ; — the Cardinal, 
 absorbed by personal anxieties, which rendered him indif- 
 ferent to an\' other. Many picturesque details have been 
 grouped about the incident. We hear of fifteen couriers 
 hurr\ing one after the other from St. Petersburg to Paris, 
 and vainly awaiting orders in the Versailles ante-chamber; 
 — of Campredon himself, shut up in his house, and counter- 
 feiting sickness, and of de Bonac, at Constantinople, inter- 
 vening, on his own responsibilit}", in the disputes between 
 Russia and Turke\', with the object of saving this invaluable 
 alliance from the failure which threatened it.^ French 
 historical authorities are pcrj^etually at war with the 
 Government of the Regency, and a foreign writer can 
 scarcely dare to contradict historians who are his own 
 masters in his art, but he may, perhaps, venture to set 
 forth actual facts. Campredon never sent fifteen couriers to 
 Cardinal Dubois, — he would have found that more than 
 difficult. No courier could travel, in those days, from St. 
 Petersburg to Versailles, for less than five or six thousand 
 iivres, and, at that particular moment, the French Diplomat, 
 whose salary was more than a year in arrear, had probably 
 shut himself up in his house for reasons of economy. 
 During the whole duration of his mission, tico couriers, who 
 travelled in compan\', for safety, carried all the extraordinary 
 despatches between the two Capitals. And the Marquis de 
 Bonac had no need, when he made up for the weakness of 
 French Diplomacy on the banks of the Neva, by his personal 
 efforts at Constantinople, to take coun.sel with his own 
 patriotism and clear-headedness ; all he did was to follow 
 ver\' clear, and by no means fresh instructions, which were 
 constantly renewed up till January 1723.^ Finally, the 
 Cardinal, who, at the close of 1723, sent Campredon orders 
 which .set French foreign policy on a new path, bristling 
 with difficulties, could not, /;/ 1724, have been so absorbed 
 by the anxieties of Home Government and of his own 
 personal position, as to leave his agent, for almost twelve 
 months, without any fresh insUuctions ; and for this simple 
 reason, — he was dead ! 
 
 ^ .See, amongst other authorities, Vamlal, Louis. XV. ct Elisabeth (Paris, 
 1SS2), pp. 64, 65. 
 
 ■■^ De Bonne's Instuutinns, J.nn. 6, I72^ His (lesjiatch to Dubois, Jan. 5, 
 1723, P'rcnch I'Vjrcifjn Oftice ( yw-irr, vol. Ixv.). 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE • 387 
 
 The Cardinal did indeed leave Campredon's despatches 
 and Baron de Schleinitz' and Prince Dolgorouki's mc mo- 
 randa unanswered, /or jusi six months. But this long silence 
 did not fol/oiv, as has been generally supposed, on the de- 
 spatch of \\\s fi7'st instructions, as to the extraordinary Diplo- 
 matic overtures which had reached him through various 
 channels from the Russian Court. The silence preceded the 
 instructions, and was, at that moment, perfectly justified. 
 The whole of the incident took place between the Spring 
 and Autumn of 1722. Peter, having made peace with Sweden, 
 had suddenly changed his views as to his French Alliance. 
 Up to this point, he had only considered it as a warlike 
 expedient ; he now regarded it as the basis of a whole 
 political edifice, which was to include the two farthest extre- 
 mities of Europe — Poland and Spain — which edifice he 
 desired to crown by a family contract and a brilliant 
 marriage. 1 his marriage was, as a matter of fact, the end 
 and aim of the whole undertaking. The bomb once fired, he 
 left his capital, and undertook a some\\hat adventurous ex- 
 pedition, more than problematic in its results. I allude to 
 his Persian campaign. His absence lasted six months ; the 
 Cardinal's silence covered the same period of time. 1 am 
 inclined to think that Dubois did the wisest thing possible 
 under the circumstances, and to affirm, that Campredon 
 fully agreed with him. He made no attempt to multiply 
 his couriers, and never lost patience, except as regarded the 
 fact that he was left without money. Nothing really suf- 
 fered, save and except his own strong taste for expense and 
 luxury. 
 
 In the month of October 1722, news reached Versailles of 
 the relative success of the Persian expedition, of the likeli- 
 hood of a fresh conflict between Russia and Turkey, and of 
 the departure of lagoujinski for Vienna, on a, probabl}', 
 important mission. Dubois forthwith concluded it was 
 time to speak, and, pre-occupicd as he may hitherto have 
 been, by the crisis through which the Regent's Government 
 was passing, in consequence of his own struggle with Ville- 
 roy, it was not too late. The two couriers already referred 
 to, Massip and Puylaurent, left Versailles on the 25th of 
 October 1722, and arrived at Moscow on the 5th of De- 
 cember — before lagoujinski's departure. Campredon, who 
 was warned of their approach, ventured, before their arrival, 
 
388 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 to joke the departing Diplomat. lagoujinski had just rid 
 himself of his wife, and forced her to take the veil. Was he, 
 the {'"rcnch Minister inquired, going to Vienna in search of 
 a new partner? ' I would rather have sought one in Paris,' 
 replied the Russian, 'but you have kept us waiting too long.* 
 ' Pray wait a few days longer,' answered the Frenchman. 
 
 Massip and Puylaurent brought the French Envoy every- 
 thing his heart could desire — clear and definite orders in the 
 same sense as those De Bonac had received, monc)' to set 
 him on his feet again, and more money, to distribute to those 
 about him. The sums bestowed on him were very liberal, 
 and his orders, on the whole, were very reasonable. The 
 Versailles authorities would not hear of mixing up the two 
 affairs. The Franco-Russian alliance was one thing, the 
 idea of marrying the Due de Chartres to the Tsarevna was 
 another. The first question depended on the subsidies to be 
 paid by France, and the services to be rendered by Russia. 
 ' France was willing to give as many as 400,000 crowns a 
 year ; would Russia absolutely promise the assistance of an 
 army, in the case of a war with Germany ? ' The second 
 question was a matter of expediency. If the Princess l^liza- 
 beth's dowry was to consist of the Crown of Poland, she 
 must bring that dowry in her hand. All accessory condi- 
 tions would be easily arranged. The Regent would even 
 consent to recognise the Tsar's lately assumed Imperial title, 
 though not, of course, without claiming a considerable price 
 in return for this concession. 
 
 The negotiation seemed in a fair way to success. Why 
 then did it fail? How came it to be delayed again, 
 and for a considerable time? Through no fault of the 
 Cardinal's, certainl)-. The first difficulties arose out of the 
 nature and diplomatic habits of the Russian Government, to 
 which I have already referred. Muscovite Diplomacy always 
 worked secretly, groping its way. Every conference was 
 hedged in with an amount of precaution which sorely 
 hindered progress. The Ministers, full of suspicion and 
 constantly on the qjii vive, were inapproachable in their own 
 offices. Secret interviews were held, — sometimes even in 
 such places as the Cafe of the ' Four Frigates,' a favourite 
 resort of common sailors. The Tsar, as distrustful and 
 secretive as his Ministers, always made some public pretext 
 for conferring with a foreign Diplomat, to mask the real 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 389 
 
 object of the interview. In February 1723, he took advan- 
 tage of Campredon's request for an audience, to announce 
 the death of Madame, to send for him to his house at 
 Preobrajenskoie, where, behind carefully closed doors, and 
 assisted by Catherine, who acted as interpreter, he opened 
 his heart ; — and then it became evident that the two Powers 
 were once more utterly at variance. Campredon held to his 
 instructions, which had not changed, and were not to change, 
 even after Dubois and the Regent were dead, and the Due 
 de Bourbon was at the head of affairs. The Russian 
 Sovereign's ideas had altered. He still desired to marry 
 his daughter to a French Prince, and to give her Poland 
 for her portion, declaring that the reigning king of that 
 country would ' be easily persuaded, through the medium 
 of some new mistress, witty and attractive, to vacate the 
 throne.' But he seemed opposed, both in word and deed, to 
 any political alliance between the two countries, tie hinted 
 at a possible rupture with Turkey, from which Power he 
 desired to retake the town of Azof He seemed to meditate 
 an expedition into Sweden, with the object of placing the 
 Duke of Holstein on the throne, aided by a popular insur- 
 rection. He even spoke of joining the Pretender, and send- 
 ing Russian troops to make a descent on the shores of 
 Great Britain. 1 In August 1723, just after the death of 
 Dubois, the new Secretary of State, De Morx-ille, then taking 
 up the direction of foreign affairs, was fain to write to Cam- 
 predon in the following terms : ' Your despatches have proved 
 more clearly than ever the utter impossibility of treating 
 with the Tsar, until he has settled his plans and ideas . . . 
 we must wait till time and opportunity permit us to judge 
 whether the King may safely make engagements with this 
 Prince, and carry them out.' They waited thus, and vainly, 
 until Peter died. No progress whatever was made. Cam- 
 predon may, at one moment, have thought success was 
 within his grasp. Early in August 1724, the Tsar was filled 
 with joy at the news of a pacific arrangement, to which De 
 ISonac had powerfully contributed, of his differences with 
 Turkey. As he was leaving the Church, in which a Te 
 Deum had just been sung, he embraced the P'rench Envoy, 
 and sj)oke these words, big with promise — ' You have always 
 been an angel of peace to me ! I am not ungrateful, as you 
 
 * Solovief, vol. xviii. p. 131, 
 
390 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 will soon perceive.' A few days later, the Russian Ministers 
 appeared at the French Lei^ation, their faces wreathed in 
 smiles. Their master had given in on every point, even on 
 that which had hitherto formed <jne of the principal difficul- 
 ties of the negotiation — the admission of luigland into the 
 arrangement to be made with France. The alliance seemed 
 a settled thing. But all these rejoicings were premature. 
 There was another long pause, and the signing of the Treaty 
 was still deferred. Peter and all his circle were so completely 
 absorbed by the IMons business, that, until the end of No- 
 vember, it was impossible to get speech with them. And 
 besides, every time Camj^redon met Ostermann, he was 
 obliged to risk his life in crossing the Neva. There 
 was no bridge, and great blocks of ice came whirling 
 down the stream. When, at last, communications 
 were re-opened and a conference arranged, matters once 
 more came to a full standstill ; the Tsar had changed his 
 mind, and would not hear of England being included in the 
 alliance. What had happened ? It was a very simple 
 matter. Kourakin, who had been sent to Paris, to replace 
 Dolgorouki, finding his new post a pleasant one, and desiring 
 to remain there, had sent home accounts of certain imaginary 
 diplomatic triumphs, of which the Russian Sovereign's 
 friendly expressions to Campredon, and his conciliatory 
 inclinations, had been the outcome. Kourakin had even 
 gone so far as to give his master hopes of a possibia 
 marriage between the Tsarevna and Louis XV. himself, 
 — whom he described as being tired of his Spanish fianc^e.^ 
 But he had been forced, finally, to acknowledge the truth, 
 and even to admit that the marriage of the Russian l*rincess 
 with any one of the Princes of the Blood, was considered by 
 the PVcnch Ministers 'too remote a possibility to be mixed 
 up in the present negotiation.' 
 
 P"rom that moment, the fate of that negotiation was scaled. 
 It did indeed seem to return to some life and hope, after 
 Catherine I.'s accession, but it soon fell back into oblivion. 
 The Treaty lay unsigned, and the Tsarevna Elizabeth 
 remained unmarried. The alliance thus prematurely pro- 
 jected was not to become a reality for another century and a 
 half, and its way was yet to be prepared, amidst trials and 
 convulsions which shook the whole European continent. 
 
 ^ Solovief, vol. xviii. p. 126. 
 
THE APOGEE— FRANCE 391 
 
 The failure of the attempt, made on the threshold of thp i8th 
 century, may, I think, be explained and justified without 
 necessarily casting blame on the Governments either of 
 France or of Russia. No agreement was come to, because, 
 in the first place, the separation between the two countries 
 was too great, and in the second, because, while apparently 
 desiring the arrangement, they were, in reality, marching, 
 from the beginning to the end of the negotiation, in dia- 
 metrically opposite directions. The very wish for any under- 
 standing was, in the first instance, quite one-sided. Peter 
 was for some time the only person who seriously felt it. 
 Then, when his desire was shared by both countries, one 
 Government claimed to realise it in one fashion, and the 
 other in another. France desired a political, and Peter a 
 domestic alliance, — each of which only suited the purpose 
 of the nation which put it forward. We cannot wonder, nor 
 find fault, if the French King felt little inclination to espouse 
 the natural daughter of a ci-dcvcxnt laundress (to say no 
 worse), whose birth had been legitimized by a tardy and 
 secret marriage ; nor that Russia was scarcely disposed to 
 assume the ill-paid political yoke which had already galled 
 the necks of Poland and Sweden. There was no clearly 
 marked ground for the union of the two nations, and of their 
 interests. That meeting-point was to be prepared in later 
 days, by a recent cataclysm, which has affected the whole 
 scheme of European politics. 
 
 26 
 
BOOK II— TIIK INTERNAL STRUGGLE— 
 THE REFORMS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE NEW R£GIMK — THE END OF THE STRELTSY — 
 ST. PETERSBURG 
 
 I. The new Regime — Preliminary question — The Reforms and the customs of 
 ancient Muscovy — Slavophiles, and Lovers of the West— Origin of the 
 Reforming movement — Krnm nv/itiion to rtfoliition — (leneral character- 
 istics of the work — The order in which its results may be studied — Typical 
 features. 
 II. The end of the Stieltsy — l!s causes — The new army and the old armed 
 bands — Discontent of the latter — Mutiny— Peter makes it a pretext for 
 extermination — A huge inquiry— Fourteen torture chambers — Lack of 
 results— The Tsarevna Sojihia — Her complicity n'lt proved — She is 
 sentenced to take the veil — Wholesale executions— Peter s share in them 
 — The Juiige — The Moscow Place (\c la Greve — The Lobuoie miesto. 
 III. St. Petersburg— Before and after Poltava — Fortress or Capital? — Peter's 
 reasons for making it his seat of Government — Criticism and justification 
 — The National traditions. 
 
 My Russian readers would not forgive me, if I began this 
 section of my work without touching on a prefatory 
 problem, which, — apart from historical criticism, properly 
 so called, — is the inexhaustible subject of a most passionate 
 national discussion. Did not Peter, when he cast Russia 
 into the arms of European civilisation, do violence to the 
 history of his country, and despise and overlook native 
 elements of original culture, susceptible of a development 
 which would, perhaps, have been superior to, and, at all 
 events, more in conformity with, the spirit of his people? 
 This is the great bone of contention between the Slavophiles 
 and the lovers of the West. 
 
 .S02 
 
THE NEW REGIME 393 
 
 The question of ethnical origin, which seenns, nowadays, 
 to be fairly settled, and cast into oblivion, may be put on 
 one side. Physiologically speaking, Russia, whether she 
 wills it or not, holds a clearly marked place in the great 
 Indo-European family. Morally speaking, her civilisation 
 is founded and built up with Indo-European materials. 
 Certain of these materials, by their geographical and 
 historical conditions, have been endowed with special 
 characteristics, giving birth to customs and ideas, con- 
 ceptions and habits, quite apart from those of other 
 nations: — as, for example, in matters of property, of family 
 life, and of the sovereign power. Did Peter make ' a clean 
 sweep' of all this? And that being granted, did he act 
 wisely in so doing? The whole discussion now lies in these 
 questions. 
 
 The inquiry I am now about to make will, I hope, if it 
 does not decide, at all events throw some light upon, the 
 subject. It will lead us at once to the recognition, on one 
 side, of the inconsistency, the rudimentary, embryonic, and 
 inorganic condition, of the greater part of those elements 
 upon which the great Reformer was called to work ; and, on 
 the other, of the persistency of certain features, some of 
 which remained intact, under a factitious appearance of 
 modification, while others completely escaped the action of 
 the Reform. 
 
 The ' clean sweep ' was not so complete as some have 
 imagined. The old n^ginie had, in many respects, become 
 unworkable before Peter's time. It was essentially founded 
 on two principles — orthodoxy and the absolute power 
 {sajiiodierjavic), — and these, for more than a quarter of a 
 century, had been tottering to their fall ; the first, ruined by 
 the inward faults of its original organisation, and the second, 
 by an exaggeration of its fundamental idea, due, in part, to 
 that political competition, from which Peter himself only 
 escaped by means of a coup d'etat. After the Muscovite 
 hegemony rose on the ruins of the ancient independent and 
 rival States, the Sovereign's personal power took on an 
 Oriental form, based on his private right. All idea of 
 feudal suzerainty was past and gone ; the ruler held by a 
 title of ownership, which affected both the persons of his 
 subjects, and their property. No other title was acknow- 
 ledged, save and except in the case of the Church. There 
 
394 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 was no passr.ij^c b)' legal inheritance from one subject to 
 another, — nothing but a division, occasional!)' hereditary 
 {''ottc/iina), oftener a mere life interest {po)nicstit), but 
 invariably arbitrary, of lands, granted by the Sovereign, in 
 exchange for service paid. There was no private commerce 
 or industry, or hardly any, — for commerce and industry, like 
 everything else, were the Tsar's property, and his monopoly, 
 which was well-nigh universal, only brooked the existence 
 of the middleman. The Sovereign even bought food of 
 every kind, — meat, fruit, and vegetables, — wholesale, and 
 sold it retail.^ The independent Dukes of former times, 
 the Rurikovitch of Tver, laroslav, Smolensk, Tchernihof, 
 Riazan, Viasma, and Rostov, had ended b}- being no more 
 than a mere aristocrac)', among the servants of the common 
 master. They balanced the peasantry, — all of them, except 
 a few free peasants in the South, serfs, since the year 1 600, 
 — and avenged their own abasement upon it. There 
 was no other social class, no trading corporations, no social 
 existence. The Merchant Corporation of Novgorod, which 
 had originally brought prosperity to the old cit\-, had dis- 
 appeared, with every other trace of Norman organisation 
 and culture. Moscow, in her struggle \t'ith the Mongol 
 power, had borrowed Mongol principles and forms of 
 government, and, to ensure her supremacy over the 
 neighbouring towns, had carried the application of those 
 princii^les and methods to their furthest consequences. 
 
 The Tsar then was not only the master, he was, in the 
 most absolute sense of the term, the proprietor, of his 
 country and of his people. But his right and his might, 
 soaring as they were, lacked firm support. Beneath them 
 was an empty void, filled with the dust of slavery. There 
 were no social groups, there was no hierarchy, there was no 
 organic bond, of any kind, between these incoherent monads. 
 They all came and went at random, driven hither and 
 thither by elementary instincts, swarming in a wild con- 
 fusion of unbridled passion and brutal appetite ; falling on 
 the nearest prey, passing from Peter to Sophia, and back 
 again from Sophia to Peter, with all the unconscious 
 indifference peculiar to untaught masses. The present was 
 chaos, the future was black darkness. 
 
 The Church, when it reached Kief from Byzantium, was 
 
 ' Kotoshihin, Memoirs, ch. x. 
 
THE NEW REGIME 395 
 
 already worn out and degraded. All moral strength had 
 been lost in the decadence of the Greek Empire ; the spirit 
 of the faith had been overlaid with forms ; religion was 
 swaddled in the bonds of a complicated devotion, stifled 
 under relics, images, special prayers, fasts, and an utterly 
 incomprehensible liturgy. The priests, thanks to the huge 
 number of monasteries which sprang up all over the 
 country, soon grew rich and influential. But these 
 advantages were only used, — as the Catholic priests used 
 theirs, in the worst periods of the Papal power, — for the 
 intellectual debasement of the people, without any attempt 
 to follow the example of the best Popes, by striving after 
 the moral and economic improvement of the masses. 
 When, under the Tsar Alexis, the Russian Church desired 
 to introduce a simple reform in her ritual, her weakness 
 instantly became apparent. Mutiny and schism raised their 
 heads — and the Raskol broke out. 
 
 Peter reached power by a coup d'etat. The Strcltsy, in- 
 fluenced by Sophia, attempted to overthrow him by another. 
 Thus, at a very early age, he became aware of the void 
 on which his omnipotence rested. When, — Chief of a great 
 Empire as he was, — he essayed, prior to the defeat of Narva, 
 and under the walls of Azof, to employ the strength he 
 believed himself to possess, everything gave \\a}' beneath 
 his feet. Within a few hours, his armies were dispersed. — 
 within a few days, his treasury was empty, — and his whole 
 administration broken down. 
 
 The great Reformer's predecessors were fully conscious of 
 this condition of things, and did what they could to remedy 
 it. Their ideas, their attempts, and even their desires, may, 
 in some cases, have been somewhat vague and undecided, 
 but in other matters, they took active steps, and they 
 sketched out a whole programme of reforms, with the object, 
 not indeed of radically modifying, but of improving the 
 existing rcf^ime, and fitting it for the new demands of a 
 political position which was constantly increasing in import- 
 tance, and ambitious possibilities. Their programme included 
 the reorganisation of the armed forces, and, as an inevitable 
 consequence, the improvement of the finances, — the develop- 
 ment of the economic resources of the country, — and the 
 encouragement of foreign commerce. They admitted the 
 necessity of more direct intercourse and co-operation with 
 
396 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 foreign countries. They looked to .1 commencement of 
 social reforms, by the emancipation of the urban classes, 
 and even of the serfs, and finally, under the auspices of 
 Nicone, they laid a finger on the Church, and, consequently, 
 on the National education, — the Church being the only 
 vehicle of education in existence. 
 
 Then we come to Peter. What otJicr, what nczv thing did 
 he do? Nothing, or, at most, very little indeed. The pro- 
 gramme above referred to was his programme ; he enlarged 
 it a little, added the Reform of the national customs ; he 
 modified the nature of the intercourse already in existence 
 with the Western world ; but he, too, left the foundations of 
 the jjolitical edifice he had inherited, intact, and he even 
 failed, from the social point of view, to carry out the plans 
 his predecessors had conceived or prepared. In spite of the 
 ajjparent universality of his efforts, his work — and this has 
 not been sufficiently noted — is, generally speaking, some- 
 what limited, and exceedingly su[jcrficial, even within those 
 limits. It is, as I have previously said, a sort o{ rc-plastcriug 
 axxd pafch<uork business, with nothing absolutely new about 
 it. It was begun before his time, — what he did was to 
 change the conditions under which it was to be carried on 
 in future. The new factor was, in the first place, the endless 
 war, which, fcjr twenty long years, was to inspire, direct and 
 drive him forward, and which resulted, on one hand, in 
 hurrying the work of e\'olution already commenced, and, on 
 the other, of inverting the natural order of the political and 
 social modifications consequent upon it, to suit temporary 
 requirements, not necessarily corresponding to the most 
 urgent needs of the national life. In the second place, we 
 have the tastes, habits of mind, manias and fancies, which 
 the gifted but whimsical ruler owed to his education, his 
 visits to the Sloboda, and his intercourse with Europe. 
 These he erected into principles, giving them a place in his 
 great scheme, quite out of proportion with their intrinsic 
 value. These innovations of his were just the points which 
 were most offensive to his subjects. Finally, the Reformer's 
 personal temperament, which endued all his measures with 
 qualities of violence, excess and hastiness, both painful and 
 disconcerting to every one they affected, must be taken into 
 account. What had been a peaceful evolution became, m 
 consequence of these peculiarities, a 7'cvolntion. Those very 
 
THE NEW REGIME 397 
 
 tendencies and attempts which, in the reigns of Alexis and 
 Feodor, roused but the slightest resistance, now provoked 
 an insurrection, which, in its earlier days, was almost general, 
 and necessitated strong and vigorous measures of repression. 
 The reforms, promulgated at the will of the Sovereign, in 
 sharp and sudden jerks, without any apparent order or con- 
 secutiveness, fell on his subjects like storms of hail, or 
 thunderbolts. Peter himself, harried by his long war, 
 carried away by his own eagerness, fascinated by what he 
 had seen in Germany, in England, and in Holland, could 
 neither clearly arrange his plans, nor prepare them thought- 
 fully, nor show patience in their execution. He swept over 
 his country and his people like a whirlwind, extemporising 
 and inventing expedients, and terrorising all around him. 
 
 But this peculiarity, as I should not dream of denying, 
 gave the renovating movement, out of which modern Russia 
 sprang, a fulness and a swiftness, which the timid attempts 
 of Alexis and Feodor could never have imparted. Peter, in 
 a few years, had performed the work of several centuries. It 
 may be doubted whether this sudden bound across time and 
 space was an unmixed benefit. That is another point, the 
 study of which must, in my opinion, be preceded by that of 
 accomplished facts, — in other words, of the results obtained. 
 
 The work of tracing these results, as they successively 
 appear, in the history of the great reign, would be a most 
 ungrateful task, and could only inspire a general sensation 
 of chaos. The order of their appearance was determined, 
 up to a certain point, by the great originating element to 
 which I have referred. The war made military reforms a 
 first necessity, and these called forth financial measures, 
 which, in their turn, made economic enterprises indispens- 
 able. But this procession of things is not an absolute 
 rule, as the attempt at municipal re-organisation, at the 
 very beginning of Peter's reign, will prove. I shall be 
 guided, in my inquiry, by the relative importance of the 
 various points. But to clear the way, and cast some light 
 upon the wide and crowded field I have to consider, I will 
 iirst mention certain features, which, — though their relation to 
 the Reformer's work is in itself merely accessory, and very 
 secondary, — have been considered by the public to represent 
 its essence, and its whole scope. And the public, elementary 
 as its conception of matters naturally is, has n(jt been alto- 
 
39* PETER THE GREAT 
 
 g^etlicr in the wroni;. Insii^nificant in ihcmsclves as these 
 features may be, the\' are most invaluable as the expression 
 ami the api^arcnt symbol of the new regime. And for this 
 reason, doubtless, the)' have a[)pealed to the imaj^ination of 
 the masses. I refer to the 'clippint^ of the beards,' the 
 suppression of the Strcltsy, and the buildinij of St. ]*eters- 
 bur-r. 
 
 II 
 
 When the young Tsar returned from his first European 
 journe)', he appeared before his subjects in the cast-off 
 garments of Augustus of Poland, — a Western costume, 
 which, hitherto, he had never worn in their sight. A few 
 hours later, at a banquet given by General Shem, he laid 
 hands on a pair of scissors, and began to clip the guests' 
 beards. His jester, Tourguenief, followed his example. The 
 witnesses of this scene may have thought it a mere despot's 
 whim. Peter himself was naturally hairless, his beard was 
 sparse, and his moustache grew thinly. He had been drink- 
 ing freely, and his behaviour may have been taken for a mere 
 outburst of gaiety. Jiut no! a few days later, the clipping 
 was sanctioned by a ukase. A huge reform, moral, intel- 
 lectual, and economic, had been initiated by an absurd 
 festive incident, which took place between the drinking ot 
 two glasses of wine. I shall later refer to the more serious 
 side of the matter. 
 
 Close upon this came the suppression of the Strdtsy. This 
 was an unexpected but a very natural consequence, — the 
 first, — of the warlike projects which had haunted the )-oung 
 Tsar ever since he had made acquaintance with his Saxon- 
 Polish friend, Augustus. He had learnt, under the walls of 
 Azof, the true value of his armed bands, and had realised 
 that the military strength he had believed himself to 
 possess had no real existence. He had then openly 
 declared his intention of training his new levies on the 
 PLuropean system, — of the relative superiority of which 
 he had already seen proof, — and of making his two 
 'pleasure regiments' the nucleus of the new organisation. 
 And one of his apparent reasons for crossing the frontier, 
 was to study the principles to be applied to this work. 
 Thus the old Muscovite ami)', — the Stnilsy, — saw itsclt 
 
THE END OF THE STRELTSY 399 
 
 doomed to disappear. For some time past the most un- 
 grateful tasks had been allotted to it. During the war games 
 which had taken place before the campaign of Azof, the 
 Streltsy were always ordered to represent the vanquished 
 side. After the capture of Azof, the ' pleasure regiments ' 
 went to Moscow, where they made a triumphal entry, re- 
 ceived an ovation, and were loaded with rewards, — while the 
 Streltsy were left behind to rebuild the fortifications of the 
 conquered town. Humiliated and ill-treated, even be- 
 fore they were absolutely destroyed, they broke out into 
 mutiny. In March 1698, while Peter was in England, they 
 sent a deputation to Moscow from Azof, to explain their 
 grievances. It returned without having obtained satisfac- 
 tion and bearing exciting news. Peter had gone over to the 
 foreigners, body and soul, and his sister, the Tsarevna Sophia, 
 who was shut up in the Dicvitchyi Mojiastyr, appealed to her 
 former partisans, to defend the Church and Throne against 
 a revolutionary and impious Sovereign. Letters from the 
 ex-Regent (whether false or genuine, no one knew) were cir- 
 culated in the regiments. A body of Streltsy, numbering some 
 2000 men, was detached from the Azof garrison, and sent to 
 Vielikie-Louki to guard the Polish frontier. The men were 
 furious at being separated from their comrades, and forced 
 to march from one end of the Empire to the other. The 
 Streltsy had always been left at home in time of peace. 
 They mutinied, and marched on Moscow. General Shei'n 
 marched against them with superior forces and artillery, met 
 them on the 17th of June, within sight of the Monastery of 
 the Resurrection, killed some, took the rest, hung several of 
 his prisoners, after having put them to the question, — and 
 the incident appeared closed.^ 
 
 But it was far from being closed. Peter, when he learnt 
 the news, hastened his return, resolved to take advantage of 
 the circumstances, and strike a decisive blow. Ever since 
 his childhood, the Streltsy had stood in his way. They had 
 put his relations and friends to the sword ; they had sup- 
 ported a usurper's power against his own, and on this last 
 occasion, when parle)'ing wii.h Shc'i'n, before the skirmish 
 in which they were routed, they had used the most violent 
 language with respect to Lefort, and the other foreigners 
 who surrounded him. He was weary of it all ; he was 
 
 ^ Moscow State Papers, The Streltsy ; Solovief, vol. xiv. p. 254. 
 
400 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 determined to make an end, to clear his native soil of these 
 seeds of perpetual revolt, and drown the visions which had 
 haunted him, from his cradle, in a sea of blood. A few 
 blows with the knout, and half a dozen executions, would 
 not suffice him ; the work, this time, was to be done on a 
 large scale, and satisfy him wholly. The inquir)-, which 
 Shein and Romodanovski had hastily conducted and closed, 
 was reopened, and took proportions unprecedented, as I 
 would fain believe, in the history of the human race. Four- 
 teen torture-chambers {aastieuok) were opened in the village 
 of Prcobrajenskoie, and their hellish apparatus,^ — even to 
 gridirons on which the Hesh of the prisoners was left to 
 grill, — worked day and night. One man was put to the 
 question seven times over, and received ninety-nine blows 
 from the knout. .Fifteen such blows generally resulted in 
 death. Lieutenant-Colonel Korpakof stuck a knife into his 
 throat to put an end to his own anguish ; but the wound was 
 not fatal, and the torture went on. Man}^ women, — wives, 
 sisters, or relations of the Strcltsy, and servants, or ladies, in 
 attendance on Sophia, — were treated in the same manner. 
 One of them bore a child in the midst of her torments. The 
 inquiry was principally concerned with the part taken by the 
 Tsarevna and her sisters in leading up to the insurrectionary 
 movem.ent. Peter was certain of their guilt. Ikit he desired 
 proof, — and proof was what the incjuiry failed to elicit. 
 ' They may very well die for us,' writes one of the princesses, 
 coolly, about some waiting-women, who were to be put to 
 the torture, and on whose silence she reckoned. One Strclctz 
 endured all the anguish of the strappado, received thirty 
 lashes with the knout, and was slowly burnt, but not a word 
 would he utter. Some half admission, some vague indica- 
 tion, was occasionally wrung from him ; as soon as he 
 recovered breath, he would contradict himself, or relapse, 
 again, into stubborn silence. Sophia herself, whom Peter, it 
 is said, examined, and put to the torture with his own 
 hands, never wavered. All her younger sister Marfa would 
 admit, was, that she had informed the ex-Regent of the 
 ajiproach of the Strcltsy, and of their desire to see her rule 
 re-established. 
 
 So far as this point was concerned, the incjuiry was an 
 utter failure. A most compromising letter from Sophia to 
 the Strr/tsj', published by Oustrialof, is acknowledged, by 
 
THE END OF THE STRELTSY 401 
 
 that generally well-informed historian,^ to be made up of 
 stray and incoherent scraps of depositions, gathered in the 
 torture-chamber, and retracted most probably by those who 
 made them. The Tsarevna was closely watched in her prison 
 in the NovodievitcJiyi Mo7iastyr,2. detachment of 100 soldiers 
 mounted guard before the convent ; but she still had means 
 of corresponding with the outer world, and of keeping up 
 daily intercourse with the Court, with the other Princesses, 
 and with her own friends. She was even able to continue to 
 exercise a most liberal hospitality. The Court officials daily 
 furnished her with 10 sterlets, 2 pike, 2 barrels of caviare, 2 
 barrels of herrings, pastry of various kinds, and ' hazel-nut 
 butter,' I viedro (about 12 quarts) of hydromel, another of 
 March beer, and 4 of ordinary beer, — every sort of food and 
 drink in fact, and extra provisions on feast days ; barrels of 
 aniseed brandy, and casks of the more ordinary species. 
 Romodanovski allowed his sisters to send her extra dainties, 
 and this, so it was thought, facilitated an exchange of secret 
 messages. The partisans of the ex-Regent had always gained 
 easy access to the monastery, amongst the crowd of beggars, 
 of both sexes, who formed a privileged class at Moscow. 
 At certain seasons of the year, hundreds of these mendicants 
 were daily received and entertained in the great Obitiels ; 
 this Hoating population, full, generally, of malcontents, 
 numbered many of the Strcltsy widows.- A movement in 
 favour of the ex-Regent certainly existed, and received co- 
 operation in this quarter. One StreltchiJia, named Ofimka 
 Kondratieva, the widow of three fierce warriors, was 
 actively engaged in it ; but no plot, properly so called, was 
 ever revealed. 
 
 The investigation proved nothing, but it exasperated the 
 }'oung Tsar's instinctive violence, and hardened him yet more. 
 He was present at the examinations, and in the torture- 
 chambers. Is it true, as some writers have declared, that 
 he enjoyed it, — delighting in the sight of the panting bodies, 
 the long-drawn anguish, and all the bitter incidents of suffer- 
 ing and death t ^ I cannot believe it. He may have watched 
 it all, I will admit, with curiosity, — with the zest of a 
 man thirsting for new sensations, and inexorably resolved 
 
 ^ Oustrialof, vol. iii. p. 159. 
 
 ^ llnJ., p. 157. 
 
 * Kostomarot, Histojy of Russia, vol. ii. p. 516. 
 
402 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 to see and touch everything himself, — his heart growing yet 
 more hard, and his imagination running wild, amidst the 
 blood)' orgy of sovereign justice. When the trial was 
 over, nothing would suffice him but wholesale executions, 
 heads falling in heaps under the executioner's axe, forests of 
 gallows, hecatombs of human life. 
 
 On the 30th of September 169.^, the first procession, 
 numbering 200 condemned men, took its way to the spot 
 chosen for the final scene. F"ive of these were beheaded on 
 the road, in front of the Tsar's house at Prcobrajenskoio, 
 and Peter himself was their executioner. This fact is 
 attested by numerous witnesses, adopted by contemporary 
 opinion, and accepted by the majority of historians.^ Leib- 
 nitz himself, in spite of his weakness for the Reforming 
 Sovereign, expresses horror and indignation at the incident.'^ 
 And Peter was not content with wielding the a.xe himself, 
 he insisted that those about him should follow his example. 
 Galitzin bungled at the work, and caused his victims 
 terrible suffering. Menshikof and Romodanovski were 
 more skilful. Two foreigners only, Lefort, and Blomberg, 
 Colonel of the Prcobrajcnskoi'e regiment, refused to perform 
 their abominable task. When the doomed men reached 
 the Red Square at Moscow, whither they were taken in 
 sledges, two in each, holding lighted tapers in their hands, 
 they were placed in rows of fifty along a tree trunk which 
 served for a block. 
 
 There were 144 fresh executions on the nth October, 
 205 on the 1 2th, 141 on the 13th, 109 on the 17th, 65 on the 
 1 8th, and 106 on the 19th. Two hundred Streltsy, three of 
 them holding copies of a petition to the Tsarevna, were 
 hung before the windows of Sophia's apartments in the 
 Novodievitcliyi Monastyr. She herself escaped prett\' easily. 
 She lost the rank which she had hitherto retained, was 
 
 ' Korh, p. 84. Guarient, in Oustrialof, vol. iii. p. 407 ; Vockerodt (Herr- 
 mann) p. 29; Villebois, Unpublished Memoirs; Solovie^, vol. xiv. p. 286; 
 Kostomarof, vol. ii. p. 517. The first edition of Korb's book, the earliest 
 work which drew European attention to these atrocities, was suppressed in 
 consequence of a recjuest addressed by the Tsar to the Viennese Court. Only 
 twelve copies were left in existence. An Knj;lish translation of a copy pre- 
 served in the Frascati Library was published. I have had the good fortune 
 of consulting one of the very rare copies of the original edition, which I owe to 
 the kindness of M. Oneguinc, a learned Russian Bibliophile, resident in Paris, 
 whom I hereby gratefully thank. 
 
 * Guerrier, p. 20. 
 
THE END OF THE STRELTSY 403 
 
 confined in a narrow cell, and thenceforth was only known 
 as the Nun Susanna. Her sister Marfa was condemned to 
 the same fate, in the Convent of the Assumption {Oiispicnski), 
 in the present Government of Vladimir, where she took 
 the name of Margaret. Both sisters died in their cloisters, 
 the elder in 1704, and the younger in 1707. 
 
 Other inquiries, followed by wholesale executions, took 
 place at Azof, and in various parts of the Empire. The 
 unhappy Streltsy were hunted hither and thither. It was 
 a war of extermination. At Moscow, in January 1699, 
 there were more inquiries and more executions. Peter's 
 absence, during November and December, at Voroncje, 
 had necessitated a pause of some weeks. The corpses 
 which strewed the Square, were carried off in thousands, 
 and thrown on to the neighbouring fields, where they 
 rotted unburied, — and still the axe worked busily. The 
 enclosure in the centre of the Red Square, — the Moscow 
 ' Place de la Greve,' — which was generally devoted to the 
 executioner's purpose, was all too small for the occasion. 
 All round the Lobnoie micsto, — a sort of brick-built plat- 
 form surrounded by a wooden palisade, — -pikes bearing 
 heads, and gallows, laden with their human fruit, stood in 
 ghastly array, until the year 1727. 
 
 That blood-stained spot, the Lobnoie viicsto^ has a char- 
 acter of its own, and a strange history, well worth knowing, 
 which explains (I dare not say, it justifies)both the sanguinary 
 scenes in which Peter insisted on playing so active a part, and 
 that part itself, inexcusable as it appears. The origin of the 
 name is quite uncertain. Some authorities derive it from the 
 Latin word /c?^/'//;//, 'a high or raised place'; others ascribe 
 it to the Russian word lob — 'head' — the place where the heads 
 of criminals are placed. There is a legend, too, that Adam's 
 head \vas buried on the spot, and here my readers will begin 
 to perceive the strange and whimsical mixture of ideas and 
 feelings, with which popular tradition has invested this 
 ghastly enclosure. A place of execution indeed, but a holy 
 spot as well ! It stood, like the LitJiostrote at Jerusalem, 
 before one of the six principal gates leading into the Krcml, 
 and had a religious and national significance of its own. 
 Here the relics and holy images brought to Moscow were 
 first deposited ; here, even yet, on .solemn occasions, religious 
 ceremonies were performed ; here it was, that the Patriarch 
 
404 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 gave his blessing to the Faithful ; and here too, the most 
 important Ukases were promulgated, and changes of ruler 
 announced to the peojile. Here, in 1550, Ivan the Terrible 
 came to confess his crimes, and publicly ask pardon of his 
 subjects. Here too the mock Dimitri proclaimed his acces- 
 sion, and here, a few weeks later, his corpse was exposed to 
 the mob, with a mask on the face, and a musical instrument 
 in the dead hand.^ 
 
 Thus the executioner's tools, and his victims' corpses, and 
 all the hideous paraphernalia of criminal punishment, did 
 not here produce the impression which would elsewhere have 
 made them objects of horror and repugnance. For they 
 were associated with the most august incidents in the public 
 life, and when Peter appeared on the scaffold, axe in hand, 
 he neither derogated from his high dignity, nor made him- 
 self odious in the e)'es of his subjects. All he did was to 
 carry out his functions as their sujireme judge. Any man, 
 at that period, might turn executioner, if the occasion arose. 
 When the work was heavy, supplementary assistance in the 
 bloody business was sought for in the open streets, and the 
 supply never failed. Peter, without ceasing to be Tsar, 
 could still be the Tsar's headsman, just as he had been his 
 drummer and his sailor. He turned his hand to the exe- 
 cutioner's duty, just as he had previously turned it to the 
 rigging of his ships. No one was shocked by his action nor 
 blamed him for it. He was much more likely to be praised! 
 
 A knowledge of these facts is essential to a thorough 
 understanding of men and things in this period of Russian 
 history, which cannot, as a rule, be interpreted or judged 
 according to our knowledge of a corresponding period in the 
 West. Peter had made up his mind to suppress the Stni/sy, 
 and did what was necessary to ensure that object. The 
 means he employed were terrible, but, in his country, terror 
 had long been a recognised method of procedure. So the 
 Strcltsy disappeared. All those on whom he laid hands in 
 Moscow, either lost their lives, or were sent into the most 
 distant parts of Siberia ; their wives and children were dri\en 
 out of the capital, and no one was allowed to give them 
 either food or work.^ 'What!' we cry, ' were they doomed 
 to die of hunger?' More than probably. The very name 
 
 * I'ylaiL-l, Old Mostow, pp. 72, 412, etc. 
 
 * GoTil-m'i^yoit/ua/, Kii^li,!) edition, p. 193. 
 
THE END OF THE STRELTSY 405 
 
 of the hated corps was proscribed. The provincial war- 
 bands, whose docihty had disarmed the Tsar's anger, were 
 reduced to the rank of private soldiery. Thus the way was 
 cleared in every quarter, and the creation of the new army, 
 which was to be the opening effort of Peter's fresh start, and 
 one of a distinctly European character, was not only rendered 
 possible, but became urgent and indispensable. The Strcltsy 
 had disappeared, but with them the army had vanished. 
 And before three months were out, Peter became aware 
 that he had gone too far and too fast, and was fain to 
 call some of his dead back into life. At the Battle of Narva, 
 in 1700, several Strcltsy Regiments fought in the Russian 
 army. These were the provincial bands whose organisation 
 and title had been taken from them by a ukase, dated i ith 
 September 1698, and reconferred by another, dated 20th 
 January 1699.^ In 1702, the Tsar himself ordered the forma- 
 tion, on the old system, of four regiments of Muscovite Strcltsy, 
 at Dorogobouje, and a similar order was given in 1704. 
 These were concessions to the necessities of the Swedish 
 war. But in 1705, after the revolt at Astrakhan, in which 
 the remnants of the old undisciplined war-bands were in- 
 volved, their final and complete destruction was resolved on. 
 Once more, long files of prisoners moved along the Moscow 
 road, and hundreds of fresh executions, on the Red Square, 
 completed the work of extermination. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It was the prospect of the great Northern war which in- 
 duced Peter to strew the Red Square with the corpses of his 
 soldiery. The chances of that same war led him to St. 
 Petersburg. When he first threw down the gauntlet to 
 Sweden, he turned his eyes on Livonia — on Narva and 
 Riga. But Livonia was so well defended that he was 
 driven northwards, towards Ingria. He moved thither 
 grudgingly, sending, in the first instance, Apraxin, who 
 turned the easily-conquered province into a desert. It was 
 not for some time, and gropingly, as it were, that the young 
 Sovereign began to see his way, and finally turned his atten- 
 tion, and his longings, to the mouth of the Neva. In former 
 years, Gustavus Adolphus had realised the strategical im- 
 
 ^ Milioukof, Peter the Great's Refonit (Si. I'tlersburg, 1892), p. 141. 
 
4o6 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 portancc of a position which his successor, Charles xil., (\\d 
 not deem worthy of consideration, and had himself studied 
 all its approaches. Peter not only took it to be valuable 
 from the military and commercial point of view : he also 
 found it most attractive, and would fain have never left it. 
 He was more at home there than anywhere else, and the 
 historical le.cjends, according to which it was true Russian 
 ground, filled him with emotion. No one knows what in- 
 spired this fondness on his part. It may have been the 
 vague resemblance of the marsh)' flats to the lowlands of 
 Holland ; it may have been the stirring of some ancestral 
 instinct. According to a legend, accepted by Nestor, it was 
 by the mouth of the Neva that the earliest Norman Con- 
 querors of the country pas.sed on their journeys across the 
 Varegian Sea — //leir own sea — and so to Rome ! Peter 
 would seem to have desired to take up the thread of that 
 tradition, nine centuries old ; and the story of his own foun- 
 dation of the town has become legendary and epic. One 
 popular description represents him as snatching a halbert 
 from one of his soldiers, cutting two strips of turf, and laying 
 them crosswise with the words, ' Here there shall be a town ! ' 
 P\)undation stones were evidently lacking, and sods had to 
 take their place! Then, dropping the halbert, he seized a 
 spade, and began the first embankment. At that moment 
 an eagle appeared, hovering over the Tsar's head. It was 
 struck by a shot from a musket. Peter took the wounded 
 bird, set it on his wrist, and departed in a boat to inspect the 
 neighbourhood.^ This occurred on the i6th of May 1703. 
 
 History adds, that the Swedish prisoners employed on the 
 work died in thousands. The most indispensable tools were 
 lacking. There were no wheelbarrows, and the earth was 
 carried in the corners of men's clothing. A wooden fort was 
 first built, on the island bearing the Finnish name of lanni- 
 Saari (Hare Island). This was the future citadel of St. Peter 
 and St. Paul. Then came a wooden church, and the modest 
 cottage which was to be Peter's first {)alace. Near these, the 
 following year, there rose a Lutheran Church, ultimately re- 
 moved to the left bank of the river, into the Liteinaia quarter, 
 and also a tavern, the famous inn of the Tour Frigates, which 
 did duty as a Town Hall for a long time before it became a 
 place of diplomatic meeting. Then the cluster of motlcst 
 
 ' P) laief, Old St. Petersburg, p. i6, eic. 
 
ST. PETERSBURG 407 
 
 buildings was augmented by the erection of a bazaar. The 
 Tsar's collaborators gathered round him, in cottages much 
 like his own, and the existence of St. Petersburg became an 
 accomplished fact. 
 
 Ikit, up to the time of the Battle of Poltava, Peter never 
 thought of making St. Petersburg his capital. It was enough 
 for him to feel he had a fortress and a port. He was not 
 sufficiently sure of his mastery over the neighbouring coun- 
 tries, not certain enough of being able to retain his conquest, 
 to desire to make it the centre of his Government and his 
 own permanent residence. This idea was not definitely 
 accepted till after his great victory.^ His final decision has 
 been bitterly criticised, especially by foreign historians ; it 
 has been severely judged and remorselessly condemned. 
 Before expressing any opinion of my own on the subject, 
 I should like to sum up the considerations which have been 
 put forward to support this unfavourable verdict. 
 
 The great victory, we are told, diminished the strategic 
 importance of St. Petersburg, and almost entirely extin- 
 guished its value as a port ; while its erection into the 
 capital city of the Empire was never anything but mad- 
 ness. Peter, being now the indisputable master of the 
 Baltic shores, had nothing to fear from any Swedish at- 
 tack in the Gulf of Finland. Before any attempt in tnat 
 direction, the Swedes were certain to try to recover Narva 
 or Riga. If, in later years, they turned their eyes to St. 
 Petersburg, it was only because that town had acquired 
 undue and unmerited political importance. It was easy 
 of attack, and difficult to defend. '1 here was no possibility 
 of concentrating any large number of troops there, for the 
 whole country, forty leagues round, was a barren desert. In 
 1788, Catherine II. complained that her capital was too near 
 the Swedish frontier, and too much exposed to sudden 
 movements, such as that which Gustavus III. very nearly 
 succeeded in carrying out. Here we have the military side 
 of the question. 
 
 From the commercial point of view, St. Petersburg, we are 
 assured, did command a valuable system of river communi- 
 cation, — but that commanded by Riga was far superior. The 
 Livonian, Esthonian, and Courland ports of Riga, Libau, and 
 Revel, all at an equal distance from St Petersburg and Moscow, 
 
 ^ See the Tsar's letter to Apraxin (July 9, 1709), Caliinet No. i. Book 28. 
 27 
 
4o8 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 ami far less removed from the great German commercial 
 centres, ciijojed a superior climate, and were, subsequent to the 
 conquest of the above-mentioned Provinces, the natural points 
 of contact between Russia and the West. An eloquent proof 
 of this fact may be observed, nowadays, in the constant 
 increase of their commerce, and the corresponding decrease 
 of that of St. Petersburg, which has been artificially developed 
 and fostered. 
 
 Besides this, the Port of St. Petersburg, during the lifetime 
 of its founder, never was anything but a mere project. Peter's 
 ships were moved from Kronslot to Kronstadt. Between St. 
 Petersburg and Kronstadt, the Neva was not, in those days, 
 more than eight feet deep, and Manstcin tells us that all ships 
 built at Petersburg had to be dragged by means of machines 
 fitted with cables to Kronstadt, where they received their 
 guns. Once these had been taken on board, the vessels 
 could not get up stream again. The Port of Kronstadt was 
 closed by ice for six months out of the twelve, and lay in 
 such a position that no sailing ship could leave it unless 
 the wind blew from the east. There was so little salt in its 
 waters, that the ship timbers rotted in a very short time, 
 and besides, there were no oaks in the surrounding forests, 
 and all such timber had to brought from Kasan. Peter was 
 so well aware of all these drawbacks, that he sought, and 
 found, a more convenient spot for his shipbuilding yards, at 
 Rogerwick, in Esthonia, four leagues from Revel. But here 
 he found difficulty in protecting the anchorage from the 
 effects of hurricanes, and from the insults of his enemies. 
 He hoped to ensure this by means of two piers, built on wooden 
 caissons filled with stones. He thinned the forests of 
 Livonia and Esthonia, to construct it, and finally, the 
 winds and the waves having carried everything away twice 
 over, the work was utterly abandoned. On the other hand, 
 and from the very outset, the commercial activity of St. 
 Petersburg was hampered, by the fact that it was the Tsar's 
 Capital. The presence of the Court made living dear, 
 and the consequent expense of labour was a heavj- drawback 
 to the export trade, which, by its nature, called for a good 
 deal of manual exertion. According to a Dutch Resident of 
 that period, a wooden cottage, very inferior to that inhabited 
 by a peasant in the Low Countries, cost from 800 to looo 
 florins a )'ear at St. Petersburg. A shopkeeper at Archangel 
 
ST. PETERSBURG 409 
 
 could live comfortably on a quarter of that sum. The cost of 
 transport, which amounted to between nine and ten kopecks 
 a pood, between Moscow and Archangel, five to six between 
 laroslav and Archangel, and three or four between Vologda 
 and Archangel, came to eighteen, twenty, and thirty kopecks 
 a pood in the case of merchandise sent from any of these 
 places to St. Petersburg. This accounts for the opposition 
 of the foreign merchants at Archangel, to the request 
 that they should remove to St. Petersburg. Peter settled the 
 matter in characteristic fashion, by forbidding any trade in 
 hemp, flax, leather, or corn, to pass through Archangel. 
 This rule, though somewhat slackened, in 17 14, at the request 
 of the States-General of Holland, remained in force during the 
 great Tsar's reign. In 1718, hemp, and some other articles 
 of commerce, were allowed free entrance into the Port 
 of Archangel, but only on condition that two-thirds of 
 all exports should be sent to St. Petersburg. This puts 
 the case from the maritime and commercial point of 
 view. 
 
 As a capital city, St. Petersburg, we are told again, was 
 ill-placed on the banks of the Neva, not only for the reasons 
 already given, but for others, geographical, ethnical and 
 climatic, which exist even in the present day, and which 
 make its selection an outrage on common sense. Was it 
 not, we are asked, a most extraordinary whim which induced 
 a Russian to found the capital of his Slavonic Empire 
 among the Finns, against the Swedes,^ — to centralise the 
 administration of a huge extent of country in its remotest 
 corner, — to retire from Poland and Germany on the plea of 
 drawing nearer to Europe, and to force every one about him, 
 officials, Court, and Diplomatic Corps, to inhabit one of the 
 most inhospitable spots, under one of the least clement skies, 
 he could possibly have discovered ? The whole place was a 
 marsh, — the Finnish word Nroa means ' mud ' ; the sole 
 inhabitants of the neighbouring forests were packs of wolves. 
 In 17 14, during a winter night, two sentries, posted before 
 the cannon foundry, were devoured. Even nowadays, the 
 traveller, once outside the town, plunges into a desert. Far 
 away in every direction the great plain stretches ; not a 
 steeple, not a tree, not a head of cattle, not a sign of life, 
 whether human or animal. There is no pasturage, no pos- 
 
 ' Custine, La Ktissie (Paris, 1843), ^o'- '• P- 204. 
 
4IO PETER THE GREAT 
 
 sibilit\- of cullivatioii, — fruit, vcj^ctables, and even corn, arc 
 all bnjui^ht from a distance. The ground is in a soit of 
 intermediate condition between the sea and tei-ra firma. 
 Up to Catherine's reign inundations were chronic in their 
 occurrence. On the iith of September 1706, Peter drew 
 from his pocket the measure he always carried about him, 
 and convinced himself that there were twenty-one inches of 
 water above the floors of his cottage. In all directions he saw 
 men, women, and children clinging to the wreckage of build- 
 ings, which was being carried down the river. He described 
 his im])ressions in a letter to Mcnshikof,dated from' Paradise,'^ 
 and declared it was ' extremely amusing.' It may be doubted 
 whether he found many persons to share his delight. Com- 
 munications with the town, now rendered easy by rail- 
 ways, were, in those days, not only difficult, but dangerous. 
 Campredon, when he went from Moscow to St. Petersburg, 
 in April 1723, spent 1200 roubles. He lost part of his 
 luggage, eight of his horses were drowned, and, after having 
 travelled for four weeks, he reached his destination, very ill. 
 Peter himself, who arrived before the French Diplomat, had 
 been obliged to ride part of the way, and to swim his horse 
 across the rivers ! 
 
 But in spite of all these considerations, the importance of 
 which I am far from denying, I am inclined to think Peter's 
 choice a wise one. Nobody can wonder that the idea of 
 retaining Moscow as his capital was most repugnant to him. 
 The existence of his work in those hostile surroundings, — in 
 a place which, to this day, has remained obstinately reaction- 
 ary, — could never have been anything but precarious and 
 uncertain. It must, after his death at least, if not during his 
 life, have been at the mercy of those popular insurrections 
 before which the sovereign power, as established in the 
 Kreml, had, already, so frequently bowed. W'hen Peter 
 carried Muscovy out of her former existence, and beyond 
 her ancient frontiers, he was logically f(;rced to treat the 
 .seat of his Government in the same manner. His new 
 undertaking resembled, both in asj^ect and character, a 
 marching and fighting formation, directed towards the 
 West. The leader's place, and that of his chief residence, 
 was naturally indicated, at the head of his column. This 
 once granted, and the principle of the translation of the 
 
 ' Oustriiilof, vol. iv. p. 273. 
 
ST. PETERSBURG 411 
 
 capital to the Western extremity of the Tsar's newly ac- 
 quired possessions, admitted, the advantages offered by 
 Ingria would appear to me to outweigh all the drawbacks 
 previously referred to. The province wa.s, at that period, 
 virgin soil, sparsely inhabited by a Finnish population, pos- 
 sessing neither cohesion nor historical consistency, and, con- 
 sequently, docile and easily assimilated. Everywhere else, 
 — all along the Baltic coast, in Esthonia, in Carelia, and in 
 Courland, — though the Swedes might be driven out, the 
 Germans still remained, firmly settled, — the neighbourhood 
 of their native country, and of the springs of Teutonic 
 culture, enduing them with an invincible power of resistance. 
 Riga, in the present day, after nearly two centuries of 
 Russian government, is a thoroughly German town. In 
 St. Petersburg, Russia, as a country, became European and 
 cosmopolitan, — but the city itself is essentially Russian, 
 and the Finnish element in its neighbourhood counts for 
 nothing. 
 
 In this matter, though Peter may not have clearly felt 
 and thought it out, he was actuated by the mighty and un- 
 erring instinct of his genius, I am willing to admit that here, 
 as in everything else, there was a certain amount of whim, 
 and perhaps some childish desire to ape Amsterdam. I will 
 even go further, and acknowledge that the manner in which 
 he carried out his plan was an\'thing but reasonable. 
 2CO,ooo labourers, we are told, died during the construction 
 of the new city, and the Russian nobles ruined themselves 
 to build palaces which soon fell out of occupation. But an 
 abyss was opened, between the past the Reformer had 
 doomed, and the future on which he had set his heart, and the 
 national life, thus violently forced into a new channel, was 
 stamped, superficially at first, but more and more dccpl}', by 
 degrees, with the Western and European character he 
 desired to impart. 
 
 Moscow, down to the present day, has preserved a religious, 
 almost a monastic air ; at every street corner, chapels attract 
 the passers-by, and the local population, even at its busiest, 
 crosses itself, and bends, as it passes before the sacred 
 pictures which rouse its devotion at every turn. St. Peters- 
 burg, from the very earliest days, presented a different, 
 and quite a secular appearance. At Moscow, no public 
 performance of profane music was permitted. At St. 
 
413 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Petersburg the Tsar's German musicians played every day, 
 on the balct)n\- of liis tavern. Towards the middle of the 
 eighteenth centur}-, the new cit)' boasted a French Theatre, 
 and an Italian Opera, and Schlozer noted that Divine 
 Service was performed in fourteen languages ! Modern 
 Russia, governed, educated, to a certain extent, intellectually 
 speaking, emancipated, and relatively liberal, could not have 
 come into existence, nor grown in stature, elsewhere. 
 
 And, to conclude, Peter was able to effect this singular 
 change without doing too great violence to the historical 
 traditions of his country. From the earliest days of Russian 
 history, the capital had been removed from place to place, 
 — from Novgorod to Kief, from Kief to Vladimir, from 
 Vladimir to Moscow. This phenomenon was the consequence 
 of the immense area of the national territory, and the want 
 of consistency in the elements of the national life. From 
 the beginning to the end of an evolution which lasted 
 centuries, the centre of gravity of the disjointed, scattered, 
 and floating forces of ancient Russia, perpetually changed 
 its place. Thus the creation of St. Petersburg was nothing 
 but the working out of a problem in dynamics. The 
 struggle with Sweden, the conquest of the Baltic provinces, 
 and the yet more important conquest of a position in the 
 European world, naturally turned the whole current of the 
 national energies and life in that direction. Peter desired 
 to perpetuate this course. I am inclined to think he acted 
 wisely. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 MORALS — HABITS AND CUSTOMS 
 
 I. Morals — The Slavophile Theory of the morals of Ancient Russia — The 
 reality — Coarseness and savagery — Brigandage — Brutal vulgarity of 
 domestic habits — Drunkenness — Sanguinary scuflles — Absence of any 
 moral ideal — Peter's work — The moral foundation ready to his liand — 
 Inconsistency and paltriness of his first attempts — Dress reform — Ulterior 
 progress — The Reform of the Calendar — Liberal tendencies of the new 
 regime — The great domestic Reform — The suppression of the Terem — 
 Whither the women were to go — Peter creates society by Ukase — 
 ' Assendjlies ' — Failure, as far as sociability was concerned — Causes of 
 this failure — Peter himself too little of a man of the world — No Court to 
 give tone to society — The tone of the Sovereign's surroundings very 
 different from that of Versailles — Coarse Habits — Official entertainments 
 — Balls in the Summer Garden — The Diplomatic Corps received at 
 Peterhof — Filthy and dissolute habits — Superficiality of the change — A 
 great moral revolution — The school of example. 
 II. Ed Ufa lion — Scholastic establishments — Bold and far-stretching theories — 
 Weakness and poverty of their practical application — C.eneral and pro- 
 fessional education — Primary and high-class schools — Lack of pupils — 
 V'oung men sent abroad — indifferent results — Russia still dependent on 
 Europe— The Academy of Sciences— The real teaching of the great reign 
 — Example again. 
 HI. IntelUctital be,^nniugs — The new language — Books — Archives and a 
 Library — Museums — Free entrance — A School of Fine Arts — The 
 Theatre — The Press — General view. 
 
 The Slavophile writers of the present clay are fond of paint- 
 ing the habits and customs of Ancient Russia in the most 
 brilliant colours, heightened by their gloomy description of 
 contemporary existence amongst Western nations. This 
 IS the last refuge of a theory which finds it hard to 
 hold its own m every other fielcl. It has grown more and 
 more-difficult, in course of time, to claim all the elements of 
 original culture, — letters, arts, and sciences, — with which, 
 according to her adorers' ideal, the Russia of the i6th and 
 
414 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 17th centuries should have been endowed. But, these 
 zealots say, though her inhabitants could not read, their 
 morals were beyond all reproach. Despite the triple 
 corruption of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the 
 Modern Period, they had remained pure, and even holy. 
 We shall see. 
 
 It is a singular fact that none of the witnesses of this 
 idyllic condition of existence, nor even the actors in it, seem 
 to have been conscious of its charm. Foreign testimony, 
 such as that of Olcarius, Margeret, and Fletcher, may be 
 doubted. lUit what are we to think of that passage in the 
 Memoirs of Jciiaboujski, to which I have already alluded, 
 and which describes the current incidents of the day as a 
 mere calendar of criminal procedure. 
 
 In November 1699, Prince Feodor Hot^tovski was 
 knoutcd, in one of the Moscow Squares, for having sold a 
 single landed property to several purchasers. In December, 
 two judges at Vladimir, Dimitri Divof, » and lakovlef 
 Kolytchef, were flogged for breach of trust. Kol\-tchef had 
 been corrupted by means of a sum of twenty roubles, and 
 a barrel of brandy ! That same year, a gentleman named 
 Zoubof was prosecuted for highway robbery. A Voivoide 
 of Tsaritsine, named Ivan Bartenief, accepted bribes, and 
 carried off married women and young girls to be his 
 mistresses. Prince Ivan Shei'diakof was convicted of 
 robbery and murder.^ 
 
 Armed brigandage was such an ingrained custom, at that 
 period, that all Peter's energy was powerless to suppress it. 
 In 1 7 10, troops had to be called out to protect the 
 immediate neighbourhood of the Capital. In 17 19, the 
 judicial bcxly was warned of the presence of well-armed 
 bands numbering from 100 to 200 robbers, in the districts of 
 Novgorod and of Mojaisk.- The Saxon Resident writes, in 
 1723: *A body of 9000 robbers, led by a Russian half-pay 
 Colonel, had planned to burn the Admiralty and other 
 buildings in St. Petersburg, and to massacre the foreigners. 
 36 of these have been taken prisoners, and impaled, or hung 
 by the ribs . . . We are on the brink of some unpleasant 
 
 ' Jeliaboujski, pp. 129-130; Korb, pp. 77, 78. Compare Kostomarof, 
 Picture of Russian Domestic Life and Habits in the 16/// and \']th Centuries, 
 p|i. 99- 1 28; lliclaicf, lessons on Russian Law, p. 464, etc. ; Goltsef, Russian 
 Laws and Customs in the 18M Century, p. 17. 
 
 '' Solovicf, vol.xvi. p. 251. 
 
MORALS— HABITS AND CUSTOMS 415 
 
 outbreak ; the popular misery is daily increasing, the streets 
 are full of people trying to sell their children ; orders have 
 been issued that nothing should be given to beggars. What 
 can they do but become highway robbers?'^ 
 
 These robbers, who had taken up arms against the 
 foreigners, were the authentic representatives of Old Russia, 
 and I cannot perceive anything idyllic about them, nor 
 about the principal and most characteristic features of past 
 times — the savagery and coarseness — presented in their 
 l)ersons. Neugebauer, German tutor to the young Tsare- 
 vitch Alexis, was discharged, in 1702, because he ventured 
 to object to his pupil's habit of emptying his own plate into 
 the dishes intended for other guests. There was no 
 sociability in the nature of a people so swayed by Byzantine 
 asceticism as to reckon knowledge heresy, art a scandal, and 
 music, singing, and dancing, an offence to the Almighty. 
 Love itself, even hallowed by religious ties, was looked on 
 with doubt and scruple. Possoshkof, in the true spirit of 
 the Domostroi, advises all newly married couples to spend 
 their two first nights in prayer, — the first to drive away the 
 demons, and the second to do honour to the Patriarchs ! 
 Women of the aristocratic class wasted their existences 
 within the padlocked doors of the tereni. The men 
 entertained themselves with their masculine surroundings, 
 consisting of needy gentlemen, whom they sometimes petted, 
 and often thrashed, — jesters, whose jokes were generally of 
 the vilest description, — baJiars or scacotchniks, who told 
 ridiculous stories, — doniratcheis, who played on a sort of 
 guitar, called the donira, and droned out religious chants, — 
 and sometimes, but much less often, skomorohi, or jugglers, 
 already looked at askance, and even prosecuted, — the civil 
 power backing the attempts of the ecclesiastical authorit)' to 
 repress profane delights. The real pleasure of every man, 
 from the Boyard to the peasant, was drink. Every festive 
 gathering was a scene of drunkenness, which too often 
 culminated in rough, and often bloody scuffles.^ 
 
 On every rung of the social ladder, there was the same 
 utter absence of morality, of any sentiment of self-respect, 
 honour, or duty. Free men, according to Korb, cared little 
 
 ^ Sbornik, vol. iii. pp. 354, 360. 
 
 * Zabielin, JJontesiic History of the Tsarinas, p. 397, etc. ; Dibiatine, Con- 
 iribntions to the History of Russian Law, p. 560, etc. 
 
4i6 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 for their liberty, and williiif^ly accepted serfdom. Informers 
 swarmed in every class, and ever}\vhcre there was the same 
 dead le\cl of idleness, indifference, and meanness. When, in 
 1705, Shcrcmctief, the best of Peter's Russian Generals, was 
 sent to Astrakhan to suppress a revolt, the growth of which 
 threatened the living forces of the country, he stopped at 
 Kasan, and turned his whole mind to getting leave to return 
 to Moscow, and there spend the winter and the Easter 
 festivities. Nothing but the Emperor's threats induced him 
 to resume his journey.^ Honour, duty, ambition, and even 
 courage, were novelties, the knowledge of which Peter, as he 
 himself boasted, was forced to propagate amongst his sub- 
 jects." He had to tear the degrading lesson of their national 
 proverb, ' Flight is not a very noble thing, but it is a very 
 safe one,' out of their hearts and minds. His methods of 
 terror and of summary justice, — as when he hung a whole 
 company of flying soldiers under the walls of Noteburg, in 
 1703, — would certainly not have succeeded, alone, as they 
 did, to a certain extent, succeed. But he found a moral 
 foundation, long buried in those darkened and degraded 
 souls, — their fanatical love of home, their power ot endur- 
 ance, their limitless docility, and immense self-sacrifice. The 
 work, apart from these, was all his own. 
 
 It was by no means a perfect work. It bore traces of all 
 the faults and weaknesses inherent in the Workman. When 
 the Reformer turned his first attention to clipping his sub- 
 jects' beards, and reforming their costume, he overlooked 
 far more pressing and serious matters. The dress worn in 
 Russia, at the end of the 17th century, was, indeed, both 
 inconvenient and ungraceful. But its distinctive features, 
 and the fulness and number of the garments placed one 
 above the other, were justified by the conditions of the 
 climate. Over his embroidered shirt and wide trousers, 
 tucked into his boots, the Russian gentleman wore a. jou/ya^i, 
 or waistcoat, of coloured silk, and a closely fitting kaftan^ 
 reaching to the knees, with a straight collar of velvet, satin 
 or brocade. The sleeves, which were long and wide, were 
 fastened at the wrist with buttor.s, made of precious stones 
 of more or less value. This was his indoor garb. When he 
 
 ' Oustrialof, vol. i%-. p. 493. 
 
 '^ .See his conversation wiili ihc Duke of I It>lstcin ill 1722, reported by Bergliolz, 
 Biisc kings- Ma^azi II, vol. xx. ji. 3S7. 
 
MORALS— HABITS AND CUSTOMS 417 
 
 went out, he added a belt of some Persian material, and over 
 his kaftan, he wore a feriaz, — a long, wide velvet garment, 
 straight cut and collarless, buttoned down the front from the 
 top to the bottom, and always with long and wide sleeves. 
 Over \\\Q.fcriaz he wore, in summer, the opachen or oJiabeu, 
 a wide mantle of precious stuff, falling to his heels, with long 
 sleeves, and a square collar; or, in the autumn, the odnoriadka, 
 a warmer garment of hairwoven material or cloth ; while, in 
 winter, he was robed in the shonba, — a fur-lined pelisse. A 
 full and thick beard was the natural complement of this 
 dress, and was equally well suited to the needs of the Russian 
 climate. The aesthetic point of view need not come into 
 this discussion. Fashion, in all times, and every country, 
 has alwa}'s disregarded it, and to this day the St. Petersburg 
 coachmen thicken their waists by means of cushions, which 
 they consider a most desirable addition to their personal 
 appearance. 
 
 This reform, like most of those to which Peter's name 
 has been attached, grew out of the general evolution which 
 had carried Russia westward, ever since the days of i^oris 
 Godunof Under Tsar Alexis, Sheremetief's father refused 
 to give his son his blessing, because he appeared before him 
 with his chin shaved, and the Patriarch Joachim had only 
 stopped the movement, by thundering excommunications 
 against it. The question was complicated by religious 
 sentiment. In all orthodox Icons, the Eternal Father and 
 His Son are represented with beards, and in long robes; and 
 the popular belief, supported by ecclesiastical teaching, held 
 that man, being made in God's image, committed sacrilege 
 when he did anything to alter that sacred resemblance.^ The 
 civil power was forced to take these elements into account, 
 and to adopt a policy of compromise. Alexis published a 
 Ukase supporting the Patriarchal view on the subject of 
 beards, but, in 168 1, the Tsar Feodor Alcxieievitch ordered 
 all male members of his Court, and officials, to shorten the 
 skirts of their clothing. 
 
 These controversies may provoke a smile, but my French 
 readers will recollect that, even in France, a passionate 
 controvcrs)' raged over the beard brought into fashion by 
 Francis I., who grew his, to conceal a wound on his face.- 
 
 * '&ovi%\2L\e{, Historical Sketches, vol. ii. p. 216. 
 
 "^ Yi^.nV.\\n, Journal of the Sie,^e of Paris ill 1590, pp. 108, log. 
 
4i8 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Peter settled the question in his usual radical fashion. 
 He would have no more beards, and ever)-body must wear 
 luiropean costume, cither French or Hungarian. His 
 Ukase on the subject was published on the 29th of August 
 1699, and patterns of the regulation garments were exposed 
 in the streets. The poorer classes were granted a temporary 
 delay, so that they might wear out their old clothes, but, 
 after 1705, every soul was to apjjear in the new uniform, 
 under pain of fines, and even of severer penalties. 
 
 The reform, thus violently imposed, met with desperate 
 opposition, especially among the lower classes. The Boyards 
 were easily managed, — they had worn Polish costume ever 
 since Dimitri's time, and the elegance of the French style of 
 dress distinctly attracted them ; in March 1705, Whit- 
 worth did not notice a single well-born person wearing the 
 old-fashioned dress. But the poorer classes hung back, and 
 not without good reason. In such a climate, short-skirted 
 garments, and uncovered stockings, were anything but 
 rational. The old-fashioned Russian costume has been 
 said to be only fit for idlers, but the Northern climate, with 
 its long periods of enforced hibernation, had taught inen 
 idleness. Their limbs might be freer when they cast off 
 their long pelisses, but they ran grievous risk of being frost- 
 bitten ; Peter himself died of a chill. The poor Monjik, 
 forcibly deprived of the beard which had kept his cheeks 
 warm in 40 degrees of cold, begged it might be laid 
 with him in his coffin, so that, after his death, he might 
 appear decently in the presence of St. Nicholas. '1 his 
 popular superstition was, like many others, the outcome of a 
 thoroughly well-founded utilitarian instinct. 
 
 liut all this was nothing to Peter. In 1704, at an inspec- 
 tion of officials of all classes, held as he was passing through 
 Moscow, he caused Ivan Naoumof, who had failed to u.se 
 his razors, to be flogged.^ In 1706, soldiers were posted at 
 all the church doors in Astrakhan, with orders to fall upon 
 recalcitrant worshippers, and pull out their beards by 
 main force. The Tsar also took upon himself to shorten 
 the women's garments, and any skirts which exceeded the 
 regulation length were publicly torn up, without the 
 slightest regard for decency.- Peter had a special, and a 
 
 * Golikof, vol. ii. p. 513. 
 
 ' Whitworth's Despatch, Feb. 20, 1706; Sl>ornik, vol. xxxix. p. 249. 
 
MORALS— HABITS AND CUSTOMS 419 
 
 kind of personal hatred, for all beards. To him they typi- 
 fied all the ideas, traditions and prejudices, he was resolved 
 to overcome. In the admonitions addressed, in his Manifesto 
 of 1 7 18, to his unfortunate and rebellious son Alexis, the 
 expression ''great beards' is frequently repeated, and would 
 appear to be his synonym for the whole reactionary party, 
 on which he showers the most violent abuse. ' This is easily 
 understood, in the case of such people as these, whose morals 
 are corrupt, qiionan Dcus venter est ! ' — his Latin quotations 
 were somewhat haphazard ! Though, as time went on, he 
 did, on condition of a heavy tax, tolerate the preservation of 
 these hirsute appendages, it was only because his financial 
 embarrassments pressed so heavily upon him. The Raskol- 
 niks paid as much as 100 roubles, yearly, for the privilege, 
 and were obliged to wear medals, given them on receipt of 
 the annual sum, engraved with the following inscription : 
 ' Bojvda lishiiaia tiagota ' (' a beard is a useless inconveni- 
 ence '). 
 
 Thus we see Russia shaved, and dressed in European 
 garments. The Reformer's next step was to put a pipe into 
 every one's mouth. Even before his travels abroad in 1697, 
 he had authorised the free sale of tobacco, which had hitherto 
 been prohibited, without the smallest consideration for the 
 offence thus given to the national prejudices. As we have 
 already seen, he negotiated with Lord Caermarthen, during 
 his stay in England, for a tobacco monopoly. A smoker 
 himself, he was determined every one else should smoke. 
 All this strikes us as being rather foolish, and even as denot- 
 ing a somewhat unhealthy imagination. Yet this, so far as 
 manners and customs were concerned, was the commence- 
 ment of the great man's civilising work. He did better as 
 he went on, but his beginnings, it must be acknowledged, 
 were not over brilliant. 
 
 On the 20th December 1699, a Ukase appeared, ordering 
 a reform in the National Calendar. The Russian Calendar 
 was the outcome of Byzantine tradition ; the year began on 
 the 1st of September, the hypothetical date of the Creation, 
 5508 years B.C. It was to open, in future, like the 
 European year, on the ist of January. 1 he whole world 
 was commanded to be present at the services to be 
 celebrated in the churches on that day, and, thereafter, to 
 exchange the traditional congratulations and good wishes. 
 
420 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 The Reformer would fain have gone a step further, and 
 adopted the Gregorian Calendar, but this, with its Roman 
 and Papal characteristics, was, in those days, strongly 
 objected to, even in England, where it was not adopted 
 till 1752. Moderate as it was, this Reform caused a 
 great deal of ill-feeling. ' Could God have really created 
 the world in winter?' it was inquired. Peter cared not a 
 jot, and he was wise ; for, this time, he was on the right 
 track. He pushed steadily forward. In the year 1700, he 
 published a Ukase ordering the first apothecary's shops, — 
 eight of them, — to be opened in Moscow. Another Ukase, 
 bearing the same date, forbade the carrying of knives, — 
 which too frequently played a terrible part in the daily 
 street quarrels in the city, — on pain of flogging and deporta- 
 tion. In the following year, the liberal spirit of the new 
 n'oijue was proved by a series of orders, doing away with 
 the necessity for kneeling when the Sovereign passed, and of 
 passing his palace with uncovered head, during the winter 
 season. Then, in 1702, came the great domestic Reform. 
 The doors of the tereni were opened, and the married state 
 was surrounded by moral guarantees. Peter stretched a 
 merciful and protecting hand over Russian family life. In 
 1704, he did battle with an odious feature of the national 
 habits, — the habitual doing away with deformed children, 
 and infants born out of wedlock. He favoured the creation 
 of an Asylum for foundlings, opened by Job, the Patriarch 
 of Novgorod, in 1706, and, in 171 5, he took more decided 
 personal steps in this most painful matter, and ordered the 
 foundation of similar establishments, in all the great towns 
 in his Empire. 
 
 This part of his work, fragmentary and incomplete as 
 it was, was excellent in its way. To make it more 
 harmonious, the Reformer would have needed far greater 
 leisure ; but his mind was taken up, and distracted, by his 
 great war. He called the Russian women forth from their 
 tcreuis — a good thing as far as it went — but what was to be- 
 come of them now? He desired the\' should go into society, 
 like their sisters in France and German}- ; — but no Russian 
 society existed, and Peter did not find time to remedy 
 this defect until the year 17 18. Then, during a pause in 
 the war, he settled the question, as usual, by means of a 
 Ukase. This fact, I imagine, has no parallel in history. He 
 
MORALS — HABITS AND CUSTOMS 421 
 
 ordered periodical receptions, which he called ' Assemblies,' 
 to be held in a certain number of private houses, and issued 
 precise regulations as to the arrant^ements, the order in 
 which they were to be held, and all other details, even to the 
 smallest. He had just returned, it must be remembered, 
 from France, and was evidently guided and inspired by what 
 he had seen in the Paris salons. But he added details of 
 his own invention. These Assemblies were to last from four 
 o'clock in the afternoon till ten at night. The hosts were 
 forbidden, on pain of fine, to go forward to receive their 
 guests, or to accompany them to the door when they 
 departed. All they were to do was to prepare a more or 
 less luxurious reception, lights, refreshments, and games. 
 The invitations were not of a personal nature ; a general list 
 of admission was drawn up, and published, with a notifica- 
 tion of the day of each reception, by the Chief of the Police 
 in St. Petersburg, and by the Commandant of the city of 
 Moscow. No games of chance were allowed, and, by a 
 special Ukase, dated 28th June 17 18, card and dice playing 
 were punished by the knout.^ A room was set apart for 
 chess-players, and was also to be used as a smoking-room, 
 but, as a matter of fact, and following Peter's own example, 
 smoking went on everywhere. Leather tobacco-bags lay on 
 every table, and Dutch merchants moved about, pipe in 
 mouth, amongst smart gentlemen, dressed in the last 
 Parisian fashions.^ Dancing held a foremost place in the 
 programme of these entertainments, and as his subjects, 
 male and female, had no knowledge of that accomplish- 
 ment, Peter himself undertook to instruct them. Pergholz 
 describes him as a first-rate performer ; he executed all 
 kinds of steps before the gentlemen, who were expected" to 
 use their legs in exactly the same fashion as he used his. 
 The memories of the drill ground, thus conjured up, were 
 not likely to be displeasing to the Sovereign. The regula- 
 tions provide that the servants, always so numerous in 
 Russian households, should remain in the ante-chambers, — 
 access to the reception rooms was utterly forbidden them : 
 e.xcept in this respect, the most absolute equality reigned. 
 
 ^ Golikof, vol. iii. p. 44. 
 
 ^ See the piclurestiue description of one of these gatherings in a fragment of an 
 historical novel by Foushkin; Collected Works, vol. iv. (1887 edition), Peter the 
 Great's Nep-ro. 
 
422 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Any gentleman miL;ht invite the Empress herself to dance 
 with him.^ 
 
 As in the case of most of Peter's undcrtakinfijs, the early 
 days of this reform bristled with difficulties, more especially 
 at Moscow, where, on Peter's arrival to celebrate the Peace 
 of Nystadt in 1722, a special Ukase convoked an Assembly, 
 at which all ladies * above ten years of age,' were ordered to 
 appear under threat of ' terrible punishment.' Only seventy 
 put in an appearance. At St. Petersburg, on the other hand, 
 the institution appears, by the end of the third year of its 
 existence, to have taken firm root. Let us now consider the 
 benefit accruing from it. Peter had three principal aims : 
 the initiation of Russian women into the ordinary intercourse 
 between the sexes, as it existed in Western countries ; the 
 initiation of the upper classes of Russian society, into the 
 social habits general in those countries ; and, finally, the 
 fusion of the native classes, and their mixture with the 
 foreign element in Russia. This last object, the most 
 important, possibly, from his point of view, of all the three, 
 was not attained, as is proved by the great mass of contem- 
 porary testimony. The Russian ladies stubbornly refused 
 to choose their partners outside the ranks of their own fellow- 
 countr}'men, and their action, in this respect, was based on a 
 deliberate and common understanding. Peter lacked the 
 qualities necessary for the attainment of the two other points. 
 He should have had more of the man of the world, and less 
 of the sailor and carpenter, in his own person. His manners, 
 like his dancing steps, were aped by his subjects, and his 
 manners, from the social point of view, were neither polite 
 nor pleasing. In the intervals between the dances, the part- 
 ners, male and female, being devoid of conversation, sat 
 apart in dreary silence. The Sovereign could think of no 
 better plan to break the ice, than the introduction of a dance 
 during the figures of which the gentlemen kissed the ladies 
 on their lips? And these poor ladies had hard work to appear 
 at all like their fair models in the l^arisian salons. They 
 wore hoops, indeed, at the Tsar's Assemblies, but they still 
 blackened their teeth ! ^ 
 
 The Court in St. Petersburg, like the Court in Paris, gave 
 
 ' Shoul)inski, Historical Selections, p. 39; Kaniovitch, Selections, p. 240. 
 
 * K.imovilrh, p. 242. 
 
 ' llyinrof, The Countess Golorkin and her Times, p. 89, 
 
MORALS— HABITS AND CUSTOMS 423 
 
 the tone to society, and the tone of the circle surrounding 
 Peter and his wife had nothing in common with that of 
 Versailles. At a banquet given in the Imperial Palace, in 
 honour of the baptism of Catherine's son, the centre of each of 
 the two tables, devoted, one to the gentlemen, and another to 
 the ladies, was adorned with a huge pasty, and, at a given 
 moment, a male dwarf emerged from the first, and a female 
 from the second, both of them in piiris natiiralibiis!'^ On the 
 14th of November 1724, the Empress's fete-day, their 
 Majesties dined in the Senate-house with a numerous com- 
 pany, including the Duchess of Mecklenburg and the 
 Tsarina Prascovia. A Senator climbed on the table, and 
 walked from one end to the other, putting his feet in all the 
 dishes!^ An important part was played, at all Court festivities, 
 by six Grenadiers of the Guard, who carried in a huge tub 
 of strongly spiced corn brandy, which Peter distributed, with 
 a wooden spoon, to every one present, ladies included. In 
 one of Campredon's despatches, dated 8th December 1721, 
 I find the following words ; ' The last banquet given in hon- 
 our of the Tsarina's name-day, was very splendid, after the 
 manner of this country. The ladies all drank a great deal! 
 
 But indeed, Peter, as we know, had no Court, properly 
 so called. One of the first acts of his reign had been to 
 make over the sums formerly devoted to the Sovereign and 
 his household, for the general benefit of the State. The 
 various departments of the Tsar's household had entirely 
 disappeared, and with them, the whole army of palace 
 officials and servants. The 3000 saddle-horses, and the 
 40,000 draught horses, which had filled the stables, the 
 300 cooks and kitchen boys, who had sent up 3000 dishes 
 daily from their kitchen, were nothing but a memory.^ 
 Towards the end of the reign, some new Court officials 
 were created after the European pattern, but they only did 
 duty a few times each year, on da}'s of great ceremony. 
 On ordinary yi'/^ days, when the Tsar came back to dinner, 
 after church, he was accompanied by his Ministers and by a 
 host of military ofificers. But sixteen places only were laid 
 at his table; for these there was a general scuffle, and the 
 sole notice Peter took of the many who were left out in 
 
 ^ Pylaief, The Forgotten Fast, p. 308. 
 '•^ Sicmievski, The 'Fsa7-itia Frascovia, p. 169. 
 * Polevoi, History of Feter the Great, vol. i. p. 340, etc. 
 23 
 
424 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 the cold, was to say, 'Go home, and delight your wives by 
 dining with them,' No great receptions were ever held in 
 the Tsar's palace, even when he came to possess one. 
 Towards the end of his reign, the Post-Office was used 
 for this purpose, instead of Menshikof's palace, and 
 the scene, when Peter's guests were gathered there, was 
 worthy of the vilest tavern, l^ergholz has left a description 
 of a banquet given in May 1721, in honour of the launching 
 of a vessel, liefore the middle of the meal, the guests, male 
 and female, were all drunk, the wine having been mixed with 
 brandy. Old Admiral Apraxin burst into a flood of tears. 
 Prince Menshikof fell under the table, and his wife and 
 sister endeavoured to restore him to consciousness. Then 
 the company began to quarrel, blows were exclianged, and 
 a general, who had come to fisticuffs with a lieutenant, had 
 to be arrested.^ It should be added, that during these 
 orgies, which generally lasted six hours, and often longer, 
 all doors were rigorously closed ; the disgusting and de- 
 liberately courted consequences may be better conceived 
 than described. They are an evident proof of Peter's utter 
 and undisguised scorn of dccenc\' and propriety. 
 
 In January 1723, a Court mourning was ordered for the 
 Regent of PVance, but at the next Assembly, most of the 
 ladies appeared in colours, and declared they possessed no 
 other dresses. Peter had them all turned out, but very 
 shortly afterwards, having drunk several glasses of wine, he 
 himself gave the signal for dancing to begin. ^ 
 
 During the summer season, the receptions and banquets 
 were held in the Summer Garden which was turned into 
 something like a noisy Fair ground. The smell of spiced 
 brandy spread into the neighbouring streets, and thousands 
 of spectators were entertained by the coarse laughter of the 
 drinker^, the screams of the women whom they forced, willy 
 nilly. to swallow their ration of brandy, and the burlesque 
 songs of the mock cardinals. Dancing went on in the open 
 air, in an uncovered gallery overlooking the Neva. In the 
 Imperial summer residences, near Moscow and St. Peters- 
 burg, the coarse habits and vulgar tastes of the Sovereign 
 and his immediate circle, were still more freely displayed ! 
 
 1 liiischings-Magaziii, vol. xix. pp. 94-96; one of CampreUon's dcsp;ilches, 
 -fid March 14, 1721, coiilains .similar details. 
 dat Biischings-Miigazin, vol. xxi. p. 191. 
 
MORALS— HABITS AND CUSTOMS 425 
 
 Here is a description of a visit to Peterhof, which the 
 Diplomatic Corps was commanded to make in May, 171 5 : — 
 ' On the 9th, the Tsar went to Kronslot, whither we followed 
 him in a galley, but a sudden tempest kept us there at 
 anchor, for two days and three nights, in an open boat, 
 without fire, or bed, or provisions. When we reached 
 Peterhof at last, we were entertained in the usual manner, 
 for we had to drink so much Tokay wine at dinner, that, 
 when it was time to separate, we could hardly stand on our 
 legs. Notwithstanding this, the Tsarina presented each of 
 us with a glass of brandy, containing about a pint, which we 
 were obliged to swallow This completely deprived us of 
 our reason, and we gave ourselves up to slumber, some of us 
 in the gardens, some in the woods, and the rest on the ground, 
 in all directions. At four o'clock in the afternoon, we were 
 roused, and led to the castle, where the Tsar gave each of us 
 a hatchet, with orders to follow him. He conducted us to a 
 wood, and marked out an alley about lOO paces long, close 
 by the sea, the trees of which we were to fell. He set to 
 work before us, and although we were little accustomed to 
 such hard labour, we contrived — there were seven of us 
 besides his Majest}' — in about three hours, to finish our task. 
 The fumes of wine were by that time mostly dissipated, and 
 no accident occurred, except that a certain Minister, who was 
 working a little too vigorousl}', was slightly wounded by the 
 fall of a tree. The Tsar having thanked us for our trouble, 
 entertained us in the evening, in the ordinary fashion, and 
 we were once more given so much liquor that we were un- 
 conscious by the time we were sent to bed. Before we had 
 slept an hour and a half, we were woke by one of the Tsar's 
 favourites, and conducted, in spite of ourselves, into the 
 presence of the Prince of Circassia, who was in bed with his 
 wife. We were obliged to remain beside their bed till four 
 o'clock- in the morning, drinlcing wine and brandy, so that 
 we hardly knew how to get back to our own lodging. About 
 eight o'clock in the morning we were called to breakfast at 
 the castle, but, instead of the tea or coffee we expected, we 
 were given large glasses of brandy, after which we were sent 
 to take the fresh air on a high hill, at the foot of which we 
 found a peasant with eight miserable nags having neither 
 saddles nor bridles, which cannot have been worth more 
 than three crowns altogether. Each of us mounted one, 
 
426 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 and we then passed, in comical array, before their Majesties, 
 who were lookinc^ out of the window.' ^ 
 
 It sliould furtlier be pointed out that this kind of savagery 
 was united with a dissoluteness and barefaced immorality of 
 which Peter himself was a prominent exponent. When the 
 Duke of Holstein, who was on the point of marrying the 
 Sovereign's daughter, publicly appeared in St. Petersburg, 
 with a mistress whose husband he openly protected, his 
 future father-in-law never dreamt of finding fault with 
 him. 
 
 In many respects, Peter on'y piled corruption on corrup- 
 tion, and in this particular matter the Slavophile theory is 
 partly justified. AH he gained, as regards external forms, 
 was a sort of disguise, which flattered his own ta.ste for 
 travesty. His Russians might be dressed like P'renchmen, 
 but few of them had lost any of their native coarseness, 
 and they had grown ridiculous into the bargain. In 1720, a 
 French Capuchin monk, residing at Moscow, thus summed 
 up his observations : — ' We are beginning to have some 
 understanding of the spirit of the Muscovite nation. His 
 Majesty, the Tsar, is said to have worked a great change 
 in the course of the last twenty years. The people are so 
 subtle-minded, it is true, that they may yet be humanised, 
 but their obstinacy is so extreme, that the greater number 
 of them would rather remain brutes, than become men. Be- 
 sides this, they are distrustful of all foreigners, rogues, and 
 thievish, to the last degree. There have, it is true, been 
 terrible executions, but even that has not sufficed to terrify 
 them. Tiiey would kill a man for a few copper coins, and 
 consequently it is not safe to be in the streets at all late at 
 night.' 2 
 
 The change was very superficial. Any sudden paroxysm, 
 physical or mental, the excitement of wine, or the heat of 
 anger, caused the mask to fall. On the day of Peter's 
 triumphal entry into Moscow, after the Persian Campaign, 
 in December 1722, Prince Gregory Dolgorouki, a senator 
 and diplomat, and the Prince Caesar, Ivan Romodanovski, 
 flew at each other, before numerous witnesses, and fought 
 
 ' Memoirs of Weber (then representative of the Hanoverian Court in Russia), 
 V. p. 1 48 (Paris). 
 
 ■^ Lclier from Father Romain de Pourrentray to the French Envoy in Poland 
 (French Foreign OfBce). 
 
MORALS— HABITS AND CUSTOMS 427 
 
 with their fists for a good half hour, without any attempt 
 being made to separate them. The foreigners about the 
 Sovereign were surrounded, in his presence, with every 
 respect and flattery. The moment his back was turned, the 
 Russians would pull off their wigs. Even the Duke of 
 Holstein had some difficulty in keeping his on his head.^ 
 Those ideas of honour, probity, and duty, of which, — and 
 herein lies his greatest historical merit, — Peter was the con- 
 stant and energetic propagator, failed to penetrate the 
 national heart, and slid over its refractory soul like an ill- 
 fitting garment. Tatishtchef himself, when he was recalled 
 from the Ural, where his peculations had been denounced 
 by Demidof, rested his defence on a conception of morality 
 anything but European in its character. ' Why should a 
 judge be reprehended, on principle, because he takes money 
 for his services to his clients ? The reward is honest, so 
 long as he judges honestly ! ' ^ In 1750, an investigation was 
 opened into a huge system of fraud and embezzlement in 
 the system of army supply. The accused persons were 
 Menshikof, Admiral Apraxin, Korssakof, Vice - Governor 
 of St. Petersburg, Kikin, the head of the Admiralty, 
 .Sieniavin, the Chief Comniissioner of the same department, 
 ]5ruce, the Master of the Ordnance, and Volkonski and 
 Lapouhin, senators ! 
 
 Peter, busy toiler as he was, could not altogether over- 
 come the inveterate idleness, and physical and moral 
 inertia of his subjects. Thousands of able-bodied men 
 begged in the streets, in preference to working with their 
 hands: some put irons on their legs, and passed as prisoners, 
 — sent out, according to the habit in the jails of that period, 
 to beg their food from public charity. In all the country 
 districts, reckless idleness went hand in hand with frightful 
 poverty. ' Once the peasant is asleep,' writes Possoshkof, 
 ' his house must be in flames before he will leave his bed, and 
 he will never take the trouble to disturb himself, to put out 
 his neighbour's fire.' Conflagrations which devoured whole 
 villages frequently occurred, and the bands of robbers who 
 carried off what the fire spared, had an easy task, for the 
 inhabitants never dreamt of combining to repulse the male- 
 factors. These would make their way into a hut, force the 
 
 * Bergholz, Buschiti°s-Mas^azin, vol. xx p. 5S9, vol. xxi. p. 231. 
 ^ Solovief, vol. xviii. p. 1S9. 
 
428 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Moujik and his wife to tell where their money was hidden, 
 lay hands on the furniture, pile it on carts, and quietly 
 depart. The neighbours looked on and never lifted a fin<;cr. 
 Many young men went into monasteries, to escape military 
 service, others obtained admission to the schools founded 
 by Peter, and, once admitted, idled their time away. 
 
 But in spite of all that, a great moral revolution was 
 accomplished. The seed Peter cast over his native soil, at 
 random somewhat, irregularly, and sometimes capriciously, 
 was to germinate and bear fruit. And, above all things, he 
 set his people the example of a life in which the most 
 deplorable vices, — arising from his original hereditary stain, 
 — were mingled with the manliest and noblest virtues. 
 History has proved to which side the balance inclined. A 
 force, the elements of which are certainly not material, only, 
 has been developed before the eyes of astonished and 
 startled Europe, in a population of ioo,ooo,ooo souls. This 
 force is rooted in the soul of the hero of modern Russia. 
 
 To him. too, his country owes her intellectual progress, 
 although the scholastic establishments of the great reign are 
 considered, and not unjustly, to have failed. 
 
 II 
 
 The Slavophile party has ideas, and somewhat presump- 
 tuous ones, of its own, as to Russian education, previous to 
 the days of Peter the Great. According to these the great 
 Reformer rather put his country back, by substituting for 
 the sy\stem of iiniversal education carried on, in a very 
 satisfactory manner, in primary and secondary schools, and 
 in the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy at Moscow, that of 
 education by professors, already discredited in Western 
 Europe. Let us first consider the nature of these schools, 
 and to what the universality of their teaching really 
 amounted. 
 
 The only schools in existence were those attached to a 
 few monasteries. The universal education consisted in the 
 perusal of the Sacred Books, and some very bare and ele- 
 mentary notions of geography and history. After Peter 
 was dead, Feofan Prokopovitch, who cannot be suspected of 
 undue spite against the ecclesiastical system of education, 
 called attention to the fact, that, when no other system 
 
MORALS— HABITS AND CUSTOMS 429 
 
 existed in the country, it would not have been easy to find 
 such a thing as a compass within the borders of Russia. 
 The elementary text-books of the period are drawn up in 
 the form of conversations, which give curious proof of the 
 intellectual level of the times. (Q.) What are the elevation 
 of the sky, the extent of the earth, and the depth of the 
 sea? (A.) The elevation of the sky is the Father, the ex- 
 tent of the earth is the Son, and the depth of the sea is the 
 Holy Ghost. (Q ) To whom was Christ's first writing given } 
 (A.) To the Apostle Caiaphas {sic) ! 
 
 No real period of education existed in those days for 
 Russian men. There was no clearly marked point of transi- 
 tion from childhood into adult years, and the Russian mind, 
 even in maturity, kept something of the freshness, but at the 
 same time some of the gullibility of childhood. It was filled 
 with a sort of uncertain dawning light, peopled with dim 
 shapes, and confused forms — a mixture of pagan superstition 
 and oddly disfigured Christian legend. Peroun, the God 
 of Thunder, was replaced by the Prophet Elijah, in his 
 chariot, riding the clouds. Moral and physical pheno- 
 mena were accepted as the result of terrible and mys- 
 terious forces, in the face of which man stood defenceless, 
 and miserably impotent.^ 
 
 This chimerical conception of the realities of life, so 
 favourable to all cowardly instincts, Peter especially desired 
 to overthrow, by means of education. His personal views 
 on the subject were far-reaching ; they even extended to the 
 s) stem of compulsory and gratuitous teaching advocated by 
 Possoshkof. This principle was confirmed by a Ukase, 
 dated 28th February 1714. But its application was con- 
 fined to a single class of of pupils, the only one attainable, — 
 the children of the Z^/c?/'i- (persons employed in the Adminis- 
 trative Offices) and of the popes. The Senate refused to go 
 a step further, holding that commerce and industry must 
 come to ruin, if the supply of apprentices was entirely cut 
 off. The Reformer yielded, and applied his system, in its 
 restricted form, with all his wonted vigour and severity. 
 The son of a Dink, named Peter Ijorin, refused to study in 
 a mathematical school at Olonets, and was sent back to St. 
 
 ' Zal)ielin, Kussian Society before (he Time of Peter the Great ; Historical 
 Essays (Moscow, 1872), p. 90, etc. ; Solovief, History of Russia, vol. xiii. 
 p. 184, clc. 
 
430 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Pctcrsbur^^ with irons on his legs.^ Schools there must be 
 everywhere, and schools of every kind. This was Peter's 
 watchword. 
 
 But what schools? It was long, unfortunately, before 
 Peter came to any decision on this point. In the earlier 
 days he seemed to lean tov/ards that pseudo-universal t} pe 
 of literary tendency, which Polish and Little Russian influ- 
 ence had hitherto supported. P2ven on his return from his 
 first foreiij^n journey, his view was simplj- '-) extend the pro- 
 gramme of the old Muscovite Academies, but his meeting 
 with Gllick inspired him with a different idea, though some- 
 what in the same direction. Catherine Troubatshof's former 
 emploNXT was suddenly nominated Director of an establish- 
 ment, the curriculum of which was to include geography, 
 ethics, politics, Latin rhetoric, Cartesian philosophy, the 
 Greek, Hebrew, Syrian, Chaldean, French and English 
 languages, riding and dancing ! ^ Giiick soon lost the few 
 wits he possessed ; — and then, with his usual swiftness, the 
 Reformer turned him about. He knew his mind at last 
 He would have schools for special professional instruction, like 
 those he had seen in Germany. Holland, and England. \h\t 
 he did not give himself time to prepare a general plan, and 
 to begin at the beginning, — by establishing primary and 
 secondary schools. He passed at a bound, to the higher 
 subjects: Engineering, Navigation, and High Mathematics. 
 His principal idea was not so much to diffuse knowledge, as 
 to prepare the officers necessary for his army and navy, and 
 this utilitarian view long continued to sway all his efforts. 
 A Naval Academy was established at St. Petersburg, while 
 Moscow was given a School of Military Surgery, in 
 which richly endowed Professorships were held by German 
 and Juiglish teachers. Pupils were the only thing lacking. 
 The sons of the Diaks and popes, the only learners at the 
 Tsar's disposal, could not well attempt to study Hi.^h 
 Mathematics, until they knew how to read and write ! Peter's 
 hasty stride brought him to the top of the ladder, but he had 
 never given a thought to the lower rungs. A Ukase was 
 indeed })ublished, in 17 14. containing a plan for establishing 
 Provincial Schools, both Primary and Secondar}', in connec- 
 tion with the Bishoprics and Monasteries. But in 17 19, the 
 
 * Popof, Tatishtchef and his Times, p. 38. 
 
 ' Piekarski, Literature and Science in Ktissia, vol. i. p. 128. 
 
MORALS— HABITS AND CUSTOMS 431 
 
 Director of these establishments, Gregory Skorniakof- 
 Pissaref, informed the Sovereign that it had only been found 
 possible to open one school, containing six-and-tvventy 
 pupils, at Jaroslav. Forty-seven schoolmasters were sent 
 from St. Petersburg and Moscow into the Provinces during 
 the year 1723 ; eighteen found nothing to do, and returned to 
 the two cities. During that same year the question of fusing 
 these projected Provincial schools with the Church schools, 
 which a recently published edict had called into being, was 
 raised. The Synod informed the Tsar that only one such 
 Church school, that of Novgorod, was in existence.^ Up to 
 1713. there were only three-and-twenty pupils in the 
 Engineering School, Peter, in that year, forcibly caused 
 seventy -seven youths, taken from the fann'lies of the Palace 
 servants, to enter it, and their learned teachers were driven 
 to begin by teaching them their alphabet ! 
 
 The Reformer was not unaware of the poor results ob- 
 tained, and endeavoured to supply the want by sending a 
 great many young men into educational establishments 
 abroad. But here again difficulties arose. PLngland pro- 
 tested against this foreign invasion. The necessary funds, 
 too, were not forthcoming. Two young men sent to Paris 
 in 17 16 and 171 7, — one of them the negro, Abraham, — com- 
 plained that they were starved ; they had not a crown a day 
 between them. Idleness and misconduct, too, played their 
 part. In 17 17, Prince Rcpnin besought the Sovereign to 
 allow his two sons to return from Germany, where, instead 
 of learning to be good soldiers, they were doing nothing but 
 running into debt. The authorities at Toulon were obliged, 
 at the same period, to take strong measures with the young 
 Russian gentlemen who had been allowed to enlist in the 
 Gardes Marine. Zotof, the Tsar's Agent, reported that they 
 quarrelled amongst themselves, swore at each other ' as no one 
 here, even of the lowest condition, would do,' and even killed 
 each other, 'otherwise than in open duel.' It was found 
 necessary to deprive them of their swords.^ 
 
 Russia, take it all in all, was still dependent on Europe 
 for her military, scientific, artistic and industrial staff, and 
 though, by some means or other, the barracks were filled, all 
 other services betrayed a distressing void. Yet Peter did 
 not lose courage. Me pushed steadily forward. After his 
 ^ Piekarski, vol. i. p. 125. - Ibid., p. i6^ 
 
432 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 stay in Paris, he was haunted b)' the desire of possessing an 
 ' Academic des Sciences' at St. retersbur<^. 
 
 He had endless plans drawn up; he collected information 
 from ever)' quarter ; he superadded ideas of his own, and 
 ended by attemptini; something at once ambitious and ill- 
 defined. His iiope had been to fill up, by this means, all the 
 disappointing gaps of the scholastic organisation he had en- 
 deavoured to create, and of the intellectual life he had hoped 
 to arouse. He was well aware, up to a certain point at least, 
 of the inadequacy of the materials at his command, and 
 therefore, contrary to his usual habit, he moved slowly, as 
 though groping his way, until several years had gone by. 
 It was not till 1724, just twelve months before his death, that 
 he settled the question, in his characteristic fashion, with one 
 stroke of his pen. Below Pick's report on the necessity of 
 finding capable men for the various Russian staffs, he wrote 
 the words, ' Sdtclat akadcniioii ' (Found an academy). 
 
 In small provincial towns, and in some of the remoter 
 quarters of Paris, general establishments are to be seen — 
 half shops, half ' bureaux de tabac' — where stamps, groceries, 
 cigars, household utensils, newspapers, and even books, are 
 retailed. They are the typical remnant of the ancient 
 bazaars, a form to which the huge general emporiums of 
 our period seem, by a process not unfrcquent in the history 
 of civih'sation, to be returning. The difference between the 
 two resides in the confusion apparent in the first, and the 
 methodical arrangement so remarkable in the second. The 
 Academy, as created by Peter the Great's ukase, was like a 
 primitive bazaar. The three classical forms — the German 
 Gymnasium, the Teutonic University, and the French Aca- 
 demy, were mingled and confounded in whimsical juxtaj^o- 
 sition. It was to be a school, but, at the same time, it was 
 to be a learned society, and an artistic coterie. This strange 
 idea is easily explained. It corresponds with an inferior 
 degree of specific development, just as in the case of those 
 general shops, where packets of candles lie on the same 
 counter with yellow-backed novels. The Moscow Acatlemy, 
 founded before the Reformer's accession, was half ecclesiastic 
 and half secular. 
 
 This work has been severely and not unjustly criticised.^ 
 
 ^ The unfavourable verdict of PIcyer and Vockerodt.conlemporary diplomatists, 
 as published by Herrmann, roused a somewhat lively discussion (in which the 
 
MORALS— HABITS AND CUSTOMS 433 
 
 As a teaching centre, it never accomplished anything serious, 
 for it had no pupils capable of following the lectures of such 
 men as Hermann, Delisle, and Bernoulli, on the highest 
 problems of speculative science, abstruse mathematical ques- 
 tions, and Greek and Latin antiquities. But as a learned 
 society, it certainly did good service, both to scientific 
 interests in general, and to those of Russia in particular. 
 There can be no doubt as to the practical value of De- 
 lisle's work in Russian cartography, nor as to Bayer's studies 
 of Greek and Roman antiquities. It may be disputed whether 
 the 24,912 roubles, assigned for the support of the institution, 
 and charged on the revenues of Narva, Derpt, and Pernau, 
 might not have been better emplo}'ed, in a country where 
 intellectual luxury may fairly have appeared ill-placed, and 
 at a period when, before providing highly scientific books, it 
 was not easy to find readers able to digest far more elemen- 
 tary works. 
 
 But the real teaching of the great reign, and the only one 
 which did not fall short of the Tsar's hope and endeavour, 
 is that which Peter himself bestowed for thirty years — the 
 teaching of his great example, to which I have already 
 referred : his universal curiosity, his feverish love of learningj 
 contagious in their essence, and which, to a certain extent, 
 he succeeded in communicating to his subjects. And apart 
 from this, no one can reproach him with having neglected 
 the elements and rudiments of that intellectual initiation 
 which he so earnestly desired to bestow. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Peter did more, to begin with, than teach liis subjects to 
 read — he gave them a new language, which, like the rest, 
 was almost wholly his creation. When he was at Amster- 
 dam in 1700, he ordered a Dutchman, John Tessing, assisted 
 by a Pole, named Kopiewski, or Kopicwicz,^ to set up a 
 
 eminent French Slavist, IVI. Leger, shared), during 1S74. Ilerr Briickner 
 defemicd Peter and his Academicians in the fotii-nal dti Alutistire de C Instruc- 
 tion Fublique (Jan. 1874), and in the Neviie A'usse. An article pubn^hcd liy 
 M. Leger in the Revue critique (1874, No. 14), attracted Ilerr Herrmann's 
 altenlion to this argument, to whicli he rephed in a %'ery aggressive panqililet 
 (/". G. Vockerodt und dcr /'ro feasor fiir Russische Gcsckic/tte zii Dorpnt, \. 
 lirtickner, 1874), which elici ed a somewhat sharp rejoinder in llie Rcviic Russe, 
 1S75, vol. vi. p. 113. 
 
 ' He himself spelt his name in two different fashions. 
 
434 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Russian printinf:;-prcss in that town. A batch of worlds on 
 the most varied subjects, history, i^cot;ra})liy, hin.Ljuages, 
 arithmetic, the art of war, and the art of navigation, was 
 here pubhshed : most of these were translations, or adapta- 
 tions, without any scientific value, but useful for poi)ular- 
 ising purposes. In 1 707, this printing-hive sent off a swarm, 
 and a compositor, a printer, and a typefounder arrived at 
 Moscow, with a Russian al[)habet of a novel kind, — the 
 ^C^rajddtiski sJirift, or 'civil alpliabet,' thus named to distin- 
 guish it from the ancient Slavo-Servian alphabet, to which 
 the Church still adhered. This was at once adopted by Peter 
 for two new publications ; a Treaty on Geometry, and a 
 Manual of Complimentary Phrases, translated irom the 
 German. These were followed by translations of military 
 wi^rks, the proofs of which the Tsar himself corrected. But 
 this new alphabet did not satisfx' the eager creative spirit of 
 the Reformer. The faithful subjects of Queen Victoria are 
 fond of calling their language 'the Queen's English'; 'the 
 Tsar's Russian,' is, historically speaking, a far more vera- 
 cious phrase. In 1721, Peter desired the Holy Synod, then 
 recently called into existence, to undertake the translation 
 of part of Puffendorfs works. A contention arose amongst 
 the members of the Assembly. Should the contemplated 
 work appear in the ancient Slavonic language of the Church, 
 or in the current form, which, in course of time, had under- 
 gone great alteration ? The Sovereign settled the question 
 in most unexpected fashion, decreeing the employment of a 
 s[)ecial language, which, up to this moment, had only been 
 used in the Tsar's Diplomatic Chancery, and which clearly 
 betrayed its cosmopolitan origin, crammed as it was with 
 foreign words, or existing ones used in a novel sense, — a 
 lisping of barbarians striving to spell out European civilisa- 
 tion. This was, in future, to be the official tongue. At the 
 present moment, it is written and spoken by one hundred 
 millions of men. 
 
 Tiie very idea of having Puffendorf translated by a body 
 of ecclesiastics, seems droll enough, but Peter, as we know, 
 was apt to use any means he found to his hand. He wanted 
 books, and after having desired the manager of his printing 
 press, Polycarpof, to supply him with a history of Russia, 
 and found his w^ork far from satisfactory, he confided the 
 duty to the officials in his Diplomatic Chancery, the Ian- 
 
MORALS— HABITS AND CUSTOMS 435 
 
 guage of which he had lately adopted. When he wanted a 
 Museum, he appealed to the zeal of all his subjects, and 
 accepted, without inquiry, any curiosities they offered him, — 
 even two-headed calves and deformed children, — endeavour- 
 ing, all the while, to convince the givers that these 'monsters' 
 did not come from the Devil, as they were inclined to think. 
 There is something touching after all, in his perpetual 
 struggle, ill-calculated often, clumsy, missing its object, but 
 ceaseless and unwearying, always straining towards that 
 point, bathed in the light of progress, on which his eyes were 
 fixed. And in the end he generally won. Two officers of 
 his fleet, Ivan levreinof and Feodor Loujin started, in 17 19, 
 on an exploring voyage to the coast of Kamschatka, with 
 orders to seek for the solution of a problem suggested by 
 Leibnitz, — Were Asia and America united on that side, or 
 did the sea lie between them .'' The only result of this first 
 expedition was a map of the Kurile Islands, but Peter 
 returned to the charge, and in 1725, the Straits which still 
 bear the name of the bold explorer, were discovered by 
 Behring. 
 
 In the Records of the Paris Academy, we find mention 
 made, by the elder Delisle, of a map of the Caspian Sea, and 
 the surrounding Provinces, which Peter had shown him in 
 1717, and which, though not absolutely correct, did much to 
 rectify the contemporary Western idea of those countries. 
 In 1 72 1, thirty cartographers were already working inde- 
 pendently in different Provinces in Russia. The instructions 
 given them by Peter were characteristically scanty. ' The 
 latitude of each town will be taken by the sun-dial, and you 
 will then work in a straight line to every point of the com- 
 pass, up to the frontier of each district.' Yet some work was 
 done. S^ ecial explorers were also sent out, Lieutenant 
 Gerber, to the Northern Caspian, Dr. Messerschmidt, and 
 Tabbert, a Swedish prisoner, better known under the name 
 of Strahlenbcrg, to Siberia. Florio Beneveni, an Italian, 
 travelled into Persia and Bokhara, and to Khiva, while 
 Lieutenant Buchholz and Major Liharef followed the course 
 of the Irtich. The Secretary of the Senate, Ivan Kirillof, 
 was ordered to use the information thus collected, for the 
 compilation of a general Atlas, on which he laboured till 
 1734, and which is a work of considerable value.^ 
 
 ^ Struwe, Russische Revue, vol. viii., 1876. 
 
436 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 In 1720, the innumerable monasteries in the Empire were 
 comniaiiclcd to give up their stores of ancient charters, 
 manuscripts, and books.^ This was the beginning of the 
 Russian Archives. The foundations of a Library, the direct 
 result of Peter's Conquest, were laid with books, carried off 
 from Mittau, in the course of the Northern War, and stored, 
 in the first instance, in the Summer Palace at St. Petersburg. 
 But a Museum of Art was still lacking, and Peter gave com- 
 missions, in 17 1 7, to several Florentine artists, amongst others 
 to Bonacci, from whom he ordered two statues, representing 
 Adam and Eve. In 17 13, he began to make purchases at 
 Rome, and his Agent, Kologrivof, wrote him that he had 
 acquired a Venus 'more beautiful than that at Florence, and 
 in better preservation.' For this he paid only 196 ducats. 
 A School of Fine Arts was added to the Museum, and 
 attached, oddly enough, to the offices of the Arsenal. The 
 entrance to all Museums was free. In vain did Peter's 
 counsellors open a question which frequently attracts atten- 
 tion in the present day, and endeavour to enrich the National 
 collections by means of a moderate entrance fee. He took 
 a step in the opposite direction, and gave orders for the 
 gratuitous distribution of refreshments to the visitors. This 
 habit was continued till the reign of Anna Ivanovna, and cost 
 about 400 roubles a year.^ Sixty groups of figures, which 
 adorned the fountains in the gardens of the Summer Palace, 
 taught the St. Petersburg public the story of /Esop's P'ables. 
 The text of each fable was affixed to the group representing 
 it. These gilded leaden figures possessed no beauty, but 
 the intention with which they were placed in the gardens was 
 excellent. 
 
 Peter did not overlook the value of the Theatre, as a 
 means of intellectual instruction. Very little is known of 
 theatrical history in Russia before the great reign. Periodi- 
 cal representations, on the model of those given in the Jesuit 
 F2ducational Establishments, did certainly take place in the 
 Monasteries at Kief and Moscow, and at the Hospital in the 
 ancient Capital. The subjects of these plays were always 
 religious, and the actors were seminarists and students. 
 The scenery was of the roughest, and the general style 
 extremely coarse. Jokes upon the subject were current in 
 the German quarter. There was a story, that, in a piece 
 
 ' Collected Law i, 3693. ^ Golikuf, vol. x. p. 42. 
 
MORALS— HABITS AND CUSTOMS 437 
 
 representing tlie Annunciation, the Blessed Virgin answered 
 the Angel, 'Dost thou take me for a . . . ?'^ In 1672, the 
 year of Peter's birth, actors first appeared at Court. Alexis' 
 first wife, the Miloslavska, ruled by Byzantine asceticism and 
 the laws of the Domostroi", had opposed all such representa- 
 tions, but his second consort, who was cheerful in tempera- 
 ment, and altogether more open-minded, welcomed them to 
 the Kreml. The company was a German one, but it was 
 expected to make Russian actors out of the pupils belonging 
 to the State offices i^poddiatcJiyif) who were confided to it as 
 apprentices. These actors performed, before Racine's time, 
 a version of the story of Esther and Ahasuerus, which was 
 considered to recall that of Nathalia and Alexis. The Tsar's 
 death, and the troubled years that ensued, put a stop to 
 these entertainments. There is, indeed, a story that Sophia 
 caused plays of her own, amongst others a translation of 
 Moliere's ^ Medecin malgre lui', to be performed within the 
 tereui about 1680. She is even said to have taken a part 
 herself. But the Regent's well-known character, and the 
 disturbed history of her Regency, render this a very unlikely 
 supposition. She may have been confused with Peter's 
 elder sister, the Tsarevna Nathalia, then about seventeen 
 years of age, who was later to give proof of real theatrical 
 talent. 
 
 All these performances were private in their character, 
 and this quality Peter caused to disappear. Pie installed the 
 theatre on the Red Square, and summoned the general public 
 to the performances. He set his heart on having a Russian 
 company, playing Russian pieces, and his desire was accom- 
 plished. In 1714, the Tsarevna Nathalia lodged a company 
 of native actors, who played both tragedy and comedy, in a 
 huge house at St. Petersburg, which had been lately built, 
 and hastily abandoned. She herself superintended the staging 
 and machinery, sketched scenery, and wrote plays full of 
 political allusions, of a moral tendency. The orchestra was 
 composed of Russian musicians ; — the conductor's baton, so 
 Weber tells us, was not unfrequently replaced by a cudgel. 
 Peter was a great lover of music, especially of religious 
 music ; he hatl a fair choir of church choristers, in whose 
 performances he was fond of joining, and he also had horn 
 
 ^ Ilaigold, Beilagoi zuin iieuvcrainlerten Kusslattd (Leipzig, 1770), vol. i. 
 P- 399- 
 
438 PETER TIIK GREAT 
 
 players, and performers on the Polish bag-pipes. After the 
 year 1720, the Duke of Ilolstein's orchestra frequently played 
 at the Russian Court, and there introduced tlie sonatas, solos, 
 trios and concertos of such famous German and Italian 
 masters as Telemann, Kayser, Haynischen, Schultz, Fuchs, 
 Corelli, Tartini, and Porpora. 
 
 Finally, the usefulness and the power of the periodical 
 press did not escape the great man's watchful eye. In 
 the year 1702, Baron von Huissen was charged with 
 the duty of keeping up good relations between the 
 Tsar and European opinion, and was granted financial 
 means for the purpose. He translated, published and 
 disseminated the Sovereign's decisions as to the military 
 organisation of his Empire ; he encouraged learned 
 men, in every country, to dedicate their works to the 
 Tsar, and even to write books in his honour ; he inun- 
 dated Holland and Germany with pamphlets, according to 
 which Charles XII. had been beaten, and altogether worsted, 
 long before the Battle of Poltava. A Leipsic newspaper, 
 ' EiiropcniscJie Fatna' was in his pay, and conscientiously 
 flattered and toadied the Tsar, in return for his money. 
 In 1703, the first Russian Gazette appeared at Moscow — 
 yet another 'window' opened to admit Western air and 
 light. Until that time, the Tsar had been the only, 
 or almost the only, person in Russia who knew what 
 was happening abroad. The extracts from the foreign 
 Gazettes {Koin-anty), made in the Office of Foreign 
 Affairs, were only intended for the Sovereign and his im- 
 mediate circle. All the domestic news of the country was 
 transmitted from mouth to mouth, and so disfigured in the 
 process, that error sprang up, in every direction, amongst the 
 simple - minded populace. This first number of the new 
 Gazette gives information as to the number of cannon re- 
 cently cast at Moscow, and the number of pupils in the 
 newly-founded schools. 
 
 Even in the present day, the Russian press is very 
 far from having reached tlie level of its Western fore- 
 runners, and if, generally speaking, Peter's work in this 
 matter were to be judged by its apparent and immediate 
 results, the benefit would appear but small. The only literary 
 efforts we can find are a few very faulty translations ; a 
 memorandum by Shafirof, the Secretary of State, on the 
 
MORALS— HABITS AND CUSTOMS 439 
 
 motives of the Tsar's war against Sweden, written in Russian, 
 but full of French words ; an historical compihition by Peter 
 Krekshin ; another by Prince Hilkof, as badly expressed 
 as Shafirofs production ; and one more, far the best, by 
 Basil Tatislitchef The only poet of the period is Prince 
 Antiochus Kantemir, the son of that Hospodar of Moldavia 
 whose friendship so nearly proved fatal to Peter ; but his 
 eight satires, in syllabic verse, did not appear till after the 
 great Tsar's death. As far as science is concerned, we have 
 a second-rate arithmetical treatise and a few maps ; in art, 
 some statues brought from Italy, and three painters who 
 studied there, Nikitin, Merkoulief, and Matvieief. The 
 portrait of Peter by the last - mentioned artist is not a 
 masterpiece. 
 
 But this is not the manner in which to assess the distance 
 covered by the great leader, and by the subjects who followed 
 him. These dimensions must be sought in the general 
 change of mind and feeling brought about by the reforms, 
 and the consequent modification of the national thought and 
 sentiment. I will refer, if written evidence is absolutely re- 
 quired, to two documents, set, like frontier posts, at the begin- 
 ning and end of the reign. Possoshkof's w'ill, at its com- 
 mencement, and Tatishtchefs, at its close, are both of them 
 addressed, not so much to the writers' direct heirs, as to their 
 intellectual posterity. Possoshkof was an enthusiastic ad- 
 mirer of the Reformer and of his work ; he followed him 
 faithfully, so far as his ideas and principles of order and 
 administrative government were concerned, but, in the 
 matter of scientific beliefs, he was bound by the monastic 
 spirit of the fifteenth century. When Tatishtchef appeared, 
 those bonds were broken. He was the embodiment of 
 Modern Russia, hearkening readily to the wind that blew 
 from afar ; the open current had no terror for him ; he was 
 over eager, rather, to cast himself into it. All progress 
 charmed him ; no step was too bold for him ; there is 
 something almost American in his inclination to eccentric 
 methods. All this was Peter's doing. 
 
 It was no light undertaking to turn the national mind 
 from purely religious subjects, and interest it in profane and 
 human things. It is a curious fact, though easily explained 
 b)' the circumstances, that the man who did most to help 
 Peter in this matter, Feofan Prokopovitch, was himself a 
 29 
 
440 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 priest. He never spoke, save within churches — he never 
 wrote, but on matters of theology or ecclesiastical discipline; 
 but iiis sermons were political pamphlets, and his religious 
 rules were satires. Peter laicised even the priesthood — for 
 the movement he created was driven, in its search for men 
 worth}- to take part in it, to take hold of this priest within 
 the walls of his sacristy, and sweep him into the outer world. 
 Out of this sudden whirlwind of new sensations and ideas, 
 which snatched men from their habits and their prejudices, 
 from the sanctuaries in which they had spent centuries of 
 idleness, and threw them headlong into the budding tumult 
 of an intellectual and moral world just breaking into life, 
 Modern Russia has arisen. This too, and above all other 
 things, was Peter's work. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL REFORMS AND THE SUPPRESSION 
 OF THE PATRIARCHATE 
 
 I. The Church — Feofan Prokopovitch — Intellectual Propaganda and Ecclesi- 
 astical Reform — Precarious condition of the ancient ^Iuscovite Church — 
 Material prosperity, moral degradation — The Raskol — The Reform forced 
 on the Reformer — The death of the Patriarch Adrian opens the way. 
 
 II. TJu Patriarchate — A temporary guardian of the Patriarclial throne — Stephen 
 lavorski — Peter first attacks the Monasteries — The Black Clergy submit 
 — The revolt of the Raskolniks — The struggle — It carries Peter away — • 
 Stephen lavorski betrays his mission and cheats the Government — The 
 conflict — Gradual destruction of the Patriarchal authority — An open void 
 — A more radical reform necessary. 
 
 II. 7he Holy Synod — Ecclesiastical regulations — Programme and pamphlet — 
 Universal discontent — It does not check the Reformer — Suppression of 
 the Patriarchate — Establishment of the Holy Synod — The spirit of the 
 Reform — Results. 
 
 FEOFAN Prokopovitch came into the world at Kief in 
 1 68 1. By his origin, he belonged to the sphere of Polish 
 influence, and, by his education, to the Catholic Church. 
 He first studied in a Uniate School, and then was sent to 
 Rome. Thence he brought back a hatred for Catholicism, 
 a mind open to all the ideas and thoughts of the century, to 
 philosophy, science, and politics, and even certain Lutheran 
 tendencies. Long before his acquaintance with Peter, while 
 still nothing but an ordinary teacher of theology, he 
 became known as a restless spirit, an innovator, a partisan 
 of all bold action.^ He belonged to the movement of which 
 Peter himself was the outcome, and which had already 
 reached the foot of the altar. The moral features of this 
 priest were, in themselves, a novelty in Russia. He was the 
 type, unknown in those days, and almost extinct in these, of 
 
 ' Pickarski, vol. i. p. 4S1. 
 
 441 
 
442 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 the great Western Prelate. Nothing was lacking. He hail 
 the varied knowledge, the literary and artistic taste, tiie 
 ambition, the spirit of intrigue, the touch of scc[)ticisni, and 
 the sybaritic instuicts. Proi)okovitch had a library of 
 30,000 volumes, he kept open house, he never ate meat 
 from one year's end to the other, but every year 1500 salmon, 
 21,000 fresh-water herrings, 11 poods of caviare, and as 
 many barrels of smoked fish of various kinds, were con- 
 sumed at his table. He lived freely, and gave alms equally 
 freely. In 1 701, he established a school, the best of that 
 period, in one of his houses in St. Petersburg. The instruc- 
 tions drawn up for its guidance might iiave been compiled 
 by a full-fledged Jesuit, and the teachers, in several cases, 
 were foreigners and Lutherans. He wrote verses and plays, 
 which he caused the pupils in his school to perform. He 
 was heard to say, when he was lying on his deathbed, in 
 1736, 'Oh! head, head, thou hast been drunk with know- 
 ledge ; where wilt thou rest now ? ' ^ 
 
 The movement which bore him along originated largcl\', 
 as I have already pointed out, in a Polish and Little Russian 
 circle, which gave birth to a whole generation of open-minded 
 and cultivated men. It supplied Peter with his principal 
 resources and chief helpers, both in his educational under- 
 takings, and his ecclesiastical reforms. Before Prokopo- 
 vitch's time, another Little Russsian priest, Dimitri, Bishop 
 of Rostov, served the Reformer with tongue and pen. ' Is 
 it better to cut our beards or to have our heads cut off?' he 
 was asked, and he replied, ' Will your head grow again, 
 after it has been cut off?'^ Feofan, more intelligent 
 and energetic, was to do a different work. He was to be 
 Peter's haltering ram, to break down the defences of the old 
 Muscovite Church. 
 
 This was a fortress which the great reform could not 
 leave unbreached ; and indeed, apart from any external 
 interference, it was tottering to its fall. Priests and monks, 
 white clergy and black, formed a world apart ; they were 
 numerous, [powerful, rich, and utterh' degraded. The Church 
 jiroperty was enormous, the monasteries owned more than 
 900,000 serfs, — one alone, that of St. Sergius, near Moscow, 
 possessed 92,000 serfs, besides fisheries, mills, fields and 
 
 * Tsliislovilch, f>io:;raphy of Feofan Prokopovitch (Si. Petersburg, lS68). 
 ^ Soiovief, vul. XV. pp. 125, 126. 
 
THE ECCLESIASTICAL REFORMS 443 
 
 forests without number. The Archimandrites who ruled 
 these convents, wore diamond buckles on their shoes ; all 
 the clergy lived freely, many in scandalous luxury. The 
 most characteristic trait of the Russian family life of that 
 period, was its isolation. Each household lived apart, and 
 every householder desired to have a church and priest of 
 his own. In default of this, a family would deposit a 
 sacred picture within the parish church, and never pray 
 before any other. When means were not sufficient to hire 
 a priest by the year, one or several were engaged by the 
 hour, for special ceremonies. Priests stood in the public 
 squares, and waited to be hired. 
 
 The power of the clergy in the State was enormous. 
 Peter's ancestor, the Patriarch Philaretus, ruled the country, 
 from 1619 to 1633, in the name of his brother Michael, the 
 first of the Romanofs. The Patriarch Nicone held out 
 against the Tsar Alexis, who, in order to overcome his 
 resistance, was forced to appeal to the rival Patriarchs of 
 Alexandria and Antioch. Catholic influences, and the 
 weakness of the civil power, had imparted a Papal air to 
 the Ecclesiastical Government, but, as I have already 
 pointed out, this tremendous position was not counter- 
 balanced by any virtue, or moral strength. The priests, 
 sought after as they were, knew the routine of their ritual, 
 but they had forgotten how to treat men's souls. They were 
 far too prosperous, besides being too ignorant. In the year 
 1700, there were only 150 pupils in the Moscow Ecclesiastical 
 Academy, and these lived a life of idleness, within a building 
 which was rapidly falling into decay. Godunof rendered a 
 doubtful service to his Church, in 1589, when he ensured its 
 independence by the final rupture of the bond that con- 
 nected it with the CEcumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. 
 The Russian Church had, indeed, a separate head after that 
 period, but, in another sense, that head had been cut off. 
 The Moscow Patriarch's authority was purely administra- 
 tive ; spiritual power, properly so called, slipped from his 
 grasp. He could not even interpret questions of faith and 
 dogma ; all these matters were in the hands of the CEcume- 
 nical Council, and no meeting of that Council was probable 
 or even possible. When tlie Church lost the power of 
 touching these problems, she lost the principle of life and 
 motion. She was doomed to inertia. When she tried 
 
444 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 to bestir herself, the Kaskol straightway rose in her path. 
 A mere attempt at innovation, in the very limited field of 
 the external formula of devotion, raised a shriek of rebellion 
 from one end of the country to the other. The Patriarchate, 
 as an organ of administration, was already discredited and 
 broken-down. 
 
 This reform, then, like others, was forced on the Reformer. 
 He was not sorry, we may be sure, to seize the opportunity ; 
 the legacy of Philarctus and Nicone would have been a 
 most inconvenient element in tlie State he wished to bring 
 into existence. The young Sovereign's intimacies in the 
 German quarter, and his visits to Holland and to England, 
 had not prepared his mind to accept any idea of divided 
 power, nor even the scholastic principle of the two planets, 
 which shed an independent light on the peoples of the 
 earth. When the Patriarch Adrian ventured to find fault 
 with the Tsar's English tobacco treaty, he received a cutting 
 reply: 'Is the Patriarch the director of my customs?' 
 inquired Peter. Yet, in this new matter, he went care- 
 fully. Indifferent as he was to the wills of other men, he 
 seems to have shrunk from offending their consciences. 
 He left the Pontiff on his throne, and when, during his 
 absence, and even sometimes in his presence, the spiritual 
 ruler took on the air of presiding over the secular Govern- 
 ment of Moscow, he patiently endured it. But the news of 
 the Patriarch's death, in October 1700, came as a sound of 
 victory to the monarch. 
 
 II 
 
 Kourbatof is believed to have advised the Tsar to put off 
 appointing a successor to the office. Ha^i the idea of the 
 suppression of the Patriarchate already occurred to him ? I 
 hardly think so. His plan at that moment would rather 
 appear to have been to deprive the vacant office of part of 
 its prerogatives, and to confer it, at a later date, on some 
 more submissive holder. Advantage was to be taken of the 
 temporary absence of the master to sweep out his house 
 and make the necessary repairs. A ukase, dated i6th 
 December 1700, provided for the provisional administration 
 of ecclesiastical affairs, by a body appointed for the purpose; 
 the different branches of the business were confided to 
 
THE ECCLESIASTICAL REFORMS 445 
 
 various departments, and the most important matters were 
 nominally confided to a ' temporary guardian of the 
 Pontifical throne.' 
 
 This post was conferred upon a Little-Russian. Stephen 
 lavorski, Bishop of Riazan and Moscow, was born at Kief, 
 and educated in foreign schools. Peter deliberately de- 
 prived him of the management of the monasteries, which 
 he placed in the hands of a department, presided over 
 by a layman, Moussin-Poushkin. In this quarter the first 
 clearance was to be made. The convents contained an 
 enormous floating population of men and women, most of 
 whom had never dreamt of taking vows. These mock 
 monks and nuns, who had assumed the conventual habit to 
 escape from the results of some intrigue, to avoid perform- 
 ing some unpleasant duty, or simply to enjoy the sweets of 
 well-fed idleness, travelled from one monastery to another, 
 scouring the country and the towns, and living a life of 
 scandalous profligacy. Two radical measures were at once 
 adopted. A general census was taken of all monks and 
 nuns, whose comings and goings were in future to be regu- 
 lated by the Sovereign. The conventual garb was hence- 
 forth not to be considered to constitute the conventual con- 
 dition. Further, the convent revenues were, after a fashion, 
 confiscated ; all income was to be paid to the department 
 directed by Moussin-Poushkin ; the monasteries were to 
 receive an amount sufficient for their actual needs, and the 
 surplus was to be spent in supporting charitable institutions. 
 
 This reform had a result which Peter had not foreseen. 
 Left to themselves, the clergy would have submitted tamely. 
 The Tsar's absolute power in temporal matters was a tradi- 
 tion of the Church itself. When the priests refused to con- 
 tribute to the expenses of his war with the Tartars, Ivan 
 Vassilevitch forced tw^enty of them to fight with as many 
 bears in a sort of circus.^ Peter was not driven to such 
 lengths as these, but Prokopovitch, acting as his mouthpiece, 
 openly declared that any pretension, by priest or monk, to 
 independence of the Tsar's will, was a Popish delusion- The 
 call to resistance came from without. The monks' cause, which 
 they themselves had almost utterly abandoned, was taken up 
 by other malcontents, who carried it out of its proper limits, 
 
 ' Galitzin's Memoirs (Paris, 1867), p. 410. 
 "^ Tshistovilch, Life of J^rokofoviUh, p. 29. 
 
446 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 and invested it with a purely religious character.' The 
 standard of insurrection was raised by the Ras/coiniks. Peter 
 was astounded, and no wonder. Me had never had any- 
 thing to do with the Raskol. The movement had been 
 aroused by Niconc's action, before his birth, somewhere 
 about 1666, and he had never taken any interest in those 
 ritualistic questions which were at the bottom of the great 
 discussion. There is a sort of mingled pity and scorn in 
 his language about the unfortunate sectarians, whom the 
 official Church desired to persecute: 'Why make mart}-rs 
 of them, they are too foolish for that.^'^ And why not, he 
 further asked, live at peace with them ? A certain number, 
 residing in the neighbourhood of Olonets, on the banks of 
 the Wyga, near a recently established factory, were accused, 
 in the course of the year 1700, of desiring to form a 
 settlement, and a regular religious community. The Tsar 
 wrote, 'Disagreeable neighbours, you think .^ A piece of 
 good luck ! Let them come and work at the forges. If 
 they will do that, they shall pray after their own fashion.' ^ 
 
 But the Raskobiiks themselves, unfortunately, were much 
 less peaceably inclined. A ruler who was friendly to Lefort 
 and Gordon, — the one a Calvinist, and the other a Catholic, 
 — was an object of suspicion in the eyes of such austere 
 believers. He must be the accomplice, even if he were not 
 the author, of the impious innovations which revolted the 
 consciences of the Faithful. He might even be Antichrist. 
 Besides all this, the defence of religion was an attractive 
 phrase, and these defenders were most valuable allies. Like 
 most persecuted classes, they were brave, and ended by 
 becoming important. Hard-working, temperate and econo- 
 mical, relatively well taught, — having, at all events, learnt 
 to read for the sake of understanding the subjects of their 
 eager discussions, — they soon rose to wealth, influence, and 
 consideration. They bribed officials, were protected in high 
 quarters, took advantage of the ignorance of the official 
 clergy, and soon grew powerful. They were sought for, 
 their supjjort was solicited, and their j)rotests against the 
 reform of the national ritual was gradually united with, and 
 fused into, the universal opjxxsition to Peter's reforms in 
 
 * Solovief, vol. xvi. p. 295. 
 
 * Ibid. See also 'J he Raskol and the Russian Church in the Days of Peter the 
 Great (.St. Petersburg, 1S95), p. xiii., etc., p. 327, etc. 
 
THE ECCLESIASTICAL REFORMS 447 
 
 general. An eloquent proof of this fact is found in the 
 legend which describes Peter as Nicone's illegitimate son. 
 The monks' cause was certainly strengthened by this story. 
 
 The Reformer, then, was forced to wrestle with the Ras- 
 kolniks. But how was this to be done, unless he first made 
 common cause with that official Church whose privileges 
 he attempted to break down, whenever they came into 
 collision with his own ? He was driven into this course, 
 unwillingly enough. At first he endeavoured to avoid it. 
 
 As in the case of the monks, he ordered a Census 
 and a Fiscal measure : — the Raskolniks, rich as they were, 
 refused to share the common expenses ; nothing could force 
 them either into the Army, or into the Administration ; the 
 Tsar was determined they should pay for their privileges, 
 and doubled their taxes.^ Naturally they refused to pay, 
 and the struggle began. It soon raged round Peter. In 
 September 17 18, George Rjevski went with the monk 
 Pitirim, a converted Raskolnik, to Nijni-Novgorod, one of 
 the principal centres of the Raskol, where he laboured, 
 k'nout in hand, to re-establish order. Meanwhile Stephen 
 lavorski used the same arms to repress the Calvinist and 
 Lutheran heresies. In 1717, the wife of an inferior employe, 
 in the Department of Provincial Affairs, named Nathalia 
 Zima, who was accused of Protestant leanings, was knouted 
 three times, receiving eighty-five blows in all, and only saved 
 her life by abjuring her errors. Other, and less docile 
 heretics, were executed, Peter himself signing the sentences.^ 
 
 This was in utter contradiction to the ideas, principles, 
 and tendencies, the Reformer had intended to put forward 
 with the assistance of that very man, lavorski. But, since his 
 elevation, the 'temporary guardian of the Pontifical throne' 
 had changed his skin. Whether out of care for his budding 
 popularity, or from a sense of his recently assumed responsi- 
 bilities, he yearly inclined, more and more, not to Ortho- 
 doxy only in all its ancient fanaticism, narrov/ and un- 
 compromising, but to the old Muscovite instinct of rebellion 
 against any idea of progress. In 1712, he actually ventured 
 to find fault with the Administrative Reforms of the new 
 regime, and thundered, from the pulpit, against the un- 
 popular fiscal regulations ! 
 
 ^ Collected Laws, pp. 2991, 2996. 
 * Solovief, vol. xvi. pp. 302, 315. 
 
448 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 With such a companion, Peter could scarcely fail to go 
 astray. Tlie acknouIccl<,nncnt of liis error, which, in 
 characteristic fashion, he tiid not hesitate to make, was to 
 open out new destinies before the official church and its 
 leader. 
 
 Before the final experience of their common campaign 
 against the Knslo/, and his own consequent disgust, 
 the Reformer felt the necessity of protecting himself and 
 liis work against this hostile leader, by gradually reducing 
 the already diminished power and privileges allotted to 
 him. lavorski's authority, even on those questions which 
 had been left in his hands, was soon further limited ; — first, 
 by an Episcopal Council, which met periodically at Moscow, 
 and then by increasing interference on the part of Moussin- 
 Poushkin. His last shadow of independence disappeared, 
 when the Senate was created in 171 1. Church affairs were, 
 in future, to be submitted, like all others, to the supreme 
 jurisdiction of this newly-constituted body. The Patriarch's 
 representative could not even appoint an Arliire'i in an 
 Eparchy, without the approval of the Senate. When he 
 tried to intervene in the discussions, which arbitrarily 
 disposed of the interests committed to his care, and to claim 
 his own rights, he was brutally treated, and quitted the 
 Assembly in tears.^ In 1718, Peter, suspecting his 
 former favourite of connivance with Alexis, removed him 
 from Moscow, kept him at St. Petersburg under his own 
 eye and hand, and gave him a ri\al in the person of 
 Prokopovitch, whom he created Bishop of Pskof, and whose 
 influence steadily increased. 
 
 By the year 1720, scarcely a trace of the ancient 
 power and prestige of the Patriarchs remained. Every- 
 thing had passed out of lavorski's hands. But Peter soon 
 perceived the abnormality of a state of things, whereby 
 the spiritual authority was subordinated, not to that of the 
 Sovereign onl}', — Bj'zantine tradition was not opposed to that 
 — but to a mere department of his Government. The clergy 
 had grown tame enough, but was it still worthy of its name .-* 
 It was more like a regiment, kept under military discipline, 
 but bereft of the honour of the flag. The Abbot flogged his 
 monks, the Bishop flogged his Abbots, the Government 
 knouted the Jiishop, and then degraded him and sent hiui 
 
 ' Olchc'vski, The Holy Synod under Peter the Great (Kief, 1894), p. 9. 
 
THE ECCLESIASTICAL REFORMS 449 
 
 into exile. All classes, high and low, from the top of the 
 ladder to the bottom, were falling into the same state of 
 degradation, into idleness, ignorance, drunkenness, and the 
 worst vice. Such a condition of things could not continue. 
 Some change was indispensable. That presbyterian institu- 
 tion, known as the Holy Synod, dictated by imperious 
 necessity, and inspired by the friends of Prokopovitch, who 
 owed the greater part of his knowledge to such Protestant 
 theologians as Ouensted and Gerhard, was summoned, in 
 172 1, to draw Russia out of the abyss, which threatened to 
 eiiFulf her religious and moral future. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The idea of the Holy Synod was occupying Peter's 
 attention in 17 18, and some people have thought the com- 
 plicity of the clergy in the rebellion of the Tsarevitch had 
 something to do with his resolution.^ But I am inclined 
 to believe he took a broader view. In the following year, 
 he drew up, with Prokopovitch's assistance, a Code of 
 regulations, intended to justify the new Reform, and explain 
 its basis. The document is a curious one ; — a striking picture 
 of the ecclesiastical customs of the time, in which the 
 Bishop's satirical turn finds free play, and a strange mixture 
 of ideas and doctrines, drawn from the most distant corners 
 of the Western world of religion, philosophy, and politics. 
 The advantages of a collective authority are forcibly main- 
 tained, with a strange indifference to the arguments thus 
 supplied against the Sovereign's own personal and individual 
 I)Ower. No other proof could be needed of Peter's incapacity 
 for abstract conceptions. 
 
 These Regulations, which were read, before a special 
 meeting of the Senate and the Episcopal Council, and 
 sent into every Eparchy, to be signed by the Bishops 
 and the principal Archimandrites, raised a perfect tempest 
 of fury. They were at once recognised for what they 
 were — a pamphlet, whose authors put themselves for- 
 ward as the physicians of men's souls, and, before citing 
 their chosen remedies, described the disease with terrible 
 exactness. They desired to remove out of the priesthood 
 all that numerous body who had entered it as a matter of 
 
 ^ Piorliiiji's Kussia and the Sorbouue, p. 47. 
 
4SO PETER THE GREAT 
 
 calculation, and wilhout any real vocation. The Episcopal 
 Schools, throuLili which future candidates would have to 
 pass, and the strict examinations to be conducted by com- 
 petent authorities, until these schools could be established, 
 were to ensure this fact. These examinations were not only 
 to deal with the knowledge, but with the moral worth, of the 
 future Popes. No priest, according to Peter and Prokopo- 
 vitch, must be either a mystic or a fanatic; the examineis 
 were to make sure he saw no visions, and had no disturb- 
 ing dreams. Domestic chaplains. — the usual instruments, 
 according to this Regulation, of hidden intrigues,and the prime 
 movers in irregular marriages, — were to be questioned and 
 tested, with special severity. As for the priests who served 
 chapels kept up by zvidoius, they were to be completely 
 suppressed. AH miraculous places not recognised by the 
 Holy S>'nod were also to be done away with. Fees were 
 to be replaced by free-will offerings, and the 'death-tax,' as 
 the document describes the price claimed for prayers for the 
 dead, which, according to custom, were offered for forty 
 days, was utterly forbidden. The expenses of this part of 
 the ritual were to be paid by means of a fixed tax on all 
 parishioners. 
 
 But the Black Clergy were more especially attacked. No 
 man was to enter a monastery before he was thirt\-, all 
 monks were to confess and communicate at least four times 
 a year. Work was to be compulsory in every monastery, 
 no monks were to visit nunneries or private houses ; no nun 
 was to take final vows before she was fifty, and until the 
 final vows were taken any female novice might marry.^ 
 
 Discontent, this time, was universal, but Peter held on 
 his way. The regulation was published on the 25th of 
 January I72i,and on the iith of the following February, 
 the Ecclesiastical College, — later, out of some tardy deference 
 to the Byzantine tradition, entitled the Holy Synod, — held 
 its first meeting. The Patriarchate was suppressed. The 
 civil and religious interests of the Church, with all the 
 necessary powers, legislative, judicial, and administrative — ■ 
 these last under the management of a duly appointed 
 
 ' This regulation was published in Russian, in the Collected Laws, No. 3718, 
 and fre(]uently in German transiulions. See Catalogue il-:s A'/isshu, 265-268. I 
 have seen a cojiy, |irinted at St. Petersburg during the reign of Catherine n. ; in 
 this the paragraph as to ' widows' chaplains ' was suppressetl, but, through some 
 carelessness, it had remained in the Index. 
 
THE ECCLESIASTICAL REFORMS 451 
 
 Government official — were made over to a permanent 
 Assembly, in which an ordinary priest might sit, in the 
 company of Bishops. This body held equal rank with the 
 Senate, and took precedence of all other Administrative 
 bodies. 
 
 It should be remembered that, at this period, the substitu- 
 tion of administrative bodies, for individual administrative 
 chiefs, was much in fashion in all Western countries. Peter 
 had just returned from Paris, where Louis XIV. 's ministers 
 had given place to the Councils of the Regency. And again, 
 this revolution of the Tsar's may be looked on as the con- 
 sequence of a progressive evolution, two centuries old already, 
 which had modified the constitution of the Eastern Churches. 
 The Holy Synod was to replace, to a certain extent, the 
 Patriarch, who had been suppressed, and the Council, which 
 had disappeared. And the six Oriental Churches, one after 
 the other, organised themselves on this same pattern. Finally, 
 the reaction against the Papacy, so strong in the old 
 Patriarchate, was evidenced in the Democratic and Presby- 
 terian nature of the institution which took its place. 
 
 This, the most sharply contested, perhaps, of all Peter's 
 reforms, has, since his time, received the double sanction of 
 internal duration, and external expansion. I will not take 
 upon myself to discuss the value of the work. But it has 
 been a lasting one. The Holy Synod still sits at St. Peters- 
 burg. Has it fulfilled its Founder's expectations? Has it 
 given, or brought back, to the Russian Church, together with 
 her dignity, independence, and power, her old authority over 
 human souls, and the virtue necessary to the wielding of it ? 
 These are matters which I cannot broach, without venturing 
 into burning questions, which I have determined to avoid. 
 The Reformer's chief desire was to take measures to prevent 
 the Church from being a present or future difficulty, in the 
 new State he had called into existence ; and no one can 
 deny that his success, in this respect, was admirable and 
 complete. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SOCIAL REFORM — THE TAIJLE OF RANKS 
 
 Thi A^obility — Was Peter a social reformer? — Social classes in ancient 
 .Muscovy — Ivan lu.'s Slonjilyic Liotidi — Their triple part: military, ad- 
 ministrative, and economic — Peter turns them into a Nobility — New dis- 
 trilnition of offices and privileges — Universal enrolment — A table of ranks 
 — Collectivism. 
 
 The P,asants — The rural population — Two classes of peasants — How their 
 condition was influenced by Peter's policy and laws — (General servitude — 
 State rea.-ions — The greatness of Russia and its price — Paid by the peasant. 
 
 The Aliddle Class — Peter's attempt to found one — Failures and inconsis- 
 tencies — Municipal autonomy and bureaucracy — Nobles and Commons — 
 A far-reaching work— The socialisation of the Church. 
 
 Was Peter a social reformer? The title has been denied 
 him. It has been argued that the changes, important as 
 they were, in the condition of the various social classes dur- 
 ing his reign, were only the indirect consequences, and, occa- 
 sionally, those he had at least foreseen and desired, of his 
 legislative work. This argument does not affect me. Obser- 
 vation, indeed, has taught me, that most contemporaryrcforms 
 of that period had something of this accidental quality. 
 Peter made no alteration, either in the constitution of the 
 various classes, or in the nature of their respective right's and 
 duties. All he did was to mod-fy their distribution. But, 
 if he did not actually introduce a far-reaching political and 
 social principle into this reorganisation, he certainly affirmed 
 its existence in the clearest and most energetic manner. Let 
 us now, without further discussion as to names, come to facts. 
 Even before the Mongol invasion, Ancient Russia pos- 
 sessed three social classes, vaguely corresponding to those of 
 the Carlovingian and Merovingian periods in the West. The 
 Mouji or Notables bore some resemblance to the Rachiui- 
 
 452 
 
THE SOCIAL REFORM— THE TABLE OF RANKS 453 
 
 bonrgs and Bons/ioinincs of those days. Tlicy have all 
 the mixed and confused character of the Gallo-Frankish 
 aristocracy. Next in order, the Liotidi, like the Homines in 
 the West, formed a compact body, comprising all the free 
 men of the country. Last of all, came the serf population. 
 This family resemblance may be explained by the Norman 
 origin of the Russian State. This was almost entirely wiped 
 out, under the Mongol yoke, by the levelling hand of a 
 common servitude It was not till the second half of the 
 fifteenth century, that a commencement of organic life 
 began slowl)^ to rise out of the barren ground. Ivan IIL, in 
 his merciless endeavour to unify the country, gathered a new 
 group about him, a class of 'men who gave service,' sloujilyi^ 
 lioiidi, who were, at the same time, the only landed pro- 
 prietors in existence — for the Sovereign, in return for com- 
 pulsory service, both in time of peace and in time of war, 
 gave them hereditary or life interest in certain lands. From 
 the military, from the administrative, and from the economic 
 point of view, this body played an important part, both in 
 the State and in society. These men made war, helped 
 the Sovereign to govern, and ovv'ned the whole, or almost 
 the whole, of the social capital of the country. Yet, 
 before Peter's accession, this class had no regularly con- 
 stituted form. It was not a caste, nor an aristocracy. 
 Peter was the first to give it this character, and to bestow 
 on it a generic title borrowed from Polish phraseology, 
 sJdahctstvo, or nobility. Until that period, the body 
 had remained somewhat undefined and unsettled in char- 
 acter, and even the title conferred by the Tsar did not 
 entirely remove this embryonic quality. The condition of 
 these sloujilyic lioicdi, or dvo7'tanie,\wdiS the first to be affected 
 by Peter's reorganisation of the military and civil services. 
 Military service in the provincial armed bands, called out in 
 case of war, was exchanged for permanent service in stand- 
 ing regiments. Thus the budding aristocracy was removed 
 out of its natural surroundings. The corporate instinct, 
 which had begun to develop in the provincial centres, was 
 broken up, and removed into regiments and Cfl7-ps d'arvn^e, 
 which gave it a special character. At the same time, the 
 civil was separated from the military service. The dvoriaiiit' 
 had formerly performed a double office. The)' had been 
 soldiers and magistrates in one, wielding both sword and 
 
454 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 pen. Now, cacli service was to do its separate duty — but 
 that duty ^rew all the heavier. The official, whether civil 
 or militar}', was laid hands on when he was- fifteen, and 
 worked till death set him free. And this was not all. Until 
 the a.^e of fifteen, he was expected to prepare himself to do 
 liis duty. He was to study, and his progress was to be 
 strictly examined. Peter expected his nobility to be a 
 nursery of officers and officials. The gaps in his army, 
 civil and military, were to be filled up with men of lower 
 condition, amongst whom the dvoriatiic were to act the part 
 of leaders. But this was the Reformer's only concession to 
 the principle of a social hierarchy. Faithful to the tendency 
 evident in those reforms which preceded his own accession, 
 he determined that in his apportionment of the various 
 ranks, the claims of aristocratic origin should be balanced 
 by the democratic claim of merit. A peasant might rise to 
 official rank, and, by the fact of his becoming an officer, he 
 became dzwrianiii (noble). There was something fine about 
 this, but it certainly sounded the knell of any autonomous 
 distribution of social elements. Nothing was left but a 
 universal enrolment of the units at disposal, in the ranks 
 of an official hierarchy. The famous 'Table of Ranks,' pub- 
 lished in 172 1, is the official expression and sanction of this 
 system. Those who served the Sovereign were thus divided 
 into three departments, the Army, the State, and the Court. 
 But the staff, in each case, held equal rank. There were 
 fourteen classes, or degrees of official rank {tchin), corre- 
 sponding, in every department, like the rungs on a triple 
 ladder. The list was headed by a Field- Marshal on the 
 Military, and a Chancellor on the Civil side ; immediately 
 below these two, we find a General, beside a Privy Councillor, 
 and so it goes on till we come to a Standard-Bearer and a 
 Departmental Registrar, at the bottom. The same order of 
 precedence was extended to families of officials — the wife 
 shared her husband's rank, and the daughter of a first-class 
 official, so long as she remained unmarried, held the same 
 rank as the wife of one of the fourth class. 
 
 This artificial classification clearly has nothing in common 
 with those spontaneously developed in other Kuropean 
 societies. Yet it may perhaps be the only one suited to the 
 country of its birth. Peter's acting Privy Councillors and 
 Departmental Registrars were nothing but a rej)roduction of 
 
THE SOCIAL REFORM-THE TABLE OF RANKS 455 
 
 Ivan IH.'s sloiijilyic Jwudi, in a French or German disguise. 
 This pi-rticular method of grouping the population was 
 historical and traditional in Russia, and may very possibly 
 be bouna up with the existence of a people, which, all 
 through the centuries, has shown but little disposition 
 towards the formation, cither of a free Democracy, or of 
 a powerful Aristocracy. Peter, rather than let his subjects 
 wander at random, enrolled them all. Kach person was 
 given his place and duty, and individual or corporate rights 
 and interests were, as a general principle, subordinated 
 to those collective ones represented by the law of the State. 
 A certain writer has declared that Peter, in this respect, was 
 a century before his time.^ I should be disposed to double 
 the period. His ])lan strikes me as bearing the closest re- 
 semblance to modern Collectivism. It remains to be seen 
 whether the principle already affirmed by Ivan IIL consti- 
 tuted a real step in advance. 
 
 Peter, when he arranged his dvoriajiic into classes, and 
 carefully numbered them, did not overlook what they owed 
 him as landed proprietors. He invented a strange part, 
 vvhich he expected them to play ; they were to serve the 
 State as ^ rural steivards! This is the real meaning of the 
 Ukase published on the 23rd of March 17 14, on the subject 
 of tini-personal inheritance, the iedinonasledie, which has been 
 wrongly taken to be a law of entail on the eldest son. Peter 
 did indeed, before attempting this Reform, inquire into all 
 the information obtainable on the subject, from the Codes of 
 foreign countries. But, after having commissioned Bruce to 
 collect a whole library of works on the order of property succes- 
 sion in England, in France, and at Venice, he finally fell back 
 on the nearest possible approach to the local rights and customs 
 of his own country. His Ukase simply confirmed the two 
 forms of ownership already existing in Russia, the vottchiua 
 (freehold) and \\\& poniicstie {^^(ti), with the principles of transi- 
 tion affecting both. Thus he invented a right of uni-personal 
 inheritance, united to free testamentary powers. The 
 dvorianin must leave his landed property intact to one of his 
 children, but he was free to choose which that child should 
 be. This was not the principle of entail on the first-born 
 son ; it was simply the enforcement of the autocratic spirit 
 in domestic life. There was nothing in the system approach- 
 
 ^ Filippof, Peter the Great'' s Reform of the Penal Code, p. Sv 
 30 
 
456 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 iiiff to that known as a ' majorat! Peter did ccrtairly con- 
 sider the question of the impoverishment of the .lobiHty, 
 and hoped to put a stop to it, b)- preventin^r the suodivision 
 of their fortunes. Hut he looked at the matter from his 
 personal point of view, and therefore in the interests of the 
 State. The dvoriaiii^ must be rich, if they were to serve 
 him as he expected to be served, spend all their lives work- 
 inf^, unpaid, in his armies and his State Offices, and build 
 palaces at St. Petersburg into the barijjain. Now, speaking 
 generally, they were completely ruined ; even the Ruriko- 
 vitch were forced to earn their bread in private houses. 
 Prince Bielosielski was acting as major-domo in the house 
 of a rich merchant, and Prince Viaziemski managed the 
 landed property of an upstart parvenu.^ 
 
 The Tsar also desired to constitute a class of well-born 
 younger sons, who would form an excellent nursery for 
 commerce and industry. The disinherited sons of these 
 Dvoriatiin were not to lose caste by going into trade, and, 
 after seven years' soldiering, ten in the Civil Service, and 
 fifteen in commerce or industry, — service of some sort they 
 must give ! — they had the right to acquire landed property, 
 and thus retake their place in the so-called aristocracy they 
 liad been forced to leave. Those who would not work were 
 not to possess anything, and those who would not learn were 
 even denied the right to marr}'. 
 
 And finally, Peter desired to improve the condition of the 
 Serfs. Their owners, if they were richer, were likely to be 
 more merciful. All this is expressed in the Ukase, which 
 even contains phrases about the glory of the 'illustrious 
 families' which the legislator proposes to protect. But this 
 was not the real question. The law was general in its 
 application, the rule of uni-personal inheritance touched 
 every form of real property, from arable fields to drapers' 
 shops, and Peter's chief anxiety was to have security, both 
 in town and country, for the payment of his taxes, and the 
 performance of the service exacted by the State from every 
 subject. 1 hese sole inheritors were the Tsar's cJiief deputies, 
 and his law was, above all things, a fiscal measure. 
 
 It failed of success. When, seventeen years later, the 
 F.mpress Anne repealed it, she declared her reason to be 
 that its provisions had produced no effect. The great mass oi 
 
 ^ K.irnovitch, Great Russian Fortunes, p. 33. 
 
THE SOCIAL REFORM— THE TABLE OF RANKS 457 
 
 landed proprietors had contrived to elude the lawgiver's will. 
 Only two fortunes had been built up by its means — those of 
 the Sheremetief and Kantemir families.^ Entail on the 
 first-born son, according to the English system, has never 
 taken real hold in Russia ; there are not more than forty 
 instances of it in existence, in the present day, throughout 
 the whole length and breadth of that great Emi)ire. 
 
 II 
 
 At Peter's accession, the rural population of Russia, as 
 apart from the landed proprietors, consisted of two principal 
 classes of peasants, greatly differing from each other, from 
 the political, judicial, and economic point of view — the 
 Ivn's/ur//u' and the Holopy. Another class of ^ free men,' who 
 tilled the ground, was rapidly disappearing. The Krcstianie 
 had two masters, the State and their owners. Each of these 
 had a right to tax them, and demand forced labour of them. 
 They lived in perpetual serfdom, and might be sold, with, or 
 without, the ground they tilled. The Holopy, or, at all events, 
 the Holopy kabaliiyic or ' mortgaged ' peasants (the Polynie 
 holopy, or ' full serfs,' had almost disappeared at this period) 
 owed nothing to the State, and were only united to the 
 owners of the land on which they lived, by a personal bond, 
 a kind of mortgage (kabala) on their own persons, agreed to 
 by themselves, and which ended with the death of their 
 holder. These could not be sold on any pretence whatever. 
 Peter's policy, with regard to this population, was a double 
 one. He intervened, in its favour, with a series of regulations 
 of a liberal and humanitarian tendency. His ukases forbade 
 the sale of serfs, except in cases of absolute necessity, and 
 insisted, in such cases, on whole families being kept together. 
 Special commissioners were appointed to prevent abuses, 
 etc.- But the indirect action of his government and legisla- 
 tion was very different. Its invariable tendency was to fuse 
 the two categories of peasants, and to tighten the yoke of 
 serfdom about their necks. This fusion, politically speak- 
 ing, took place in the year 1705. when compulsory military 
 service was imposed on the holopy by ukase. Judicially and 
 economically speaking, the general census of 1718, and a 
 
 * Karncjviuii, Great Russian Fortunes, p. 33, 
 2 Collected Laws, 3294, 3770 (1719 and 1721). 
 
4S8 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 series of ukases dcaliiif^ with the composition of the census 
 papers, published between 1720 and 1722, completed the 
 operation. At that period the land tax was replaced by a 
 poll tax, and the Sovereign's chief object became to find the 
 greatest possible number of taxable heads or ' soii/s.' How 
 was this to be done ? The landed proprietors, who were 
 called upon to play the part of tax-collectors, and made 
 responsible for the new tax, neither could nor would be 
 answerable for any ' souls ' save those in their own posses- 
 sion, over whom they had complete control ; and they, 
 naturally, endeavoured to diminish the number borne on the 
 census papers, while the State did all in its power to increase 
 it. The State did not succeed in carrying the day, until it 
 consented to agree to the general and complete serfdom of 
 the whole body of the agricultural population. Every 
 peasant appearing on the list had to be considered as the 
 permanent serf of the person answerable for him, who, other- 
 wise, refused that responsibility. 1 hus, little by little, the 
 whole peasantry was swallowed up.^ 
 
 This certainly was Peter's work. Soon it was completed 
 by a new series of ukases, the object of which was to put a 
 stop to the exodus of peasants, who fled from this fresh 
 severity, and crowded to take refuge beyond the frontier, in 
 the border districts of Poland. These were so many locks 
 on the prison of universal serfdom. Then a fresh class of 
 serfs was called inte existence. There were no workmen 
 for the factories the Reformer had established. Where were 
 these to be found ? The serfs supplied the only nnmual 
 labour known to the country ; such a thing as free labour 
 did not exist. There must be factory serfs then, as well as 
 agricultural serfs. And the manufacturers received permis- 
 sion to recruit their necessary staff by purchase." 
 
 Peter was no inhuman Sovereign ; this is eloquently 
 proved by the sixty charitable 'establishments called into 
 existence, in 1701, in connection with the Moscow churches.' 
 But the State reasons he represented were a hard and 
 even a cruel law. The grandeur and the glory he bestowed 
 
 ' Klioutchevslsi, The Poll Tux and its lujlueiue on the Cotuli/ion of the 
 Peasantry, in Kiissian Thou<;ht (Rousskoia Mysl, i8S6). 
 
 2 Ukase dated Jan. 18, 1721. Sec lji«51aief, 'J he Peasant))/ in Russia 
 (Moscow, 1S60), p. 257. 
 
 ^ Pylaief, Old Moscow, p. 419. 
 
THE SOCIAL REFORM^ THE TABLE OF RANKS 459 
 
 on Russia cost a heavy price, and that price, up to the year 
 1 86 1, was paid, for the most part, by the Russian peasantry. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Peter never, according to his apologists, had any intention 
 of lessening the reforming programme left him by his 
 predecessors, by the omission of the emancipation of his 
 rural subjects. All he did. we are assured, was to sub- 
 ordinate the solution of this problem, to the preliminary 
 accomplishment of another work — the emancipation of the 
 Urban class. The town, once raised out of its misery and 
 degradation, was to free the village. I cannot find any trace 
 of such an idea, either in the actions or the writings of the 
 great Tsar. He certainly took great pains to create a 
 middle class, in the young cities of his Empire, and to make 
 that class worthy of its natural vocation. According to his 
 usual habit, he made a trial of every system at once, English 
 Administrative Autonomy and Self- Government, French 
 Trade Corporations, Companies and Wardenships, and 
 German Guilds. His success did not equal his expectations. 
 His reign marked a period in the history of the gradual de- 
 velopment of the industrial and commercial centres of Modern 
 Russia, but his attempted organisation of the industrial and 
 commercial classes had nothing to do with these results. It 
 only brought him disappointment. The development of the 
 Russian towns grew out of political successes, and econonn'c 
 victories, out of the conquest of ports, and the establishment 
 of new means of communication, which gave a fresh impulse 
 to the national commerce and manufactures. In the Baltic 
 Provinces, Peter found a middle class ready to his hand ; 
 his endeavour to evolve one elsewhere proved a mere waste 
 of time. I do not myself believe the nature of the Russian 
 people to be so averse to the corporate idea, as some writers 
 have affirmed. There are many forms of corporation, and 
 the Artel, — that eminently Russian, and democratic, method 
 of association, is, after all, one of these, — more liberal, 
 and in greater conformity with the original fraternal 
 principle, which, in the case of most Western corporations, has 
 been vitiated by the dcs[)otic influence of Rome. I believe, 
 — and Peter's example confirms me in this belief, — that it is 
 
46o PETER THE GREAT 
 
 not pos>ible to create social forces by law and regulation. 
 Peter issued many such, and all in vain. And, as so often 
 happened in his case, his whole method was full of incon- 
 sistencies. In 1699, he sketched out a huge plan of 
 municipal autonomy on social lines. In 1722, he finally 
 replaced this by an ordinary Magistracy of the burcavicratic 
 type. Me never took the trouble to consider whether the 
 exotic forms he so hastily imposed on the industrial and 
 commercial existence of his country were fitted for its needs. 
 He never perceived that they were a garment, which had 
 already seen hard service on the shoulders of his European 
 neighbours, who were about to cast it aside, and that he was 
 dressing his own people in mere rags. While he claimed to 
 favour the development of commerce and industr}-, he did 
 not relinquish the fiscal policy of his predecessors, who 
 regarded the urban population chiefly as a taxable element, 
 from which forced labour might be obtained. He in- 
 creased the burden thus injudiciously imposed,^ and finally, 
 — though, as I have alreatly indicated, he held that his so- 
 called nobility, the dvorianit\ did not lose caste by engaging 
 in Middle Class occupations, — he recognised the formal 
 entrance of any member of that aristocracy into the middle 
 class, as a disgraceful thing, — a blot on his reputation. 
 Voltaire's enthusiasm on this point is difficult to understand.^ 
 
 Peter's social reforms were unconscious, and this is his 
 best excuse. All he did, in town and country alike, was to 
 brush carelessly past, or else to stumble gropingly ujion, 
 certain great problems, the full comprehension of which 
 demanded a far more powerful and extended range of vi.sion 
 than he possessed. 
 
 Yet, from one point of \icw, the work he performed in 
 this particular sphere, though unconscious and indirect, was 
 far-reaching in its consequences. He introduced into the 
 social organisation of his country, — perhaps we should say, 
 he drove back within its borders, — an element which may 
 be held to have brought about a more harmonious combina- 
 tion of its every part. The Church, before his time, was out- 
 side the general community. Church rights and privileges 
 rivalled and resembled those of the State ; a huge Church 
 
 ' Ditiatin, The Administratio7i of Russian Towns, t^. 175. 
 - Sec the views expressed by D.imazc de IJayni'ind in his Ilisloriial, Geo- 
 graphical, etc.. Picture of Russia, vol. i. p. 1 19 (Paris, 1812). 
 
THE SOCIAL REFORM— THE TABLE OF RANKS 461 
 
 property was managed without any reference to the 
 temporal power ; the Church was served by her own army 
 of dependants, her jurisdiction was not restricted to ecclesi- 
 astical affairs ; she formed a separate State. Peter, as we 
 have seen, made an end of all this. During his reign, priests 
 and monks went back to their proper place. If he could not 
 make them citizens, at all events he made them subjects of 
 the State ; it was a good beginning. ^ 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 PETER'S ECONOMIC WORK 
 
 I. Industry — Guiding ideas — Their great scope and relative consistency — 
 Causes which partially imperilled their success — A mortal error — I'eler 
 expects to create commerce and industry by ukase — The mercantile thetiry 
 — Protection — State manufactures — Peter manufactures cambric — Pre- 
 carious position of his establishments — He ends by finding fruitful 
 ground — The mining industry. 
 II. Comnicrce — A commercial monopoly — Peter's liberal tendencies — His war 
 obliges him to put them aside— Liberal in theory — Practical continuation 
 of arbitrary methods — The Port of St. Petersburg— Canals — Highways — 
 The caravan trade — The Persian and Indian niaikets. 
 
 III. Rural economy — Peter as an agriculturist and forester — Political and moral 
 
 obstacle to economic progress. 
 
 IV. The finances — The Budget — Appearance and reality — The necessities of 
 
 war — A policy of disorganisation and robbery — The revision of the 
 Cadastral Survey — Di-ap])ointing results — More expedients — A deficit — 
 Return to healthier methods — General reform of taxation — The land 
 tax replaced by a poll tax — Partial adherence to former mistakes — 
 Bankruptcy. 
 
 At the period of Peter's accession Russian commercial 
 indiisti)' hatl no existence. The Tsar was the only great 
 merchant in Russia. During the Du-umvirate of Peter and 
 Ivan, a hirge reward was offered to a French sea-captain for 
 introducing white paper, wine, and certain other merchandise, 
 which would otherwise have been unobtainable, into the 
 country. Just at that moment, the earliest Russian econo- 
 mist, Possoshkof, was writing a book — his ' lVi7/' — in which he 
 openly affirmed his contempt for wealth. Twenty years 
 later the very same author drew up, on white paper, vim/e in 
 Russia, a Treatise on Poverty and Ric/ics, in the course of 
 which he points out every possible method of increasing 
 private fortunes and the wealth of the State, and forestalls 
 
 462 
 
PETER'S ECONOMIC WORK 463 
 
 both Smith and Turgot in pressing the superiority of task- 
 work over daily labour. This again was Peter's work. 
 
 It was far-reaching in its effects. In spite of some incon- 
 sistencies, it deserves a place of honour in the great Tsar's 
 history, both on account of the magnitude of the effort, the 
 multiplicity and ingeniousness of the means employed, and 
 the logical sequence of the ideas which guided it. Peter 
 desired, and attempted to attain, the increase of private 
 happiness, and of State resources ; to simultaneously create 
 fresh sources of taxation and production ; to replace foreign 
 importations by the produce of the national industry ; to 
 stimulate the activity and originating power of his subjects ; 
 to remove all idle persons, monks, nuns, and beggars into 
 the ranks of the industrious classes ; to check administrative 
 indifference, and even hostility, to the productive forces of 
 the country. He endeavoured to supply what was lacking 
 in public justice, to develop public credit, and atone for 
 the absence of public security, for the non-existence of a 
 third estate ; — to bring Russia, in fact, into touch with con- 
 temporary economic existence. 
 
 The partial failure of this enterprise was brought about 
 by an unlucky coincidence, and a mortal error. The coin- 
 cidence was the war, with its natural consequences and neces- 
 sities. The war it was which drove Peter, the resolute 
 adversary of all monopolies, to create fresh ones, and thus 
 pull down with one hand what he had built up with the 
 other. The fundamental error was his belief that, by dint 
 of ukases and physical force, he could create a commercial 
 and industrial life, endow it with the necessary organs, give 
 it muscles and blood, and rule its movements, driving it to 
 the right and left, just as he embodied regiments and 
 drilled them. His commercial and industrial companies, 
 founded in 1699, were his first attempt in this direction. 
 The Dutch began by being alarmed, but they soon ended 
 by laughing them to scorn. 
 
 Money was indispensable to carry on the war. The 
 standing armies of the West laid the foundation of the mer- 
 cantile doctrine, and Peter soon became a devoted follower 
 of Colbert. The national tradition was with him in this 
 respect. In the time of Alexis Mihaiiovitch, and probably 
 earlier, all entrance duties were paid into the Muscovite 
 Custom-house in Hungarian ducats or Dutch thalers, Peter 
 
464 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 enforced and aggravated this system, wliich is still in exist- 
 ence at the present day. In spite of all Bodin's or Child's 
 advice to the contrary, he forbade all exportation of the 
 precious metal. Me had never read the works of Klock, 
 Sciiroder, or Decker ; he went beyond their view, and actu- 
 ally forbade his subjects to accept payment for their mer- 
 chandise in the national currency.^ He believed in the 
 balance of trade, and contrived to make it incline to his 
 own side, a privilege which his Empire preserved in common 
 with Spain, until a recent date. According to Marpcrgcr, 
 Russia, towards the year 1723, gained several tons of gold 
 yearly on her foreign exchange.^ Peter also believed in pro- 
 tection. He ruled a country, the external commerce of 
 which is almost entirely confined to the production of raw 
 material ; he forbade the exportation of certain produce of 
 this nature, as, for instance, of wool, and hampered all others 
 by an almost prohibitive export tariff. He was not yet in a 
 position to dress his whole army in native-made cloth, but 
 he would wear nothing else him.^elf, and made its use for all 
 liveries compulsory.^ A Frenchman, named INlamoron, es- 
 tablished a stocking factory at Moscow, and Peter forbade 
 his Moscovian subjects to buy stockings elsewhere. When 
 certain manufacturers under his protection seemed little 
 disposed to turn the felt they manufactured into hats, their 
 courage was stimulated by an official ukase which forbade 
 them to sell their merchandise at all, unless they put a certain 
 number of hats on the market. This system of entreaty, of 
 persuasive and coercive arguments, and of moral and pecu- 
 niary assistance, ended by producing its effect. P\actories 
 sprang up in all directions, some of them subsidised by the 
 Sovereign ; others directly undertaken by him, and others 
 af^ain worked by independent persons. The Empress was 
 interested in a tulle factory, and starch works, at Ekatierinhof 
 Peter's efforts were limited, at first, to the production of 
 supplies for his navy ; sailcloth, saltpetre and sulphur, leather 
 and arms, but in time, and somewhat against the grain, he 
 enlarged his sphere of operations. He manufactured cambric 
 at St' Petersburg, made paper at Douderof, and had cloth 
 mills all over the country. 
 
 ^ Collected Laws, 2793, 2SS9, 3441. Comp. Sticda, in the Russische Revue, 
 vol. iv. p. 206. 
 
 8 Moscovilischer Kaufmann (1723), p. 218, ^ Solovief, vol. xvi. p. 203. 
 
PETER'S ECONOMIC WORK 465 
 
 But none of these establishments, unfortunately, made 
 money. In vain did the Tsar sell his cambric at a loss, 
 giving material which had cost him fourteen kopecks for five. 
 As usual, he grew stubborn, went further and further, and 
 even endeavoured to introduce artistic production into the 
 manufactures of his country. Russia began to make tapestry 
 before she knew anything about cotton-spinning. And he 
 was not satisfied with urging her on, he dealt blows. In 
 1718, a ukase forbade the use of tallow, in dressing leather; 
 tar was to be employed, on pain of confiscation and the 
 galleys ! But, in the course of this wild struggle, he came 
 on a most promising field, teeming with riches, easily and 
 promptly realised ; and forthwith his eagerness, his pas- 
 sionate keenness, and creative activity, worked wonders. In 
 the reign of Alexis, a Dutchman and a Dane had attempted 
 mining operations in the neighbourhood of Moscow, and 
 had extracted several tons of mineral.^ The work, when 
 Peter put his hand to it, took on vast proportions. This 
 new departure was, it must be acknowledged, that inspired, 
 guided, and hurried forward by the necessities of war. 
 When the ironworks of Vierhotour and Tobolsk were estab- 
 lished by ukase, in 1697, Peter was entirely prompted by his 
 military needs ; — he wanted guns and heavy artillery. But 
 once started, he went steadily forward, and the prodigious 
 development of Russian mining industry, in the present day, 
 is the result. 
 
 The Sovereign began by seeking iron, and working it. 
 But soon, as might have been expected, the gold fever was 
 upon him. He grew more and more eager, collecting every 
 kind of information, searching in all directions. The various 
 expeditions he organised, — that sent towards Persia in 17 17, 
 under the command of Bekovitch-Tcherkaski, and that 
 despatched to Siberia in 17 19, under the leadership of 
 Liharef, were unsuccessful. Up till 1722, only one silver 
 mine was brought into actual work; but in the course 
 of these expeditions copper was found, and more iron, — and 
 in 1722, coal was discovered. Thirty-six foundries were 
 opened in the Government of Kasan, and thirty-nine in that 
 of Moscow. 
 
 Private enterprise, apart from that of Demidof, was slow 
 
 * Storch, Ilistorisch-Slatistische GemdlJe des Kussischen Ketches (Riga, 
 1797), vol. ii. p. 485. 
 
466 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 to appear. A ukase published in 1719 gives us an insight 
 into this question. By it all men are declared free to seek, 
 and work, any kind of metal, in any ground. The only 
 right of the proprietors of metalliferous soil is that of 
 priority ; if they fail to take advantage of it, so much the 
 worse for them. If they venture to conceal the presence of 
 workable seams, or to prevent their being worked by others, 
 death is to be their punishment.^ In 1723, the legislator 
 made another step. He resolved to break, finally, with the 
 system of the industrial monopoly of the Crown. He pub- 
 lished a regulation for the embodiment of a College of 
 Manufactures, and added a manifesto, whereby private in- 
 dividuals were invited to replace the State in the working 
 of all his industrial establishments of every kind, and offered 
 the most advantageous terms. The sum-total of these 
 repeated efforts bore fruit at last. The creative movement 
 increased and broadened, and the national industry became 
 an accomplished fact. 
 
 II 
 
 The history of the National Commerce closely resembles 
 that of Peter's industrial undertakings. The Tsar, when he 
 ascended the Throne, was greatly inclined to do away with 
 those Crown rights which made him the foremost, and, 
 indeed, the only considerable merchant, in the country. But 
 the necessities of the war forced his hand. Want of money 
 obliged him to continue his trading operations, and, as he 
 / never did anything by halves, he increased these to such an ex- 
 tent as to mono polise and absorb all markets, both internal and 
 external. He created new branches of traffic, but every one of 
 these was a monopoly. He bought wholesale, and sold retail, 
 in every department, even going so far as to sell Hungarian 
 wine in small quantities, at Moscow.^ At a certain period, 
 overwhelmed, as he was, by the cares of government, 
 and worried by the irregularity of the income they brought 
 in, he began to farm out his rights. Menshikof took over 
 the Archangel Fisheries, and the trade in castor oil and 
 otter skins. But, when the hope of an early peace diminished 
 the Sovereign's financial anxieties, he came back to his own 
 natural and liberal tendencies. The Corn Trade was de- 
 * Collected I. aivs, 3464. -' Golikof, vol. vi. p. 326. 
 
PETER'S ECONOMIC WORK 467 
 
 clared free in 17 17, and, in 17 19, all monopolies were done 
 away with. Meanwhile, the 'College of Commerce,' which 
 had been founded in 171 5, was beginning to do good work. 
 The education of the commercial class wa's made the object 
 of its special care, and dozens of young men belonging to the 
 rich merchant families of Moscow — a rapidly increasing class 
 — were sent into Holland and Italy. Diplomatically speak- 
 ing, efforts were made, in all directions, to extend conniiercial 
 relations w^ith other nations. The war had led Peter into 
 some regrettable errors in this respect, — such as the s;;le, in 
 17 13, of certain rights and privileges to the town of Lubeck, 
 for a sum of between 30,000 and 40,000 crowns, and similar 
 arrangements with Dantzic and Hamburg. After the year 
 1717, Peter showed an evident intention to put an end 
 to this condition of things, and no further reference to such 
 proceedings appears, either in his negotiations with France, 
 or in the instructions sent to the Consuls, simultaneously 
 appointed, at Toulon, Lisbon, and London. 
 
 Yet he could not resist the temptation of trying to direct 
 this budding intercourse after a somewhat arbitrary fashion. 
 This fact is evidenced in the history of the Port of St. Peters- 
 burg, and of the pitched battle between the Tsar and the 
 merchants, native or foreign, who persisted in preferring the 
 Port of Archangel. When all pacific means of persuasion were 
 exhausted, — when Peter realised that nothing would attract 
 the merchants to St. Petersburg, — neither the establishment of 
 a huge Gostmnyl dvor (bazaar), nor of a special Magistracy 
 largely composed of foreigners, nor the pains he himself had 
 taken to ensure a good and cheap supply of their favourite 
 article of commerce — hemp — in his new Capital, — he boldly 
 appealed to his ancestral traditions. Though he did nut 
 forcibly transfer the citizens of Archangel to St. Petersburg, as 
 his predecessor, Vassili, had removed the Novgorod burghers 
 to Moscow, he decreed that the recalcitrant merchants must, 
 in future, buy and sell their hemp at St. Petersburg, and no- 
 where else.^ 
 
 The result of this measure was easy to foresee. The new 
 Capital, as a commercial mart, was still far from desirable. 
 The system of canals, by which the Volga and the Neva 
 were to be joined to the Lake of Ladoga, had, as yet, no 
 
 * Tchoulkof, Historical Description of Russian Trade, vol. vi. p. 488 ; 
 Storch, vol. V. p. 19, etc. 
 
468 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 existence except on paper. The ^i^reat Enc;lish enf][ineer. 
 Perry, to whom the work had been confided, disgusted by 
 the ill-treatment lie had received, had retired from the work 
 while it was in its earliest stage. Peter planned a second 
 canal, by which the dangerous Lake was to be avoided, and 
 the Neva directly united to the mighty affluent of the 
 Caspian. But this canal was not completed till 1732. A 
 third system, based on the utilisation of various intermediate 
 streams, served no purpose, but that of enriching a miller 
 named Serdioukof, who invented it, and who took advantage 
 of the concession, all too iiastily granted bim, to dot the 
 banks of the Tsna and the Shlina with mills and taverns, 
 which brought no advantage whatsoever to the Port of St. 
 Petersburg. Thus, hemp and furs, and every other mer- 
 chandise, — for after 17 17 two-thirds of all produce had to 
 be sent thither — were brought up to the Capital with the 
 greatest difficulty, and at terrible expense. And there, as 
 no purchasers were to be found, they were heaped up, 
 depreciated by over-keeping, and ended — this was especially 
 the case with the hemp — by actually rotting. 
 
 Put Peter cared not. Somehow or other, he was resolved, 
 St. Petersburg was to become a commercial port. Only 
 sixteen foreign vessels touched there in 17 14. but the next 
 year there were fifty-three ; in 1722 there were 119, and in 
 1724 the number rose to 180. Peter laid tlie foundation of 
 that sj'stem of river communication, which all his successors, 
 down to Catherine's time, laboured to complete, connecting 
 the basin of the Volga with those of the Neva and Dvina, 
 opening the way from the Caspian to the Baltic and White 
 Sea, and uniting seventy-six lakes, and 106 streams, by 
 means of 302 versts of artificial waterwa\'. This result was 
 not achieved without enormous waste of mone\', of labour, 
 and even of human life. Ikit the secret of Russian strength 
 and success has always largely consisted in the will and the 
 power not to count the cost of the object to be attained. 
 Here again the patient Moujiks, who lie buried in their 
 thousands in the P^innish marshes, paid the price unmur- 
 muringly ! 
 
 Peter attached b}- no means the same importance to land 
 communications, and did not, indeed, make any endeavour to 
 develop them. He made no roads, and even in the present 
 day, this is one of Russia's weak points. The very inadc- 
 
PETER'S ECONOMIC WORK 469 
 
 quate hi'f^hways which do exist, have been entirely con- 
 structed by the Engineering Corps called into existence so 
 lately as 1809. Yet, the great man did not overlook the value 
 of caravan trade, as practised by his ancestors. He engaged 
 in it himself, bought the harvests of Tokay, on the spot, and 
 carried his purchases to Moscow on hundreds of carts, which 
 returned into Hungary laden with Siberian produce.^ — And, 
 though his best thoughts and efforts were turned towards the 
 Baltic, and western commerce, he did not, as I have already 
 shown, lose sight of his South-Eastern frontier, and of the 
 commercial interests which beckoned him in that direction. 
 Probabl}', if he had reached Bokhara, he would have founded 
 an Indian trade. Occasional caravans already came to 
 Orenburg and Astrakhan, bringing not only silken and 
 cotton stuffs, made in Bokhara, but Indian merchandise, 
 precious stones, gold, and silver. At all events, he took 
 possession of the Irtish, — thereby moving the Siberian 
 frontier back, and protecting it against the Kalmuks and the 
 Kirghiz, — and of the Kolyvan Mountains, the treasures of 
 which, discovered at a later period, confirmed the old Greek 
 story of gold mines guarded by gnomes. If he had main- 
 tained bis hold on Azof, he might, too, have sought, and 
 succeeded in obtaining, the re-establishment of the ancient 
 commercial route, followed by the Venetians and the 
 Genoese. Driven back on the Caspian, he attempted, we may 
 believe, to turn trade by Astrakhan, towards St. Petersburg. 
 This idea would seem to have dictated his great expedi- 
 tion in 1722, and the project for a great commercial depot, at 
 the mouth of the Kour, on which 5000 men of various tribes 
 were actually working, when he died. There was, it may be 
 hinted, some fancy, and even a touch of madness, in all this : 
 there was no attempt, certainly, at any reasonable calcu- 
 lation of possibilities, distances, and cost of transport. But 
 in spite of the exaggerated boldness of his plans, and of the 
 utter oblivion into which the indifference of his earlier suc- 
 cessors soon cast them, one result was gained. The Persian 
 and Indian markets, to which a kind of road was opened, 
 were thus included in the inheritance, which, even in our 
 days, Russia is yet receiving and reckoning up, and the huge 
 benefits of which she continues to enjoy. 
 
 ^ Storcti, vol. V. p. 37 ; Goliktif, vol. vi. p. 326. 
 
470 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 III 
 
 A man so catholic in his tastes as Peter could hardly 
 have failed to be an agriculturist. And he was an eager 
 one. His reign marks an era in the history of Russian 
 rural economy. He did not, like the great Frederick, in 
 later years, content himself with teaching his peasants to 
 plant potatoes. Near Moscow, he taught them, by his own 
 pergonal example, how to cut their corn, and near St. Peters- 
 burg, he showed them how to make their laf^ti (bark shoes). 
 He treated them as a schoolmaster treats his scholars, and 
 forbade them to wear nailed soles, because they spoilt the 
 floors. He fixed the width of the coarse cloth they made 
 in their cottages. He was struck by the beauty of a French 
 Cure's garden, and as soon as he returned to Russia, he fell 
 out with iiis own popes, because they liad nothing of the 
 kind. He interested himself in the matter of seed-corn, in 
 the care of domestic animals, the manuring of fields, the use 
 of agricultural instruments, and the improvement of methods 
 of cultivation. He endeavoured to introduce vines into the 
 country of the Don Cossacks, and to develop that branch 
 of culture near Dcrbent, where he planted Persian and 
 Hungarian vines. In 171 2, he established the first Russian 
 breeding studs, and in 1706, he began to breed sheep in the 
 Governments of Harkof, Poltava, and lekatierinoslav, which 
 now swarm with that useful quadruped.^ He was the first 
 forester in his own country, the first to protect the wood- 
 lands against the inveterately destructive habits of his 
 subjects. It must be confessed that no Minister of 
 Agriculture, even in Russia, would venture, in these days, 
 on his methods. All along the Neva and the Gulf of 
 Finland, at every five versts, a gallows was set up, 
 on which depredators were to be hanged. Within the 
 boundaries of St. Petersburg, on the space now occupied 
 by the Custom-house, there was a pine wood. As the 
 people continued to cut and steal the wood, Peter ordered 
 a sudden descent by the police, had every tenth prisoner 
 hanged, and knouted the rest.^ 
 
 Generally speaking, the Reformer's good intentions, with 
 regard to economic progress, met with a double obstacle, 
 
 ' Russian State Tapers (1S73), p. 22S8. 
 
 - SDbofs Paper in \.\Mi Journal of Agriculture. 187?,. 
 
PETER'S ECONOMIC WORK 471 
 
 moral and political. On the 13th of March 17 16, a Ukase 
 to the Senate pronounced the penalty of death on those 
 Russian merchants who should continue to carry on a 
 practice of which their English customers had long com- 
 plained, — that of hiding damaged merchandise inside their 
 bales of hemp, or even of introducing stones to increase the 
 weight.^ Notwithstanding this effort, the connncrcial and 
 industrial morality of the country remained a problem, 
 to be solved in future reigns. When Peter died, the 
 elements of industrial and commercial activity, which he 
 had created and called out of the void, were still in a condi- 
 tion of savagery. In 1722, Bestoujef announces the arrival, 
 in the city of Stockholm, of certain Russian merchants from 
 Abo and Revel. They had brought over a small quantity 
 of coarse cloth, wooden spoons, and nuts, which they sold 
 from their sledges in the streets ; they cooked their caslia 
 in the open air, refused to obey the police, got drunk, 
 quarrelled and fought, and the disgusting filthiness of their 
 habits made them an altogether shameful spectacle.^ 
 
 The political difficulty was connected with Finance. The 
 Tsar's financial policy was the dark spot on his reign. It 
 was the part of Peter's work, most directly inspired and 
 compiViidcd by the necessities of his war, and bears that 
 mark. It was far from being a policy of reform, and was, 
 almost always, thoroughly bad. I can only give a hasty 
 summary of its more salient features. 
 
 IV 
 
 The pecuniary resources which Peter found at his dis- 
 posal, when he succeeded to the Russian throne, cannot 
 be directly compared with those of any other luiropean 
 State. Their sum did not, according to Golikof, exceed 
 1.750,000 roubles.^ The mere internal existence of the 
 State, independently of all external matters, would, at first 
 sight, appear impossible, on such slender means, but the very 
 exceptional conditions which then specially favoured the 
 State exchequer, must be taken into account. In the first 
 place, except for the army, there were hardly any State 
 expenses whatsoever. The servants of the State were all 
 
 ^ Sbornik, vol. xi. p. 308. 
 
 ^ Solovief, vol. xvii. p. 164. • Vol. xiii. p. 706. 
 
 31 
 
472 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 uiip.iifl. Tlicy cither gave their services in exclianj^c for 
 privilcL^cs c^raiited, or they were indirectly rewarded by 
 the system known as the konnlaiie. There were no roads, 
 and consequently no expenses for keeping tiietn up. And 
 so f^rtii. I subjoin the Jkidget of State Expenses for the 
 year 1710, which is instructive — 
 
 Expenses of the Army . . . 1,252,525 roubles 
 
 ., „ Artillery . . 221.799 
 
 Elect . . . 444,288 
 
 „ „ Garrisons . . 977,^96 „ 
 
 Recruiting Expenses . . . 30,000 „ 
 
 Purchase of Arms .... 84,104 „ 
 
 Diplomatic Service .... 148,031 ,, 
 Other Expenses, including Chief 
 
 Gunners' pay .... 675,775 ,} 
 
 In 1679, before Peter's time, a great and salutary reform 
 was introduced into this rudimentary organisation, by the 
 centralisation of all revenue in the Great Treasury Depart- 
 ment {Prikaz BalsJioi Kazny') which was replaced in 1699 by 
 the ' Hotel de Ville.' When Peter came, he undid what had 
 already been done. He was in too great a hurry to attempt 
 to carry out any programme, the benefits of which were not 
 likely to accrue to him for a considerable time. He wanted 
 money quickly, and a great deal of it, and he behaved like 
 many young men who find themselves in a difficulty. In- 
 stead of carrying on the process of centralisation, and 
 gradually suppressing those special and local departments, 
 which sucked up and swallowed the National wealth, he 
 invented new ones, such as his Financial War Departments^ 
 which received the special war taxatitin. Instead of en- 
 deavouring to increase the already existing sources of 
 revenue, which were suited to the productive forces of the 
 country, he began a policy of financial brigandage, taxing 
 anything and everything which struck him as being taxable, 
 even to his subjects' beards. He seized oakcti coffins in the 
 joiners' shops, had them taken to the monasteries, and there 
 sold, four times as dear, for the benefit of the Treasury ! 
 In 1700, he took possession of the taxes hitherto paid by 
 the merchants, to the private proprietors of the various 
 
 ' Blocli, The Finances of Russm (Warsaw, 1SS4), vol. i. p. 20. 
 
PETERS ECONOMIC WORK 473 
 
 market-places. In 1704, he laid his hands upon the taverns; 
 in 1705, he seized the salt and tobacco monopoh"es ; in 1707, 
 he extended this system to a whole series of articles of 
 commerce, including the principal exports of the country. 
 Meanwhile, advised by Kotoshihin, he had attempted to re- 
 coin the National Currency ; but this only resulted in greater 
 poverty, for the value of the rouble diminished one-half^ 
 
 A more judicious attempt was that to work the State 
 farms {obrotcJiny'ie stati) through a special department (the 
 Ijora CJiancery), opened, in 1704, in Alenshikof's house, met 
 with better success, and the revenue from this source rose 
 from 299,000 to 569,000 roubles, — but as expenses had cor- 
 respondingly increased, the Treasury remained in as bad a 
 case as ever. From the outset, there was a struggle between 
 ihe 'Hotel de Ville' and the new departments, which resulted 
 in constant waste and confusion. The great financial and 
 administrative reform of 1708 only added a fresh element 
 of disturbance and disorder. All the departments claimed 
 the various revenues. In 171 1, there was a deficit in the 
 budget of the Moscow Government. The revenue of the 
 Artillery Prikaz had been assigned to it, and this Prikaz 
 had no revenue of its own ; it was expected to subsist on 
 subsidies given to it by other departments! The disputes, 
 mutual recriminations, and general confusion, went from bad 
 to worse. 
 
 In 1 7 10, Peter, who was still at war, and sorely pressed 
 for money, was tempted by a plan to revise the Cadastral 
 Survey or list of inhabited houses and cultivated fields,^ 
 the basis on which the principal traditional, and really 
 National, tax was levied. This operation gave most un- 
 satisfactory results, it was found that since the last census, 
 in 1678, taxable property had diminished by one-fifth. 
 In the North, the loss amounted to 40 per cent. This was 
 the result of the army recruiting, and of the flight of those 
 subject to military service. Peter sought expedients to 
 remedy this difficulty, and pitched on one which probably 
 suited tlie national spirit, for, even at the present du)-, it is 
 still in force, with regard to certain classes of the population. 
 The actual population was condemned to pa)- the share of 
 
 ' Collected Laws, 1799, 1977, 2014, 2015, 2132. Comp. Storch, vol. v. p. 
 131 ; Perry, Present State of A'ussia, p. 249 ; Ouslrialof, vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 641 ; 
 Sbornik, vol. xxxix. v. ^61 : Milioukof, u. 204. 
 
474 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 the absentees, and the tf)lal revenue attained in 1678 was 
 alwaxs to be kept up. But this measure was clearly not 
 calculated to check the current of emigration, and the situation 
 grew more and moreseriou?:. From 1704 to 1709, — though a 
 deficit on the lUidgct frequently appeared, — the excess was 
 ahva)-s covered b)- what remained over from preceding years. 
 
 
 Receipts. 
 
 
 Expenses. 
 
 
 I70I. 
 
 2,S6o,OGO roubles. 
 
 2,250,000 roubles. 
 
 1702. 
 
 3,150,000 
 
 
 2,470,000 
 
 
 1703. 
 
 2,730,000 
 
 
 3,340,000 
 
 
 1704. 
 
 2,490,000 
 
 
 3,240,000 
 
 
 1705. 
 
 2,640,000 
 
 
 3,340,000 
 
 
 1706. 
 
 2,520,000 
 
 
 2,7 1 0,000 
 
 
 1707. 
 
 2,410,000 
 
 
 2,450,000 
 
 
 1708. 
 
 2,020,000 
 
 
 2,220,000 
 
 
 1709. 
 
 2,760,000 
 
 
 2,700,000 
 
 1 
 
 But in 1 7 10 an absolute deficit appeared, and naturally 
 increased from year to year. All attempts at borrowing 
 from abroad ended in failure. As the finances at disposal 
 barely sufficed for the necessities of the war, they were 
 entirely devoted to that purpose, and the other branches of 
 the public service were left to struggle on as best they 
 could. At last the very sinews of war began to fail, and 
 then, and not till then, Peter's soul fell into distress, and he 
 began to betray an inclination to more rational principles, 
 and a wiser practice. Soon afterwards, his stay in France 
 brought him into more direct contact with the economic 
 doctrines then beginning to govern the Western world. lie 
 finally jnit away his methods of violence and robbery, and 
 turned his mind to increasing the resources of his country, 
 and thus adding to its ta.xable capacity, by the organisation 
 of his * College of Commerce,' while he endeavoured to 
 improve its fiscal management, by a general reform of 
 taxation, carried out between 171 8 and 1722. 
 
 This reform has not met with universal admiration. 
 Certain of its qualities, — the substitution of a Poll Tax 
 {podoHsJuiy'i)y whereby each subject was taxed, instead of 
 each inhabited house {podvor/iyi), or tilled field {posoc/iiiyi) 
 gave the Russian fiscal system an artificial, and a certain 
 
 ' Milioukof, p. 235. 
 
PETER'S ECONOMIC WORK 475 
 
 anti national cliaractcr, which it still bears. Contemporary 
 opinion, as in the case of Possoshkof, rose in indit^iiation. 
 ' How can the soul, an intangible and inestimable value, be 
 taxed ? ' In later days, Count Uimitri Tolstoi, the eloquent 
 historian of Russian financial institutions, has forcibly de- 
 scribed the pernicious influence of the innovation on the 
 economic development of his country. Count Cancrin, who 
 must be acknowledged one of the best financial ministers 
 possessed by Russia, in the course of two centuries, is 
 almost the only native statesman who has attempted to 
 support it. The immediate and palpable results of the 
 reform speak in its favour. The only direct tax levied by 
 the Treasury, doubled the revenue, which rose at a bound 
 from 1,800,000 to 4,600,000 roubles, and the Budgets of the 
 last years of Peter's reigti show distinct progress, so far, at all 
 events, as receipts are concerned. That of 1725 amounted, 
 according to Golikof, to 9,776,554 roubles. At the same 
 time the new spirit in which the finances were administered! 
 began to bear fruit. The list of expenditure shows 47,371 
 roubles assigned to schools, and 35,417 to the support of 
 hospitals and refuges. But the progress, after all, was very 
 trifling, and the improvement far more apparent than real. 
 
 As regards both receipts and expenses, these written 
 Budgets continued most deceptive in their nature. The 
 State really received and paid out far more than was shown 
 in them. The revenue was increased by all sorts of devices, 
 by contributions in kind, and even in money. The country 
 furnished all food and forage for troops on active service. 
 Every peasant gave half tons of rye and oats for the benefit 
 of the Civil Service, and many pensions assigned by the 
 Tsar were actually paid by private individuals. Thus that 
 of Princess Anastasia Galitzin was exacted from Alexis 
 Miloslavski, who, in return, was freed from military service.^ 
 In the same manner, when the clerks {poddzatchy'ie) of the 
 Secret Office of the Chancery of the Senate complained, in 
 1713, of being insufficiently paid, their income was increased 
 by a sum duly assignetl them on ' the revenues of all foreign 
 business, and all the business of Strogonof, except merchan- 
 dise coming from Archangel."^ 
 
 ' A Mcinorandiini from Caini)rc<l<)n, writlcn at St. Petersburi^ in 1724, 
 Contains Koine curious details on this subject (French I'oreign Onicc I'ai/ers, 
 vol. x\. !>. 75, Russia). - Collected Laws^ 26S3. 
 
476 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Thus past mistakes wore still adhered to, and this adher- 
 ence, coupled with the incomplete and bun^lin^ ap[)lication 
 of the newer niethoils, prevented a reall)' successful assimila- 
 tion of the benefits conferred by the new rcgivtc. The 
 maintenance of the army, still the great business and the 
 chief burden of the Treasury, was a constant subject of 
 dispute between the Financial Department, which had been 
 re-organised after a fashion, since 1708. and the War Depart- 
 ment, which disorganised all arrangements, and claimed to 
 imitate the method followed in Sweden. But in Sweden, 
 the population fed the soldiers by contracts, regularl}' made 
 with the Government, which were a source, if anything, of 
 profit ; whereas in Russia, the army and the population 
 were set face to face, as creditor and debtor; and the 
 Government interfered, with all the weight of its authority, 
 on the creditor's side onl)'. The sj'stem had all the draw- 
 backs of one of permanent billets. 
 
 And the chief cause of all, — the lack of moral education, — 
 vitiated the principle of the wisest and most skilful measures, 
 and destroyed their effect. The venality of the Fiscal Staff, 
 and the ease with which the tax-payer could slip out of part 
 of his obligation, were both proverbial. In a document 
 which inipresses me with a sense of its sincerity, I find the 
 following words : — ' If, indeed, a tax-collector should be 
 found wiio is proof against gifts, — which in Russia would 
 be a most astonishing thing — there is another expedient by 
 which he may be deceived ; tliis is to join several houses 
 together during the time of his inspection. These are 
 easily separated and brought back to their own placts 
 within a few houis, for they are all made of wooden timbers, 
 and easily carried about.' ^ 
 
 In 1722, thanks to the Persian cami)aign, there was a 
 fresh and alarming deficit ; in 1723, a Ukase commanded 
 that civil and military salaries should be paid in Siberian 
 merchandise, other means being lacking. In the same year, 
 these same salaries were diminished by a compulsory sub- 
 sidy, to supply the Treasurer's urgent needs, and the servants 
 of the State were forced to hand back a portion of the money 
 the)' had never received ! ^ In 1724, according to the Saxon 
 resident, Lcfort, 'neither troops, nor navy, nor departments, 
 
 * Mciuorandum from Camprcdon. 
 
 * Collected Laws, 4533, 4565. 
 
PETER'S ECONOMIC WORK 477 
 
 nor any one, has been paid, and every soul complains of 
 poverty.'^ At the time of Peter's death, the Diplomatic 
 Corps, and all the strangers in the capital, were living in 
 dread of the excesses threatened by the lower classes, who 
 were dying of hunger, and even by the soldiers, who had 
 received no pay for the past sixteen months.^ 
 
 Thus the financial policy of the great reign, insjjired 
 though it had been, by the necessities ot war, and framed to 
 supply its needs and demands, failed utterly, even as regards 
 the army it was destined to serve. 
 
 ^ SI:)ornik, vol. iii. p. 3S2. 
 
 2 Caiupiedon's Despatch, February 6, 1725 (French Foreign OlTice). 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Tin: roi.iTiCAL work of petkr the gkkat 
 
 Administration— The Spirit ami the Form — Municiiial Autonomy a mere 
 fiscal expedient — The first eii;lu (Jovernmenls — Anoiher expedient — • 
 Decentralisation — -The Senate — The Institution develops and becomes a 
 centralising organ — Absorption and confusion of Power — Administrative 
 and Financial control — The F'iscals — Their unpopularity — The Procu- 
 rators — Lack of unity and equilibrium — The ' Colleges ' — No general 
 idea in their establishment — Fresh elements of confusion — Plethora of 
 administrative organs — Poverty of individual administration. 
 
 Polnr — Repression of Brigandage — The low moral level of society a hin- 
 drance to progress. 
 
 Justice — Peter's tardy atten'ion — His d- sire to accomplish everything at 
 once — Reasons of his failure — General denial of the idea of Law — The 
 progress of legislation a hindrance to codification — Lack of judicial prin- 
 ciples and jurists — General view. 
 
 As regards economic, social and intellectual progress, Russia 
 lags, to this day, behind her Western neighbours and rivals, 
 liut she has already built up an apparatus of human power, 
 one of the most formidable the world has ever known — 
 archaic and Asiatic in its spirit and inner structure, modern 
 and l^vuropcan in all its outward apfiearances. This is the 
 undoubted outcome, and the crowning point, of Peter's 
 work. 
 
 No idea of any general reform of his Governmental insti- 
 tutions, or of the constituent elements of his power, ever 
 entered the Tsar's brain. For a considerable time, and 
 during the whole course of the Northern war, his anxiety 
 and his efforts were all directed to the solution of a C()ni])ara- 
 tively limited problem — that of raising an army which should 
 beat the Swedes, and a fleet which should make a good ap- 
 pearance on the Northern .seas, and of fmding funds to 
 keep buth up. Occasionally, accidentally and irregularly 
 
THE POLITICAL WORK OF PETER THE GREAT 479 
 
 only, his attention and activity were applied to the 
 exercise of the essential rights of his sovereignty, as con- 
 tained in those executive, judicial, and legislative powers, the 
 nature and effects of which he modified and corrected, in 
 obedience to what were, frequently, very ill-considered im- 
 pulses. He ruled, and, at the same time, he reformed the 
 administration ; he dispensed justice and organised tribunals; 
 he made innumerable laws ; and, while maintaining the ori- 
 ginal, personal^ and despotic principle, on which his Govern- 
 ment was based, he modified its external appearance after a 
 new pattern, which I shall endeavour to describe. 
 
 It is vain, in this endeavour, to look for very clear and 
 well-defined outlines. Here, as elsewhere, the designer used 
 his pencil roughly ; his lines are scattered and run zigzag, 
 there are gaps and dashes, and that general incoherence 
 which marks all he did. There is not even any symptom 
 of a deliberate attempt at transformation. The elimination 
 of the old forms, and the substitution of new ones, were, for 
 the most part, the result of a spontaneous work of decompo- 
 sition, which prepared the way for new organic structures, 
 and even called them into existence. The workman's will 
 liad nothing to do with this result. His work was the in- 
 direct outcome of his great war. Life flowed out of the old 
 worn-out channels — worn out by long abuse — into the new 
 ones, which the urgent necessities of the moment had hol- 
 lowed out. On one side there was atrophy and a literal 
 falling to pieces ; on the other, a gradual development. 
 Peter, in binding the two together, here and there, gave his 
 country a new reform. But the progress of the phenomenon 
 was most capricious, and its earliest effect was the produc- 
 tion of incongruous and ill-assorted*combinations, which did 
 each other mutual injury. The new order of ofiiciais, and 
 administrative departments, was superadded to the old one, 
 and each worked against tjie other. Peter's new collabo- 
 rators — Ministers, Chancellors, and Councillors, in their 
 luiropean dress, and equipment, and titles, elbowed the 
 Okolnitchjlc, Kravtc/iyie liud PustielnitcJiyle oi \.\\<i old rJ^iine, 
 whose offices — which had been principally invented as a 
 means of supporting their holders — were to last as long as 
 they lived. The okl Prikaz stood beside the new Depart- 
 ments, the Offices of the Navy and Artillery, of Supply and 
 Mines, which had only risen into existence, and begun to 
 
48o PETER THE GREAT 
 
 work in successive jerks, under the sudden pressure of some 
 freshly recognised ncccssit)'. Execution, in every case, fol- 
 lowed close on the heels of conception, but the necessary 
 measures for regular practice were less quick in llieir 
 coming. 
 
 To conclude, and this must be specially noted : these 
 new institutions were Western in form onl}- — the Western 
 spirit did not exist. It would have been in too great con- 
 tradiction with the essence and soul of the existing political 
 organisation, the principle of which remained unchanged. 
 This fact has not, as a rule, been sufficiently understood ; 
 yet it is clearly proved by the history of the first legislative 
 edict of the reign, — the Ukase, dated 30th January 1699, 
 decreeing the organisation of Municipalities in Russia. 
 Historians, otherwise clear-sighted, have taken this for a 
 thoroughgoing attempt at administrative autonom.y, in the 
 English or German st\'le, and tlierefore as a measure of the 
 greatest political, economic, and social scope. According to 
 these opinions, the new Elective Magistracies, the Provincial 
 Chambers {ZionskU Izby), the Chamber of Burgomasters at 
 Moscow (^Bouruiistrskaia Palata\ were intended by the law- 
 giver as the first Russian School of public life, in which the 
 citizens were to learn to combine for defence of their com- 
 mon interests, to cast off that instinctive isolation which had 
 hitherto left the power in the hands of the strongest, and de- 
 liver all merchants and manufacturers from the tyranny of 
 greedy Vdievodes} But we shall find, if we consider the 
 matter closely, that no such mighty programme can justly 
 be ascribed to Peter. I am not even sure that it would do 
 him honour. Thirty years before his time, Ordine-Xasht- 
 sliokin, Vo'icvodc of Pskof, attempted to set up the principle 
 of municipal self-government, with fifteen Starostes elected 
 by the Burghers of the town, to whom the care of public in- 
 terests was confided. He was checked by the difficulty of 
 reconciling this institution with the general spirit of the 
 regime then prevailing — with the principle, that is to say, 
 of absolute power — and its existence was of the shortest. - 
 In 1699, Peter was doubtless quite aware of this experiment, 
 and had no idea of renewing it. His sole desire was to dress 
 
 ' Ousuialuf, vol. iii. p. 260; Briickiier, History of Teler the Great, p. 506. 
 "^ Ditialin, Studies for a History of Russian Law (St. IVlurbbiir};, lii'jS), 
 p. 460, t.'lC. 
 
■ THE POLITICAL WORK OF PETER THE GREAT 481 
 
 up the old Administrative Departments {Prikaznyle Izbj) 
 already existing — and charged with the care, not of local 
 interests, but of those of the Sovereign — in an English or 
 German dress. He sought to increase the activity of his 
 tax-collectors, and to provide them better for their work ; 
 and his general and somewhat simple-minded faith in the 
 value of outward appearances and forms, inclined him to 
 this imitation of autonomy. But, apart from the electoral 
 principle, now introduced into their organisation (which of 
 itself was by no means a novelty in Russia), the new Magis- 
 tracies were exactly like the old ones, and were only called 
 to do their predecessors' work with greater severity. Those 
 who came under their lash had no doubt on this point. The 
 electors were driven to the poll, and the elected candidates 
 were kept in their places, by dint of fines and heavy blows. 
 As for the Vozevodes, they thrashed the new Burgomasters 
 just as they had thrashed their predecessors. The great 
 work so pompously described was nothing, after all, but a 
 fiscal expedient. 
 
 So also was the creation, in 1708, of the eight great Ad- 
 ministrative centres called Governments. These, like every- 
 thing else at that period, were the outcome of the war. The 
 first military and financial centre arose out of the creation 
 of the fleet at Voroneje, and the establishment of a Russian 
 Port at Azof. The conquest of Ingria and Carelia resulted 
 in the constitution of the first Government in the newly- 
 acquired territory; this was intrusted to Menshikof. The 
 advance of Charles xn. into the heart of Russia, centralised 
 the military and financial resources for the defence of the 
 country in the hands of the Vo'ievodes oi Sn\o\Q.x\s\<. and Kief; 
 the repression of the insurrectionary movement on the banks 
 of the Volga, brought about the establishment of a Govern- 
 ment at Astrakhan. These were all so many new admini- 
 strative units, each of which served as a nucleus for the new 
 organisation set on foot just before the Battle of Poltava. 
 This organisation was no more than the adjustment and 
 fusion of the elements thus prepared, and, by it. the t\'pe of 
 administration already developed on Swedish models in the 
 Government of Ingria, was made general throughout Russia. 
 F'rom the territorial point of view, these eight Governments 
 partly corresponded with former mihtary and financial dis- 
 tricts, already called into existence by local needs. The 
 
4Si PETER THE GREAT 
 
 very name of Governor was only a translation of the Russian 
 name i;iven to the heads of these districts, Voicvodcs, or 
 'Leaders of the War.' As early as 1694, Peter addressed 
 the Voic7'ode of Archanc^el, in Dutch, as ' Min Her Giibcruor'. 
 
 The Reform of 1708 belies, in this particular, the criticism 
 so frecjuently made as to its accidental and mechanical 
 character. The pre-existinjj military and financial districts, 
 of which the territorial limits were partial!}' adopted, were, 
 in themselves, somewhat arbitrary and artificial. But the 
 creation of provinces, in the European sense of that word, — 
 conveyini^ the idea of an organic unity, — does not exist in 
 Russian history, Peter merely combined his work with an 
 organisation already installed, after a fashion, on the shifting 
 soil of his native country. Other fault may be more justly 
 found with his endeavour. 
 
 As I have already pointed out, he thought less, in the first 
 instance, of forging an instrument of government, tiian of 
 finding means to fill his Treasury. Peter's temporary 
 Minister of Finance, Kourbatof, resolutely opposed the new 
 Governments, and defended the regular principles of adminis- 
 tration, at which they dealt a blow. He was all for adminis- 
 trative centralisation at the ' Hotel de Ville.' But the 
 Sovereign would not hear of it. If the revenues of the 
 State were centralised at the ' Hotel de Ville,' they could 
 not fail to be applied to the needs of the various branches of 
 the public service there represented ; and his great aim was 
 to apply the greater part of them to one special need and 
 service — the carr}'ing on of his war. These isolated govern- 
 ments, whose only direct connection with the State would 
 exist at the Ruler's will, were likelv to be more manageable 
 and more useful for this object. He had invented them for 
 this purpose, and for the sake of it lie had broken with the 
 centralising principles of the seventeenth century, which iiad 
 brought about the unity of the country. He put forward all 
 the accessory advantages which, as he claimed, this rupture 
 would confirm, declaring his new Governments would be 
 easier of control, and the taxes more easily collected. I^ut, 
 in real truth, he looked at the question from the military, 
 and not from the political point of view. And further, he 
 studied his own personal convenience. He was an incessant 
 tiavcllcr; he saw no necessity for having any centre of 
 guvcrnnicnt, or rather, he tlunr^lit the centre of government 
 
THE POLITICAL WORK OF PETER THE GREAT 483 
 
 might very easily follow his journej's. As for reconciling 
 the advantages of centralisation with those of local autonomy, 
 he was not learned enough (in 1708, at all events), to dream 
 of such a thing. He had no idea, to begin with, of clearly 
 defining the rights of the administrative bodies he had estab- 
 lished. He first divided the country and the towns between 
 his eight Governments, and then the anxieties of his war 
 claimed him, and he appears to have forgotten all about 
 them, and even kept his new Governors, who were also his 
 generals, in his camp. It was not until the spring of 1709, 
 when the melting of the snows gave him a little breathing 
 space, that he presented them with the official statistics of 
 their various districts, adding orders to ' give close attention 
 to the collection of the taxes, and to all the interests of the 
 State.' This was the only information vouchsafed as to 
 their new duties. 
 
 The Governors' ideas on the subject were, as may be 
 imagined, very limited. They really scarcely knew what 
 they were expected to do, nor how they were to do it, and 
 the Sovereign does not appear to have been in a position to 
 give satisfactory answers to the piles of official correspond- 
 ence addressed to him on the subject, How, to begin with, 
 was the financial administration to be removed from the 
 offices of the * Hotel de Ville,' where it was actually estab- 
 lished, into those of the various governments, where it ought 
 to be ? This was more than either he or they could tell, 
 and Kourbatof himself had to be appealed to. Then, how 
 were the administrative functions of the governors to be 
 reconciled with their permanent presence with the armies 
 they commanded ? This difficulty was solved by the appoint- 
 ment of substitutes, under the name of Laitdrichtet's. And 
 how, to conclude, were these substitutes to be made to realise 
 that their chief duty was to fill the Tsar's war-chests .-* 
 
 From the very first a bitter conflict arose over the contra- 
 diction between the real and apparent objects of the new 
 organisation. Peter's only thought was to extract money 
 from the provincial administrations, and as these felt obliged 
 to defend the general interests of their provinces, a struggle 
 began, like that between an unwilling debtor and an exact- 
 ing creditor. Both sides played the keenest game ; every 
 kind of subterfuge was attempted, to forestall disposable 
 funds on one side, and protect them on the other. Peter, of 
 
484 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 course, always liad tlic last word, for lie could fall back on 
 his usual tiictliods. A ukase, dated 6th June 17 12, simply 
 deprived the Government of St. Petersburg of tiie revenues 
 paid by certain districts, and made them over to the Admir- 
 alty. That same day a sum of 10,000 roubles was forcibly 
 levied on the funds of the same Government, to pay the 
 arrears due to Frenchmen and Hun^^arians serving in the 
 Tsar's army. He. was so pleased with this expedient, that 
 it was frequently repeated, especially after the removal of 
 the Senate to St. Petersburg. The local Treasury was 
 constantly laid under contribution. Any idea of conforming 
 to the table of receipts and expenses drawn up in 171 1 was 
 utterly abandoned. Absolute chaos reigned. 
 
 It should be added that Peter took it into his head to 
 imitate a Swedish practice which had been reported to him, 
 and charged the different Governments with the supjwrt of 
 his regiments. As these regiments were constantly on active 
 service, commissioners were delegated, by the various Govern- 
 ments, to provide for their food and equipment — a fresh 
 complication in a machine already sorely cloL;ged. 
 
 The most immediate and evident result of the reform was 
 the constitution of fat offices, for the possession of which the 
 Sovereign's favourites wrangled, in which they trafficked, 
 and whose holders, having bought them at a heavy price, 
 were driven to indemnify themselves at the expense of those 
 under their care. If any information was laid against them 
 — a rare event, for such traffickers are generally wary — they 
 got out of the difficulty by following the example of the 
 Turks, and offering their master a bonus on the fruit of their 
 thievery. Peter's system tended, besides, to make his 
 Governors a sort of farmers-general, possessing almost com- 
 plete latitude as to the manner in which they raised the 
 funds out of which the huge war contribution demanded of 
 them was paid. The new organisation, wrong in its original 
 conception, and still more faulty in its first workings, did 
 not put on any appearance of decency, regularity, and 
 system until the last years of Peter's reign, when it began 
 to benefit by the peaceful condition of the country, and 
 came in contact with the Swedish military and administra- 
 tive system, established in the conquered Baltic Provinces.^ 
 
 ' See, wilh regard to this subject, the remarkable, though sonicwhnt gloomy 
 picture drawn by M. Milioukof, in his work already quoted, p. 291, etc. 
 
THE POLITICAL WORK OF PETER THE GREAT 485 
 
 The creation of the Senate, in 171 r, was another great 
 step in Peter's gradual eHmination of the old administrative 
 bodies, or their external assimilation to the western type. 
 But the honour of having replaced the former Council of 
 Boyards, or Boiarskala Doinna, by this new assembly, has 
 been wrongly ascribed to Peter. Though nothing is known 
 as to the precise date of the disappearance of this super- 
 annuated relic of the ancient Muscovite State, this one thing 
 is certain, that, in 171 1, it did not exist. It had already 
 been replaced, since 1700, at all events, by a Council of 
 Ministers, which sat in the Private Ch?.x\cery {Blijnam Kant- 
 selaria), and is frequently confused with it. From the very 
 outset Peter withdrew a most important department from 
 the jurisdiction of this Council, and kept the management in 
 his own hands. I refer to a whole category of Crown rights 
 which he claimed to direct, according to his special personal 
 views, with the assistance of special functionaries, the Pry- 
 bylshtcJiiki. At the moment of his departure for the campaign 
 of the Pruth. he was at a loss what to do with this adminis- 
 tration, which had grown to considerable proportions, and 
 the first duty he required of the Senate was to relieve him 
 of it. Tliis was another war expedient. The ukase which 
 c.dled the new institution into life was published the very 
 day of the ])roclamation of a war with Turkey, and though 
 the general idea, and the name, were borrowed from Sweden 
 or Poland, the assembly was thus endowed with a character 
 of its own. Peter was far from foreseeing the much more 
 important part it was to play in later years. 
 
 It was intended, in the first place, — and this was natural, — 
 to supply the want of those central institutions, which the work 
 of decomposition, to which I have already referred, had 
 caused to disappear. The Reform of 1708- 17 10 had 
 made no provision for reconciling the new provincial 
 organisation with the old administration, centralised at 
 Moscow. Its only result had been to destroy this last. 
 The Private Chancery had thus become the only centralis- 
 ing power in the country, and it had proved notably in- 
 adequate for the work it had to do. But it was not till 1714 
 that the new Assembly was charged with a permanent 
 commission to remedy this inadequacy, by itself despatching 
 a certain amount of current business. P'rom 1711-1718, the 
 respective rights of the Chancery and the Senate remained 
 
486 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 undefined. The other public bodies, not knowing to which 
 their repc^rts, or requests, should be addressed, generally 
 settled the matter by following a policy of total abstention. 
 It was only by degrees, — by means of Ukases published 
 from }ear to }'ear, and, sometimes, from month to month, — 
 that the rights of the Senate were augmented and defined. 
 These rights, before the creation of the Administrative 
 Departments, extended over the whole field of Government 
 action, that is to say, over the administration, properly so 
 called, justice, police, army, finances, trade, and foreign 
 politics. The Senate had the care of the supplies for troops 
 on active service, of the sale of all State merchandise, of the 
 canals, of the cleaning of the St. Petersburg streets. Until 
 and even after, the establishment of the Holy Synod, it 
 intervened in ecclesiastical matters. In 1720, it carried on 
 negotiations with Poland, with the object of strengthening 
 Russian influence in that country ; and it was the final judge 
 in civil and criminal cases.^ In 1724, Peter ordered the 
 Ukases published by the Senate to be printed concurrently 
 with his own, and thus set his seal upon a legislative power 
 which he had for some years practically recognised. He 
 treated the principle of the division of power with com- 
 plete indifference, and indeed the only European characteris- 
 tic of his Senate was its name. He excused himself in his 
 own eyes, by the reflection that the whole arrangement was 
 purely provisional, and intended to be followed by one of a 
 more regular nature. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Senators had ' everything in their hands.' 
 This was the Tsar's own expression. But he expected a 
 faithful discharge of the duties and responsibilities conferred 
 upon them. He had given them much, — he expected a 
 great deal in return. The unlucky representatives of his sove- 
 reign authority were pelted with reproaches, reprimands, and 
 threats. He wrote, 'You must have done that in joke, or 
 because you had received vziatki (bribes) ; — but I will make 
 you come here (into Ingria), and you will be questioned in a 
 very different fashion ! '^ These reproaches were frequently, 
 and unhappily, only too well justified. The Dutch Resident, 
 De Bie, writes in November 1714, 'The great drawback is 
 that all business is made over to the Senate, which never 
 decides anything.' 
 
 » Pctrovski, The Senate under Peter the Great {Mo'^cow, 1875), pp. 224-238. 
 * Ukase to the Senate, Sept. 1711 (Archives of the Ministry of Justice). 
 
THE POLITICAL WORK OF PETER THE GREAT 487 
 
 Peter judged it necessary, from the very outset, to com- 
 plete his creation by the addition of a controlling body. He 
 began by causing certain officers of his staff to be present at 
 the sittings, with orders to watch the deliberations. Then 
 he invented the Fiscals; but the name only, this time, 
 was borrowed from Sweden, the thing itself was essenti- 
 ally local. The inquisitorial policy of the Tsar turned the 
 Swedish Comptrollers into spies, in the worst sense of the 
 word. Until 17 14, any Fiscal could give information, which 
 might be proved false and calumnious, without incurring the 
 slightest responsibility, and the informer shared the fines he 
 caused to be inflicted, with the Tsar's Treasury. Stephen 
 lavorski had to thunder a bold reproof in the Cathedral of 
 the Assumption, in 17 12, before this odious abuse of power was 
 tardily diminished. By a Ukase published 17th March 1714, 
 intentional error on the part of these agents was rendered 
 punishable. 
 
 An Ober-Fiscal, or Chief Comptroller, was attached to the 
 Senate. The appointment of this official, replaced in 1722 
 by a ' General-P rocoiiror^ was a real progress, for the various 
 authorities which had long been independently exercised, — 
 the Tsar, the Senate and the various branches of the 
 Executive Power, — were thus brought into connection. Ihe 
 Gcneral-Procouror held intercourse with these last through 
 Procourors placed under his orders, and himself acted as 
 intermediary between the Tsar and the Senate. Peter 
 modelled this office, doubtless, on that of the Swedish 
 Oinbtitsjnati, delegated by the Government to the judicial 
 body. But his General-Procoiiror, having no seat in the 
 Chief Assembly, bore a yet closer resemblance to the 
 P^rench Procurciir-Gencral of that period, attached to the 
 l^'rench Parliament. Like him, he possessed a right of 
 active intervention in the exercise of those powers he was 
 called upon to watch. He might even take the initiative ; 
 he had legislative functions ; he had a Deputy who bore the 
 name of Obcr-Proconror. lagoujinski was the first person to 
 hold this post. These Procourors, attached, as controlHng 
 agents, to the various branches of power, advantageously 
 replaced the Fiscals, whose functions had been exercised 
 independently, and who bore an objectionable resemblance 
 to Secret Police. 
 
 Until the year 17 18, the Russian Senate remained a 
 32 
 
488 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 mongrel and ill-balanced institution. It could not preside, 
 like the Swedish Senate, over the workini; of the Admini- 
 strative Bodies, because no such liodies existed. It did not 
 consist, like the Swedish Senate, of the Heads of 'Colleges^ 
 gathered in Council, because there were no such Colleges in 
 existence. 
 
 Peter early realised the advantages of the collegial form, 
 and carried his admiration to a somewhat exaggerated point. 
 Leibnitz had praised it, telling him its structure 'resembled 
 that of a clock.' Peter would gladly have turned clock- 
 maker, but he had no wheels. Those of the old prikases 
 were all worn out. We do not know how and when the idea 
 of replacing them by these Departments or ' Colleges ' grew 
 and developed in his mind. It was the outcome, probably, of 
 a series of suggestions. During the Tsar's stay in England, 
 in 1698. Francis Lee submitted to him, at his ow^n request, 
 a plan of government by seven Coiiunittccs or Colleges} In 
 1702, Patkul suggested, in a memorandum, the organisation 
 of a 'Geheimes Kriegs Collegium' ;2 in 171 1, Bliicher, a 
 Saxon engineer, recommended the establishment of a 
 'College of Mines,' but the Reformer was still inclined, at 
 that period, to a thoughtless destruction of all centralis- 
 ing institutions. It was not till 1712 that an anonymous 
 memorandum on the utility of a 'College of Commerce' 
 turned his mobile mind in an opposite direction. The 
 Sovereign, with his usual prompt decision, answered the 
 memorandum in most unexpected fashion. By his Ukase, 
 dated 12th February 17 12, he decreed the creation of the 
 ' College of Commerce.' The decision in this case did not. it 
 must be acknowledged, go beyond an expressed intention ; 
 no more was heard of it till 1715. At that period, the new 
 institution, which had first been attempted at Moscow, 
 made a sudden reaj^pearance at St. Petersburg. It was 
 already provided with a director, bearing the name of 
 Apraxin, and he was about the sum-total of its possessions. 
 But J^eter's note-books prove that the idea occupied him, 
 and had grown familiar to his mind. It was still confused 
 enough, floating between an Office (^Prikaz) of Mines, a 
 Tribunal attached to the Senate, which was to be a ' College 
 
 ^ Proposals given to Peter the Great (London, 1 752). 
 
 ' Writings and Correspondence of Peter the Great, vol. ii. pp. 39-50. 
 
 ' Milioukof, p. 567. 
 
THE POLITICAL WORK OF PETER THE GREAT 489 
 
 of Justice,' and a ' Colleq;e of Commerce.' But a little later, 
 an autograph note b}' the Tsar sketches out a complete 
 organisation to consist of six 'Colleges' on the Swedish 
 models Henry Pick, who was then in the Imperial service, 
 probably had something to do with this plan, and the first 
 detailed project may have been drawn up by him.^ 
 
 He certainly went into Sweden, in December 17 15, to 
 study the subject on the spot, but two more years passed 
 before anything was done. Peter was travelling. Towards 
 the end of 1715, he received, through Boetticher, his Resident 
 at Hamburg, some Reflections ' iiber des RussiscJicn Reiches 
 Staats-Q^conoinie,' by Baron Christian Luberas, whose son 
 was in the Russian service, — and Luberas* was forthwith 
 employed to draw up a definite plan. 
 
 Here, as elsewhere, no general idea inspir'^d the projected 
 reform, and the partial notions out of which it proceeded, 
 were all of foreign origin. The Reformer had no very clear 
 idea, at starting, of whither his steps were to tend, and his 
 horizons broadened as he proceeded on his way. Problems 
 presented themselves to his notice ; he employed foreigners 
 to seek for a solution, and they drew up plans ; Peter, with 
 his natural aptitude, seized on their principal features, and 
 then called on his Russian collaborators to adapt them to 
 the local needs of his Empire. Thereupon, and, generally, 
 somewhat prematurely, he issued a Ukase. The faults of 
 the conception became evident in its practical working, and 
 Peter's readiness to acknowledge these, was both sincere 
 and wise. He undid what he had begun, and started 
 afresh. 
 
 And thus, in spite of many Ukases, the Colleges, in 
 17 17, were still in an unfinished condition. The Tsar con- 
 fined himself, that year, to deciding on the number and the 
 nature of these bodies, and appointing their presidents. 
 Then the work was stopped by one of his prolonged 
 absences. When Golikof, and Peter's own journal, mention 
 these Colleges as being in active work at this pcriotl, they 
 refer to the Chanceries of War, of the Admiralty and of 
 Foreign Affairs, which were already currently designated by 
 that name.^ But the Kamer-Kollegia, or Treasury, was not 
 
 * Sbornik, vol. xi. pp. 285, 286. 
 
 2 Published by Piekarski, in his History of the Academy of Sciences, vol. i. 
 p. 23. ^ Miliouicof, p. 5S9. 
 
490 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 regularly established till 1/22, and the organisation of 
 the other Colleges was barely sketched out in 1720 and 
 1 72 1. Peter himself had not much to do with this pre- 
 liminary work. It was not until 1722, that he took some 
 personal part, with reference to the regulations for the 
 College of the Admiralty, which he desired to draw up him- 
 self. It then became evident that he was in complete 
 ignorance of what had already been done, and that his ideas 
 on the subject were of the most rudimentary and childish 
 nature. On the nth of May 1722, he published a Ukase, 
 commanding that the regulations for all the other Colleges 
 should be copied on those of the Admiralty. The only 
 change to be introduced was that of 'altering the ?iaiiies 
 sJiould it appear necessary' ^ Now the regulations for all 
 these other Colleges had already been drawn up, and the 
 'College of Patrimonial Property' {VotteJiinnaia Kollegia), 
 the only one which literally followed the Sovereign's orders, 
 made itself a laughing stock. 
 
 During Peter's life, the results of this reform were only 
 partly evident. There was one immediate benefit ; I mean 
 the restoration of the unity of the Treasury, which, since the 
 creation of the Governments, had disappeared in the ruins of 
 administrative centralisation. Close upon this came the 
 re-establishment of a properly-balanced Budget, which, since 
 1704, had also disappeared. Hut this last benefit was at 
 once imperilled by a swift return, in practical matters, to 
 those national traditions to which the adoption of Western 
 methods was most unpalatable. The principle of generalisa- 
 tion was admitted, but, in practice, all receipts and expenses 
 were specialised, and certain sources of revenue were effected 
 to certain particular outlays. Tiiis condition of disorder 
 extended to administrative matters. The Colleges were 
 subordinated to the Senate, but an exception was made in 
 favour of three, those of War, the Navy, and Foreign 
 Affairs, which were permitted the privilege of corresponding 
 directly with the Sovereign, and thus given rank above that 
 of the Chief Assembly. Decentralisation reappeared, and 
 brought insubordination and chaos in its train. 
 
 And this was not all. To the Colleges were added 
 'Financial Provinces' on the Swedish s}'stem. This, in 
 itself, was a good thing, but these Provinces were called 
 
 * Collected Laws, No. 4008. 
 
THE POLITICAL WORK OF PETER THE GREAT 491 
 
 upon to perform the same work as the established Govern- 
 ments, which ah'eady formed regular financial and admini- 
 strative districts. The Colleges themselves, in man}' re- 
 spects, held the same functions as the Senate. There was 
 too much machinery now, and not enough men to work it. 
 The Tsar was reduced to sending his Swedish prisoners to 
 fill up his innumerable offices ! ^ The whole thing had been 
 overdone, and many palaces, like the houses in the new 
 Capital, were likely to be left untenanted. Trouble was ex- 
 perienced, even in finding a sufficient number of respectable- 
 looking Senators. One of the first, Prince Michael Vladi- 
 mirovitch Dolgorouki, could not write his name.'^ None of 
 them had any experience of business, any idea of their real 
 duty, any desire to perform it. nor, for the most part, any 
 personal integrity whatever. The time of the Colleges was 
 wasted, so one of Peter's Ukases declares, in gossip and abuse 
 Mike women selling at street stalls.' In 1715, Prince 
 Volkonski, a Senator, and one of the Directors of the Mint, 
 named Apouhtin, were convicted of fraud, knouted, and their 
 tongues were pierced with red-hot irons.^ Such punishments 
 did not, as a general rule, result in the removal of the culprit 
 from the public service — the difficulty of replacing him was 
 far too serious. In 1723, Skorniakof-Pissaref lost his office, 
 his titles and his goods, and was degraded to the rank of a 
 private soldier, but he was at once given a commission to 
 superintend the Ladoga Canal Works. 
 
 Peter contrived to place his army and his Admini- 
 stration on a European footing, but he found it easier to 
 secure soldiers than administrators. The Reformer borrowed 
 the Collegial form from Europe, but he did not succeed in 
 assimilating its living spirit, and principle, — of common toil 
 and divided responsibility. He never endeavoured, indeed, 
 to secure what a recent Russian writer has described as ' too 
 exotic a fruit to flourish in our country.''* All Peter attained 
 was the estabhshment of a Bureaucracy. 
 
 ^ Collet ted Laws, No. 31 01. 
 
 "^ Petrovski, p. 50. 
 
 " Do Hie's Despatch to the Slates-General April, 26, 17 1 5 (Dulch Ai chives). 
 
 * Milioukof, p. 565. 
 
492 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 II 
 
 The blemishes in the ^re.it Tsar's work are largely 
 acc(ninted for by the nature of the moral foundation on 
 which he built it. This is as evident in police, as in admini- 
 strative, matters. His cjreat object, in this latter department, 
 was the rejjression of brigandage, a plague-spot which the 
 savage habits of the period, the national inclination to the 
 nomadic form of existence, and the political troubles of the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had maintained and 
 deepened. In vain did the Sovereign strive to burn it out 
 with hot irons ; the hand of every class in society was against 
 him. In 1695, a Prince Ouhtomski and two members, — 
 brothers, — of the Sheremetief family, were taken red-handed, 
 sacking a house in Moscow, and murdering the inhabitants,^ 
 The evil had been increased by the manner in which Peter's 
 predecessors had hesitated between two methods of cure — 
 excessive severity, and extreme clemency. They had even 
 condescended to offers of pardon, and entreaties to desist. 
 Matters had reached a point at which all further hesitation 
 was impossible, — and my readers will imagine to which side 
 Peter inclined. Me issued orders that any robber, who was 
 not hanged, was to have his nose cut off ' to the bone' and 
 another edict commanded that all such malefactors should, 
 without any exception whatsoever, be hanged on the spot. 
 This remedy was disastrous in its eftects. According 
 to Possoshkof, and even on Peter's own admission, brigand- 
 age steadily increased. This was the result of the extreme 
 severity, and generally unreasonable nature, of the existing 
 regime. The brigands and the Cossack mutineers, were, 
 most of them, insurgents against the Tsar's rule. The 
 malefactors had their ' art els' ']\X)r,\. as, elsewhere, there have 
 been revolutionary clubs. The police regulations at St. 
 Petersburg were numerous, minute, and altogether excessive. 
 In a country where mendicity had been, for centuries, one of 
 the ordinary elements of social life, alms-giving was punished, 
 and the beggar was threatened with the knout and with hard 
 labour. During 17 19, five or six persons were daily Hogged 
 on this account.- This, in itself, proves how ineffectual the 
 measure was. And those taken by the police to put a stop 
 
 ' Jeliahoiijski, pp. 19, 42. 
 
 i 
 
 Ivoslomarof, History 0/ Russia^ vol. ii. p. 629. 
 
THE POLITICAL WORK OF PETER THE GREAT 493 
 
 to another national plague-spot — the incessant fires — were 
 equally useless. During one day, in 1712, 9 monasteries, 
 86 churches, 35 charitable institutions, 32 public buildings 
 and 4000 private houses, were burnt in Moscow, and 136 
 human victims fell a prey to the devouring element.^ 
 
 It was a hard thing for Russian society to cast off the 
 conditions of savagery, and the justice of the country did 
 but little to help the administration and the police to forward 
 the work of evolution. 
 
 Ill 
 
 With regard to judicial matters, Peter found himself face 
 to face with an inveterate idea, only quite recently eradicated 
 from the Russian mind, that all functions, whether admini- 
 strative or judicial, constituted not a duty, but a profitable 
 privilege, for their holder. This was the affirmation and 
 perpetuation of the ancient system of the Kormleiiie (that 
 which feeds). The only object of the office was held to be 
 the support of the official." ' In Russia,' wrote Krijanitch, a 
 Servian, and contemporary of Locke, 'justice is a saleable com- 
 modity.' Possoshkof repeats the assertion in another form, 
 and all foreigners, Herberstein, Fletcher, Olearius, and Mas- 
 kiewicz, refer to the evil. Peter could not do away with it. 
 In 1724, he was still making laws against dishonest judges. 
 
 The Dukes of Moscow had won their supremacy, not so 
 much by the sword, as by gifts bestowed on Tartar officials. 
 Russia had been brought up in this school, and bore its 
 mark. Bribery was in the blood. Peter did not turn his 
 attention to this portion of his work till somewhat late in 
 his career. With the exception of a Ukase against bribes, 
 published in 1714, and merely amplified by that of 1724, and 
 some measures taken, in 17 16, to remedy the slowness of 
 criminal procedure, and clear the prisons, he made no attempt 
 at any general reform, till 17 18. His attention being then 
 attracted in that direction, he endeavoured, as usual, to do 
 evcr)'lhing at once, and put matters on a European foot- 
 ing in a moment. He turned once more to Swedish models, 
 and caused a mass of documents to be copied at Stockholm, 
 for his information. He deprived the Vo'ievodcs of their 
 
 ' S()Ioviof, vol. xvi. p. 254. 
 
 '^ .See Nil I'Dpof, 'ratiihtiluf and his Times, p. 25. 
 
494 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 judicial powers, established inferior courts of two classes in 
 the provinces, and instituted Courts of Apj:)eal in the capital, 
 and in the more important towns. 
 
 Here, as elsewhere, the Reformer made a considerable 
 effort and showed an admirable sense of his own duty. A 
 complainant applied to him, he refused to hear him, or to 
 receive his written recjuest. The man said, ' My complaint 
 is at^ainst you.' The Sovereii^n received it, submitted the 
 matter to the Senate, and paid, without a murmur, the 
 damages to which he was condemned.^ Some of his ideas 
 were excellent, — such as the Ukase of 1716, forbidding the 
 torture of women about to become mothers (excepting, we 
 are forced to admit, in the case of inquiries ' affecting the 
 safety of the State'), and the abolition of the barbarous 
 custom of the Pravieje, in 17 18. But the general result 
 was far from satisfactory. After Shafirof's trial in 1723, 
 there appeared on the judge's table in every court in the 
 Empire, a strange three-sided erection of gilded wood, 
 crowned with a double eagle, which has remained there till 
 this day. On this, Peter caused to be inscribed the text 
 of three edicts, simultaneously published at that period, which 
 are really nothing but a violent diatribe against the behaviour 
 of the judges,— against magistrates, whose sole object was to 
 hide themselves under the mantle of justice, and so to violate 
 its laws by twisting their meaning in a way 'unknown in 
 other countries,' — against those who professed not to know 
 or understand the laws they were charged to administer. — 
 and those who, like Shafirof, ventured to censure, and openly 
 disobey, the laws they represented. 
 
 There were two obstacles to the realisation of any imme- 
 diate progress in judicial matters. The first, and the 
 greatest, was the absolute impossibility of giving any idea 
 of law its proper value, in the midst of surroundings which 
 were a negation of all law. One of Peters greatest merits 
 certainly was, that he freed this idea from the clouds of 
 savagery and brutality which darkened it, in his subjects' 
 eyes. lie was the first person to draw attention to 
 a principlej in certain rcsi)ccts independent of, and 
 superior to, the S(jvcreign's (jwn will. Once the law was 
 established, every soul, beginning with the Tsar himself, 
 ouctl il iibcdiiiiLC. Peter .set the example. JUlt, unlia|Ji)il)-, 
 
 ' Tojiuf, 'J'alii/ililic/ aitil his 'J'iiiics, j). 17. 
 
THE POLITICAL WORK OF PETER THE GREAT 495 
 
 he had hardly won this victory over a condition of barbarism, 
 before he compromised its benefits, and diminished its scope, 
 by the exercise and abuse of a power he himself forgot to 
 control. He did indeed bow before the law, but the law 
 was only his personal will, expressed in a Ukase — it was 
 often arbitrary, and always changeable. A great poet, whose 
 desire to do all honour to the glory of the national hero has 
 transformed him into a historian, has claimed to discover a 
 characteristic difference between Peter's institutions and his 
 edicts. The first, he believes, emanated from a far-reaching 
 and wise intelligence. The second were the dictates of 
 caprice, often a cruel one, and were 'written, as it were, 
 with the knout.' The first, designed to last eternally, or, at 
 all events, for a very prolonged period ; the second, the 
 momentary whim, as one might think, 'of an impatient 
 and despotic provincial proprietor.' ^ This remark does not 
 strike us as being absolutely correct, when we glance at the 
 history of Peter's institutions, which he himself made, and 
 unmade, and remade, over and over again. None of his legis- 
 lative acts bear any sign of eternal duration. There is no 
 doubt that he always desired to do the best he could. The 
 care invariably taken to explain, and with some prolixity, 
 the motive of each decision, and in what points it will be 
 superior to the previous state of things, is a very noticeable 
 feature. Traces of this didactic method appear, even at the 
 present day, in Russian legislation. But the ' best ' is only 
 what, at a given moment, appears best to him. All 
 through his legislation, it should be noted, there is a radical 
 separation between his idea of the law, and any conception 
 of legal morality. The law, in the Tsar's eyes, was not what 
 zvas jHst, but what ought, or ought not, to be done — for 
 reasons very frequently quite removed from moral ethics. 
 The guilty man, who ought to be punished, was not the man 
 who did a bad action, but simply the man who acted m con- 
 travcntio)i to the text of the Tsars ukase. The very manner in 
 which the penalties of the law were applied throws a curious 
 Kght on this subject. In January 1724, a French artisan, of 
 the name of Guillaume Belin, was condemned to the galleys 
 lor murder. His sentence was commuted, and he was sent 
 to the naval dock)-ards to ply his trade — that of a lock- 
 smith — and teach it to the native workmen. The wIujIc 
 
 ' I'uiibhkiii, Works, vul. iv. p. 327. 
 
496 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 judicial spirit of the period revolved between two poles, des- 
 jDotism and utilitarianism.' Occasionally, the punishment to 
 which tlic culprit was sentenced was replaced by his admis- 
 sion into the Orthodox Church, and Ba{:)tism was substituted 
 for the knout ! - 
 
 1 come to the second obstacle. Peter made many laws, 
 but their abundance, and their incessant production, made it 
 impossible to gather them into a Code. The earliest Russian 
 Code, Ivan Vassilevitch's Soudichnik (1542), contains little 
 more than directions for judicial combats, to take the 
 place of more direct proofs. The Oulojaiic of Alexis 
 (1650), was for the most part, a manual of practical 
 jurisprudence. In 1695, under the twin rule of Ivan and 
 Peter, the need of a fresh codification made itself felt, and 
 the Administrative Offices {Prikas) were ordered, by 
 ukase, to prepare the necessary elements. This work, it 
 may be concluded, was not very zealously proceeded with, 
 for it was made over, in 1700, to the Council of Jio)-ards. 
 This Council addressed a request to the Prikaz for the 
 necessary information, and did nothing further. It soon 
 passed out of existence, and Peter himself, for successive 
 years, had many other things to think (jT. It was not till 
 1714 that the idea of codification re-occurred to him, and this 
 time, naturally, the work was confided to the Senate. The 
 Senate began as the Council had begun. The Prikaz, as 
 in 1700, did nothing at all, and the business came to a stand- 
 still. 
 
 There was a fair excuse for all this non-accomplishment. 
 How could any Code be drawn up while the publication of 
 laws flowed on unceasingly, so that the conditions of the 
 problem were undergoing constant change? Everything 
 altered from day to day. One wave carried away what the 
 last had cast up. In 17 19, the Reformer was fain to have 
 recourse to one of those heroic methods which so specially 
 attracted him. Instead of codifying existing laws, why not u.se 
 one already in existence ? His mind had been haunted, during 
 the preceding )'ear, by the idea of a judicial antholog)', in 
 which Danish and Swedish laws were to appear side by side 
 with a selection from indigenous Russian legislation. lie 
 was now inclined to take a shorter cut, and simply to adopt 
 
 ' Filippof, Peter the Creates Reform and the /\iia/ Code (Moscow, iJiy5), 
 pp. 156, 249. - I/>id. p. 255. 
 
THE POLITICAL WORK OF PETER THE GREAT 497 
 
 the Swedish Code, from which he proposed to eHminate all 
 provisions unsuitable to his own country, substituting others 
 borrowed from the Oiilojmie of 1650. In 1720, the Senate 
 nominated a special Commission for the execution of this 
 programme, and associated certain foreign jurists with its 
 labours. But these only resulted, some time in the following 
 year, in the solemn recognition of the absolute inappropri- 
 ateness of the Swedish Code to Russian needs. Meanwhile, 
 the tide of Ukases rose yet higher and higher. 
 
 In 1724, Peter, in spite of his constitutional stubbornness, 
 seems to have abandoned all idea of fresh attempts in this 
 direction, and a Ukase, dated March nth, decreed that in 
 default of any other Code, all future laws were to be added 
 to the Oiilojciiie of 1650. He can hardly be personally 
 blamed for this failure. To attain complete success, two 
 things were needful, and both failed him. The true judicial 
 idea had not sufficiently established itself in the mind and 
 conscience of even a small and select number of his subjects, 
 and he had no jurists capable of seconding his efforts. The 
 political and social edifice, thus hastily raised, was to make 
 but a poor show, in this respect, for many a year to come. 
 It reminds us of an old wall roughly whitewashed, with its 
 cracks, and moss, and fungi showing through the thin coat 
 of plaster. The whole fabric, indeed, had something of this 
 quality. The work of ten centuries cannot be performed in 
 twenty years, even though the builder work with fire and 
 sword. 
 
C II A P T E R VII 
 
 THE ARMY AND THE NAVV 
 
 1. Tlic Army — Precedents — Peter only luuried tlie movement fDrward — Stranj^e 
 l)eginnint;s — 'The Pleasure Kes^inients ' — (Jood and liad <|iialilies of llie 
 new fi)rniations— Spirit and substance — Narva— On the riyhl road— The 
 moral element. 
 II. The Navy — I'recedents — The hasty and intemperate nature of this new 
 undertakini^ — The fighting Navy, and the Merclianl Navy — iJouble 
 failure — What remained of the work after the Tsar's death. 
 
 Peter did not endow Russia with a good financial system, 
 but he gave her a military organisation, the value of which 
 has been am[)ly proved, and which forms one of the Re- 
 former's most undoubted claims to glory. Yet, even on this 
 licad, his work was not the absolute personal creation it is 
 frequently described as being, and it is open to criticism in 
 various respects. I shall not enter on a discussion for which I 
 do not feel myself competent, but shall confine myself to a 
 short statement of the most striking features of the subject, 
 and the most authoritative opinions on it. 
 
 The great Tsar's predecessors may fairl}' be said to have 
 had 200,000 armed men, and not a single soldier. The 
 army, picturesque as it was, was anything but military. 
 Knights of the Middle Ages, clad from head to foot in 
 mail, rode beside horsemen mounted on miserable bare- 
 backed jades, armed with sticks, and provisioned with a 
 bag of rye cast over their shoulders. These heterogeneous 
 war-band.s were not regularly recruited ; they were a mere 
 collection of armed men, belonging to one class onl}-, that of 
 the landed proj^rietors. There was no preparation, lU) train- 
 ing in the art of war. Militar)- drill, in limes of peace, was 
 uUerl)' unknown. There were no organised connnands ; the 
 
THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 499 
 
 leadership of the troops belonjTcd, as a right, to the chiefs of 
 the local aristocracy — the Boyards and the Okohiitcliyie. 
 There was no commissariat. The men equipped and fed 
 themselves as they chose, and as best they could. And 
 finally, the army, being almost exclusively composed of 
 cavalry, could not fulfil the needs of modern warfare. 
 
 But this state of things did not continue unmodified until 
 Peter's accession. Even in the sixteenth century the Tsar 
 Feodor Ivanovitch (i 584-1 598) had some regular troops, 
 drilled and equipped in European fashion. Two foreign 
 officers in his service, Margeret, a Frenchman, and Von 
 Rosen, a Livonian, commanded a body of 2,500 men, most 
 of them Poles and Livonians, but with a few Scotchmen, 
 Danes, Swedes, Frenchmen, Greeks, and subjects of the 
 Emperor.^ Peter's immediate predecessors, Alexis and 
 Feodor Alexieievitch, went yet further. They left behind 
 them a first attempt at a general reform, on democratic lines, 
 of the command, recruiting, and organisation of the army. 
 A commission established in 168 1, under the presidency of 
 Prince Vassili Galitzin, suggested that the principle of indi- 
 vidual capacity should be considered in the selection of 
 military chiefs. At the same time, the personal service of 
 landed proprietors was replaced by recruits {Datotsfnijlc) 
 supplied by them in proportion to the extent of their pro- 
 perties ; and, finally, permanent bodies of regular troops, 
 foreign and even native, including some regiments of infantry, 
 came into existence. 
 
 Peter's personal work was limited to a somewhat un- 
 methodical, and, in the early days at least, a yet more whim- 
 sical development, of these resources. On 30th January 
 1683, Sergius Bouhvostof, a Court groom attached to the 
 ' pleasure stables,' was enrolled in the military ' pleasure 
 service,' which the young Tsar had taken it into his head to 
 institute. This man was to be the first soldier of the Preo- 
 brajenski regiment. Other koniou/iywQYQ successivelyenrolled, 
 and these were followed by young men belonging to the 
 noble families opposed to Sophia's rule. In 1684, there were 
 300 volunteers, and the germs of a military establishment at 
 PrcobrajenskoTe. In the following year Peter ventured to 
 beat up recruits openly. The number soon rose to 1000, and 
 a second depot was created at Siemionof, from which place 
 
 ^ Oustrialof, %-ol. i. p. 179. 
 
500 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 a second regiment of the Guard took its name. In 1690 and 
 1691, the Tsar held the first manoeuvres of these troops; 
 these were called the ' Siemionof Campaign.' In 1692, the 
 'pleasure regiments' were definitely organised, and Peter 
 took the rank of a sergeant in the Preobrajenski, During 
 1694, in another series of manoeuvres, known as the ' Kojouhof 
 Campaign,' they figured as regularly constituted tactical 
 units, and lost the name and quality of 'pleasure regiments.' 
 The time for playing at soldiers had gone by, and Peter was 
 preparing for serious work. That same year a company 
 of bombardiers was formed, in which the Tsar himself figured, 
 under the name of Peter Alexcief. 
 
 This was the nucleus of the future army, which, from that 
 period, was to have nothing in common, whether as, to com- 
 position, discipline, or instruction, with the old rat\ or war- 
 bands of various arms. The only old regiments sharing, to 
 a certain extent, in the new organisation, were Lefort's, — 
 one of comparatively recent formation, — and the Bout\'rski 
 regiment, which had been raised in 1642, under Michael 
 Feodorovitch. 
 
 The relative superiority of these troops was proved under 
 the walls of Azof, in 1695 (see p. yj), but Peter did nothing 
 to extend their organisation, and make it general, until 1699. 
 All he did was to destroy the Stnitsy, — thereby wiping out 
 the old army, without putting a new one in its place. It 
 was the Swedish war which finally called forth the great 
 Tsar's creative activity. Then there was an explosion, a 
 tremendous rush, of ideas and new efforts, which seemed to 
 defy time, space, reason, and substance. Many of his notions 
 were original, all his efforts were bold and energetic. To 
 begin with, he gave up the system of enrolment as then 
 practised in most European armies. He adopted a method 
 of recruiting which only differed from the compulsory service 
 of the present day, by being collective instead of individual. 
 This difference was, indeed, -a fundamental error. The 
 necessity enforced on socict}- f)f furnishing a proportionate 
 number of recruits, carried with it the fatal practice of substi- 
 tution, of buying off individual service, and of hiring by 
 contract. To this Peter added service for life, which was in 
 direct contradiction with his own principle of equality — for 
 the whole nation could not possibly serve in an army, the 
 ranks of which were only cleared by death, — which separated 
 
THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 501 
 
 the army from the general population, and made it a class 
 apart, and which inevitably filled the regiments with men 
 who were unfit for active service. His whole conception, 
 though in advance, in certain respects, of the usual European 
 idea, lacked proper balance. And, to begin with, it was a 
 purely material creation. It did not possess the spirit which 
 is the real strength of Western military institutions. This 
 was soon to be proved at the siege of Narva. Peter there 
 brought 32,000'regular troops into action, but the Preobra- 
 jcnski and Sicmionovski regiments alone made any stand, 
 and even these, so Possoshkof declares, fired twenty volleys 
 without killing a single man. 
 
 This second experience convinced the young sovereign at 
 last of the value of that moral element which he had hitherto 
 completely overlooked, and thus set him on the right path. 
 In future, without neglecting other elements of effective 
 strength, his constant care was to form the spirit of his 
 soldiers ; and this is a greater title to glory than all his 
 cannon foundries and powder factories at Ohta, Toula, and 
 St. Petersburg, than his School of Military Engineering at 
 Moscow, and even than the earliest known attempt at raising 
 a body of horse-artillery, which has been generally ascribed 
 to him. By the end of his reign, his regular army consisted 
 of 40 infantry and 33 dragoon regiments, 57,956 foot soldiers, 
 and 36,333 cavalry, without reckoning his irregular troops,-Cos- 
 sacks, Kalmuks, and so forth. But imposing as these numbers 
 were, the sum-total of his armies is a matter of secondary 
 importance ; the great value of his work lies in the wonderful 
 spirit he breathed into his men. The Russian soldier was 
 transformed, by him, out of a simple, half-conscious brute, 
 into a thinking being, ruled, whatever his detractors may say, 
 by other motives than the fear of punishment. An ideal has 
 been set before him, and he follows it. Such active courage, 
 and intelligent daring, cannot be beaten into men with blows. 
 I will point out one feature in refutation of certain opinions 
 on this subject, which strike me as having been too lightly 
 adopted. At the very moment when the war of the Spanish 
 Succession was considered, in the West, to have absolutely 
 proved the superiority of mechanical order in battle forma- 
 tion, Peter was putting forward the principle of the inde- 
 pendent organic action of tactical units. This spirit is 
 breathed in all his military instructions and regulations, 
 
503 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 which prove his desire to develop and cultivate the personal 
 initiative of his fifj^htin^; men.^ 
 
 His military Ici^islation, carefully studied as it was, and 
 for a wonder, successfully codified, does not alwaj-s deserve 
 the same praise. Its disciplinary and penal provisions are 
 quite absurd. They are in direct opposition to the principles 
 adopted for the ort^anisation and education of his armed 
 forces. It has been asserted, in his defence, that the severity 
 of his measures, and the barbarity of his methods of repres- 
 sion, — the stake, the g^allows, the quartering of culprits, and 
 the cutting-off of tlieir noses and their ears, — was a mere 
 imitation of foreign mcxlcls, more esi)ecially of the French 
 code, with certain merciful modifications of their severity.'^ 
 But this plea is not convincing, because it overlooks the 
 difference which Peter's military reform permitted to exist," 
 — which it even sanctioned and developed, — between the 
 composition of the Russian army, and those of Western 
 countries. The Russian soldier of Peter's time was not, in 
 principle at all events, a recruit, in the French or German 
 sense. He was not drawn, as too often happened in other 
 countries, from the very dregs of the population ; he was 
 rather, in principle at all events, the representative of what 
 was best in his class, and as a matter of fact, he did, 
 generally speaking, represent a decidedly superior element. 
 But this was what Peter himself completely overlooked, and 
 therefore it was that he succeeded in arousing a general desire 
 for flight, as is eloquently proved by his numerous ukases 
 with respect to the nictshiks (refractory recruits), who were 
 unable to endure a military service which had become a 
 pitiless and ignominious servitude.^ 
 
 On the other hand, all the Tsar's energy and knowledge 
 could not triumph over certain causes of inferiority, which, 
 even to a quite recent date, have seemed to threaten the 
 success of the Russian arms — I refer to defects of admini- 
 stration, and the incapacity of persons in high command. 
 This experience throws light, as I think, on another ditTcr- 
 ence, — that which, though frequently denied, certainly exists 
 
 * Maslovski, The Russian Annies in the Time of Peter the C/vfrt/ (Moscow, 
 1883), p. 47. 
 
 ■^ Kohrcjv.ski, Alilitary Law in Western F.urope at the Time of the Constitution 
 of Standin!^ Armies (Moscdw, 1SS2), p. 462. 
 
 =* Rosenheim, Prdcis of the History of Russian Military Institutions, 1S78, 
 p. 215. 
 
THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 503 
 
 between the natural and, so to speak, instinctive qualities 
 and virtues of the human race, and those others which can 
 only be produced by long and laborious culture. P.cter was 
 powerless, in face of the eternal laws of the intellectual and 
 moral world. Courage and even Jionour are elementary 
 phenomena, and may appear under conditions of savagery. 
 It is quite otherwise with knowledge and integrity. 
 Ancient Muscovy was not a warlike country. The Dukes 
 of Moscow won their victories over the Tartars by 
 means of their patient and cunning policy. Modern Russia 
 could not become a nation of heroic warriors again, at one 
 bound. Peter found, just below the surface of the national 
 character, the necessary instincts for this transformation, — a 
 return to the distant traditions of the Norman period. 
 Further he could not go, but, when he gave his country 
 the army of Poltava, he forged a wonderful instrument of 
 material power and moral progress. That army has made 
 ■:he greatness of contemporary Russia. 
 
 II 
 
 In considering the Navy created during the great reign, 
 whether for mercantile or fighting purposes, I shall venture 
 to be more critical. I am inclined to regard the haste and 
 excess of its production as the result of an atavic instinct, 
 which, when we consider the local circumstances, would 
 appear to have developed into a mania, and become the 
 wild caprice of a despot. Precedents, for such there had 
 been, should have warned Peter not to allow himself to be 
 carried away by his imagination. In the reign of Michael 
 h'eodorovitch, certain Holstein merchants begged permission 
 to build vessels at Nijni Novgorod, and to utilise the waters 
 of the Volga for their trade with Persia. In later years, 
 Alexis Miha'ilovitch himself began building ships at Diedinof, 
 at the confluence of the Moskva and the Oka. All these 
 attempts ended in failure ; some of the Dutch ships were 
 lost in the Caspian, others were taken and burnt by Stenka 
 Ra/in at Astrakhan.^ The very nature of things, in this 
 country without a seaboard, seems to have protested against 
 the violence done her. 
 
 ' Vi^ssielago, Precis of a History of the Russian Navy, vol i. p. 5, etc. 
 33 
 
504 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Peter ran a yet c^rcatcr risk for himself, and for his Empire, 
 when he ventured on the storm)' waters of the White Sea in 
 a hastily constructed yacht, built in his improvised shipyards 
 at Archangel. Aided by Dutch ship-builders, he contrived, 
 as early as 1694, to possess three vessels, intended to do 
 double dut}', — armed for war, and fitted for commerce, — a 
 type imposed on these first attempts, by the fear of pirates, 
 and which was long continued in the naval architecture of 
 the country. But this squadron was nothing but a toy, and 
 the young Sovereign was so fully conscious of the fact, that, 
 in 1695, '""c suddenly turned his back on his Northern port, 
 and all the work he had made himself there, just as he 
 might have turned his back on any pleasure j^arty. He 
 came back to the fresh waters of the laouza, where his first 
 attempts at navigation had been made. He was bent on 
 preparing the elements of a flotilla, built on the model of a 
 Dutch galley, brought there piecemeal, on sledges, — which 
 flotilla he proposed to transport by land to Voroneje, whence 
 it was to proceed down the Don, and take part in the siege 
 of Azof.i 
 
 The doubtful success of this fresh attempt has already 
 been described. In the following year, the war flotilla took 
 its place amongst the young Tsar's cast-off toys. Peter's 
 chief desire then became, to possess a merchant nav\', and, 
 faithful to his usual manner of conception and procedure, he 
 deemed it possible to bring one into existence, by merely 
 embodying his will in a decree, and using authoritative 
 methods. He called his council together at PreobrajenskoTfe, 
 on the 4th of November, and ordered all owners, lay or 
 ecclesiastic, of 100 houses and more, to form themselves 
 into companies, for the the construction of merchant vessels. 
 The Archimandrites who held domains under the abbeys, 
 were not to be excused, and the Patriarch was called on to 
 supply two frigates, of fifty guns each ! The number of 
 ships to be fitted out was definitely fixed ; there were to be 
 ninety, and the State undertook to build eighty more. 
 Their design and equipment was formally regulated, and 
 they were all to be finished within two years, — under pain 
 of death to the laggards ! The order was obeyed ; every- 
 thing was ready on the appointed da)% but, on 20th April 
 1700, a fresh Ukase decreed the suppression of the companies 
 
 ' Tsvielaicf, The Creation of the Russian Fleet , 1696, p. 12. 
 
THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 505 
 
 which had so obediently organised themselves, and built a 
 fleet they evidently could not learn how to use.^ 
 
 All this expenditure of time, and energy, and money, only 
 resulted in a naval demonstration, which, it must be acknow- 
 ledged, had a certain value of its own. In August 1699, a 
 Russian ship sailed across the Black Sea, and cast anchor 
 before Constantinople. The action was purely pacific, and 
 the vessel brought the Tsar's two plenipotentiaries, who were 
 charged to negotiate a definite treaty. But the Turks offered 
 vehement opposition. Everything they could think of was 
 brought into play — diplomatic arguments, entreaties, and 
 even threats. But Peter stood firm, and this demon- 
 strative character has never left the Russian navy. It has 
 always been used with a special view to moral effect, and 
 thus its best service has been done. As for the flotilla which 
 was shut up at Voroneje, because there was not enough water 
 to float it down the Don, it proved of no service when hos- 
 tilities with Turkey recommenced in 171 1. The surrender 
 of Azof to the Turks deprived Peter of all future hope of 
 using it. Part of it was made over to the Porte, and the 
 rest was left to rot. 
 
 The Northern fleet, called into existence by the necessities 
 of the Swedish war, was a more serious undertaking. There 
 was something heroic about its beginnings. Two Russian 
 sailors, who had been seized by the Swedes, and forced to 
 pilot them during an attack on Archangel, in June 1701, ran 
 the enemy's ships under the guns of the Fort, where they 
 were stranded and captured. They themselves were 
 wounded, counterfeited death, and contrived to escape. 
 Then came several victorious fights on the Lake of Ladoga, 
 of which the Russians retained possession. In 1703, after 
 the conquest of the Mouth of the Neva, a ship-building yard 
 was established at Olonets, at the confluence of the Megrega 
 and the Olonka. The next year, the St. Petersburg Ad- 
 miralty had come into existence, and the young Baltic fleet 
 carried troops and provisions to the sieges of Uerpt and 
 Narva. In 1705, it repulsed a Swedish attack on the Island 
 of Kotlin ; in 1706, it captured a large Swedish vessel, the 
 ' P2sj)crn,' under the walls of Viborg. and, in 17 10, it played 
 a part in the capture of that town. But Sweden was mistress 
 of the Gulf of Finland, and blockaded all the Baltic shores. 
 
 1 Viessielago, vol. i. p. 13, etc. 
 
5o6 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 The mere numerical su|ien'()rity of her fleet sufficed to ensure 
 her this advanla.L^^e. Peter had indeed boasted, when he met 
 Augustus at Birze, that he possessed eii^hty ships, of sixty 
 and eij^ht)' i^uns each — one of which, built on his own de- 
 signs, was to be called the ' Divine Foresight.' The prow of 
 this ship was to be adorned with a figure of St. Peter, sur- 
 mounting an allegorical representation, also of the young 
 Tsar's design, of a boat manned b)' children.^ The plans and 
 drawings had, doubtless, been distributed, but the squadron 
 with which he made his victorious attack on Ilelsingfors and 
 Rorga, ten years later, only reckoned seven ships of the line 
 and four frigates, three of which ships, and two frigates, had 
 been bought abroad. 
 
 This same squadron, escorting a flotilla of two hundred 
 galleys and small craft, figures in the first naval victory of 
 any importance of which Russian annals can boast. This 
 took place at Hango-Udde, where the Swedish Admiral 
 Erenskold handed his sword to Peter Mi/iailof, on the 25th 
 of July 17 14. The same squadron ravaged the coast of 
 Sweden in 17 19, and largely contributed, by the assistance it 
 rendered to the descent of Admiral Lascy on the Swedish 
 shore in 172 1, to the conclusion of the I'eace of Nystadt. 
 V>wt the success of these operations, which, for the most part, 
 were demonstrations, was secured by the number and excel- 
 lence of the land forces on board the ships. Thus, in 17 19, 
 Apraxin had 27,000 infantry under his command. The 
 battles in which the fleet took part were invariably fought 
 close in shore. They were not real sea fights, and suc- 
 cess was ensured, in every case, by the territorial element, 
 which predominated. - 
 
 To sum the matter up, Peter, whether we look at it from 
 the fighting or the commercial point of view, passionately 
 and unsuccessfully endeavoured to make his Russians a 
 nation of sailors. The inhabitants of a huge continent, 
 washed, on one side, by most inhosjjitable seas, can hardly 
 be blamed for not having fallen in with his fancy. Russia, 
 even to this present day, is, commercially speaking, largely 
 dependent on foreign navies. The fighting navy of the Don, 
 with its imitations of Dutch, English, and Venetian galleys, 
 was an expensive and unfortunate experiment. The neces- 
 
 ' Solovief, vol. xiv. p. 331. 
 
 '^ Mychlaievski, The Finland War, 1712-1714 (1S96). 
 
THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 507 
 
 sity for reducing the draught of the new vessels made it 
 impossible to reproduce the elementary nautical qualities of 
 the foreign models. Thanks to their less unfavourable local 
 conditions, and to the experience acquired by the Sovereign, 
 his northern dockyards were more successful, and even 
 caused an anxiety in England, which subsequent events 
 proved to be somewhat premature.^ Here, as elsewhere, the 
 exaggeration and precipitation, which were the cardinal 
 faults of all the great Tsar's efforts, diminished their suc- 
 cess. His timbers were too green, his rigging was of inferior 
 quality, his. sailors were ill-taught. Leaks and broken masts, 
 unskilful and inferior crews, hurriedly recruited, and fre- 
 quently decimated by sickness, constantly appear in the 
 annals of these squadrons. The number of vessels of every 
 kind — ships of the line, frigates and galleys — built during 
 Peter's reign, has been reckoned at something near a thou- 
 sand. In 1734, nine years after his death, when their co- 
 operation was needed for the projected blockade of Stettin, 
 there were not fifteen fit to put to sea, and not an officer 
 could be found to command any one of them.'' 
 
 Peter went too fast, and, above all, he tried to go too far. 
 It would have been a good thing to give Russia a fleet; it 
 was not a reasonable thing to endeavour to turn Russia into a 
 second Holland. He established ship-building yards at five- 
 and-twenty points, many of them in the very centre of terra 
 firnia, and abandoned them, one after the other.^ He replaced 
 the Department of Naval Construction at Vladimir by the 
 Department of the Admiralty at Moscow, and each of these 
 places was more than three hundred and seventy-five miles 
 from the sea. He thus gave his creation an artificial char- 
 acter, which it has never lost. His naval enterprises, which 
 he carried to St. Petersburg in 1712, with the 'Chancery of 
 the War Fleet,' and finally concentrated there, in 1719, at 
 the ' College of the Admiralty,' would seem to have been 
 principally destined as an amusement and a delusion to him- 
 self. They certainly supplied the opposition with which his 
 whole work was to wrestle, and to which I am now about to 
 refer, in concluding this work, with a certain amount of 
 cogent argument, if not, indeed, with any actual justification. 
 
 ' Sbornik, vol. Ixi. p. 563. - Vicssit'lago, vol. i. pp. 54-70. ^ Ibid. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE Ori'OSITION — THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 
 
 I. Ct)llcctive and isolated resistance — Plots and attacks— Nature of the opposi- 
 tion personified liy Alexis. 
 
 II. The eilucation of the 'I'sarevilch — His first struggle with the parental 
 authority — Alexis will not he a soldier — He is left at Moscow — Mutual 
 sympathy — The clergy and the aristocracy — Idea of a change of ruler — 
 His father intervenes again — Alexis must serve — A had recruit — The 
 Tsarevitch too ill to he present at the Battle of Poltava — He is sent 
 abroad to study and take a wife — Marriage— The Princess Charlotte — 
 Honeymoon — An early disturbance of conjugal harmony — Alexis at the 
 head of a jiarty — Charlotte's death — Cathernie bears a son — Disinherit- 
 ance — Prince or monk — First and second requisition. 
 
 III. A legend— Charloite alive — Her adventures — An explanation. 
 
 l\'. Final rcijuisitiun — Peter sends for his son — The Tsarevitch's flight — The 
 pursuit — The Tsar's bloodhounds — Vienna — Ehrenberg — Naples — 
 Euphrosine appears — The treachery of the mistress — Betrayal of Alexis — 
 The return. 
 V. Abdication — The Moscow inquiry— Alexis gives up his friends — Executions 
 — Paternal forgiveness — Plans for the future— Marriage with Euphrosine 
 — C(jnfidence and happiness. 
 
 VI. St. Petersbnrg — Arrival of the mistress — Cross-examination— A witness for 
 the prosecution — A fresh inquiry — The prince is arrested— Brought into 
 court — Torture— Confession and recantation — The High Court of Justice 
 — The sentence. 
 VII. Death — Various versions — Probabilities — Material reality and moral respon- 
 sibility — European opinion — The judgment of posterity — Voltaire — Before 
 the bar of History. 
 
 The great Reformer's work, and tlic difficulties with which 
 he had to contend, have not been fairl)' judged even b)' his 
 own peers. ' lie worked on his people,' said the great 
 Frederick, not, perhaps, without a touch of jealousy, 'just as 
 aquafortis bites into the steel.' This cf>mparison is hardly 
 just. The Russian nation did not preserve a passive atti- 
 tude under the r(jugh and sudden attack made on its habits, 
 
 608 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 509 
 
 its sense of decorum, and its inner feelings, — an attack which 
 more resembled blows dealt with hammer and axe, than the 
 slow action of corrosive fluid on the metal plate. Peter, in 
 the wildest moments of his rage and desire to punish, often 
 answered violence with violence. This is proved by the 
 minutes of the Pn'obrajensko'ie Prikaz. ' What Tsar is this ?' 
 cried a prisoner named Vanka Borliout, who was put to the 
 question, in 1698, 'he is a Turk ; he eats meat on Wednes- 
 days and Fridays, and eats frogs I He has exiled his wife, 
 and lives with a foreigner!' 'What Tsar is thi:?.?' Here, 
 as afterwards, the exclamation, with its note of mingled 
 astonishment and indignation, was the cry of a wounded con- 
 science. And then followed the argument, * It is not possible 
 that this man, to whom none of those things which, for 
 centuries past, have made the life and faith of Holy Russia, 
 appear sacred, can be born of a Russian man and woman ! 
 He must be the son of some German, — the son of Lefort 
 and of a German woman substituted in the cradle for the 
 child of Alexis and Nathalia ! The real Peter Alexieievitch 
 remained abroad in 1697, the Niantsy kept him, and sent an 
 impostor to take his place. Or perhaps, indeed, this may be 
 Antichrist!'^ In 1701, a writer named Talitski was con- 
 demned to death for having lent his pen to the support of 
 this latter supposition. And, in later years, Stephen lavorski 
 wrote a book, full of quotations from the Apocalypse, to 
 demonstrate the falseness of the idea.- In 17 18, a foreigner, 
 travelling through a village on the road to St. Petersburg, 
 noticed a crowd of three or four hundred men. He inquired 
 of a pope as to the meaning of what he saw, and was told, 
 * Our fathers and our brothers have no beards ; our altars are 
 left unserved ; our most sacred laws are violated ; and we 
 are groaning under a foreign tyranny.' What he saw was 
 the beginning of an insurrection/^ 
 
 The example made of the Streltsy had, indeed, discouraged 
 any attempt at concerted revolt, but individual cases of 
 mutiny, and even of violent resistance, were still frequent, and 
 occasionally took a very simj^le and touching form. One 
 poor gentleman brought a written protest, addressed to God 
 Almighty, into the church, and laid it before the holy images, 
 
 ' Kostomarof in Russian Avtiquities, 1S75, vol. xii. 
 
 ^ Siemievski, Slovo i Dielo, \>. 107, etc. 
 
 * La Vie's despatch from St. Pclersbiirj;, Jan. 10. 171S (French Foreign Office). 
 
5IO PETER THE GREAT 
 
 in llic presence of the Tsar.^ But, in most cases, the fanatical 
 followers of the Domostroi', wounded in their tenderest jjoint, 
 raised an<^r\' hands, and strove to render blow for blow. 
 Attem[)ts on the person of the Sovereij^n occurred almostexery 
 year. In 1718, La Vie refers to the tiveuty-nintli which had 
 taken place since the beginning of the reign. 'There is no 
 doubt,' wrote Campredon, in 1721, 'that if the Tsar were to 
 die, this State would go back to its ancient form of govern- 
 ment, for which all his subjccls secretly sigh.' 
 
 The opposition was not really so general ; it grew more 
 and more timid and weak, as the new order of things gained 
 consistency and strength. It failed to interfere seriously 
 with its development, but it never gave in, to the very end. 
 The elements of this opposition, the motives which swayed 
 it, its special means of action, its spirit and its character, are 
 all evidently summed up in the gloomy incidents of which 
 Peter's eldest son was the pitiful hero. And as I, too, must 
 shortly sum up my own work, I shall give those incidents 
 the principal place in the study for the purpose of which 
 this closing chapter is written. 
 
 My task has been facilitated, in some ways, and complicated 
 in others, by the multij^licity of former efforts devoted to the 
 same subject. History, romance, drama, and poetry, in all 
 countries, and every language, have essayed to conjure up 
 the tragic picture of the unhappy Tsarevitch. A brilliant 
 French writer has endowed the somewhat rough-hewn work 
 of Russian historians with the personal charm of his own 
 brilliant style.- I desire to avoid all useless repetition. But, 
 as it seems to me, the true features of these events, and of 
 the persons who played their part in them, have not, as yet, 
 been brought out with the desirable clearness, and the greatest 
 attainable amount of veracity. I do not claim that I shall 
 succeed, as I would fain have succeeded ; but my readers 
 will forgive me if I make the attempt. 
 
 II 
 
 Ale.xis was born on February 19th, 1690. Ilis por- 
 traits help us to understand his story, and the terrible pro- 
 secution with which it closed. He was neither ugly nor 
 
 ^ Russian S(ate rajiers, 1878, vol. ii. p. 353. 
 
 * Vicomtc Mclchior de \'ogue, / e Fih de J'lerre Ic CraMir ( Paris, 1884). 
 
THE OPPOSITION -THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 511 
 
 handsome ; his forehead was full ; his eyes were round and 
 uneasy, and his whole appearance puny and obstinate. 
 Neither physically nor morally, did he resemble his father ; 
 yet he was anything but the ill-favoured creature he is so 
 frequently represented to have been. He strikes me as a man 
 whose health, never strong, was early ruined by excess of 
 every kind, but he had no actual infirmity. His intelligence 
 was naturally clear ; he was fond of reading, had the Slavonic 
 facility for foreign languages, and the Slavonic love of know- 
 ledge, — of a certain kind, at all events. Like his Uncle 
 Feodor, he preferred theological vvorks. This marked the 
 old Russian spirit, and also the effect of the viethodus in- 
 structionis drawn up for the young prince by one of his 
 tutors, the Baron Von Huissen, who seems to have been a 
 very devout person. Certain extracts from Baronius, which 
 figure in the records of Peter's prosecution of his son, as 
 telling against the culprit, strike me as indicating quite 
 different tendencies from those suspected by his stern 
 father. They seem to me the evidence of a generous and 
 tender-hearted soul. Alexis found pleasure in the thought 
 that Theodosius and Valentinian habitually liberated 
 prisoners on the occasion of the Easter Festivities, forbade 
 capital executions during Lent, and ordered that fire- 
 wood and bedding should never be taken from the poor. 
 He was glad too, it must be admitted, to remember that one of 
 these Sovereigns had observed the Fasts with considerable 
 severity, and that the other had been killed, because he had 
 attempted to interfere with the rights of the Church. 
 Certain points about this son and grandson of semi-Asiatic 
 despots, mark him, in my eyes, as what we should call, 
 nowadays, a liberal-minded man, though others prove him a 
 fanatic, of the purest water. But he was neither uncultivated 
 nor dull-minded. Sometimes he was actually witty. When 
 he was asked, in the course of cross-examination, how he 
 had dared to foretell that the Tsar might one day lose 
 St. Petersburg, he replied, 'Well! he has lost Azof!' He 
 was violent, coarse, and brutal, but it must be remembered 
 that, when still very young, he was taught to drink to 
 excess, and that he was frequently intoxicated. He pulled 
 his second tutor, Viaziemski, about by his hair, and he even 
 dragged at the beard of his Confessor, the Proto-pope 
 Ignatief lUit these fits of rage seem innocent compared 
 
512 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 with those in which he saw his father daily indulge. Violence, 
 coarseness, and brutality were the salient characteristics of 
 the society in which he lived. 
 
 I do not even notice any deliberate intention, on his j)art, 
 of hostility to the reforming movement ; I find him taking 
 an interest in the visit paid to foreign countries by the son 
 of one of his servants, and in the studies he is pursuing, — 
 insisting that the boy should be taught Latin, German, and 
 even French. But what alarmed and estranged him from 
 the revolution by means of which Peter desired to hurry on 
 this movement, was the excess of effort, the too great 
 violence of the shock, the too great suddenness of the 
 change, and, in this respect, he did not stand alone. The 
 repugnance which put him out of tune with his father, was 
 shared by a good half of Russia. 
 
 He remained with his mother till he was nine years old. 
 The earliest effects of the Reform had not been fortunate 
 for her, and of this the child had doubtless been made aware. 
 In 1699, the unhappy Eudoxia was shut up in the Convent 
 of Souzdal ; the separation was probably a cruel pang and 
 a cause of early bitterness to her son. The mother's place 
 was taken by tutors. The father, absent for the most part, 
 and absorbed by the anxieties of war, did not, for some time, 
 take any active interest in his son's education. When he 
 did, the first conllict at once arose. The Tsar, who had 
 been beaten at Narva, and who was to conquer at Poltava, 
 desired, first and foremost, that his son should be a soldier. 
 Alexis had not the smallest taste for the warlike profession. 
 In vain did Peter dilate, in high-sounding language, on the 
 duties incumbent on a Sovereign. The Tsarevitch willingly 
 admitted his duty to fight in the front rank, wherever his 
 subjects fought ; but why were they fighting now? It would 
 be such a simple matter to stay in their own country and 
 leave the Swedes in theirs ! The pupil was not docile, the 
 master was not patient. After several ineffectual attempts, 
 on Peter's part, to inspire his son w ilh a taste for the rough 
 profession over which they wrangled, Alexis was left to 
 himself at Moscow, and treated as a perfectly useless indi- 
 vidual. Naturally his house became the rall}-ing-point of all 
 the numerous malcontents in the neighbourhood of the 
 Kreml, — all those persons who were worried and irritated 
 by the incessant disturbance, and never-ceasing activity, and 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 513 
 
 merciless expenditure of strength, so characteristic of the 
 new regime. The youth and the old city suited each other. 
 He loved it, and it returned his affection. Especially he 
 loved its most lovable and attractive feature, — those in- 
 numerable sanctuaries, cathedrals and chapels, adorned with 
 gold and precious stones, full of mysterious legends, redolent 
 of mystery, and simple poetry. ' Do you believe,' he was 
 asked at a later date, ' that your betrothed will consent to 
 change her religion .-' ' Smiling confidently, he replied, ' I 
 will do nothing to force her ; I will only take her to our 
 Moscow churches — I am sure she will readily pray there 
 with me.' ^ 
 
 And now the revolution dared to lay a sacrilegious hand 
 on the beauty and the majesty of those holy places, to 
 deprive the capital of its Patriarch, and strip the monasteries. 
 Alexis discussed the subject with his confessor. Kneeling 
 in his bedroom at Preobrajenskoi'e, before he made his first 
 communion, he had sworn eternal obedience to this priest, 
 promising he should always be ' his guardian angel, the 
 judge of all his actions, the mouthpiece of Christ.' And 
 the thrilling voice of this man of God echoed, excited, and 
 inflamed, the Prince's inner feelings. It spoke of the indig- 
 nation of the clergy, the profound dejection of the people, 
 and the hopes which had risen, in those bleeding hearts, of a 
 change of ruler — to one who should follow the right, and 
 repair the errors of the past. It called up memories of his 
 mother, that first and most piteous victim of the errors and 
 excesses from which the whole community was suffering. 
 
 A change of ruler? Did the Church herself see no other 
 hope of salvation ? The mind of the youth, startled at first, 
 soon grew accustomed to the thought. The words of the Mus- 
 covite aristocracy, following on the first eager ones spoken 
 by the priest, increased this familiarity. The nobles were 
 furious too, and out of patience ; especially they were out- 
 raged by the sight of the foreign collaborators with whom 
 Peter's intercourse was daily growing more exclusive. Did 
 not Menshikof seem to usurp the Tsarevitch's own proper 
 place beside the Tsar .'' A change of ruler .-' That meant a 
 father's overthrow. Yes! but it also meant the deliverance 
 of a mother, and her liberation from the most unmerited 
 disgrace. Alexis saw his father but rarely nowadays, and 
 ^ Solovief, Readitii^s (Tchtenia), 1861, Book iii. 
 
514 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 when he did appear it was always in the character of a 
 severe and anij^ry master. How had he caused him to 
 employ his time? What had he tau^dit him? lie had 
 never dropped a kindly word, — nothini^ but rcjiroaches, 
 threats and sometimes blows, occasionally most unjust, — 
 as in 1707, when the boy ventured to pay a visit to the 
 unhapp}' prisoner shut up in her nunnery at Souzdal.^ 
 
 In 1708, Peter was suddenly seized with a fresh desire to 
 set his heir to work, 'to make him serve,' as he himself de- 
 scribed it. He first sent him to Smolensk, on Army Com- 
 missariat duty, and then to Moscow, with orders to fortif)' the 
 town atjainst a possible Swedish attack. The experiment 
 failed ; the father was furious, and the son wrote letters 
 to the most influential people in his circle, to beg their 
 friendly intervention. He applied, amongst others, to the 
 new favourite, who was to become his step-mother, but 
 whom, in the meantime, her future step-son addressed as 
 Catherine AU'xicievna. The following year, while the 
 Tsarevitch was bringing up reinforcements sent for by the 
 Tsar, the young prince caught cold and was unable to be 
 present at the Battle of Poltava. Pie was too sickl)', evi- 
 dently, to be worth anything as an apprentice in the art of 
 war. If he was to be made into a satisfactory heir, some 
 other course must be pursued. Peter resolved to send his 
 son into Germany, to complete his studies. There was a 
 chance that he might thus gain a taste for that civilisation 
 to the elements of which he was so complete a stranger. 
 And besides, he was to choose a wife whose influence might 
 help to change the direction of his mental tendencies. 
 
 Alexis w^is delighted with an arrangement, the earliest 
 effect of which was to set a greater distance between 
 himself and his father. He allowed himself to be sent 
 to Dresden, and there applied himself, or pretended to 
 apply himself, to the study of Geometry and Fortifica- 
 tion. But he still kept up an active correspondence with 
 Ignatief, — who sent him an extra Confessor, disguised as 
 a lacquey, — and with his other Moscow friends, who kept 
 him informed as to their long-standing grievances and hopes. 
 He allowed himself a certain amount of pleasure, too, and, be- 
 sides thinking of his soul's salvation, he took care to replace the 
 lady-loves he had left behind him in the old Capital. Ex- 
 
 ' Oustrialof, vol. vi. p. iS. 
 
THE OPPOSITION-TIIE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 515 
 
 trcmc devotion was very compatible, in the P>yzantine mind, 
 with a certain amount of Hcentiousncss. Ikit Peter sur- 
 rounded his son with a whole gang of confidential agents, 
 who were commissioned, not, indeed, to protect his virtue, 
 but to get him married, at the earliest possible moment. 
 The young prince suddenly gave in to their entreaties, and 
 pitched his choice on Princess Charlotte of VVolfenblittel, 
 whose sister had married the future Emperor, Charles vi., 
 — a very suitable marriage. The ceremony took place at 
 Torgau, on the 14th of August 17 11, in the house cf the 
 Queen of Poland and I£lectress of Saxony, by whom Char- 
 lotte had been brought up. 
 
 Peter's idea was a good one, the success of which, as too 
 often happened in his case, was compromised by the over 
 hasty method of its execution. Charlotte, though not very 
 pretty, though her face was pitted with small-pox, though 
 her figure was long-waisted and flat, was, in spite of these 
 physical imperfections, a very charming woman. Ikit she 
 was not, by any means, the life-companion Peter had dreamt 
 of for his son. It goes to our hearts to see this poor, delicate, 
 graceful creature, caught like a bird in a net, overshadowed 
 by the gloomy events of the coming drama, utterly unable 
 to defend herself, or even to understand what was happening 
 to her. Suffering and death were her inevitable fate. 
 
 The early days of the marriage promised fairly. Alexis 
 appeared well pleased with his bride. He replied sharply to 
 Menshikof s ill-natured remarks about her ; she was grateful 
 to him, and showed her gratitude. She was a gentle, dreamy- 
 natured woman, and love was her great desire. An expedi- 
 tion to the island of Riigen, in which the Tsarevitch was to 
 take part, filled her with alarm. She would be, she wrote, 
 * unspeakably wretched if she were to lose her beloved hus- 
 band.' The idea of accom.panying him to St. Petersburg 
 terrified her at first, but, immediately afterwards, she de- 
 clared herself ' ready to go to the other end of the world, so 
 as to stay with him.' ^ It was Peter, again, who began to 
 spoil matters by his unflagging efforts, during the following 
 years, to destroy his work. The idea of making his heir 
 'serve' was upon him again. Between 171 1 and 1713, 
 Alexis was perpetually travelling about, — between Thorn, 
 where he was again despatched on business connected w ith 
 
 ' Guerrier, Die Kronprinzessin Charlotte, 1S75, pp. 25, 86, 90. 
 
5i6 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 yXrmy SiippU', Pnmcrania, where he was sent to carry secret 
 orders for Menshikof, and the shores of the Lake of Ladoga, 
 where he was employed about shipbuildini^ matters. At 
 the same time, the household, thus broken up, was cruelly 
 pinched, — never well-off, pecuniarily speakin<;, and frequently 
 without visible resources. In April 1712, the Princess was 
 forced to appeal to Menshikof, who had insulted her, to lend 
 her 5000 roubles, and in 17 13, fearing she might die of star- 
 vation, she took refuge with her own relations.^ 
 
 Conjugal happiness did not withstand these trials. Char- 
 lotte's letters to her own family soon began to betray the 
 fact that her mind was disordered, and her soul distressed. 
 In November 17 12, she was in despair. Her position, she 
 wrote, was ' terrible.' She was married to a man, who had 
 ' never loved ' her. Then there was a ray of sunshine, and 
 everything seemed changed. The Tsarevitch loved her 
 ' passionately,' and she loved him ' to madness.' But this 
 was a mere passing gleam. Another letter, written soon 
 after, describes her as being ' more wretched than any one 
 can imagine,' adding that she had endeavoured, up to the 
 present, to cast a veil over her husband's character, but that 
 the mask had fallen at last. 
 
 The danger of trusting anything to the chances of the 
 Russian post may have had something to do with the 
 apparent contradictions visible in these confidential com- 
 munications. It is certain, at all events, that no durable 
 reconciliation, nor any serious intimacy, can ever have existed 
 between two young people so absolutely unsuited to each 
 other. Graver difficulties of a moral nature were added to 
 the material fact of an almost incessant physical separation. 
 Charlotte was a confirmed Lutheran, — all the eloquence of 
 the Moscow churches had been wasted on her. Then .she 
 had brought a small German court in her train, and this 
 formed her habitual circle. Alexis was as fanatical as ever 
 in his religious views, and grew more and more wrapped up 
 in the narrow particularism of Moscovian orthodoxy. All 
 I'eter's authority and violence had done, was to make his son's 
 resistance to the spirit of the new regime more and more 
 stubborn. An open struggle had begun between the father 
 and the son, and on each side the natural disposition grew 
 more clearly marked, — Peter's eager and active originating 
 
 ' Solovief, vol. xvii. p. 148. 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 517 
 
 power, his deliberate and despotic coercion, in the interests of 
 revolution, — Alexis' stubborn and passive immobility, and 
 equally deliberate sullen opposition. In 17 13, the Tsare- 
 vitch fired a pistol into his own right hand, to avoid an 
 examination into his talents as a draughtsman ! 
 
 His attitude was strengthened by the fact that a more 
 general opposition was beginning to take shape. With- 
 out any intention on his part, without, indeed, being well 
 aware of it, he had become the head of a party. Amongst 
 the clergy, even Stephen lavorski had a sympathetic feeling 
 for him, evidenced by the famous sermon preached on the 
 1 2th of March 1712, and the representatives of the old aris- 
 tocratic families, such as the Dolgoroukis and the Galitzins, 
 looked towards him with anxious eyes. Now everything 
 that drew him nearer them, removed him yet farther, not only 
 from his parent, but from his wife. She, the heretic and the 
 foreigner, had no place in the future they dreamed for him 
 and for themselves. She, too, personified the hated rvgime. 
 
 In 1 7 14, Alexis obtained permission to take the cure at 
 Carlsbad. He left his wife without regret, though she was 
 on the brink of her confinement, and she saw him depart 
 without any sense of sorrow. She herself now suffered from 
 his natural brutality, all the more that the members of his 
 circle had encouraged him in that coarse debauchery 
 which formed part of the national tradition, the perpetuation 
 of which they claimed to share with him. He frequented 
 women of bad character, and drank to excess. ' He is 
 almost always drunk,' writes the Princess. She was even 
 alarmed as to the danger with which the intemperate 
 language, resulting from his drinking excesses, threatened 
 him. Under the influence of wine, he would give his dreams 
 expression, ' When what is to happen does happen, his 
 father's and his stepmother's friends are to make acquaint- 
 ance with the stake . . . the fleet is to be burnt, and St. 
 Petersburg will sink down into its own marshes ! ' 
 
 On his return from Carlsbad, he seized the very moment 
 when she had borne him a daughter, to outrage her in 
 the most cruel manner. Euphrosine, the celebrated 
 courtesan, who was to play such a ruinous part in his 
 existence, appeared beside him, with every attribute of a 
 ])ublicly acknowledged mistress. In the following year 
 his wife once more had hopes of becoming a mother. He 
 
5i8 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 watched over her, with a certain amount of care, clininf^ 
 a period of very tr)-ing health, but, worn out by sorrow, 
 she died in childbed on the 22nd of October 17 15. Her 
 re.sic^nation, in her last moments, was truly admirable. 
 A\cx\s/tf/>//{:(/ three titnes in succession beside her bed ! Was 
 this sorrow or remorse? Perhaps it was the mere conscious- 
 ness of the manner in whicli her death increased the gravity 
 of his own position. He acknowledged, later, that at that 
 moment the feeling that a fresh clanger threatened him 
 had crossed his mind. The dead woman's child was a boy ; 
 a second heir was thus provided for the lunpire, and the 
 consequences of this event, which the rebel son may have 
 dimly foreseen, were soon to be apparent. 
 
 Six days later, his anxiety was confirmed by a letter from 
 his father, cunningly antedated so as to appear as if it had 
 been written on the nth of October. All the elements of 
 the drama of which he was to be the principal hero, and the 
 victim, had been brought together, and the curtain was 
 about to rise. 
 
 The letter was a summons, ' a last summons,' as the 
 Sovereign wrote, and he pointed out that it was not his 
 habit to make u.se of empty threats. ' Thou wilt do nothing, 
 and thou wilt learn nothing ; when thou comest to power, 
 thou wilt have to be fed like a little bird. ... I do not spare 
 my own life, nor that of any of my subjects ; I will make 
 no exception in thy case. Thou wilt mend thy ways, and 
 thou wilt make thyself useful to the State, otherwise thou 
 shalt be disinherited.' 
 
 The word had been spoken, and the very day after the 
 delivery of the letter, the lines of the dilemma it referred to 
 were deepened by another incident ; Catherine, in her turn, 
 bore a son. 
 
 What feeling swayed Peter at that moment ? This, from 
 the point of view of historical responsibility, is the great pro- 
 blem that hangs over his son's lamentable trial. 1 he apolo- 
 gists of the great Tsar have claimed that he was inspired by 
 State reasons. Peter's anxiety, and his legitimate anxiety, 
 was to ensure the future of his work, and protect his own 
 inheritance from the incapable and unworthy heir who 
 threatened it. But considerations to which I have already 
 had occasion to refer (see p. 460), and others which will be- 
 come apparent as my story proceeds, disincline me to adopt 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 519 
 
 this .solution. The extreme enerf:^y and consistency of the 
 Sovereign's exercise of his paternal authority, in the first 
 place, and the weakness and inconsistency of his final settle- 
 ment of the dynastic question, in the second, lead me to the 
 conclusion that these two matters cannot have been closely 
 connected in his mind. I believe, on the whole, that, in the 
 first, his action was purely despotic, — he was determined to 
 be obeyed. He may, too, have been influenced by the 
 natural consequences of his second marriage. Independently 
 of any direct pressure on Catherine's part, the child of that 
 beloved wife was surely dearer to him, than the son of 
 his repudiated consort. Alexis must have been a living 
 reproach to his father, and that father's customary manner 
 of treating men and things which caused him discomfort is 
 well known. I shall have to return to this question. 
 
 Alexis, advised by his most intimate confidants, Viazi- 
 emski, Kikin, and Ignatief, made a bold answer to the 
 mighty blow dealt at him. He acknowledged himself unfit 
 to bear the heavy burden of the Crown, declared himself ill, 
 and weakened in body and mind, and offered, now that he saw 
 he had a brother to replace him, to spontaneously resign his 
 rights. All he asked was to be allowed to retreat into the 
 country, and to be given means to live there quietly. Peter, 
 who had not expected to be taken literally, was somewhat 
 suspicious of this prompt submission. He took time to 
 reflect, and then, on the 19th January 17 16, he returned to 
 the charge. He had endeavoured, in former days, to con- 
 vince his son of the necessity of taking up a more manly 
 attitude, by appeals to the memory of Louis XIV., and even 
 to the heroes of Greek history. This time he invoked the 
 memory of King David. 1 he Psalmist King had proclaimed 
 the truth that 'all men are liars.' A retreat into the country 
 would, in the case of the Tsarevitch, be both an impropriety 
 and a deceit. The subject must be reconsidered. An heir 
 who never expected to reign, and still remained a prince, 
 would be neither fish nor flesh. Alexis must choose between 
 the throne and a more safely-guarded retreat. He must 
 either prove himself worthy to reign or become a monk ; 
 there was to be no alternative. The choice lay in his hand. 
 If he failed to make one, he was to be treated 'as a 
 malefactor.' 
 
 The cloister ! ' the deep dungeon, the tomb-like retreat 
 
520 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 wliich kills in silence,' as a certain pf)ct-historian has described 
 it ! Alexis shivered at the thoui^dit. lie consulted a^ain 
 with his friends. 'Pooh!' replied Kikin, 'you will come 
 back, the klolwok (monk's cap) is not fastened on with 
 nails ! ' Three lines expressed the son's rej^ly ; he would be 
 a monk, but, while he addressed this message to his father, 
 he took care to give its real meaning in two letters confided 
 to Kuphrosine, for Kikin and Ignatief, two of the foremost 
 members of the retrograde party. These letters contained 
 the words, ' I am going into a monastery, driven there by 
 force! 
 
 Peter was once more taken at a disadvantage. He was 
 just about to go abroad, and left things as they were. Me 
 evidently felt he had gone too far. He had expect(xl to 
 frighten his son, and make him sue for mercy. He knew 
 only too well the part in the national history played by 
 monks, even less closely related to the throne. Unliappily 
 for Alexis, his friends soon gave him other and less wise 
 counsels, and he, obedient to their advice, took the offensive, 
 lost all the benefits of his apparent resignation, gave back 
 his father all the advantage he had won over him, and finally 
 cast himself into the gulf 
 
 But before I follow him down that fatal slope, I must say 
 a few words about a very strange, and, at one time, a very 
 generally credited legend, which increases the complications, 
 and adds to the dark riddles, and romantic features, of 
 this gloomy tragedy. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Princess Charlotte is said to have survived her 
 husband. According to the accepted story, worn out by his 
 ill-treatment, — he had actually kicked her, when .she was 
 near her confinement — she had passed herself off as dead, 
 and aided by one of her ladies. Countess Warbeck, she first 
 of all escaped to France, and then sailed to Lousiana, where 
 she married a PVench officer, the Chevalier d'Auban, to 
 whom she bore a daughter. After ten years of marriage, .she 
 reappeared in Paris, whither her husband had come to con- 
 sult doctors, and undergo an operation. She was recognised 
 in the Tuileries Gardens by a gentleman, the future Marshal 
 de Saxe, who had seen her at St. Petersburg. He was 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 521 
 
 anxious to mention their meeting to the King, but she made 
 him promise to keep silence for three months, and, at the 
 end of that period, she had disappeared. She had departed 
 to the island of Bourbon, where her husband had taken up 
 duty. The King, informed of this fact, transmitted the 
 news to the Empress Maria Theresa, who was Princess 
 Charlotte's own niece, and who offered to receive her, if she 
 would consent to separate from the gentleman whose name 
 she bore. She refused. She did not return to France till 
 after the Chevalier's death in 1760, and then lived a most 
 retired life, in a country house at Vitry, which she bought 
 from President Feydeau, for 112,000 francs. These details, 
 it will be observed, are very exact. She received a pension 
 of 45,000 livres from the Empress, her niece, and gave away 
 three-parts of it in alius. Her story was fairly well known 
 in Paris, so much so that when Voltaire was occupied on his 
 ' H istory of Russia, under Peter the Great,' he applied to the 
 Due de Choiseul for information on the subject. The Duke 
 answered, that, like everybody else, he was acquainted with 
 the story, iDut that he could not vouch for its authenticity.^ 
 
 The supposed Princess died in 1771, and the Paris news- 
 ]:)apers gave the strange posthumous biography, the principal 
 features of which I have just described, in the fullest detail. 
 Catherine II , who then ruled Russia, was much disturbed, 
 and answered by an argument containing six heads. ' Every 
 one knows,' she affirmed, ' that the Princess died of con- 
 sumption in 17 1 5, and that she never suffered any ill-treat- 
 ment whatsoever.' ' Every one knows,' retorted one of the 
 journalists concerned, 'that Peter III. died of apoplexy!' 
 The Austrian Ambassador — and this is an historical fact — 
 was present at the lonely burial at Vitry, and the Abbe 
 Sauvestre, Court Almoner, officiated, by order of the King, 
 l^ut Voltaire appears to have been enlightened, at an earl>' 
 date, with regard to this enigmatic personage. In a letter 
 to Madame P'ontaine, dated September 1760, he laughs at 
 the credulity of the Parisians, and in another written a little 
 later, to Madame Bassewitz, he asserts that the Chevalier 
 
 ^ This answer is included in one of tlie Memoirs, written by \'oltaire, wiih a 
 vjew to this work. These documents, the lo=s of which Oustrialof has wrongly 
 deplored, — for they are in the I'hilosoplicr's Library, which is known to have 
 been removed to St. Petersburg, — prove that he laboured very conscientiously, 
 though certain notes and remarks are singular enougli, such as the following :— 
 * Camshatka, grand pays ou ni pain ni vin . . . Comment messe ? ' 
 
522 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 d'Auban married a Polish adventuress. In I78i,an inhabit- 
 ant of the French capital had the curiosity to go to Vitr)-, and 
 there consult the Parish Registers ; the name of the dead 
 woman was given as Dortic-Maric-Elizabcth Daniclsoii} 
 I possess no more informatic^n on the subject. 
 
 IV 
 
 On the 28th of August 17 16, after a silence which had 
 lasted six months, Peter, who had left St. Petersburg very 
 early in the year, sent a fresh summons to his son. 'If he 
 desired to remain in the world, he was to prove his princely 
 quality by coming to join his father, and making the 
 Camijaign with him. If he preferred to become a monk, 
 the moment had arrived for giving effect to his declared 
 intention ; he must choose a Monastery, and specify the day 
 on which he proposed to be received.' According to some 
 writers, the Tsar had already forestalled his son's decision, 
 by choosing an Abbey at Tver, and causing a cell to be pre- 
 pared for his recej:)tion, the arrangements of which strongly 
 resembled those of a prison.- Were the young Prince's 
 friends aware of this fact ? Such knowledge would excuse 
 their action. In any case, the decision, taken on their 
 unanimous advice, by the unhappy Alexis, was promptly 
 made. He informed Menshikof that he was starting to 
 join his father, asked for lOOO ducats to pay his journey, 
 and for leave to take Euphrosine with him ; obtained 
 another 2000 roubles from the Senate, and set forth towards 
 Riga, on 26th of September 17 16. But, at the last moment, 
 he confided his secret intentions to Afanassief, his valct-de- 
 chambre, whom he left behind him at St. Petersburg. He 
 had no idea of joining the Tsar ; he was going to Vienna, to 
 place himself under the protection of the Kmperor. Kikin 
 had arrived there several months previously, to feel the way, 
 
 "^Journal de Paris, Feb. 15, 177 1. Consult also, with reference to this 
 incident, the Chevalier Bossu's Nouvcaux Voyages dans V Aiiu'riqiie Scpteutriouale, 
 I'aris, 1S77 (ihe first work which alludes to it) ; Continuation de P Histoire 
 Moderne de F Ai>hi! de Muiry, hy Richer ; Extrait dii MJniorial de M. Duclos, 
 historioi^raphe de France, inserted in Interesting and Little-known Historical 
 Documents, Brussels- I'aris, 1781 ; Levcsc|ue, History of Teter the Great, vol. ii.; 
 Russian Antiquities, 1874, j). 360. A clever tale was written on the subject, 
 and a vaudeville founded on the incident was performed at the Th(5atre des 
 N'arieies in Paris. 
 
 ''■ Messager Russe, 1S60, No. 13. 
 
THE OPPOSITION-THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 523 
 
 and had sent back reassuring tidings ; the Emperor wouUi 
 not give up his brother-in-law, and would allow him 3000 
 florins monthly for his support. 
 
 At Libau, the fugitive met his aunt, Maria Alexicievna, 
 and at once took her into his confidence. She was alarmed, 
 'Where dost thou think to hide thyself? He will find thee 
 everywhere ! ' She did not encourage him, for though ill- 
 disposed towards Peter, on account of his second marriage, 
 slie was filled with a terrifying sense of his omnipotence. 
 Alexis did his best to reassure her, found courage himself in 
 the hopes held out by Kikin, and continued on his way. 
 
 It v.as a considerable time before Peter knew what had 
 become of his son. At the first news of his disappearance, 
 he loosed his cleverest bloodhounds in pursuit, — Viesselovski, 
 his Resident at Vienna, Roumiantsof, and Tolstoi'. It was a 
 regular coursing match. ' We are on the track, we shall 
 soon catch the brute.' Such terms as these were constantly 
 used by the pursuers. The hunt went on for nearly a year. 
 
 On the evening of the loth of November 1716, the Tsare- 
 vitch suddenly appeared at Vienna, in the presence of Count 
 Schonborn, and ' with many gesticulations, casting terrified 
 glances right and left, and rushing from one end of the room 
 to the other,' he claimed the Emperor's help, to save 
 his life. He accused his tutors of having brought him up ill, 
 declared Menshikof had ruined his health by teaching him 
 to drink, said his father desired to kill him by dint of over- 
 work, and ended by asking for beer. The Emperor and his 
 councillors, sorely perplexed, made up their minds to en- 
 deavour to arrange the dificrcnces betv^een father and son, 
 and in the meantime to conceal the whereabouts of the 
 latter. An old keep in the valley of the Lech, known as the 
 Castle of Ehrenberg, which was destroyed, in the year 1800, 
 by Massena's soldiers, occurred to them as being a safe 
 hiding-place, and thither Alexis allowed himself to be con- 
 ducted, and shut up as a State prisoner, in the most pro- 
 found incognito. 
 
 It was not until the month of March, in the following j-car, 
 that he was discovered. It then became known that Roumi- 
 antsof and several officers were prowling round the little 
 fortress, and it was reported that his orders were, to obtain 
 possession of the fugitive's person at any cost. The Austrian 
 Government decided to send him to Naples, which, as my 
 
524 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 readers are aware, had been ceded to the Imperial house by 
 the Treaty of Utrecht. He was invited to dispense with his 
 Muscovite servants, whose drunken habits compromised his 
 safety. He insisted on keepin^i; one pajje, and this was per- 
 mitted for reasons thus explained in a letter from Count 
 Schonborn to Prince Eugene of Savoy: ' Our little page . . 
 has been at last acknowledged as a female. . . . She is de- 
 clared to be a mistress, and indispensably necessary.' ^ 
 
 This page, as my readers will have guessed, was Kuphro- 
 sine. Testimony as to her origin is most conflicting. She 
 ma}' have been a Finnish peasant, one of Viazicmski's serfs, 
 or, like Catherine, the captive of a victorious general. Roumi- 
 antsof describes her as tall, stout, with thick lips and red 
 hair. Viesselovski declares she was short of stature. In any 
 case, she was a child of the people, and of a very low class. 
 How did she acquire that absolute mastery over the heart of 
 Alexis, which, so often, lies at the root of human tragedy? 
 This is an eternal m\-stery. The unhapjjy prince seems to 
 have inherited that peculiar form of sensuality, coarse to the 
 last degree, and yet not untouched by sentimentality, which 
 appears in most of the great Tsar's love affairs, without a 
 symptom either of his intelligence or of his strong will. At 
 Naples, Kuijhrosine was to decide his fate. 
 
 Roumiantsof first of all followed him to that place, then, 
 returning to Vienna, he joined Tolstoi in an official demand 
 for the surrender of the Tsarevitch's person. The matter 
 was growing serious. The Tsar seemed resolved to proceed 
 to extreme measures, and the army he then had in Poland 
 was very well able to convert the threats, evident in the 
 haughty language held by his agents, into grim reality. 
 Silesia was within his grasp, not to mention Bohemia, 
 v.here he was certain to be heartily welcomed by the 
 Slavonic population of the country. Charles vi. tried to 
 temporise. He wrote to King George of England, to in- 
 terest him in the cause of the persecuted son, and en- 
 deavoured to delay matters till the end of the campaign 
 then in progress, which did not promise well f(^r the Tsar's 
 arms. Meanwhile, he persuaded the two Russians to try 
 
 ' Oustrialof, vol. vi.. p. 95. .\11 the following dct.iils h.ive been diawn, ex- 
 cept where the contrary is indica'ed, from the documents piil)lislie(l liy the ahovc 
 historian, and from the sixth volume of his work, which is entirely devoted lo 
 the Tsarevitch and his trial. 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 525 
 
 what they themselves could do at Naples. Perhaps the 
 Tsarevitch might be induced to put himself into their hands 
 willingly. To Naples they went, and then began a struggle, 
 in which Count Daun, the Viceroy, played a far from noble 
 part. Orders had been sent him from Vienna to facilitate 
 an interview between the Russian Sovereign's agents and the 
 young Prince, and even, if necessary, to force the young man 
 to grant one. He simply opened the gates of the Castle of 
 St. Elmo, where the fugitive had been shut up, to the Tsar's 
 messengers. He suspected his master's great desire to get 
 rid of his protege, and he was not mistaken. Tolstoi and 
 Roumiantsof soon drove him to assume the extreme conse- 
 quences of this supposition. 
 
 Alexis underwent a regular siege. He was first shown a 
 letter from his father, half threatening and half merciful, 
 which promised him pardon for all his faults, in return for 
 his swift submission. If this was refused, the Tsar would 
 declare war on Austria, and take back his son by main force. 
 Alexis held firm. Then Count Daun's secretary, Weinhart, 
 who had been bought over with a few ducats, dropped a 
 confidential word in his ear. The Emperor had decided to 
 leave him to his fate. Next, Tolstoi', in the course of con- 
 versation, said something of Peter's expected arrival in Italy, 
 and Alexis, already terrified, began to tremble. Finally, 
 Daun himself went beyond his instructions, and put forward 
 a threat which had the most immediate effect. If the Tsare- 
 vitch desired to remain at St. Elmo, he must make up his 
 mind to part with Euphrosine. Then the serf-girl herself 
 appeared upon the scene. She had been won over by pro- 
 mises or gifts, and made common cause — as she boasted at 
 a later period — with the father against the son. Her tears 
 and supplications strengthened the assault, and Alexis gave 
 in at discretion. 
 
 Two conditions, only, he attached to his obedience. He 
 was to be allowed to live quietly on his country property, 
 and there was to be no more talk of parting him from his 
 mistress. Tolstoi and Roumiantsof both agreed, and even 
 undertook to obtain the Tsar's consent to his son's marriage 
 with the girl. He wrote his father a very humble letter, full 
 of repentance for the past, and entreaties that his two final 
 requests might be granted. Then after an excursion to Pari, 
 where he greatly desired to adore the relics of St. Nicholas, 
 
526 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 he allowed himself to be carried off. He soon recovered 
 confidence and cheerfulness, and was delighted with a letter 
 from his father, received on the road. The Tsar was willing 
 to allow him to marry Euphrosine, and only stipulated that 
 the ceremony should take place in some out-of-the-way 
 corner of Russia, ' so as to avoid still greater shame.' The 
 mistress was in an interesting condition, and he had been 
 obliged to leave her behind him in Italy ; but she was to re- 
 join him after her confinement, and he had charged one of 
 her own brothers to watch over his treasure. To this indi- 
 vidual he writes as follows : — ' Ivan Fedorovitch, I salute thee ! 
 I beseech thee to watch over thy sister and my wife (this is not 
 yet accomplished, but I have the order) [s/c], so that she may 
 have no sorrow, for so far nothing has interfered' (to prevent 
 the marriage) ' save her condition, and, with God's help, all 
 will go well.' This letter contains a postscript, addressed to 
 one of the servants who waited on the lady of his affections. 
 It betrays all the anxiet}', and all the inherent coarseness, of 
 her lover. 'Alexander Mihailovitch . . .' (here come two 
 coarse expressions), ' do all that in thee lies to amuse Euph- 
 rosine, so that she may not be unhappy, for everything is 
 going well,' adding an intimation that, because of the lady's 
 condition, 'things cannot be quickly accomplished.' 
 
 Euphrosine's amusement does not appear to have been a 
 difficult matter. During her journey along the road whereon 
 the man she had betraj^ed was travelling to torture and to 
 death, her chief thought was to amuse herself by spending 
 the money — the price of his blood — she had just earned. 
 At Venice she bought thirteen ells of cloth-of-gold, for one 
 hundred and sixty-seven ducats, besides a cross and earrings 
 and a ruby ring. She went to listen to a concert, and was 
 sorry to find neither opera nor play-acting in the town. Did 
 she give a thought to the future — to that dream of love and 
 happiness, free from all care, in a retirement shared with 
 Aphrosiiiiouslika, which was the theme of all Alexis' letters? 
 No sign of it appears in the commonplace answers she dic- 
 tated to a secretary, to which she would add a few lines in 
 her own large, ill-formed handwriting, requesting her lover 
 to send her some national dainty — caviare, or cas/ia. 
 
 One chance of salvation for the unhappy Ale.xis yet re- 
 mained. The events which had occurred at Naples had 
 disturbed the Emperor's feelings, and caused him pricks of 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 527 
 
 conscience. He feared some violence had been done the 
 Tsarevitch, and resolved to see his brother-in-law, on his way 
 through his dominions, and make personal inquiry of him. 
 Suddenly he became aware that the Russian Prince was 
 already at Briinn in Moravia. Tolstoi and Koumiantsof had 
 hurried him through Vienna in the night. They were deter- 
 mined to carry off their spoil. Charles VI. did his duty 
 nobly. The Governor of the Province, Count Colloredo, was 
 given orders to stop the travellers, to see the Tsarevitch witJi- 
 out zuitnesses, to find out whether he was returning to Russia 
 of his ozvn free zui'll, and, in case of a negative reply, to pro- 
 vide him with means to stay in Austria, and take all neces- 
 sary measures to ensure his safety. This order, alas ! was 
 not carried into effect. A scene took place at the inn, where 
 Alexis was lodged with his escort, which proves the immense 
 increase of moral power already acquired by Russia, under 
 Peter's rule and teaching. Right in the middle of the Em- 
 peror's country these agents of the Tsar barred the progress 
 of the Emperor's representative. They threatened, if that 
 were necessary, to oppose access to the Tsarevitch, sword in 
 hand. Colloredo sent for fresh instructions, and this time — 
 alas! again — the Imperial Council pronounced for absten- 
 tion. Thus Alexis' fate was sealed, and, on the 31st of 
 January 17 18, Peter had the gloomy satisfaction of knowing 
 his son was back in Moscow. , 
 
 No one in Europe suspected the nature of the fate to 
 which the unhappy boy was destined, and the weakness of 
 the Imperial Councillors finds a partial justification in this 
 fact. The Gazette de Hollande was actually announcing the 
 Prince's approaching marriage with his cousin, Anna Ivan- 
 ovna. In Russia, on the contrary, the emotion was general 
 and deep. The most contradictory stories had been circu- 
 lated during the long absence of the Tsarevitch. He had 
 been believed to be betrothed to a German Princess, — im- 
 prisoned in a cloister, — put to death by his father's order, — 
 concealed, under a borrowed name, in the ranks of the 
 Imperial army. When the real truth came out, it spread 
 terror amongst his ojjcn and his .secret partisans. There 
 was no likelihood that Peter would be content with having 
 
528 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 refrained possession of his son ; there wt)uld certainly be an 
 inquiry, a search for accomphces, and sittings in the Ques- 
 tion Chambers at Preobrajensko'ie. Kikin, the most directly 
 compromised of all the Tsarevitch's friends, endeavoured to 
 induce Afanassief, the Prince's valet-de-chambre, to go to 
 meet, and warn, his master ; but the man, fearing he might 
 arouse suspicion, refused to budge. None of the persons 
 most closely interested ever reckoned, for a moment, on the 
 pardon granted the culprit by the Tsar ; and Peter soon 
 justified the general opinion. 
 
 On the 3rd of February 1718, the higher clergy and all the 
 lay dignitaries were convoked in solemn meeting at the 
 Kreml. Alexander was brought into their presence as an 
 accused prisoner, — without his sword. When Peter saw him, 
 he burst into a fury, and overwhelmed him with abuse and 
 reproaches. The Tsarevitch fell on his knees, wept floods of 
 tears, stammered excuses, and once more entreated the for- 
 giveness on promise of which he had allowed himself to be 
 led home, like a sheep to the slaughter. Pardoned he should 
 be, but he had made conditions, and now the Tsar was going 
 to impose his. The guilty and unworthy Prince was solemnly 
 and formally to resign the Crown, and to denounce all those 
 who had shared in his wrong-doing, — who had advised, or 
 assisted him, in his wicked flight. The popular fear had 
 come true. This meant a criminal inquiry, with all its 
 hideous following of torture and execution. In the Cathedral 
 of the Assumption, before the Gospels, and on the very spot 
 where he should, one day, have assumed the Imperial diadem, 
 Alexis abdicated his rights to the throne, and recognised his 
 younger brother, Peter, Catherine's son, to be the rightful 
 heir. Then, in one of the low-roofed chambers of the Kreml, 
 where his father shut himself up with him alone, he ga\e up 
 the names, — all those he could call to mind, all those which 
 corresponded, in his terrified memory, with the recollection 
 of any encouragement, with any sign of sympath}', even with 
 any affectionate word, dropped in the midst of that mental 
 crisis which had driven him into flight. 
 
 He was warned that one single omission, or reticence, 
 would cost him the benefit of his confession. 
 
 Kikin's was the first name given, then came Viaziemski, 
 Vassili Dolgorouki, Afanassief, and many others. Even the 
 Tsarevna Maria herself was mentioned, on account of that 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 529 
 
 meeting at Libau, and in spite of the reserve she had then 
 manifested. At each fresh name, Peter yelled with fury. 
 Until 1 7 14, Kikin had been one of the most intimate 
 members of his circle, — Weber had, on more than one occa- 
 sion, seen the Tsar holding him in his arms, ^ for over a quarter 
 of an Jwur!^ Dolgorouki was the only member of the old 
 aristocracy in whom the Sovereign had placed great con- 
 fidence. Both were at once brought to AIoscow, with iron 
 collars round their necks, and the inquiry began. 
 
 One thing was soon proved, that no understanding as to 
 any fixed aim had ever existed between Alexis and his 
 friends. There was not the shadow of a conspiracy, properly 
 so called. The foreign diplomats' reports to their Govern- 
 ments, almost unanimously expressing a contrary view, must 
 have arisen out of a misunderstanding, or been inspired by a 
 base desire to please the Tsar. Alexis may, indeed, as the 
 Dutch Resident affirmed, have had the aristocracy his father 
 had humiliated, the clergy he had stripped, and the people he 
 had crushed under the triple yoke of serfdom, taxation, and 
 perpetual military service, ' on his side.' '^ But all these 
 were partisans, not conspirators. And, indeed, as a party, 
 their condition was most elementary, there was no organisa- 
 tion of any kind. De Bie goes so far as to speak of two 
 plots, directed simultaneously, and separately, to the same 
 object — the accession of Alexis to the throne, the proscrip- 
 tion of all foreigners, and the conclusion of a peace of some 
 kind with Sweden. All this is pure imagination. The Preo- 
 brajenskoie torture-chambers brought nothing of the kind to 
 light. A certain clerk in the Department of the Artillery, 
 named Dodoukin, was called upon to swear allegiance to 
 the new heir-apparent. He replaced this formula by a violent 
 protest ; but he was no conspirator, he was a political 
 martyr.^ 
 
 Kikin, during a stay of several weeks at Vienna, had 
 entered into relations with certain refugees, — the remnants 
 of some former political jDarties, — a few old Streitsy, who had 
 miraculously escaped the massacres of 1698. Besides this, 
 he had kept up intercourse with some members of the Tsar's 
 
 ^ Herrmann, Peter der Grosse und der Tsarevitch Alexis (Leipzig, 1880), 
 p. 122. 
 
 - De Bie's Despa'ches, Jan. 8, 17 17, Feb. 24, and May ic, 17 18 (Dutch 
 Archives) ; La Vie s Despatch, Feb. 26, 1718 (French Foreign Office). 
 
 * Solovief, vol. .xvii. p. 216. 
 
530 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 own circle, and was intimate with Poklanovski, one of Peter's 
 favourite Dicnshtchihs, one of those in whose arms he habitu- 
 ally slept. Alexis, just before his flight, had an interview 
 with Abraham Lapouhin, one of Eudoxia's brothers, who 
 gave him tidint^s of the uniia])py recluse. Far from conspir- 
 ing with his mother, the poor j-oung Tsarevitch had not even 
 known whether she was still alive. Learning her destitute 
 condition, he gave Lapouhin 500 roubles to convey to her. 
 These facts, and some unseemly remarks droj^ped by the 
 young Prince in moments of anger, or of drunkenness, were 
 the only points of accusation the inquiry revealed against 
 him. Speaking of his marriage with Charhjtte, he had com- 
 plained of his father's counsellors, who had bound him to a 
 'she-devil,' and swore to be avenged on them. Speaking of 
 them, he said, * I spit upon them all I Long live the common 
 people ! When my time comes, and my father is no longer 
 here, I will whisper a word to the bishops,, they will give it 
 to the popes, and the popes to their parishioners, and they 
 will call me to rule whether I will or not.' 
 
 None of this was either very wicked or very serious, and 
 besides, when Alexis left Russia, he was firmly resolved to 
 adhere to the abdication forced on him by his father's last 
 attempts on his independence. His depositions on this point 
 never varied, even when he could ha\e had no further object 
 in lying, or in hiding anj'thing. Mis plan, which his own 
 weakness prevented from carrying out, was to remain abroad, 
 and await the death of his father, after which, he hoped to 
 get possession of the Regency during his brother's minority. 
 
 What, then, was the Tsar's object in putting the whole 
 machinery of justice into motion? Probably he scarcely 
 knew himself Those long-prepared designs, with which he 
 has been credited, for drawing his unhaj^py son into a sort 
 of maze which should lead him from mistake into mistake, 
 and weakness to weakness, until his own head was placed in 
 jeopardy, are not confirmed by any clear fact, and are con- 
 tradicted by everything we know of Peter's character.^ lie 
 was not at all the man likely to enter into such calculations. 
 He was most likely led by events, and suited these to his own 
 passions. He seemed satisfied, in the beginning, with the 
 victims supplied by his son's confessions, aid by the inquiries 
 
 * Pogodin, Trial of the Tsarevitch Alexis, in 'he Kousskdia Bii'ssicda, i860, 
 vol. i. pp. i-i 10. 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 531 
 
 which he extended to the convent at Souzdal. Kikin re- 
 ceived twenty-five blows with the knout, on four different 
 occasions, and was finally broken on the wheel. Afanassief, 
 whose only guilt, poor wretch, was that he had listened to 
 his master's confidences, had his head cut off. The fate of 
 Eudoxia and Glebof has already been described. Dolgorouki 
 and Viaziemski, whom xAlexis specially charged, escaped, on 
 account, probably, of his insistence, with their lives ; their 
 goods were confiscated ; they were dismissed from their 
 offices, and exiled. Dositheus, Bishop of Rostof, acknow- 
 ledged that he had foretold Peter's approaching death, and 
 the accession of his son, to the ex-Tsarina. But he addressed 
 these significant words to the arJiireis gathered togethci in 
 solemn assembly to pronounce his degradation : — ' Look into 
 all your own hearts, carry your ears into the midst of the 
 people, and repeat what you hear ! ' He, too, w'as broken on 
 the wheel, with one of his priests. The heads of the executed 
 persons were set on pikes, and their entrails were burnt. 
 Poklanovski lost his tongue, his ears, and his nose ; Princess 
 TrouTekourof, two nuns, and a large number of gentlemen, — 
 one of them a member of the Lapouhin family, recently 
 returned from England, — were knouted. That merry gossip, 
 Princess Ailastasia Galitzin, who had kept silence after the 
 Abbess of Souzdal had informed her of the relations between 
 Eudoxia and Glebof, escaped the knout, but she was beaten 
 v/ith ' the sticks.' Peter forced his son to be present at the 
 executions, which lasted three long hours, and then carried 
 him away to St. Petersburg. 
 
 Alexis believed himself out of the wood, and was more 
 than contented with his own fate. Adversity had hardened 
 his heart. He had no feeling left for any one but his 
 I'Aiphrosine. He wrote to tell her that his father treated 
 iiim perfectly well, and had invited him to his own table, 
 and expressed his satisfaction at having got rid of the title 
 of heir-apparent. 
 
 ' We have never thought, as well thou knowest, of any- 
 thing but living peacefully at Roshestvienka. To he with 
 thee, and in peace, until I die, is my sole desire.'^ Tliis letter 
 may possibly have been written with an eye to the Secret 
 Police, but he was certainly more bent than ever on marrying 
 
 ' Quoted hy Kostomarof ( The Tsarcvilch Alexis, in Russia, Old a?iJ Ncw^ 
 1S75, Jan., Feb.). It does not appear in Ouslrialof's work. 
 
532 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 his mistress. Before his departure from Moscow, he had 
 cast himself at Catherine's feet, aiifl entreated her to favour 
 his union. 
 
 VI 
 
 Euphrosine's arri\al at St. Petersburg on the 15th of 
 .April 17 1 8, roused general curiosit)', swiftly transformed 
 into a stupor of astonishment. Could this possibly be the 
 person with whom the Tsarevitch was so desperately in 
 love?^ The lady was shut up in the fortress, she underwent 
 a certain amount of examination, and then, suddenK-, a 
 story went about that the Tsarevitch had been arrested. 
 Up till that time he had remained at liberty, lived in a house 
 close beside the Palace, and enjoyed a pension of 40,000 
 roubles.- Had the girl's depositions brought new facts to 
 light? None, so far as we are aware. The Tsarevitch, 
 when at Ehrenberg, had written to his Russian friends, to 
 the Senate and the Bishops, to recall himself to their recol- 
 lection, and he had also written to beseech the Emperor's 
 protection. He had spoken of a mutiny amongst the Russian 
 troops quartered in Mecklenburg, of disturbances in the 
 neighbourhood of Moscow, and rejoiced over the news, which 
 had appeared in the gazettes. At Naples, he had continued 
 his correspondence and his unseemly remarks. He had 
 declared his intention, when he came to power, of leaving 
 St. Petersburg, spending his winters at Moscow, and his 
 summers at laroslav, of getting rid of all the ships, and only 
 keeping enough troops for the defence of the country. When 
 he heard of the illness of the little Prince Peter Petrovitch, 
 he had said to his mistress, ' Thou seest, my father does as 
 he chooses, and God does as He wills ! ' Einally, when he 
 saw the P^mperor had forsaken him, he had thought of 
 placing himself under the protection of the Pope. 
 
 All this was mere repetition ; and Peter himself was so 
 thoroughly convinced of it, that he did not cause Alexis to 
 be arrested for fully two months. The Prince was examined, 
 doubtless, during the interval, as to the details supplietl by 
 his mistress, and his examination may ha\e been combined 
 with those coercive methods his father so currently employed. 
 
 * De Bie to the .States-General, April 29, 17 18 (Dutch Archives). 
 ^ Sbornik, vol. xxxiv. p. 331. 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 533 
 
 lie accompanied the Tsar to Pcterhof, in May, and the 
 expedition was certainly no pleasure party. Some time 
 later, one of Count Moussin Poushkin's peasants was con- 
 demned to the galleys,' for having related that when the 
 Tsarevitch had accompanied the Sovereign to his countr}^ 
 residence, he had been taken to a lonely outhouse, whence 
 screams and sobs had been heard to issue.^ However that 
 may have been, Alexis preserved his liberty, till the 14th 
 of June. 
 
 On the eve of that day, Peter convoked a fresh meeting of 
 lay and ecclesiastic dignitaries, to whom he presented a 
 declaration appealing to them to judge between himself 
 and his son, whose partial concealment of the truth had 
 broken the agreement whereby mercy was to have been 
 shown him. The Sovereign had evidently contrived to 
 make Euphrosine's depositions a pretext for reopening the 
 trial which had been nominally brought to a close at 
 Moscow. But why did he seek such a pretext ? Perhaps 
 he had become aware of the dangers arising out of the 
 ex-heir's position, fie had, at a previous period, declared 
 such a position inadmissible. But perhaps, too, he simply 
 }'ielded to the horrible charm of the murderous procedure he 
 was tempted to set in fresh motion. Willingly would I 
 believe that he himself had been caught in the wheels ! 
 His inquisitorial tastes, his instincts as a despot, and a 
 merciless judge, were all excited. He thirsted for blood. 
 
 The clergy, who formed part of the Court to which he 
 had appealed, were sorely put to it. After five days, they 
 got out of the difficulty by appealing, turn-about, to the 
 Old Testament and to the New. The Old Testament con- 
 tained precedents for the punishment of a guilty son by his 
 father ; others, more merciful, appeared in the New Testa- 
 ment. There was the story of the Prodigal Son, and of the 
 woman taken in adultery. The Senate demanded further 
 information. This doubtless was the answer Peter desired. 
 It was Alexis' death-knell. Never again was the terrible 
 machinery of suffering and death to relax its hold upon its 
 pre}' ! 
 
 Alexis appeared once more before the Court, with no 
 further result than a confirmation of his former confessions. 
 It was the same dull and monotonous history of intercourse 
 ' Messager JRtisse, 1861, No. 21. 
 
534 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 \\ith the partisans of the old regime^ and of hopes common 
 to him and to them. On the 19th of June, the Tsarevitch 
 was put to the torture, for the first time. Fivc-and-twcnty 
 blows with the knout extorted a fresh confession. He had 
 desired his father's death. He had confided this to his 
 Confessor, who had replied, 'God for;:^i\e thee, we all desire 
 it!' Ignatiefs examination confirmed this deposition. But 
 this, after all, was only a guilty thought. It was not enough. 
 Three days later, the Tsarevitch was confronted with three 
 questions, ' Why had he disobeyed his father .' How was it 
 he had not been deterred by fear of the chastisement he 
 must have expected ? Why had he thought of obtaining 
 his paternal inheritance b)' illegitimate means?' Alexis, 
 from that moment, lost his footing in the chasm he felt 
 yawning beneath him. He had only one care, — to shield 
 Euphrosine. We are told he was confronted with her, and 
 heard her speak accusing words, which proved her false to 
 his love. No matter, he loved her — he would love her 
 always, till he died. He accused himself, and ever)'body 
 else, and steadily refused to implicate her. She had 
 known nothing, she had done nothing, — save give him good 
 advice, which, to his misfortune, he had not followed. All 
 the pitiful agony of his soul shows in his answers, inspired 
 by this one great anxiety. ' I was brought up by women, 
 who taught me nothing but h}'pocrisy, to which, in- 
 deed, I was naturally inclined. I did not want to work, 
 as my father desired I should work. Viaziemski and 
 Naryshkin, in their turn, only encouraged me to gossip and 
 get drunk with popes and monks. Menshikof was the only 
 person who advised me well. So by degrees, not only 
 ever}'thing about my father, but his very person, became 
 odious to me, and my stay in foreign countries, whither my 
 father sent me for my own good, did not suffice to cure me. 
 It was my own wicked nature which prevented me from 
 fearing his just wrath. Since my childhood, I have been far 
 from the right path, and as I would not follow my father, I 
 was obliged to seek my way elsewhere.' 
 
 TolstoT, who was acting as Examining Judge, was not 
 satisfied with these recantations. He wanted something 
 more precise, some peg on which a trial might be hung. At 
 last he succeeded in making the unhappy Prince acknow- 
 ledge ' that he would have accepted the Emperor's help to 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 535 
 
 conquer the Crown by main force* But when asked wliether 
 this help had been offered him, lie answered 'No.' AiTd so 
 the inquiry came back to its original point of departure. 
 Guilty intention there may have been, and criminal thoughts, 
 but not a single act. Something had to be done. On the 
 24th of June, there was a fresh visit to the torture-chamber, 
 and fifteen blows with the knout, which brought forth nothing. 
 The accused had felt great confidence in the turbulent 
 Bishop, Stephen lavorski, but he had never held any con- 
 versation with him. He had been informed by other persons 
 of the bishop's s}'mpathy with his cause. It was hopeless. 
 Nothing more was to be gained either by the knout, or the 
 strappado. Some end must be made. 
 
 What was that end to be? There could be no doubt. 
 The idea of having worked in vain was not admissible. No 
 Tsarevitch, who had been given over to the hands of the 
 torturer, could.be permitted to come clear out of his trial, 
 and leave his prison, so that all the outer world might read 
 the odious proofs of the paternal iniquity, written on his back 
 by the bloody thongs. But would Peter dare it ? 
 
 During his struggle with the people of Novgorod, Vassili 
 Bousslaievitch, the legendary hero of the tenth century, lifted 
 his sword against his own father. His mother, to restrain 
 him, came behind him, and laid hold of the skirts of his 
 garment. The hero thus addressed her, — ' You are a cunning 
 old woman ; you knew what to do to overcome my mighty 
 strength ! Had you approached me in front, my mother, I 
 would not have spared you ; I would have killed you like 
 any Novgorod Moujik.^ Peter belonged to this wild race. 
 He was the last representative of that cycle of terrible 
 warriors, and no one stood behind, to stay his arm. In spite 
 of the emptiness of the testimony collected against him, 
 Alexis had grown to be the very personification, in the Re- 
 former's e\es, of that hostile party with which he had been 
 wrestling, for the last twenty years. It was no son, it was 
 an adversar\-, a rebel, a ' Novgorod Moiijik' who stood 
 before the Tsar. And then, from Moscow to St. Petersburg, 
 the inquiry had already spilt a sea of blood round the chief 
 culprit. Twenty-six women, and men innumerable, had 
 writhed under the lash, and laid their panting flesh on red- 
 hot bars. The miserable servants, who had followed Alexis 
 abroad, — in utter unconsciousness that they were doing 
 35 
 
536 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 anything exccjit tlicir (liit\', — had been knouted, given the 
 strappado, and sent to Siberia, because, so the sentence runs, 
 ' it would not have been proper for them to have been left in 
 St. Petersburg.' For man)' months a redoubled reign of 
 terror had existed in the Capital. 'There have been so 
 many accusations in this town,' writes La Vie, in January 
 1718, 'that it seems like a place of disaster: we all live in a 
 sort of public infection, every one is either an accuser, or an 
 accused person.' Peter had caught the infection. The 
 blood he had already shed had risen to his head- ■ 
 
 A High Court of Justice, composed of the Senate, the 
 Ministers, the great officers of the Crown, and the Staff of 
 the Guard (the Clergy, which seemed inclined to excuse 
 itself, had been dispensed with), was convoked to pronounce 
 the .sentence. There were 127 judges ; every one knew what 
 verdict he was expected to give, and not one dared refuse 
 his vote to what he guessed to be the sovereign will. One 
 single individual, a lieutenant in the Guard, refused his sig- 
 nature — but he did not know how to write. So the trial 
 drew to its inevitable close — the death-sentence. 
 
 Yet the tragedy was not played out. There was to be a 
 final episode, the gloomiest of all. one of the darkest riddles 
 in all history. The verdict was not carried into effect. 
 Alexis died before his father had made up his mind whether 
 he would show him mercy, or allow the law to take its 
 course. How did he die? 
 
 VII 
 
 Here is the official version : ' The Tsarevitch, wlien 
 the verdict was read to him, was seized with a .sort of 
 apoplexy. When he recovered his senses, he asked to 
 see his father, confessed his faults in his presence, re- 
 ceived his pardon, and, in a few moments, breathed 
 his last' Peter, according to documents emanating from 
 the same source, was disposed to be merciful, but, ' in 
 the midst of this uncertainty and distressing agitation, it 
 pleased God Almighty, whose holy judgments are always 
 just, to deliver the person of the Sovereign and his Empire 
 from all fear and all danger, by means of His all-divine 
 goodness.' The Prince's corpse was cxpcsed for eight days, 
 
THE OPPOSITION- THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 537 
 
 and every one was allowed to see it, so that all might per- 
 ceive that he had died a natural death. ^ 
 
 Some doubt, we thus see, did exist, as to whether the 
 Prince's death was natural. All other contemporary versions 
 of the event betray something far beyond mere doubt ; they 
 categorically affirm the contrary. Their only disagreement 
 is as to the nature of his violent end. The Imperial Resident, 
 Plej-er, declares the Tsarevitch was beheaded in his prison, 
 and Scherer goes so far as to mention the name of the execu- 
 tioner. General Weyde. A girl of the name of Krahmer, 
 the daughter of a townsman of Narva, is said to have been 
 emplo\'ed to sew the severed head to the dead body, and thus 
 hide all traces of the assassination, which fact did not prevent 
 her becoming, in later years. Mistress of the Robes to the 
 murdered man's daughter, the Grand Duchess Nathalia. All 
 Staehlin knew was that she had been employed to dress the 
 Prince's corpse, but he could give no other explanation of 
 her intervention.'^ Henr)^ Bruce tells the story of a potion 
 intended for the Prince, which General Weyde went himself 
 to procure from a druggist named Behr, who, when he read 
 the prescription, turned deadly pale.^ The poison hypo- 
 thesis also appears in a collection of anecdotes pub- 
 lished in England,* according to which a paper, given to 
 the Tsarevitch, on which the judgment was written, was 
 impregnated with some deadly compound. A letter from 
 Alexis Roumiantsof, of which numerous manuscript copies 
 have been circulated, appears conclusive. In it the writer 
 relates to one of his friends, Dimitri Titof, that the Tsare- 
 vitch had perished by his father's order ; that he had been 
 stifled with cushions ; and that the will of the Sovereign had 
 been accomplished by Poutourlin, Tolstoi', Oushakof, and 
 himself But the authenticity of this document has been 
 contested, by Oustrialof amongst others, and is certainly 
 doubtful. De Bie and Villebois hold that the Prince's veins 
 were opened with a lancet, but they only speak from hearsa}-. 
 The most detailed accounts are those given by Lcfort, then 
 
 ^ Memoir presented to the States General on the 6th of August 17 18, by 
 Koiirakin (Archives of the Hague): ' The true relation 0/ all that fmsai with 
 regard to the seyttetice of the Prince Alexis and the circumstances of his death.' 
 1 7 18 (published officially). 
 
 ^ Anecdotes, p. 322. 
 
 ' Memoirs, p. r86. The authenticity of these memoirs is contested. 
 
 ^ A Select Collection of Singular Histories. London, 1774. \'(il. ii. p. 1^3. 
 
538 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 in the Tsar's service, and later hiohly placed in the Saxon 
 Legation, and by Count Rabutin, who subsequently replaced 
 rieyer, as the Emperor's Resident. These only differ on 
 very secondary points. ' On the day of the Prince's death,' 
 sa)'s Lefort, 'the Tsar, accompanied by TolstoV, went to the 
 fortress, and into one of the vaulted dungeons, furnished with 
 gallows, and all the other necessary preparations for appl}'- 
 ing the knout. The unhappy wretch was brought in, and 
 having been fastened up, he was given numerous blows with 
 the knout, and, — though I am not sure of this, — I have been 
 assured, that his father struck the first blf)ws. The same 
 thing was done at ten o'clock in the morning, and, towards 
 four o'clock, he was so ill-treated that he died under the 
 lash.'^ Rabutin is more definite in his assertions, and he 
 mentions Catherine. Peter struck his son, and, ' as he did 
 not know how to use the knout, he struck so hard that the 
 poor wretch fell swooning to the ground, and the Ministers 
 thought he was dead.' But Ale.xis had only fainted, and 
 when he recovered, Peter said angrily, as he moved away, 
 'The Devil will not take him yet!' He evidently intended 
 to recommence the process. But Catherine spared him that 
 trouble. Hearing the Prince was recovering, she took counsel 
 with Tolstoi, and sent the Court physician. Hobby, to the 
 prisoner, to open his veins. Peter, when he was informed 
 of what had occurred, came to look at the corpse, shook 
 his head as if he susj:)ccted what had happened, but said 
 nothing.^ 
 
 This testimony has the merit of its ghastly agreement 
 with a most indubitably reliable document, the Journal 
 of the St. Petersburg garrison, daily posted up, in the 
 very fortress within which the tragedy was played out.* 
 In it the following details appear: 'On the 14th of 
 June, a special torture-chamber was arranged in the Trou- 
 betzkoY Bastion, in a casemate close to the dungeon in which, 
 on that same day, the Tsarevitch had been shut up. On the 
 19th, two visits were paid to this chamber, the first from 
 noon to one o'clock, and the second from six to nine o'clock 
 in the evening. The following day a third visit was paid, 
 from eight till eleven, and on the 24th, two more, one from 
 
 * Herrmann, Geschichte Russlavds, vol. iv. p. 330. 
 
 * /liischitts^s-Maqazifi, vol. xi. p 4S7. 
 
 3 I'rcserved in tlie library of the ' .Academic des Science-.,' at St. PctcrsUurg. 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 539 
 
 ten o'clock in the morning till noon, and the other from six 
 till ten o'clock at night. On the 26th, there was yet another 
 sitting, in the Tsar's presence, from eight o'clock in the morn- 
 ing till eleven ; and that same day, at six o'clock in the 
 evening, the Tsarevitch died.' 
 
 Thus on one point, at all events, we have an evident cer- 
 tainty. Even after his condemnation, Alexis was tortured ; 
 and in this matter indeed, his tormentors only adhered to 
 the usual errors of the criminal procedure of the period.^ 
 
 But, that being so, it is not easy to understand, in the first 
 place, why Peter or Catherine should have had recourse to 
 other methods to hasten their victim's end, for which the 
 knout ampK' sufficed ; and in the second, the h\'pothesis 
 that the Tsarevitch's death was hastened by an immoderate 
 use of torture, acquires a great deal of likelihood. Thousands 
 of analogous cases are to be found in the judicial annals of 
 the period, and Ale.xis, as we know, must have been any- 
 thing but a tough subject. So early as 17 14, he had, accord- 
 ing to De Bie, sufTcred from a sort of apoplexy, which had 
 attacked his left side.^ To conclude, the sudden nature of 
 the end, and the probable intervention of some element of 
 violence, whether steel, or poison, or excessive torture, seems 
 placed beyond all doubt, by a very significant incident. 
 De Bie's report of the catastrophe, which, like that of Ple}'er, 
 was intercepted by the Russian Government, brought very 
 tr\-ing disfavour on its author, and even resulted in a some- 
 what aggressive violation of his domicile, and his d'iplomatic 
 position. The information he had collected was made the 
 subject of a special inquiry, which principally turned on the 
 following fact. A carpenter of the name of Boless, the son- 
 in-law of a Dutch mid-wife, named Maria van llusse, was 
 employed in the fortress, while the Tsarevitch was imjjrisoned 
 there. All the Prince's food was cooked in this man's house. 
 The day after Alexis' death, this carpenter's wife told her 
 mother, who repeated the story to the Resident's wife, that, 
 on the previous day, the Tsarevitch's meal had been served, 
 as usual, at twelve o'clock. She herself had seen the dishes, 
 which did not return from his presence intact. This detail 
 
 ' Briickner {Dfr Tsamvitch Ah-xci, p. 221) points out that there is no express 
 mention of the Tsarevitch's presence at the silling of tiie Torture Clinniher on 
 the 26th of June, but I do not think thai any one, roiding llie document, can 
 have tiie shglitost douht on tlie suhjcct. 
 
 * InlercejHed despatch, dated 5tii .May 17 12. Moscow Archives. 
 
540 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 had ridt struck her as possessing any importance. That 
 given it b\- the incjuiry was very great, and most expressixc. 
 Ikit the two poor women maintained their general assertion, 
 in sjjite of some trifling contradictions, during an examina- 
 tion probabl\- accompanied b\- torture, and they ultimately 
 recovered their liberty.^ If then, only a few hours before his 
 death, Alexis was able to take food, his death must certainly 
 have been a violent one. 
 
 I pass over the endless legends which have given their 
 own colour to the terrible story. The peasants long pre- 
 served their belief in the survival of the Tsarevitch, whom 
 they supposed to have miraculously escaped from his 
 tormentors. In 1723, a false Alexis appeared at Pskof, and 
 there was another in 1738, at laroslaviets. For my part, 
 I am almost inclined to believe that the material reality 
 of the events which brought about the disappearance of the 
 unhappy Prince, has no very great historical importance. 
 Morally speaking, all the responsibility lies on Peter. The 
 trial, which arraigned a man guilt}' of mere intentions, leaves 
 us in no doubt as to the Tsar's. He was determined to get 
 rid of his son, no matter how, and he will bear that gloomy 
 mark upon his forehead, to all eternity. His behaviour after 
 the event was enough to put a stop to any attempt at 
 apology. Tlie Journal of the St. Petersburg Garrison, and 
 Menshikof's own private journal,- give us details as to the 
 fashion in which the Sovereign spent the first days after 
 that terrible event, which fairly make one shiver. ' 27th 
 June (the day after the Tsarevitch's death). Mass and Te 
 Deum for the Anniversary of the Battle of Poltava, artillery 
 salutes in his Majesty's presence. ... At nine o'clock in 
 the evening, the body of the Tsarevitch was removed from 
 the Troubetzkof Bastion to the Governor's house.' 
 
 '28th June. — At ten o'clock in the morning, rcmoxal of 
 the body of the Tsarevitch to the Church of the Trinity, in 
 which it was exposed.' 
 
 ' 29th June. — His Majesty's fete - day. 'Launch at the 
 A .hnira]t\- of a newly-built ship, the " Licsna," constructed 
 after His Majesty's plans. His Majesty and all his Ministers 
 
 ' See the result of this inquiry in Oustiialof, vol. vi. p. 2S9. De Bic, on his 
 side, confiimed his own report (Exhibidon, dated Sth Auj^ust 171S, .Archives 
 of the I iague'. 
 
 - Preserved in the Imperial .Archives. 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 541 
 
 were present at the ceremon}' ; tliere was great vicrry- 
 makiJig! 
 
 Pleyer also speaks, in his despatches, dated 4th and 8th 
 July, of a dinner given, on the same occasion, at the Summer 
 Palace, and followed by an evening entertainment, and a 
 display of fireworks. When the members of the Diplomatic 
 Body inquired as to what mourning they should put on, the 
 Chancellor replied, that none was to be worn, as the Prince 
 had died guilty. And the Imperial Resident affirms that 
 though Catherine showed some signs of sorrow during these 
 disgraceful rejoicings, Peter's cheerfulness never abated. 
 Even this final insult was not spared in the lamentable fate 
 to which Eudoxia's son was doomed, — a very abyss of mis- 
 fortune, which we can readily conceive to have inspired the 
 deepest and most poignant expressions of feeling, in poetry 
 and art. Kostomarof's very curious study is accompanied 
 by a reproduction of the work of a famous Russian painter — 
 Peter laying Eiiphrosines depositions before his son. 
 
 What became of the mistress ? In spite of all affirmations 
 to the contrary, she certainly received the price of her 
 treachery. She was present when the Tsarevitch's posses- 
 sions were inventoried, and herself received a goodly share of 
 them.^ Pleyer declares that the Tsar and Tsarina showed 
 her a great deal of kindness, and, according to other con- 
 temporary testimony, she married an officer of the St. 
 Petersburg Garrison, with whom she spent another thirty 
 years, in peace and plenty.- 
 
 Peter's spirits never flagged. On the ist of August 1718, 
 a month after the catastrophe, in a letter to his wife, written 
 from Revel, he refers to the event with visible contentment, 
 and in a somewhat sportive manner, claiming to have dis- 
 covered graver accusations against the dead man than any 
 which had yet come to light. Alexis, he declared, had 
 endeavoured to enter into relations with Charles Xli.^ At 
 the close of the year, a medal was struck, by the Tsar's 
 orders, which bore an Imperial crown floating in the air, and 
 bathed in rays of sunlight, streaming through the clouds. 
 Below the device this inscription appeared : — ' The horizoti 
 has cleared / ' 
 
 ' Oustrialof, vol. vi. p. 571. 
 
 * /luschiiti^s-Mm^azin, vol. xv. p. 235. 
 
 ' Solovief, vol. xvii p. 232. 
 
542 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 \cs\ Peter had cleared his horizon, with a thunder-clap, 
 lie liad beheaded the h)-dra of opposition ; he had broken 
 the spirit of his subjects, under a terror yet more mi<j^ht\- than 
 that with which the trial of the Strcltsy had inspired them, 
 and he had joj'fully taken up his course. Although that 
 dreary trial had not put an actual stop either to his usual 
 avocations, or his pleasures, both had been slightly inter- 
 rupted. Between the 21st of April and the 21st of June, 
 only twenty-one Ukases appeared, and not a single one was 
 published between the 9th and the 25th of May; ^ while such 
 publications, as a general rule, were of daily occurrence. 
 The dose should be doubled now ; he could legislate in 
 safety. He had much more chance of being obeyed than in 
 the past ! 
 
 But he had stirred up public opinion — outside his own 
 country, at all events — and he never succeeded in deceiving 
 it, in spite of his huge expenditure of official apologies, mani- 
 festos, 'faithful and authentic relations,' and liberally-paid 
 articles in various gazettes. Forty years later, he was sorely 
 to try the conscience of the least scrupulous of European 
 political writers. In a confidential letter to D'Alembcrt, 
 Voltaire wrote the following words: — 'The Tsar Peter 
 plagues me ; I do not know how to take that matter 
 about his son. I cannot think that any prince deserves to 
 be killed for having travelled about, when his father was 
 doing the same thing, and for having lived with a woman 
 of bad character, while his father had the . . .' He was less 
 explicit in his communication to the Count Shouvalof. He 
 undertook to refute Lambcrty's view, by means of certain 
 favourable documents, substituted for others possessing less 
 of that quality ; yet, he declared, he could not take sides 
 against Alexis without laying himself open to the charge of 
 being a ' basely partial ' historian — and, carried away by his 
 polemic fervour, he wrote the following magnificent plea for 
 the accused : — 
 
 ' After four months of a criminal trial, this unhapjn' prince 
 was forced to write, that if a powerful revolt had been raised, 
 and he had been appealed to, he would have put himself at 
 its head. When was such a declaration ever taken to have 
 any real or valid weight in any trial? When was judgment 
 ever pronounced on a thought, an h)'pothesis, a supposed 
 
 1 ColUtted J.a-iva, iii. 193; iii. 211. 
 
THE OPPOSITION— THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS 543 
 
 case, which never came into existence ? Where are these 
 rebels? V\ ho took up arms? VV'ho proposed that the 
 Prince should place himself one day at the head of the 
 revolt ? To whom did he mention the subject ? With 
 whom was he confronted on this important point? Let 
 us not deceive ourselves ! When I tell this story, I shall 
 appear before the whole of Europe. You may be very sure, 
 Sir, that there is not a man in Europe who believes the 
 Tsarevitch died a natural death. Men shrug their shoulders 
 when they are told that a prince of thice-and-twenty died 
 of an apoplexy, on hearing a sentence which, he might 
 reasonably hope, would not be carried into effect. And any 
 communication to me of documents bearing on this fatal 
 subject has been carefully avoided at St. Petersburg.'^ 
 
 Long years after his death, then, the unhappy Alexis 
 found the most eloquent of advocates, and Peter, a m.ost 
 formidable accuser. A perusal of the ' History of Russia' docs, 
 unfortunately, convince us that Count Shouvalof ultimately 
 found (not in the St Petersburg Archives, certainly) argu- 
 ments which shook Voltaire's conviction, and changed his 
 views. But the counsel's address and formal accusation still 
 remain. They will be, to all eternity, the expression of the 
 public conviction with regard to the great trial, and Peter 
 must bear that burden to the end of time. 
 
 I willingly acknowledge that he was not the man to totter 
 beneath it. 
 
 He killed his son. For that step there is no possible justi- 
 fication. I have rejected, and do still reject, the argument 
 of a political necessity, brought forward by his defenders. 
 One single fact is its sufficient answer. Peter would not 
 have this son to be his heir. To whom, then, did he leave 
 his inheritance? To utter uncertainty. A Court intrigue 
 threw it into Catherine's hands, and for half a century Russia 
 was a prey to adventurers and to chance. It was for this 
 that the great man set his executioners to work. 
 
 Yet a great man he was,--and he made Russia a great 
 country. Herein lies his sole excuse. 
 
 ^ Voltaire's Works, vol. xii, p. 255. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 peti;r the great's last will — co^'CLUsION 
 
 I. Peter's dcatli. 
 
 II. The great man's apocryphal Will, and his real Will. 
 III. General survey. 
 
 It was all very well for Peter to hold the posthumous 
 vengeance of history cheap. His treatment of Alexis 
 was swiftly avenged by fate. I do not believe that, 
 when the Sovereign doomed his eldest son to death, 
 he imitated Abraham, and sacrificed his own flesh and 
 blood for the' sake of the future of his country, and 
 the salvation of his work. This idea is disproved by 
 the heedlessness, the reasons for which I have already 
 detailed (see page 460), apparent in his subsequent con- 
 ception, short-sighted, though powerful, of surrounding 
 circumstances, and especially by that condition of self- 
 absorption in which he lived, which made him incapable of 
 taking any interest in, or even comprehending, a future in 
 which he himself would have no part. Yet, once in posses- 
 sion of the heir he had himself chosen, he must naturally 
 have taken delight in the idea of spending the leisure 
 granted him by the cessation of the war, in shaping the body 
 and mind of the child of his affections, according to his own 
 dream. He was most tenderly attached to this younger boy. 
 But on the i6th of April 1619. less than a year after the 
 death of his elder brother, death knocked at the Tsar's door, 
 and little Peter Petrovitch, Catherine's son, was carried off. 
 after a few days' illness. The heir, now, must be the second 
 Peter, the son of Charlotte, and of the murdered Tsarevitch, 
 At first Peter seemed to rebel against this death-.sentence. 
 which appeared an answer to his own. — and all his circle. 
 
PETER THE GREAT'S LAST WILL— CONCLUSION 545 
 
 Catherine and Menshikof in particular, must ha.ve been 
 equally enraged. Yet the Sovereign let two years slip by 
 without taking any step. It was not till the i ith of February 
 1722, that a Manifesto appealed to the authority of Ivan 
 Vassilevitch, in sanction of the Tsar's claim to regulajte the 
 succession according to his own will. This was the principle 
 of the Pravda voli vwnarslici (the truth of the Sovereign will), 
 the doctrine of which was simultaneously brought forward in 
 a famous document penned by Feofan Prokopovitch. But 
 any practical sanction of this theory was vainly awaited all 
 through the following years. The only sign the Tsar vouched 
 was somewhat vague, and variously interpreted. I refer to 
 Catherine's coronation. 
 
 Meanwhile, the ruler's health had begun to alarm those 
 about him. So early as May 1721, Lefort speaks of an 
 asthma, which caused the Sovereign great suffering, and he 
 was also believed to have an internal abscess. ' Besides these 
 ailments,' adds the Diplomat, 'a fresh one supervened at 
 Riga, which would soon have brought matters to a close, 
 and which was really most unseasonable. God only knows 
 its origin, but it was noticed that one of the hero's ill-kempt 
 jjages had the good fortune to fall ill at the same time as his 
 master.' ^ The Tsar had been at the point of death for seven- 
 teen hours, and though he was barely recovered, it never 
 occurred to him to spare himself But it was remarked 
 ' that he performed his devotions with much more attention 
 than was usually the case, with many inea culpa and genu- 
 lle.xions, and frequent bendings to kiss the ground.' 
 
 Peter's temperament was a singularly robust one, but he 
 had always overstrained it. He had lived the life of two, 
 and even of three, men. In 1722, in the course of the 
 Persian campaign, symptoms of kidney trouble appeared, 
 and increased all through the winter of 1723. He would 
 hardly allow anything to be done for him, and absolutely 
 refused to rest. The irritation caused the sick man by the 
 Mons affair, and by the necessity under which he found him- 
 self of removing Menshikof from the head of the War 
 Department, on account of his constant peculation, hurried 
 the progress of the mischief. And all this time he went on 
 making the most excessive demands on his own strength. 
 He told his doctors they were ignoramuses, and drove 
 
 ^ Sboriiik, vol. iii. p. 332. 
 
546 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 I^lumcntrost, a German, and Paulson, an Enc^lishman, who 
 both ur<^cd moderation, out of liis presence, with blows from 
 his doubuia. In September 1724, the diaji^nosis of his com- 
 plaint grew clearer. He was suffering from the stone, and 
 this was complicated by the results of certain former excesses, 
 from which he had never properly recovered. Me had violent 
 pains in the loins. There was 'a good-sized stone,' and, 
 some days after, ' fragments of corrupt matter.' then tumours 
 formed on the thighs, and began to suj)j)urate.^ Yet all this 
 did not prevent him from going, in the following month, to 
 insjiect the works of the Ladoga Canal, where he slept in a 
 tent on bitter cold nights, and plunged on horseback into the 
 half-frozen swamps.^ This visit over, lie hurried to the forges 
 at Olonets, and thence to the factories at Staraia Roussa, 
 where he worked like an ordinary labourer. Finally, he in- 
 sisted on returning to St. Petersburg by water in the middle 
 of November. On the way, near the little town of Lahta, he 
 saw a boat aground, and the soldiers on board her in a very 
 perilous position. He at once went to the rescue, and 
 plunged up to his waist in the water. The crew was saved. 
 But, by the time the Tsar reached his capital, he was in a 
 high fever, went to his bed, and never rose from it again. An 
 Italian doctor, named Lazarotti, suggested tapping, but this 
 was put off till the 23rd of January, and the operation, when 
 finally performed by the PLnglish surgeon, Horn, revealed the 
 hopeless condition of the patient. 
 
 Peter died as he had lived. He was worn out by exertion, 
 but his last act had been to sacrifice his duty as a Sovereign. 
 to his mania for using his own hands. All the heroic ex- 
 cess, all that was most unthinking, and ill-proportioned, in the 
 ubit|uity of his effort, was manifested in the closing incident 
 of his career. He lost sight, as always, of the truth, that the 
 heroism of a sailor, and the heroism of the head of a great 
 Empire, are difterent in their nature. He saved a boat 
 indeed, and the lives of several men, but he left the great 
 ship and the mighty crew he himself commanded, in mortal 
 peril. Who was to replace him at the helm ? No one could 
 
 ' Canipredon, 30th Septemhcr 1724. Ficnch Foreign OfTicc — Richler, in 
 Ills //is(oiy 0/ Afi-i/ii inr in A'i4s.\i<i, vol. iii. pp. 84-94, denies tlmt any of thcconi- 
 plic.ilinns in the Tsar's illness !iad a syphiliiic orij;in ; hul llic only authority he 
 ajipeals to is Slaelilin's anetdoles, 
 
 '^ liiograpliy of .Municli : JJnsc/iiii^s-Afa^tJzitt, vol. iii. p. 401. 
 
PETER THE GREATS LAST WILL- CONCLUSION 547 
 
 tell. He had foreseen nothinq-, he had arranged nothing, 
 and, he showed himself inca[)able, in the face of dcal'i, of 
 that great and crowning exertion of his will and conscience, 
 which his subjects had the right to expect of him. A few 
 days previously, they had seen a sailor at his work ; now all 
 they had before them was a mere ordinary death-bed. His 
 end was that of a devout son of the Orthodox Church. It 
 was not the end of a great Tsar, l^etween the 22nd and the 
 28th of January, he confessed, and received the sacraments, 
 three times over ; he gave some signs of repentance ; he 
 dictated orders to open the prison doors. When he received 
 the Last Sacraments, with much contrition, he repeated, 
 several times over, ' I hope, — I believe.' But he said not a 
 word as to the terrible problem which stirred the hearts of all 
 those who stood around his dying bed. He was false to the 
 principle affirmed in his Manifesto, to the omnipotence which 
 his whole life had so loudly proclaimed, and so passionately 
 defended, to his most essential duty. He left no will. That 
 kind of terror and moral weakness which had several times 
 appeared, in the tragic circumstances that marked his life, 
 would seem, in his last great trial, to have wiped out his 
 intelligence and his courage. Campredon mentions that 
 he betrayed great cowardice.^ 
 
 On the 27th, at two o'clock in the afternoon, he asked for 
 writing materials, but he could only trace these words, ' Give 
 back everything to — ' The sentence was never finished, but 
 it is yet another proof of that summary and rudimentary 
 fashion of settling the most delicate and complex questions, 
 which was one of his too frequent characteristics. A little 
 later, he sent for his daughter Anne, and expressed his 
 intention of dictating his last wishes to her. She hurried to 
 his bedside, but he was already speechless. And while he 
 lay d}ing, Catherine, who was shedding floods of tears 
 beside his pillow, dried her eyes now and again, and slipped 
 into an adjoining chamber, there to discuss^ with Menshikof, 
 Tolstoi" and IJoutourlin, the methods and conditions of the 
 coup d'etat, by which the possession of power was to be 
 ensured. At six o'clock on the following morning, Peter 
 drew his last breath, and, within a few hours, a rt^giuie of 
 mingled gynecocracy and military oligarchy was inaugurated 
 in Russia, under the auspices of the ct-dei'ant Livonian 
 
 ^ Despatch of 30th Januaiy 1725. French Foreign Office. 
 
548 PKTKR THE GREAT 
 
 servant-girl. It was tt) last till the vcr\- end of the century, 
 and it was no thanks to Peter that his work, and the very 
 existence of his country-, were not utterly destroyed in the 
 course of this long trial. The fortunes of Modern Russia have 
 proved themselves superior to the genius of their creator. 
 
 The death of the great man does not, indeed, seem to 
 liave roused very lively nor uni\ersal regret. On the mass 
 of the public, the impression seems to have been, to a certain 
 extent, that which Napoleon, in later years, thought his own 
 departure likely to produce. Russia, too, appears to have 
 said ' Oiif !' Count de Rabutin even speaks of 'general re- 
 joicings.' ^ Fcofan Prokopovitch pronounced a lofty pan- 
 egyric, but the popular sentiment was more faithfully ex- 
 j)ressed in an engraving of a satirical and ludicrous nature, 
 called ' The burial of a cat by the mice.' '^ I'opular feeling 
 is frequentl}' marked by such fits of momentar)' indifference 
 and ingratitude, and Russia, since those days, has fully paid 
 her debt to the memory of the most deserving and the most 
 glorious of her children. That no more heartfelt tears than 
 Catherine's should have fallen upon that open tomb, is 
 easily conceivable ; there was too much blood upon the 
 ground about it ! 
 
 II 
 
 Peter left no Will. I do not overlook the existence of the 
 document which has been so freely circulated, and so copi- 
 ously' criticised, under that title.^ But, apart from the fact of 
 its possessing no immediate practical value (it contains a 
 far-reaching programme for the conquest of Europe by 
 Russia, and no provision whatever for the hereditary trans- 
 mission of the throne), the document in question is nothing 
 but a hoax. I am not a very fervent supporter of what is 
 known as historical certainty. My faith has too often wavered, 
 when brought into contact with the elements on which such 
 certainty is generalh' built. But, in this case, the evidence 
 seems to rest on a body of j)roof which defies all doubt. Let 
 us first take the moral proofs. 
 
 ' liuschitifis- Afagazin, vol. xi. p. 497. 
 
 ^ Rovinski, l^opular A'ussian EnaraTWf^s, vol. i. pp. 391-401. 
 
 ' Quite lately it furnished a brilliant newspaper writer with the thesis of an 
 arf^unient as to the d.Tngers of the Franco-Russian Alliance {Libre Parole, 4th 
 September 1896). 
 
PETER THE GREAT'S LAST WILL-CONCLUSION 549 
 
 Can you imagine a man who died without having endea- 
 voured to foresee, or provide for, the immediate future of so 
 important a succession as Peter's, giving serious thought to 
 what was to become of Europe, and of Russia, a hundred years 
 after his own death? And that not in any vague fashion, as 
 in the vision of a dream, — I should have beHeved this pos- 
 sible — but in the most precise and methodical manner, mark- 
 ing out ever}' stage to be covered in the journey. And what 
 stages, too, this strange route unfolds ! and how extraordinar)' 
 the point of departure indicated ! Russia, we must not 
 forget, had, at the moment of Peter's death, after eighteen 
 years of desperate effort, vanquished Sweden, with the assis- 
 tance of a good half of Europe, of Saxony and Prussia, 
 Denmark and England. She had not even succeeded in 
 lording it over Poland. She had come into collision with 
 Turkey, and met with disaster. And that was all. Y'xQxy as 
 you may take Peter's imagination to have been, can you 
 imagine or understand that he could regard the conquest of 
 Europe as being in any way, logically or m^ithematically, 
 deducible from this initial fact ? 
 
 And the Chevalier or the Chevaliere D'Eon ? My readers 
 know it was he, or she, who first communicated a copy 
 of this threatening document to the Versailles Cabinet. 
 The publication of the Memoirs of this enigmatic personage 
 by Gaillardet, in 1836, placed the general public in posses- 
 sion of this astounding revelation. Where did Gaillardet 
 find these Mem.oirs .' In 1836, he was five-and-twenty, 
 and had just collaborated with Dumas in writing ' La 
 Tour de Nesle.' Authentic memoirs written b\' D'Eon 
 do exist in the archives of the Ouai d'Orsay. They have 
 nothing in common, I need hardly say, with those which 
 have been ascribed to him, and they do not contain a trace 
 of any Will whatever. On the other hand, the author's con- 
 dition of mind strikes us as being evidently and absolutely 
 irreconcilable with his knowledge of the existence of any 
 such document. D'Eon is rather opposed, than otherwise, 
 to any arrangement between France and Russia, — not be- 
 cause he looks on Russia as a dangerous factor, but because 
 he considers her an absolutely unim.portant one ! 
 
 I do not know where Gaillardet found the Memoirs 
 he has chosen to saddle on D'Eon, or rather, I should say, 
 I have a more than shrewd suspicion. I know where he 
 
550 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 found the famous Will, and here I ct>mc to m\' material 
 proofs. 
 
 The first version of this document appears in a book, Tlie 
 Policy and Progress of the Russian Pozvcr, published in 
 Paris, by Lesur, in the )'ear 18 1 i. The date of this publica- 
 tion is sufficient j)roof of its character, and I will add a still 
 more striking detail. Sir Robert Wilson, who acted as 
 British a<;ent with the Russian arm\', during the campaign of 
 the following j-ear, speaks of the numerous copies of this 
 work which had been fi^und amongst the effects of the Due 
 de Hassano, the French Foreign Minister.^ In this work the 
 Will was only represented as a SnniDiary of secret notes prs- 
 soiied among the private archives of the Russian Sovereigns. 
 Lesur's work was quickly forgotten, and, until 1836, l^uropean 
 literature makes no further mention of the prophetic docu- 
 ment. A comparison of certain passages in Villemain's 
 'Souvenirs Contemporains,* in Count Mollien's 'Memoirs,' 
 in the ' Message to the Senate,' and the ' Memorials of St. 
 Helena,' convinced Berkholz that the author of the Summary^ 
 which Gaillardet slightlx' modified and converted into a Will, 
 was no other than Napoleon I.^ I will only add one word. 
 In the course of the discussion as to the authcnticit)- of the 
 document, the existence of any copy, — whether furnished by 
 D'Eon himself, or otherwise, — at the Ouai d'Orsay, has been 
 strenuously denied.^ This is a mistake. Such a copy does 
 exist, but its position, and its external appearance, render 
 any misapprehension as to its date and origin quite impos- 
 sible. It is contemporary with the Second ICmpirc, and the 
 Crimean Campaign. 
 
 The importance of this discussion is, I am quite willing 
 to admit, very secondary. It has a certain interest, in so 
 far as it concerns Peter's personal characteristics, but it is 
 utterly valueless, as regards the arguments it furnishes, from 
 the more general point of view of Russian power and ])olicy. 
 Peter never wrote one line of the document which has 
 grown famous under his name. That point seems to me, 
 historically speaking, absolutely clear. But he did more and 
 
 ^ Private Diary, vol. i. p. 258. London, 1S61. 
 
 ^ Napoh'on I. Attteur du Testament dc JWrre le Grand, Brussels, 1863. See 
 also on llic same subject Augsbur^er AUgemeine Zeitung, November 1865, 
 Nos. 225-227. 
 
 ^ Les Auteiirs du Testament du Pierre le Grand, Paris, 1877 (anonymous). 
 
PETER THE GREAT'S LAST WILL— CONCLUSION 551 
 
 better. The first eleven paragraphs of the Sininiiary pub- 
 Hshed in 181 1, have been generally accepted as a fairly 
 exact statement of the policy followed by Russia, and the 
 progress of her power, from 1725 onwards. This is the great 
 man's real Will, — a Will not hidden in secret archives, but 
 written in the open day, graven on the face of the contem- 
 porary world, with all Europe for its witness. His Will was 
 in his work, and on that work I must now cast a final and 
 comprehensive glance. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I do not address myself to this closing portion of my task 
 without a certain feeling of apprehension. At the foot of 
 the mausoleum placed on the spot where, on the day of his 
 burial, the remains of the most unresting man who ever trod 
 this earth, were rested for a space, an ingenious inspiration has 
 set the symbolic image of a sculptor, beside the unfinished 
 figure his tool has chiselled in the marble. The Latin inscrip- 
 tion adds its own commentary, instinct with simple sincerity : 
 ' Let the ancient heroes hold their peace ; Let Alexander 
 and Caesar bow before him ! Victory was easy to men who 
 led heroes, and commanded invincible troops, but he, who 
 never rested till his death, had subjects who were not men, 
 greedy of glory, skilful in the arts of war, and fearless of 
 death, but brutes, scarce worthy of the name of man. He 
 made them civilised beings, though they had been like the 
 bears of their own country, and though they refused to be 
 taught and governed by him.'^ 
 
 Ten years later, this first judgment of posterity was 
 reversed at the tribunal of a judge whom we must acknow- 
 ledge competent. The future Frederick the Great, then 
 Prince Royal of Prussia, thus wrote to Voltaire : — ' Lucky 
 circumstances, favourable events, and foreign ignorance, have 
 turned the Tsar into a phantom hero. A wise historian, 
 who witnessed part of his life, mercilessly lifts the veil and 
 shows us this Prince as possessing all the faults of man, and 
 few of his virtues. He is no longer that being of universal 
 mind who knows ever}'thing, and desires to sift all things ; 
 he is a man, governed by whims sufficiently novel to give 
 them a certain glamour, and dazzle the onlooker. He is 
 
 ' Galilzin, Memoirs, p. 118. 
 36 
 
552 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 no longer that intrc|)i(l warrior who ncitlier feared danger, 
 nor recognised it, but a mean-spirited and timid prince, 
 whose very brutaHty forsook him in seasons of peril — 
 cruel in peace, feeble in war.' ^ 
 
 I will quote no further. The eternal quarrel w hich snatches 
 the might)' dead from the j^eace of the tomb began early, 
 round Peter's august memory, and travelled far. In 
 foreign countries, in England, and even in Germany, and 
 notably in France, opinion, as expressed by Burnett and 
 Rousseau, Frederick and Condillac, De Maistre and Custine, 
 and down to Leroy-BeauHeu, has been unfriendly to the 
 Tsar. Ill Russia, public opinion, and historical criticism, — 
 which, more or less, followed in its wake, — have taken various 
 directions. At first, with the feeling of suclden reaction, 
 came a passionate glorification of that past the Reform had 
 doomed. This is clearly indicated in Boltin's work. The 
 reign of Elizabeth, and more especially that of Catherine II., 
 cut this short, and Golikof's book echoes the concert of en- 
 thusiasm evoked by the great Empress's continuation of the 
 reforms of Peter's reign. In the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century, the reactionary instinct once more ruled, under the 
 double influence of the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic 
 Hegemony. All revolutionary enterprises were viewed with 
 horror ; the national sentiment woke in Russia, as in 
 Germany, and the Slavophile party rose in one country, just 
 as the Germanophile party rose in the other. Peter and his 
 work were both censured. Then there was another sudden 
 change. Opinions began to condense. Certain representa- 
 tives of the Slavophile school went so far as to modify and 
 diminish the severity of their disapprobation. Peter was no 
 longer held guilty of having turned Russia away from her 
 natural and hajipiest destiny, by casting her into the arms of 
 a corrupt and foreign civilisation. His fault was held to be, 
 that the precipitation and violence which he himself had 
 rendered necessary, had hurried on, and thus vitiated the 
 nature of an evolution which would have been more 
 slowly, and more healthily, accomplished, without his inter- 
 ference. This is very much the position taken up by 
 Karamzin in his later )-ears. If Peter had not burst on his 
 country like a whirlwind, pitilessly snatching every indi- 
 genous seed of culture out of his native soil, and replacing 
 
 ' Remusbcrg, 13th November 1737. Voltaire's f'Vorh, vol. x. p. 45. 
 
PETER THE GREAT'S LAST WILL— CONCLUSION 553 
 
 them by siftings brought together indiscriminately from 
 all the corners of Europe, — fragments of European speech, — 
 rags of European clothing, — remnants of European institu- 
 tions, — scraps of European customs, — and crumbs from 
 European feasts, — his work would have carried neither fear 
 nor displeasure to any Russian heart. But his unthinking 
 ^violence, his brutality and cynicism, his attempt to civilise 
 his people by dint of blows from his heavy doubina, inspired 
 no one — save an occasional individual here and there — with 
 any desire of instruction, or love of learning. The rest were 
 only terrified and stunned, and remained, for many a year, 
 in motionless stupor and alarm. 
 
 At a relatively recent period, a highl}'-placed Russian 
 official took it into his head to reward the excellent conduct 
 of his peasants by giving them a school. The building 
 remained perfectly empty. And the founder's attempts to 
 enforce attendance, only resulted in driving his dependants 
 to wait upon him in a body, and sue for mercy. ' Master, 
 we have always done our duty, why will \'ou punish us?' 
 
 This was the idea of civilisation imparted by Peter to his 
 AJoujiks ! ^ 
 
 Reduced to these limits, the Slavophile theory closely 
 approaches the view pretty generally adopted by Western 
 criticism. I should be disposed to acknowledge its truth, 
 while den}-ing Peter's personal responsibility, or reducing it, 
 at all events, to the position of a partial constituent. And 
 even as regards this partial responsibility he should, as I 
 think, be granted the benefit of extenuating circumstances. 
 The idea of the Man of Providence, or the Man of Fate, who 
 exercises an arbitrary and decisive action on the march of 
 human events, and the natural development of nations, 
 appears to me pretty generally abandoned, now-a-days, by 
 historical science, and relegated to the rank of romantic 
 fiction. The modern mind has become convinced of the 
 reality of the collective forces, which surround the great prot- 
 agonists of the drama of human life, and carr)- them forward. 
 This reality is very evident in the career, and in the work, 
 of Peter the Great, tlis programme of reform was not his 
 own. Did he stand alone in its execution ? 1 see him 
 brought into power, in the first place, by a party, and then I 
 see him surrounded by a group of men, such as Lefort and 
 
 ^ Manionof, Russian .Archives (1S73), p. 2503. 
 
554 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 Vinnius, who inspired and directed his earh'est actions. He 
 did not even fetch these foreii^ner:> himself, out of Switzer- 
 land and Holland ; he found them under his hand, ready to 
 play a part appropriate to their origin and their natural 
 tendency, waiting for their cue. And then all his helpers 
 were not foreigners. Kourbatof, Menshikof, and Demidof 
 were all Russians. But, some will say, how about the. 
 Northern War, and its influence on the advance of the 
 reforming movement? I have already recognised it, and I 
 have also been forced to recognise that in this case also, 
 Peter followed a previous current. Long before his time, 
 there had been a Russian movement towards the Baltic. 
 Before his time, too, Tsars had taken up arms. Surely this 
 must have been done because they meant to fight? But, 
 again, how about the personal character and education of 
 the great man ? I have also taken these elements into 
 account, but 1 have tried at the same time to indicate their 
 origin. I have pointed to the Sloboda, where the young 
 Tsar received his earliest teaching. Was it Peter who set 
 the Faubourg there, on the very threshold of his ancient 
 capital ? 1 have called my readers' attention to the depths 
 of rugged fierceness, and savage energy, so rooted in the 
 physical and moral nature of the nation from which the 
 great man sprang. And he did not come into existence all 
 alone. Did not Menshikofs character, in more than one 
 feature, clo.sely resemble his? It was almost the story of 
 Sosia over again ! And the others, — Romodanovski with 
 his fits of sanguinary rage, and Sheremetief, with his heroic 
 tenacity of purpose ! But for the sake of argument, I will 
 suppose Peter to have been a unique and solitary being, 
 bursting upon the world like an isolated phenomenon, falling 
 out of the sky like an aerolite, carrying all the surrounding 
 elements* with the rapidity of its fall and the weight of its 
 huge mass. I should still ascribe it to the genius of the 
 people capable of producing such phenomena ; I would call 
 up the whole of the national past, and on it I would cast the 
 original responsibility of the catastrophe. But nothing in 
 the history of the community in question, proves it so easily 
 moved, or led, in a direction which it has no desire to seek. 
 Russia has been ruled, since Peter's time, by two madmen, 
 or something very like it. The country did nothing mad. 
 It scarcely wandered from its path. That path was traced 
 
PETER THE GREAT'S LAST WILL— CONCLUSION 555 
 
 out before Peter's time, and its direction has not changed 
 since his departure. The Reformer's work did not cease 
 with the earthh' course of his existence. It has continued 
 to develop, in spite of the insignificance, and the occasional 
 unworthiness, of its direct inheritors. It has never altered 
 in character ; it is still violent, excessive and superficial. Is 
 any other proof necessary, to make me recognise its origin 
 and descent, and proclaim it the child of the whole Russian 
 nation ? 
 
 Peter, too, was the man of his own people, and of his own 
 time. He came at his appointed hour. One of the popular 
 songs of that period, relates the melancholy sensations of an 
 obscure hero, suffering from the excess of strength he feels 
 within him, which overwhelms him, and which he does not 
 know how to employ. This is the picture, and the plaint, of 
 a whole nation. The Russia of those da\-s was overflowing 
 with just such a superfluity of physical and moral energy, all 
 of it condemned, by the emptiness of public life, to lie in 
 idleness. The heroic days had gone by, but the heroes still 
 lived. Peter came, to give them the work they longed for. 
 Violent and brutal he certainly was, but let us not forget that 
 he had to do vrith very different temperaments from those with 
 which we are accustomed to deal, with men whose vigour and 
 power of endurance are almost inconceivable to us. When 
 Bergholz was at Moscow in 1722, he went to see the execu- 
 tion of three robbers, who had been condemned to be broken 
 on the wheel. The eldest had died, after five or six hours of 
 torture, but the two others, who were younger, were still 
 alive, and one of them painfully raised his broken arm to pass 
 the back of his sleeve across his nose, — then, seeing he had 
 spilt a few drops of blood on the wheel to which he was 
 fastened, he lifted his mutilated arm again, to wipe them 
 off!^ A man served by men of this stamp could do many 
 things, and might rule them to a great extent, but any 
 attempt to run counter to their natural inclinations, instincts 
 or prejudices, by gentle means, was, evidentl\', not likely to 
 be crowned with success. 
 
 Peter was a cynic and a debauchee. That mixture of 
 native savagery and Western corruption so severely blamed 
 by the detractors of his work was most espcciall)- evident in 
 his own person. Whence did this come? He was aflected 
 
 ' Busihings-Magaziu, vol. xx. p. 540. 
 
556 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 by it, long before his first visit to foreign countries. Eudoxia's 
 conjugal misfortunes, and the triumphs of Anna Mons, all 
 date before his great journey. A step across a rivulet, at 
 the very doors of the old Moscow Kreml, brought the 
 young man within the gates of the German Faubourg, where 
 unfortunate fusion of foreign elements was already more 
 than half accomplished. It was aggravated, I will admit, 
 in his own person, but, on the other hand, has not the 
 example of his splcr.did virtues given his people the means 
 of raising themselves, as he raised himself, above its level ? 
 
 To conclude, Peter was impatient and passionately violent. 
 In this respect, I am convinced, he was merely the exjjres- 
 sion, in intellect, character and temperament, of a collective 
 condition of mind. His sudden, fiery, and feverish activity 
 was a manifestation of a generally existing phenomenon. 
 There is nothing astonishing about the fact that he himself 
 did not exactl}' realise that he was a wave in a rising tide, 
 drawing other waves after him, but himself borne forward b\' 
 the flood, driven by distant and incalculable forces. This 
 mistake of his has been shared by many illustrious imitators. 
 Even the most clear-sighted of contemporary witnesses may 
 often be deceived. It is far easier to grasp things from a 
 distance. Then the flowing tide, and the march of events, 
 are clearly and visibl)' defined. This onward course is, to 
 my eyes, clearly marked through several centuries. It is 
 long delayed, and then hurried forward by a variety of 
 causes, completely independent of the will either of one or 
 of several men ; and, for this reason, it appears to me, indi- 
 vidual and generic responsibility should hardly be allowed 
 to enter into our discussion. 
 
 The sudden character taken on b}- the work of evolution 
 which, after long years of preparation, carried Russia — or, 
 rather, brought her back — into the European family, was the 
 inevitable outcome of the historical conditions of the country. 
 In the thirteenth century, the work of civilisation was sud- 
 denly cut short. It was not till the end of the seventeenth 
 that circumstances smiled on the recommencement of the pro- 
 cess, and then, finding the road open, the stream naturall)' 
 hurried its course, and, naturally also, followed the outlets 
 (jpen before it, without any attempt to form new and special 
 channels. The well-known phenomenon of the harbour bar" 
 precisely typifies this evLUt. 
 
PETER THE GREATS LAST WILL— CONCLUSION 557 
 
 What thus occurred in Russia, in moral matters, happens 
 there constantly in the material world. Everything, in that 
 country, comes to pass suddenly. The period of active vege- 
 tation is much shorter than in neighbouring countries, and 
 this fact has affected the national methods of cultivation. 
 No plough can turn the soil till the Ma\' sun has shone upon 
 it, and, less than three months afterwards, the harvest must 
 be gathered in. 
 
 The same reason accounts for the violence of the moral 
 evolution to which I refer. The suddenness of any move- 
 ment, whether the bursting of a dyke by the triumphant 
 flood, or the fall of an avalanche from the mountain side, 
 must alwa}'s cause a considerable shock. The last reforms 
 — those accomplished in Russia during the current century — 
 possessed, though in a minor degree, the same characteristic. 
 In certain portions of the Empire, the abolition of serfdom 
 took on the appearance of a social cataclysm. Those coun- 
 tries which have been permitted to arrive at a state of 
 superior civilisation without any great shock, or external 
 intervention, by means of a slow internal process, and a 
 peaceful advance along the road of progress, are speciall)' 
 privileged spots on the surface of the globe. In America 
 the process has been a very hurried one. There is little 
 chance of its being carried out in Asia, or in Africa, without 
 a certain amount of violence. 
 
 I do not deny that there are certain drawbacks to the 
 system of making forced marches, in the attempt to get 
 abreast of more favoured neighbours. But there are also 
 some objections to being born a Kaffir or a Polynesian 
 savage. 
 
 A highly-gifted writer, who has made a study of the con- 
 sequences brought on Russia by Peter's hasty procedure, 
 has charged his work with four great faults, moral, in- 
 tellectual, social, and political.^ 1 cannot make myself 
 responsible for the correctness of the calculation, but 1 am 
 willing to grant that, when the Reformer brought the coarse- 
 ness of ancient Muscov)' into such sudden contact with the 
 sceptical licence of V\'estern countries, he gave birth to a 
 condition of cynicism, which was as revolting to the old 
 Russians as to their European neighbours ; that the violence 
 done his subjects b\- the severity (A' his laws, the indiscretion 
 
 * Leroy Bcaulieu, L' iDiil-ire dcs Tsars (i'aris, 1S90), vol. i. p 270, etc. 
 
S58 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 of his rc^cjulations, and the cruelty of his punishments, ended 
 by teachinij them h}pocrisy and meanness, and that, when 
 he trampled with such utter disdain on the traditions, the 
 institutions, and even the prejudices of his country, he 
 brought about a mental condition which was the not un- 
 natural forerunner of modern Nihilism. This is the moral 
 drawback of his work. Further, I am willing to admit that 
 the too rapid and excessive development of the faculties of 
 assimilation may, from the intellectual point of view, have 
 strengthened that lack of individuality and personalit}' which 
 were rooted in the nature and history of the Tsar's subjects, 
 and quite wiped out any power of initiative they may have 
 possessed. I will admit too, that, as regards social matters, 
 the necessaril}' superficial nature of such forced cultivation 
 may have produced a dangerous division between the upper 
 and the lower classes of society, the former becoming im- 
 pregnated with those Western habits and ideas, to which 
 the latter remained obstinately impervious. And finally, 
 from the political point of view, I will confess that the 
 sudden introduction of a foreign form of Government may 
 have prevented the organisation thus imposed on the country 
 from harmonising with the natural tendencies and aspirations 
 of the nation. All this, and a great deal more, 1 am willing 
 to concede, I will go so far as to say, with Custine — who, 
 in this respect, has the exceptional good fortune of agreeing 
 with a Russian writer, the poet and historian Soumarokof, 
 whose later days brought a revulsion against his original and 
 ojjtimist view — that it was no very brilliant victor}' to 'con- 
 vert men who did not wear powder into brutes covered with 
 flour,' and to turn 'bears into monkeys!'^ I will say, with 
 Levesque, that the idea of endeavouring to reconcile in- 
 dustrial, commercial, and intellectual jjrogress, with the aggra- 
 vation of the serf s)'stem, was most unfortunate. Joseph de 
 Maistre has declared, 'that men must crawl to knowledge, 
 it cannot be attained b)' flight.' I will grant this too. Numa, 
 the philosopher further observes, never dreamt of cutting the 
 skirts of the Roman toga, and no mistake can be greater 
 than to attempt to reform a people by means which betray 
 a lack of the respect cK:e to it. To this I am read)- to agree. 
 Koslomarof himself, in sj^ite of his enthusiasm, confesses that 
 
 1 ('usiine, La himir, Paris, 1843, vol. iii. p. 382. Souiiiarokuf, Der Eiste 
 AiifstanJ der Stieliiz^n (Kiya, 1772J, p, 15. 
 
PETER THE GREAT'S LAST WILL— CONCLUSION 559 
 
 the method whereby the national hero sought to force his 
 reforms upon his people — the lash, the axe, the tearing out 
 of nostrils — was not that best fitted to arouse, in the hearts 
 and minds of his subjects, those feelings and ideas, that civic 
 courage, and honour, and sense of duty, most likely to aid 
 in acclimatising his work in Russia. And here again, I side 
 with Kostomarof, and against Peter. 
 
 But, does not all this amount, in fact, to an assertion that 
 it would have been better for Russia if there had been no 
 Tartar invasion in the thirteenth century, and if the countiy 
 had been left free, during those which followed, to work out 
 its own civilisation, quietly and undisturbed ? 
 
 As for those ' seeds of original culture ' which Peter's re- 
 form is held by those who contemn him to have overlooked, 
 and even destroyed, this question is much like that of 
 Russian art, as seen in the buildings of the Russian Kreml. 
 All discussion, archaeological and aesthetic, is checked b}' the 
 difficult}' of discovering any original architectural or orna- 
 mental features, side by side with those numerous instances 
 in which form and decoration have been more or less evi- 
 dently borrowed from Byzantine or Roman Art, from that 
 of Ancient Greece, of the German Middle Ages, or of the 
 Italian Renaissance. I do not believe that the Reformer 
 can be accused of any considerable waste of any very pre- 
 cious material. A certain historian blames Peter severely 
 for having done away with Ordin Nashtchokin's system of 
 administrative autonomy.^ But was this autonomy — which 
 was, moreover, exceedingly restricted and ephemeral in its 
 application and existence — a \evy Russian product? Was 
 not Ordin Nashtchokin himself, even in those early days, a 
 lover of the West? And further, how can Peter fairly be 
 accused of having repudiated this legacy from a period which 
 had only just elapsed ? He began by making it the corner- 
 stone of his own building ! He may not, perhaps, have de- 
 rived every desirable benefit from its use, but was that likely.-' 
 Nashtchokin's experience does not lead us to that conviction. 
 And putting that aside, what essential point can lie be said 
 to have slighted or suppressed ? He never disturbed the 
 Sainodierjavu', and the only change he made in his Tc/ii- 
 iiovniks was to dress them in luu'opcan garb. 
 
 It has been said that the net cost of his reforms greatl\' 
 
 ' Goltsef, 1.1110$ ti/ni Customs, St. Petersburg, 1896, .iddeiula, p. 22. 
 
 / 
 / 
 
56o PETER THE GREAT 
 
 exceeded their value. They did indeed cost dear. In a 
 country where the usual rate of payment did not exceed four 
 copecks a day — twelve roubles a year — the yearly tax sud- 
 denly rose to one rouble per head for the whole population. 
 And this money tax was the li^^htest of the burdens the 
 j)Cople had to bear. In 1 70S, 40,000 men were sent to the 
 building work at St. Petersburg. Every one, or almost 
 every one, seems to have perished at the task, for, in the 
 following year, a fresh and equally numerous levy of 
 labourers was called for. In 17 10, only 3000 fresh work- 
 men were demanded, but, in 171 1, a first levy of 6000 men 
 became necessary : this was followed by another of 40,000, 
 and, in 17 13, this last levy was again repeated. These 
 labourers, until they disappeared into the pestilential 
 marshes which lay all round the new capital, each re- 
 ceived half a rouble a month. They lived on the country, 
 some of them by begging, and others by absolute robbery. 
 Meanwhile, the army swallowed up a goodly number of 
 human lives. In 1701, all insolvent debtors were delivered 
 over to the recruiting officers^creditors might lose -their 
 money, but the country gained soldiers. In 1703, all 
 peasants, who were owned by officials or merchants, were 
 ordered to send QVQvy fifth man to the army. In 1705, in 
 the month of January, one recruit was levied on every 
 twenty houses ; the same thing took place in the month 
 of February. There was another levy again in the month 
 of December, besides a levy of dragoons on the relations of 
 the Chancery officials. To sum it up, taxation rose, in the 
 course of the great reign, in the proportion of three to one, 
 and the diminution of the population was calculated at 
 twenty per cent.^ This does not allow for the terrible 
 holocaust offered up on the altar of civilisation, in the 
 prisons and torture-chambers of Preobrajenskoie, on the 
 Red Square at Moscow, and in the dungeons of the 
 fortress of St. Peter and St Paul. 
 
 But Russia has paid the price, and what Russian, looking 
 at the results acquired, would now desire to cancel the san- 
 guinary bargain and convention, between his ancestors and 
 their terrible despot? The country paid, and, in 1725, it 
 was none the poorer. Vov forty years, until the accession 
 of Catherine II., the great Spendthrift's successors lived on 
 ^ .Milioukof, p. 244, etc. 
 
PETER THE GREAT'S LAST WILL— CONCLUSION 561 
 
 his inheritance, and Peter lll.'s widow found means, out of 
 the residue, to make a figure in Europe which will not be 
 swiftly forgotten. 
 
 Again, — and this, of all the criticisms on Peter's work, is the 
 one which moves me most. — That work may have been con- 
 ceived, I will admit it, from an exclusively utilitarian point 
 of view, without due respect to the other and nobler elements 
 of culture and civilisation. The Russia of Peter the Great is 
 a factory and a camp, — she is not the focus of light and heat, 
 whence the noblest discoveries, and the most brilliant researches, 
 in science and art, beam on the world, shedding those noble 
 influences which do honour to the history of other nations, 
 and are their greatest claims to glory. And I think that the 
 pessimistic view of the Slavophile party has been prompted 
 by this consideration, suggested, in 1764, to Betski, who 
 collaborated with Catherine in artistic matters, and pon- 
 dered over, in later days, by Shtcherbatof Peter made his 
 Russians a nation of officials, of labourers and of soldiers ; 
 not, in any sense, a nation 6f thinkers and of artists. Prac- 
 tical and matter-of-fact as he himself was, in the most 
 eminent degree, he taught, or tried to teach them, the use of 
 the improved weapons he gave them ; he taught them 
 to read and count, but he never attempted to inspire them 
 with splendid impulses of heart or mind, with the pursuit of 
 any humanitarian ideal, of the worship of beauty, nor even 
 with instincts of kindness or of pity. But this, on reflection, 
 may possibly appear natural, and consequently justifiable. 
 Those historical, geographical, and climatic conditions to 
 which I have previously referred, as having surrounded the 
 birth and development of Russia, have made her existence 
 one perpetual warfare. Without natural frontier, and under 
 a most inclement sky, the country has struggled, and does 
 still struggle, with a special coalition of hostile elements, 
 with men and things, with neighbouring nations, and with 
 great Nature herself, for the defence of her soil, and the 
 security of her daily bread. The development thus attained, 
 b\' the most pett)' of all instincts, that of self-preservation 
 and the preponderance acquired by material cares, may 
 easily be understood. To this has been added a tendency 
 to physical indolence and mental torpor, followed by sudden 
 fits of fierce combativeness, the natural result of long periods 
 of unavoidable inacti\it\-. In this mould Peter and his work 
 
562 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 were cast. In his own way he was a great idealist. lie 
 sacrificed everything else, to his dream of a Russia not only 
 capable of defending and increasing her material patrimon)', 
 but worth}', some day, to claim the intellectual inheritance of 
 Italy and Greece. It was only a dream. Reality soon 
 forced him back into the original mould, into the fight for 
 existence, — and a fighter he remained, — his chief and inevit- 
 able anxiety, to provide himself and his people with muscles 
 and weapons, for \\ork and warfare. 
 
 Will this mould be ever broken ? The most clear-sighted 
 prophets have so frequently failed to forecast the destiny 
 of the great Empire, that I will not attempt to follow 
 their example. Europe, so far, is neither Rejjublican nor 
 Cossack. Before that comes about, modern Russia may 
 perchance have realised the desire of her great creator, 
 and borrowed the only real and indestructible elements of 
 European power and greatness. 
 
 Juvc i4fh, iS;)6. 
 
 THE END 
 
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 $7.00. 
 
 " The field is comparatively new, and Mr. Maclay has brought to his task patience, 
 assiduity, and patriotism. . . . Maps and plans, and a f^reat number of illustrations^ 
 add value to the book, which is desijjned to be a permanent and useful contribution to 
 historical literature." — Ne-w York Observer. 
 
 "While the author has had the assistance of Lieut. Roy C. Smith, U. S. N., in 
 preparing those parts of his work which are necessarily technical, he has wisely're- 
 frained from confusing the general reader by an undue parade of technicalities. 
 The narrative proceeds in a clear, concise, and vigorous style, which very materially 
 adds to the character of the work." — New York Journal 0/ Commerce. 
 
 " The author writes as one who has digged deep before he began to write at all. 
 He thus appears as a master of his material. This book inspires immediate confidence 
 as well as interest." — New York Times. 
 
 "A most conscientious narrative, from which wise statesmen may learn much for 
 their guidance, and it certainly is one of absorbing interest." — AVw York Commercial 
 Advertiser. 
 
 "Mr. Maclay is specially qualified for the work he has undertaken. Nine years 
 has hed evoted to thetask. The result of hisl abors possesses not only readableness 
 but authority. . . . Mr. Maclay's story may be truthfully characterized as a thrilling 
 romance, which will interest every mind that is fed by tales of heroism, and will be read 
 with patriotic pride by every true American." — Chicago Evening Post. 
 
 " A more valuable and important work of history than this has not been issued from 
 the pre^^s for many a day. It is not only that this book tells a story never before told 
 I for Cooper's works never professed to tell the whole story of our navy, even down to 
 his own day ), but that it is told with true historic sense, and with the finest critical acu- 
 men." — A'ew York Evangelist. 
 
 " A work which is destined to fill a noticeable gap in our national annals." — Phila- 
 delphia Bulletin. 
 
 " No better excuse for this important work could be desired than that a navy with 
 such a brilliant career on the whole as has the American navy is without a full and con- 
 tinuous record of its achievement. . . . The author has important new facts to tell, 
 and he tells them in a clear and graceful literary style." — Hart/ord Post. 
 
 " Mr. Maclay has desei'vedly won for himself an enviable place among our Amer- 
 ican historians. . . . His researches have been exhaustive and his inquiries persistent, 
 and he has used his wealth of material with a proper appreciation of historical value." 
 — Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " Like the average young American, this author has an enthusiastic appreciation of 
 Americnn valor on the high seas, and he reproduces grapliic sketches of battle scenes 
 and incidents in a way to insure for his book a hearty welcome on the part of these 
 who keenly enjoy this sort of literature. . . . The illustrations of the old battle ships 
 and the conflicts at sea, made memorable as long as the history of the American 
 Republic shall live, add much to the attractiveness of this book. . . . Professor Maclay 
 has added a substantial work to historical American literature." — Philadelphia Tele- 
 graph. 
 
 " It fills a place which has almost escaped the attention of historians. Mr. Maclay's 
 work shows on every page the minute care with which he worked up his theme. His 
 style is precise and clear, and without any pretense of rhetorical embellishment." — 
 New York Tribune. 
 
 New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue. 
 
T 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 HE PRESIDENTS OE THE UNITED STATES, 
 1789-1894. By John Fiske, Carl Schurz, William E. 
 Russell, Daniel C. Gilman, William Walter Phelps, 
 Robert C. Winthrop, George Bancroft, John Hay, and 
 Others. Edited by General James Grant Wilson. With 23 
 Steel Portraits, facsimile Letters, and other Illustrations. 8\o. 
 Cloth, $3.50. 
 
 "A book which everyone should read over and over again. . . . We have caic- 
 (ully run through it, and laid it down with the feeling that some such book ought to 
 find its way into every household." — A'ew I'orA Herald. 
 
 " A monumental volume, which no American who cares for the memory of the pub- 
 lic men of his country can afford to be without." — New York Mail and Express. 
 
 "Just the sort of book that the American who wishes to fix in his mind the vary- 
 ing phases of his country's history as it is woven on the warp of the administrations 
 will find most useful. Everything is presented in a clear-cut way, and no pleasanter 
 excursions into history can be found than a study of ' The Presidents of the United 
 States.' ''—Philadelphia Press. 
 
 " A valuable addition to both our biographical and historical literature, and meets 
 a want long recognized." — Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " So scholarly and entertaining a presidential biography has never before appeared 
 in this country. . . . It is bound to become the standard of its kind." — Dinghamton 
 Herald. 
 
 " It is precisely the book which ought to have a very wide i-ale in this country — a 
 book which one needs to own rather than to read and lay aside. No common-school 
 library or collection of books for young readers should be without it." — The Church- 
 man. 
 
 " General Wilson has performe I a public service in presenting this volume to the 
 public in so attractive a shape. It is full of incentive to ambitious youth ; it abounds 
 in encouragement to every patriotic heart." — Charleston News and Courier. 
 
 " There is an added value to this volume because of the fact that the story of the 
 life of each occupant of the White House was written by one who made a special study 
 of him and his times. ... An admirable history for the young." — Chicago Times. 
 
 " Such a work as this can not fail to appeal to the pride of patriotic Americans." — 
 Chicago Dial. 
 
 " These names are in themselves sufficient to guarantee adequacy of treatment and 
 interest in the presentation, and it is safe to say that such succinct biographies of tho 
 complete portrait gallery of our Presidents, written with such unquestioned ability, 
 have never before been published." — Hartford Courant. 
 
 " A book well worth owning, for reading and for reference. ... A complete rec- 
 ord of the most important events in our history during the past one hundred and five 
 years. " — The Outlook. 
 
 New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fiftli Avenue. 
 
D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 H 
 
 JOHN BACH MC MASTER. 
 
 I STORY OF THE PEOPLE OF 
 THE UNITED STATES, from the 
 Revolution to the Civil War. By John 
 Bach McMaster. To be completed in 
 six volumes. Vols. I, II, III, and IV 
 now ready. 8vo. Cloth, gilt top, $2.50 
 each. 
 
 "... Prof. McMaster has told us what no other his- 
 torians have told. . . . The skill, the animation, the 
 brightness, the force, and the charm with which he arrays 
 the facts before us are such that we can hardly conceive of 
 more interesting reading for an American citizen who 
 cares to know the nature of those causes which have made 
 not only him but his environment and the opportunities 
 life has given him what they are." — N. Y. Times. 
 " Those who can read between the lines may discover in these pages constant 
 evidences of care and skill and faithful labor, of which the old-time superficial essayists, 
 compiling librarj' notes on dates and striking events, had no conception ; but to the 
 general reader the fluent narrative gives no hint of the conscientious labors, far-reach- 
 ing world-wide, vast and yet microscopically minute, that give the strength and value 
 which are felt rather than seen. This is due to the art of presentation. The author's 
 position as a scientific workman we may accept on the abundant testimony of the 
 experts who know the solid worth of his work ; his skill as a literary artist we can 
 all appreciate, the charm of his style being self-evident." — Philadelphia Telegraph. 
 
 "The third volume contains the brilliantly written and fascinating story of the 
 progress and doings of the people of this country from the era of the Louisiana pur- 
 chase to the opening scenes of the second war with Great Britain— say a period of ten 
 years. In everv page of the book the reader finds that fascinating flow of narrative, 
 that clear and lucid style, and that penetrating power of thought and judgment which 
 distinguished the previous volumes." — Columbus State yournal. 
 
 " Prof. McMaster has more than fulfilled the promises made in his first volumes, 
 and his work is constantly growing better and more valuable as he brings it nearer to 
 our own time. His style is clear, simple, and idiomatic, and there is just enough of 
 the critical spirit in the narrative to guide the reader." — Boston Herald. 
 
 " Take it all in all, the History promises to be the ideal American history. Not so 
 much given to dates and battles and great events as in the fact that it is like a great 
 panorama of the people, revealing their inner life and action. It contains, with all 
 its sober facts, the spice of personalities and incidents, which relieves every page from 
 dullness." — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 
 
 " Histor>' written in this picturesque style will tempt the most heedless to read. 
 Prof. McMaster is more than a stylist ; he is a student, and his History abounds in 
 evidences of research in quarters not before discovered by the historian." — Chicago 
 Tribune. 
 
 " A History sui generis which has made and will keep its own place in our litera- 
 ture." — New York Evening Post. 
 
 New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue. 
 
D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 r^ ERMAN V AND THE GERMANS. By W ii i.i a m H a k- 
 
 ^-^ BUTT Dawson, author of" German Socialism and l-'erdinand Lassalle," 
 " Prince Bismarck and State Socialism," etc. 2 vols., 8vo. Cloth, $6.00. 
 
 " This excellent work— a literarj- monument of intellif^ent and conscientious labor 
 —deals with every phase and aspect of state and political activity, public and private, 
 in the I atlierland. . . . Teems with entertaining anecdotes and introspective aperi;us 
 of character." — London Tcle^rap/i. 
 
 " With Mr. Dawson's two volumes before him, the ordinarj' reader may well dis- 
 pense with the perusal of previous autiiorities. . . . His work, on the whole, is com- 
 prehensive, conscientious, and eminently fair." — London Chronicle. 
 
 " Mr. Dawson has made a remarkably close and discriminating study of German 
 life and institutions at the present day, and the results of his observations are set iorth 
 in a most interesting manner." — Brooklyn Times. 
 
 " There is scarcely any phase of German national life unnoticed in his comprehen- 
 sive survey. . . . Mr. Dawson has endeavored to write from the view-point of a sincere 
 yet candid well-wisher, of an unprejudiced observer, who, even when he is unable to 
 approve, speaks his mind in soberness and kindness."— i\>w York Sun. 
 
 " There is much in German character to admire ; much in Germany's life and insti- 
 tutions from which Americans may learn. William Harbutt Dawson has succeeded in 
 making this fact clearer, and his work will g(5 far t(j help Americans and Germans to 
 know each other better and to respect each other more. . . . It is a remarkable and a 
 fascinating work." — Chicago Evening Post. 
 
 " One of the very best works on this subject which has been published up to date." 
 — yew York Herald. 
 
 A 
 
 HISTORY OF GERMANY, from the Earliest Times 
 to the Present Day. By Bayard Taylor. With an Additional Chap- 
 ter by Marie Hansen-Taylor. With Portrait and Maps. i2mo. 
 Cloth, Si-50. 
 
 "There is, perhaps, no work of equal size in any language which gives a better 
 view of the tortuous course of German liisUjry. Now that the story of a race is to be 
 in good earnest a story of a nation as well, it begins, as every one, whether German or 
 foreign, sees, to furnish unexpected and wonderful lessons. But these can only be 
 understood in the light of the past. Taylor could end his work with the birth of the 
 Empire, but the additional narrative merely foreshadows the events of the future. It 
 may be that all the doings of the past ages on German soil are but the introduction of 
 what is to come. That is certainly the thought which grows upon one as he peruses 
 this volume." — New York Tribune. 
 
 " When one considers the confused, complicated, and sporadic elements of German 
 history, it seems scarcely possible to present a clear, continuous narrative. Vet this is 
 what Bayard Taylor did. He omitted no episode of importance, and yet managid to 
 preserve a main line in connection from century to century throughout the narrative." 
 — Philadelphia Ledger. 
 
 " A most excellent short history of Germany. . . . Mrs. Taylor has done well the 
 work she reluctantly consented to undertake. Her story is not only clearly told, but 
 told in a style that is quite consistent with that of the we)rk which she completes. . . . 
 Asa matter of course the hi.-tory excels in its literary st>le. Mr. Taylor could not 
 have written an unentertaining book. This book arouses interest in its opening chap- 
 ter and maintains it to the very end." — Xeiv York Times. 
 
 " Probably the best work of its kind adapted for school purposes that can be had 
 in English." — Boston Herald. 
 
 New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue. 
 
 
MOF*^»TT «Nnror%p/>nU^'""" LIBRARY 
 
 J/\N 2 1968 
 
FEB 4 1968 
 
 U.C^ BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 CDDlD73SDb