The art of healing seems to have been a dangerous calling at that time. A learned German physician, named Anthony, in whom Ivan placed much confidence, was sent by him to attend a Tatar Prince who was a visitor at his court. When the Prince died after taking a decoction of herbs prepared by the physician, Ivan gave him up to the Tatar relatives of the deceased, to do with him as they liked. They took him down to the river Moskwa under the bridge, where they cut him in pieces like a sheep.

Ivan III. was not a warrior Prince like his great progenitors at Kief. It was even suspected that he lacked personal courage. He rarely led his armies to battle. His greatest triumphs were achieved sitting in his palace in the Kremlin; and his weapons were found in a cunning and far-reaching diplomacy. He swept away the system of appanages, and one by one effaced the privileges and the old legal and judicial systems in those Principalities which were not yet entirely absorbed. While maintaining an outward respect for Mongol authority, and while receiving its friendly aid in his attacks upon Novgorod and Lithuania, he was carefully laying his plans for open defiance. He cunningly refrained from paying tribute and homage on the pretense that he could not decide which of the five was lawful Khan.

In 1478 an embassy arrived at Moscow to collect tribute, bringing as the symbol of their authority an image of the Khan Akhmet. Ivan tore off the mask of friendship. In a fury he trampled the image under his feet and (it is said) put to death all except one whom he sent back with his message to the Golden Horde. The astonished Khan sent word that he would pardon him if he would come to Sarai and kiss his stirrup.

At last Ivan consented to lead his own army to meet that of the enraged Khan. The two armies confronted each other on the banks of the Oka. Then after a pause of several days, suddenly both were seized with a panic and fled. And so in this inglorious fashion in 1480, after three centuries of oppression and insult, Russia slipped from under the Mongol yoke. There were many Mongol invasions after this. Many times did they unite with Lithuanians and Poles and the enemies of Russia; many times were they at the gates of Moscow, and twice did they burn that city—excepting the Kremlin—to the ground. But never again was there homage or tribute paid to the broken and demoralized Asiatic power which long lingered about the Crimea. There are to-day two millions of nomad Mongols encamped about the south-eastern steppes of Russia, still living in tents, still raising and herding their flocks, little changed in dress, habits, and character since the days of Genghis Khan. While this is written a famine is said to be raging among them. This is the last remnant of the great Mongol invasion.

In 1487 Ivan marched upon Kazan. The city was taken after a siege of seven weeks. The Tsar of Kazan was a prisoner in Moscow and "Prince of Bulgaria" was added to the titles of Ivan III.

[1] From the word knot.



CHAPTER X

GRAND PRINCE BECOMES TSAR

Vasili, who succeeded Ivan III. in 1505, continued his work on the same lines of absorption and consolidation by unmerciful means. Pskof,—the sister republic to Novgorod the Great,—which had guarded its liberties with the same passionate devotion, was obliged to submit. The bell which had always summoned their Vetche, and which symbolized their liberty, was carried away. Their lament is as famous as that for the Moorish city of Alhama, when taken by Ferdinand of Aragon. The poetic annalist says: "Alas! glorious city of Pskof—why this weeping and lamentation?" Pskof replies: "How can I but weep and lament? An eagle with claws like a lion has swooped down upon me. He has captured my beauty, my riches, my children. Our land is a desert! our city ruined. Our brothers have been carried away to a place where our fathers never dwelt—nor our grandfathers—nor our great-grandfathers!" In the whole tragic story of Russia nothing is more pathetic and picturesque than the destruction of the two republics—Novgorod and Pskof.

By 1523 the last state had yielded, and the Muscovite absorption was complete. There was but one Russia; and the head of the consolidated empire called himself not "Grand Prince of all the Russias," but Tsar. When it is remembered that Tsar is only the Slavonic form for Caesar, it will be seen that the dream of the Varangian Princes had been in an unexpected way realized. The Tsar of Russia was the successor of the Caesars in the East.

Vasili's method of choosing a wife was like that of Ahasuerus. Fifteen hundred of the most beautiful maidens of noble birth were assembled at Moscow. After careful scrutiny the number was reduced to ten, then to five—from these the final choice was made. His wife's relations formed the court of Vasili, became his companions and advisers, boyars vying with each other for the privilege of waiting upon his table or assisting at his toilet. But the office of adviser was a difficult one. To one great lord who in his inexperience ventured to offer counsel, as in the olden time of the Drujina, he said sharply: "Be silent, rustic." While still another, more indiscreet, who had ventured to complain that they were not consulted, was ordered to his bedchamber, and there had his head cut off.

The court grew in barbaric and in Greek splendor. As the Tsar sat upon the throne supported by mechanical lions which roared at intervals, he was guarded by young nobles with high caps of white fur, wearing long caftans of white satin and armed with silver hatchets. Greek scholarship was also there. A learned monk and friend of Savonarola was translating Greek books and arranging for him the priceless volumes in his library. Vasili himself was now in correspondence with Pope Leo X., who was using all his arts to induce him to make friends with Catholic Poland and join in the most important of all wars—a war upon Constantinople, of which he, Vasili, the spiritual and temporal heir to the Eastern Empire, was the natural protector.

All this was very splendid. But things were moving with the momentum gained by his father, Ivan the Great. It was Vasili's inheritance, not his reign, that was great. That inheritance he had maintained and increased. He had humiliated the nobility, had developed the movements initiated by his greater father, and had also shown tastes magnificent enough for the heir of his imperial mother, Sophia Paleologus. But he is overshadowed in history by standing between the two Ivans—Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible.



Leo X. was soon too much occupied with a new foe to think about designs upon Constantinople. A certain monk was nailing a protest upon the door of the Church at Wittenburg which would tax to the uttermost his energies. As from time to time travelers brought back tales of the splendor of the Muscovite court, Europe was more than ever afraid of such neighbors. What might these powerful barbarians not do, if they adopted European methods! More stringent measures were enforced. They must not have access to the implements of civilization, and Sigismund, King of Poland, threatened English merchants on the Baltic with death.

It is a singular circumstance that although, up to the time of Ivan the Great, Russia had apparently not one thing in common with the states of Western Europe, they were still subject to the same great tides or tendencies and were moving simultaneously toward identical political conditions. An invisible but compelling hand had been upon every European state, drawing the power from many heads into one. In Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella had brought all the smaller kingdoms and the Moors under one united crown. In France, Louis XI. had shattered the fabric of feudalism, and by artful alliance with the people had humiliated and subjugated the proud nobility. Henry VIII. had established absolutism in England, and Maximilian had done the same for Germany, while even the Italian republics, were being gathered into the hands of larger sovereignties. From this distance in time it is easy to see the prevailing direction in which all the nations were being irresistibly drawn.

The hour had struck for the tide to flow toward centralisation; and Russia, remote, cut off from all apparent connection with the Western kingdoms, was borne along upon the same tide with the rest, as if it was already a part of the same organism! There, too, the power was passing from the many to one: first from many ruling families to one family, then from all the individual members of that family to a supreme and permanent head—the Tsar.

There were many revolutions in Russia from the time when the Dolgorukis turned the life-currents from Kief to the North; many centers of volcanic energy in fearful state of activity, and many times when ruin threatened from every side. But in the midst of all this there was one steady process—one end being always approached—a consolidation and a centralization of authority before which European monarchies would pale! The process commenced with the autocratic purposes of Andrew Bogoliubski. And it was because his boyars instinctively knew that the success of his policy meant their ruin that they assassinated him.

In "Old Russia" a close and fraternal tie bound the Prince and his Drujina together. It was one family, of which he was the adored head. What characterized the "New Russia" was a growing antagonism between the Grand Prince and his lords or boyars. This developed into a life-and-death struggle, similar to that between Louis XI. and his nobility. His elevation meant their humiliation. It was a terrible clash of forces—a duel in which one was the instrument of fate, and the other predestined to destruction.

It was of less importance during the period between Andrew Bogoliubski and Ivan IV. that Mongols were exercising degrading tyranny and making desperate reprisals for defeat—that Lithuania and Poland, and conspirators everywhere, were by arms and by diplomacy and by treachery trying to ruin the state; all this was of less import than the fact that every vestige of authority was surely passing out of the hands of the nobility into those of the Tsar. The fight was a desperate one. It became open and avowed under Ivan III., still more bitter under his son Vasili II., and culminated at last under Ivan the Terrible, when, like an infuriated animal, he let loose upon them all the pent-up instincts in his blood.



CHAPTER XI

IVAN THE TERRIBLE—ACQUISITION OF SIBERIA

In 1533 Vasili II. died, leaving the scepter to Ivan IV., an infant son three years old. Now the humiliated Princes and boyars were to have their turn. The mother of Ivan IV., Helena Glinski, was the only obstacle in their way. She speedily died, the victim of poison, and then there was no one to stem the tide of princely and oligarchic reaction against autocracy; and the many years of Ivan's minority would give plenty of time to re-establish their lost authority. The boyars took possession of the government. Ivan wrote later: "My brother and I were treated like the children of beggars. We were half clothed, cold, and hungry." The boyars in the presence of these children appropriated the luxuries and treasures in the palace and then plundered the people as well, exacting unmerciful fines and treating them like slaves. The only person who loved the neglected Ivan was his nurse, and she was torn from him; and for a courtier to pity the forlorn child was sufficient for his downfall. Ivan had a superior intelligence. He read much and was keenly observant of all that was happening. He saw himself treated with insolent contempt in private, but with abject servility in public. He also observed that his signature was required to give force to everything that was done, and so discovered that he was the rightful master, that the real power was vested only in him. Suddenly, in 1543, he sternly summoned his court to come into his presence, and, ordering the guards to seize the chief offender among his boyars, he then and there had him torn to pieces by his hounds. This was a coup d'etat by a boy of thirteen! He was content with the banishment of many others, and then Ivan IV. peacefully commenced his reign. He seemed a gentle, indolent youth; very confiding in those he trusted; inclined to be a voluptuary, loving pleasure and study and everything better than affairs of state. In 1547 he was crowned Tsar of Russia, and soon thereafter married Anastasia of the house of Romanoff, whom he devotedly loved. As was the custom, he surrounded himself with his mother's and his wife's relations. So the Glinskis and the Romanoffs were the envied families in control of the government. His mother's family, the Glinskis, were especially unpopular; and when a terrific fire destroyed nearly the whole of Moscow it was whispered by jealous boyars that the Princess Anna Glinski had brought this misfortune upon them by enchantments. She had taken human hearts, boiled them in water, and then sprinkled the houses where the fire started! An enraged populace burst into the palace of the Glinskis, murdering all they could find.

Ivan, nervous and impressionable, seems to have been profoundly affected by all this. He yielded to the popular demand and appointed two men to administer the government, spiritual and temporal—Adashef, belonging to the smaller nobility, and Silvester, a priest. Believing absolutely in their fidelity, he then concerned himself very little about affairs of state, and engaged in the completion of the work commenced by Ivan III.—a revision of the old code of laws established by Yaroslaf. These were very peaceful and very happy years for Russia and for himself. But Ivan was stricken with a fever, and while apparently in a dying condition he discovered the treachery of his trusted ministers, that they were shamefully intriguing with his Tatar enemies. When he heard their rejoicings that the day of the Glinskis and the Romanoffs was over, he realized the fate awaiting Anastasia and her infant son if he died. He resolved that he would not die.

Banishment seems a light punishment to have inflicted. It was gentle treatment for treason at the court of Moscow. But the poison of suspicion had entered his soul, and was the more surely, because slowly, working a transformation in his character. And when soon thereafter Anastasia mysteriously and suddenly died, his whole nature seemed to be undergoing a change. He was passing from Ivan the gentle and confiding, into "Ivan the Terrible."

Ivan said later, in his own vindication: "When that dog Adashef betrayed me, was anyone put to death? Did I not show mercy? They say now that I am cruel and irascible; but to whom? I am cruel toward those that are cruel to me. The good! ah, I would give them the robe and the chain that I wear! My subjects would have given me over to the Tatars, sold me to my enemies. Think of the enormity of the treason! If some were chastised, was it not for their crimes, and are they not my slaves—and shall I not do what I will with mine own?"

His grievances were real. His boyars were desperate and determined, and even with their foreheads in the dust were conspiring against him. They were no less terrible than he toward their inferiors. There never could be anything but anarchy in Russia so long as this aristocracy of cruel slave-masters existed. Ivan (like Louis XI.) was girding himself for the destruction of the power of his nobility, and, as one conspiracy after another was revealed, faster and faster flowed the torrent of his rage.

In 1571 he devoutly asked the prayers of the Church for 3470 of his victims, 986 of whom he mentioned by name; many of these being followed by the sinister addition: "With his wife and children"; "with his sons"; "with his daughters." A gentle, kindly Prince had been converted into a monster of cruelty, who is called, by the historians of his own country, the Nero of Russia.

He was a pious Prince, like all of the Muscovite line. Not one of his subjects was more faithful in religious observances than was this "torch of orthodoxy"—who frequently called up his household in the middle of the night for prayers. Added to the above pious petition for mercy to his victims, is this reference to Novgorod: "Remember, Lord, the souls of thy servants to the number of 1505 persons—Novgorodians, whose names, Almighty, thou knowest."

That Republic had made its last break for liberty. Under the leadership of Marfa, the widow of a wealthy and powerful noble, it had thrown itself in despair into the arms of Catholic Poland. This was treason to the Tsar and to the Church, and its punishment was awful. The desperate woman who had instigated the act was carried in chains to Moscow, there to behold her two sons with the rest of the conspirators beheaded. The bell which for centuries had summoned her citizens to the Vetche, that sacred symbol of the liberty of the Republic, is now in the Museum at Moscow. If its tongue should speak, if its clarion call should ring out once more, perhaps there might come from the shades a countless host of her martyred dead—"Whose names, Almighty, thou knowest." Ivan then proceeded to wreck the prosperity of the richest commercial city in his empire. Its trade was enormous with the East and the West. It had joined the Hanseatic League, and its wealth was largely due to the German merchants who had flocked there. With singular lack of wisdom, the Tsar had confiscated the property of these men, and now the ruin of the city was complete.

While Germany, and Poland, and Sweden,—resolved to shut up Russia in her barbaric isolation,—were locking the front door on the Baltic and the Gulf, England had found a side door by which to enter. With great satisfaction Ivan saw English traders coming in by way of the White Sea, and he extended the rough hand of his friendship to Queen Elizabeth, who made with him a commercial treaty, which was countersigned by Francis Bacon. Then, as his friendship warmed, he proposed that they should sign a reciprocal engagement to furnish each other with an asylum in the event of the rebellion of their subjects. Elizabeth declined the asylum he kindly offered her, "finding, by the grace of God, no dangers of the sort in her kingdom." Then he did her the honor to offer an alliance of a different kind. He proposed that she should send him her cousin Lady Mary Hastings to take the place left vacant by his eighth wife—to become his Tsaritsa. The proposition was considered, but when the English maiden heard about his brutalities and about his seven wives, so terrified was she that she refused to leave England, and the affair had to be abandoned. Elizabeth's rejection of his proposals, and also of his plan for an alliance offensive and defensive against Poland and Sweden, so infuriated Ivan that he confiscated the goods of the English merchants, and this friendship was temporarily ruptured. But amicable relations were soon restored between Elizabeth and her barbarian admirer. If she had heard of his awful vengeance in 1571, she had also heard of the massacre of St. Bartholomew in Paris in 1572!

Russia had now opened diplomatic relations with the Western kingdoms. The foreign ambassadors were received with great pomp in a sumptuous hall hung with tapestries and blazing with gold and silver. The Tsar, with crown and scepter, sat upon his throne, supported by the roaring lions, and carefully studied the new ambassador as he suavely asked him about his master. A police inspector from that moment never lost sight of him, making sure that he obtained no interviews with the natives nor information about the state of the country. Although the Tsar was reputed to be learned and was probably the most learned man in his nation, and had always about him a coterie of distinguished scholars, still there was no intellectual life in Russia, and owing to the Oriental seclusion of the women there was no society. The men were heavily bearded, and the ideal of beauty with the women, as they looked furtively out from behind veils and curtains, was to be fat, with red, white, and black paint laid on like a mask. It must have been a dreary post for gay European diplomats, and in marked contrast to gay, witty, gallant Poland, at that time thoroughly Europeanized.

Next to the consolidation of the imperial authority, the event in this reign most affecting the future of Russia was the acquisition of Siberia. A Cossack brigand under sentence of death escaped with his followers into the land beyond the Urals, and conquered a part of the territory, then returned and offered it to Ivan (1580) in exchange for a pardon. The incident is the subject of a bilina, a form of historical poem, in which Yermak says:

"I am the robber Hetman of the Don. And now—oh—orthodox Tsar, I bring you my traitorous head, And with it I bring the Empire of Siberia!

And the orthodox Tsar will speak— He will speak—the terrible Ivan, Ha! thou art Yermak, the Hetman of the Don, I pardon thee and thy band, I pardon thee for thy trusty service— And I give to the Cossack the glorious and gentle Don as an inheritance."

The two Ivans had created a new code of laws, and now there was an ample prison-house for its transgressors! The penal code was frightful. An insolvent debtor was tied up half naked in a public place and beaten three hours a day for thirty or forty days, and then, if no one came to his rescue, with his wife and his children he was sold as a slave. But Siberia was to be the prison-house of a more serious class of offenders for whom this punishment would be insufficient. It was to serve as a vast penal colony for crimes against the state. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century it is said one million political exiles have been sent there, and they continue to go at the rate of twenty thousand a year; showing how useful a present was made by the robber Yermak to the "Orthodox Tsar"!

This reign, like that of Louis XI. of France, which it much resembled, enlarged the privileges of the people in order to aid Ivan in his conflict with his nobility. For this purpose a Sobor, or States-General, was summoned by him, and met at long intervals thereafter until the time of Peter the First.

Of the two sons left to Ivan by his wife Anastasia, only one now remained. In a paroxysm of rage he had struck the Tsarevitch with his iron staff. He did not intend to kill him, but the blow was mortal. Great and fierce was the sorrow of the Tsar when he found he had slain his beloved son—the one thing he loved upon earth, and there remained to inherit the fruit of his labors and his crimes only another child (Feodor) enfeebled in body and mind, and an infant (Dmitri), the son of his seventh wife. His death, hastened by grief, took place three years later, in 1584.



CHAPTER XII

SERFDOM CREATED—THE FIRST ROMANOFF

Occasionally there arises a man in history who, without distinction of birth or other advantages, is strong enough by sheer ability to grasp the opportunity, vault into power, and then stem the tide of events. Such a man was Godwin, father of Harold, last Saxon King; in England; and such a man was Boris Godunof, a boyar, who had so faithfully served the terrible Ivan that he leaned upon him and at last confided to him the supervision of his feeble son Feodor, when he should succeed him. The plans of this ambitious usurper were probably laid from the time of the tragic death of Ivan's son, the Tsarevitch. He brought about the marriage of his beautiful sister Irene with Feodor, and from the hour of Ivan's death was virtual ruler. Dmitri, the infant son of the late Tsar, aged five years, was prudently placed at a distance—and soon thereafter mysteriously died (1591). There can be no doubt that the unexplained tragedy of this child's death was perfectly understood by Boris; and when Feodor also died, seven years later (1598), there was not one of the old Muscovite line to succeed to the throne. But so wise had been the administration of affairs by the astute Regent that a change was dreaded. A council offered him the crown, which he feigned a reluctance to accept, preferring that the invitation should come from a source which would admit of no question as to his rights in the future. Accordingly, the States-General or Sobor was convened, and Boris Godunof was chosen by acclamation.

The work of three reigns was undone. A boyar was Tsar of Russia—and a boyar not in the line of Rurik and with Tatar blood in his veins! But this bold and unscrupulous man had performed a service to the state. The work of the Muscovite Princes was finished, and the extinction of the line was the next necessary event in the path of progress.

Boris had large and comprehensive views and proceeded upon new lines of policy to reconstruct the state. He saw that Russia must be Europeanized, and he also saw that at least one radical change in her internal policy might be used to insure his popularity with the Princes and nobles. The Russian peasantry was an enormous force which was not utilized to its fullest extent. It included almost the entire rural population of Russia. The peasant was legally a freeman. He lived unchanged under the old Slavonic patriarchal system of Mirs, or communes, and Volosts. These were the largest political organizations of which he had personal cognizance. He knew nothing about Muscovite consolidation, nor oligarchy, nor autocracy. No crumbs from the modern banquet had fallen into his lap. With a thin veneer of orthodoxy over their paganism and superstition the people listened in childish wonder to the same old tales—they lived their old primitive life of toil under the same system of simple fair-dealing and justice. If their commune owned the land it tilled, they all shared the benefit of the harvests, paid their tax to the state, and all was well. If not, it swarmed like a community of bees to some wealthy neighbor's estate and sold its labor to him, and then if he proved too hard a taskmaster—even for a patient Russian peasant—they might swarm again and work for another.

The tie binding them to special localities was only the very slightest. There were no mountains to love, one part of the monotonous plateau was about like another; and as for their homes, their wooden huts were burned down so often there were no memories attached to them.

The result of this was that the peasantry—that immense force upon which the state at last depended—was not stable and permanent, but fluid. At the slightest invitation of better wages, or better soil or conditions, whole communities might desert a locality—would gather up their goods and walk off. Boris, while Regent, conceived the idea of correcting this evil, in a way which would at the same time make him a very popular ruler with the class whose support he most needed, the Princes and the landowners. He would chain the peasant to the soil. A decree was issued that henceforth the peasant must not go from one estate to another. He belonged to the land he was tilling, as the trees that grew on it belonged to it, and the master of that land was his master for evermore!

Such, in brief outline, was the system of serfdom which prevailed until 1861. It was in theory, though not practically, unlike the institution of American slavery. The people, still living in their communes, still clung to the figment of their freedom, not really understanding that they were slaves, but feeling rather that they were freemen whose sacred rights had been cruelly invaded. That they were giving to hard masters the fruit of their toil on their own lands.

Now that Russia was becoming a modern state, it required more money to govern her. Civilization is costly, and the revenues must not be fluctuating. Boris saw they could only be made sure by attaching to the soil the peasant, whose labor was at the foundation of the prosperity of the state. It was the peasant who bore the weight of an expanded civilization which he did not share! The visitor at Moscow to-day may see in the Kremlin a wonderful tower, 270 feet high, which was erected in honor of Ivan the Great by the usurper Boris; but the monument which keeps his memory alive is the more stupendous one of—Serfdom.

The expected increase in prosperity from the new system did not immediately come. The revenues were less than before. Bands of fugitive serfs were fleeing from their masters and joining the community of free Cossacks on the Don. Lands were untilled, there was misery, and at last there was famine, and then discontent and demoralization extending to the upper classes, and a diminished income which finally bore upon the Tsar himself.

Suddenly there came a rumor that Dmitri, the infant son of Ivan the Terrible, was not dead! He was living in Poland, and with incontestable proofs of his identity was coming to claim his own. In 1604 he crossed the frontier, and thousands of discontented people flocked to his standard with wild enthusiasm. Boris had died just before Dmitri reached Moscow. He entered the city, and the infatuated people placed in his hand and upon his head the scepter and the crown of Ivan IV.; and after making sure that the wife and the son of Boris Godunof were strangled, this amazing Pretender commenced his reign.

An extraordinary thing had happened. A nameless adventurer and impostor had been received with tears of joy as the son of Ivan and of St. Vladimir, the seventh wife of Ivan the Terrible even recognizing and embracing him as her son! But Dmitri had not the wisdom to keep what his cunning had won. His Polish wife came, followed by a suite of Polish Catholics, who began to carry things with a high hand. The clergy was offended and soon enraged. In five years Dmitri was assassinated, and his mutilated corpse was lying in the palace at the Kremlin, an object of insult and derision; and then, for Russia there came another chaos.

For a brief period Vasili Shuiski, head of one of the princely families, reigned, while two more "false Dmitris" appeared, one from Sweden and the other from Poland. The cause of the latter was upheld by the King of Poland, with the ulterior purpose of bringing the disordered state of Russia under the Polish crown, and making one great Slav kingdom with its center at Cracow.

So disorganized had the State become that some of the Princes had actually opened negotiations with Sigismund with a view to offering the crown to his son. But when Sigismund with an invading army was in Moscow (1610), and when Vasili Shuiski was a prisoner in Poland, and a Polish Prince was claiming the title of Tsar, there came an awakening—not among the nobility, but deep down in the heart of orthodox Russia. From this awakening of a dormant national sentiment and of the religious instincts of the people there developed that event,—the most health-restoring which can come to the life of a nation,—a national uprising in which all classes unite in averting a common disaster. What disaster could be for Russia more terrible than an absorption into Catholic Poland? The Polish intruders and pretenders were driven out, and then a great National Assembly gathered at Moscow (1613) to elect a Tsar.

The name of Romanoff was unstained by crime, and was by maternal ancestry allied to the royal race of Rurik. The newly awakened patriotism turned instinctively toward that, as the highest expression of their hopes; and Mikhail Romanoff, a youth of 16, was elected Tsar.

It was in 1547 that Anastasia, of the House of Romanoff, had married Ivan IV. At about the same time her brother was married to a Princess of Suzdal, a descendant of the brother of Alexander Nevski. This Princess was the grandmother of Mikhail Romanoff, and the source from which has sprung the present ruling house in Russia.



CHAPTER XIII

NIKON'S ATTEMPT—RASKOLNIKS

In the building of an empire there are two processes—the building up, and the tearing down. The plow is no less essential than the trowel. The period after Boris had been for Russia the period of the wholesome plow. The harvest was far off. But the name Romanoff was going to stand for another Russia, not like the old Russia of Kief, nor yet the new Russia of Moscow; but another and a Europeanized Russia, in which, after long struggles, the Slavonic and half-Asiatic giant was going to tear down the walls of separation, escape from his barbarism, and compel Europe to share with him her civilization.

The man who was to make the first breach in the walls was the grandson of Mikhail Romanoff—Peter, known as "The Great." But the mills of the gods grind slowly—especially when they have a great work in hand; and there were to be three colorless reigns before the coming of the Liberator in 1689—seventy-six years before they would learn that to have a savage despot seated on a barbaric throne, with crown and robes incrusted with jewels, and terrorizing a brutish, ignorant, and barbaric people—was not to be Great.

The reigns of Mikhail and of his son Alexis and his grandson Feodor were to be reigns of preparation and reform. Of course there were turbulent uprisings and foreign wars, and perils on the frontiers near the Baltic and the Black seas. But Russia was gaining in ascendency while Poland, from whom she had narrowly escaped, was fast declining. The European rulers began to see advantages for themselves from Russian alliances. Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden and champion of Protestantism, made an eloquent appeal to the Tsar to join him against Catholic Poland—"Was not the Romish Church their common enemy?—and were they not neighbors?—and when your neighbor's house is afire, is it not the part of wisdom and prudence to help to put it out?" Poland suffered a serious blow when a large body of Cossacks, who were her vassals, and her chief arm of defense in the Southeast, in 1681 transferred themselves bodily to Russia.

The Cossacks were a Slavonic people, with no doubt a plentiful infusion of Asiatic blood, and their name in the Tatar language meant Freebooters. They had long dwelt about the Don and the Dnieper, in what is known as Little Russia, a free and rugged community which was recruited by Russians after the Tatar invasion and Polish conquest, by oppressed peasants after the creation of serfdom, and by adventurers and fugitives from justice at all times. It was a military organization, and its Constitution was a pure democracy. Freedom and independence were their first necessity. Their Hetman, or chief, held office for one year only, and anyone might attain to that position. Their horsemanship was unrivaled—they were fearless and enduring, and stood ready to sell their services to the Khan of Tatary, the King of Poland, or to the Tsar of Russia. In fact, they were the Northmen of the South and East, and are now—the Rough-Riders of Russia.

They had long ago divided into two bands, the "Cossacks of the Dnieper," loosely bound to Poland, and the "Cossacks of the Don," owning the sovereignty of Russia. The services of these fearless adventurers were invaluable as a protection from Turks and Tatars; and, as we have seen in the matter of Siberia, they sometimes brought back prizes which offset their misdoings. The King of Poland unwisely attempted to proselyte his Cossacks of the Dnieper, sent Jesuit missionaries among them, and then concluded to break their spirit by severities and make of them obedient loyal Catholic subjects. He might as well have tried to chain the winds. They offered to the Tsar their allegiance in return for his protection, and in 1681 all of the Cossacks, of the Dnieper as well as the Don, were gathered under Russian sovereignty. It was this event which, in the long struggle with Poland, turned the scales at last in favor of Russia.

One of the most important occurrences in this reign was the attempt of the Patriarch Nikon to establish an authority in the East similar to that of the Pope in the West—and in many ways to Latinize the Church. This attempt to place the Tsar under spiritual authority was put down by a popular revolt—followed by stricter orthodox methods in a sect known as the Raskolniks.

Mikhail died in 1645, and was succeeded by his son Alexis. The new Tsar sent an envoy to Charles the First of England to announce his succession. He arrived with his letter to the King at an inopportune time. He was on trial for his life. The Russian could not comprehend such a condition, and haughtily refused to treat with anyone but the King. He was received with much ceremony by the House of Lords, and then to their consternation arose and said: "I have come from my sovereign charged with an important message to your King—Charles the First. It is long since I came, and I have not been permitted to see him nor to deliver the letter from my master." The embarrassed English boyars replied that they would give their reasons for this by letter. When the Tsar was informed by Charles II. of the execution of his father, sternly inflicted by his people, he could not comprehend such a condition. He at once forbade English merchants to live in any of his cities except Archangel, and sent money and presents to the exiled son.

An interest attaches to the marriage of Alexis with Natalia, his second wife. He was dining with one of his boyars and was attracted by a young girl, who was serving him. She was motherless, and had been adopted by her uncle the boyar. The Tsar said to his friend soon after: "I have found a husband for your Natalia." The husband was Alexis himself, and Natalia became the mother of Peter the Great. She was the first Princess who ever drew aside the curtains of her litter and permitted the people to look upon her face. Thrown much into the society of Europeans in her uncle's home, she was imbued with European ideas. It was no doubt she who first instilled the leaven of reform into the mind of her infant son Peter.

One of the most important features of this reign was the development of the fanatical sect known as Raskolniks. They are the dissenters or non-conformists of Russia. Their existence dates from the time of the Patriarch Nikon—and what they considered his sacrilegious innovations. But as early as 1476 there were the first stirrings of this movement when some daring and advanced innovators began to sing "O Lord, have mercy," instead of "Lord, have Mercy," and to say "Alleluia" twice instead of three times, to the peril of their souls! But it was in the reign of Alexis that signs of falling away from the faith spoken of in the Apocalypse were unmistakable. Foreign heretics who shaved their chins and smoked the accursed weed were tolerated in Holy Moscow. "The number of the Beast" indicated the year 1666. It was evident that the end of the world was at hand! Such was the beginning of the Raskolniks, who now number 10,000,000 souls—a conservative Slavonic element which has been a difficult one to deal with.

Upon the death of Alexis, in 1676, his eldest son Feodor succeeded him. It is only necessary to mention one significant act in his short reign—the destruction of the Books of Pedigrees. The question of precedence among the great families was the source of endless disputes, and no man would accept a position inferior to any held by his ancestors, nor would serve under a man with an ancestry inferior to his own. Feodor asked that the Books of Pedigrees be sent to him for examination, and then had them every one thrown into the fire and burned. This must have been his last act, for his death and this holocaust of ancestral claims both occurred in the year 1682.



CHAPTER XIV

PETER STUDIES EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION

A history of Russia naively designates one of its chapters "The Period of Troubles"! When was there not a period of troubles in this land? The historian wearies, and doubtless the reader too, of such prolonged disorder and calamity. But a chapter telling of peace and tranquillity would have to be invented. The particular sort of trouble that developed upon the death of Feodor was of a new variety. Alexis had left two families of children, one by his first wife and the other by Natalia. There is not time to tell of all the steps by which Sophia, daughter of the first marriage, came to be the power behind the throne upon which sat her feeble brother Ivan, and her half-brother Peter, aged ten years. Sophia was an ambitious, strong-willed, strong-minded woman, who dared to emancipate herself from the tyranny of Russian custom.

The terem, of which we hear so much, was the part of the palace sacred to the Tsaritsa and the Princesses—upon whose faces no man ever looked. If a physician were needed he might feel the pulse and the temperature through a piece of gauze—but see the face never. It is said that two nobles who one day accidentally met Natalia coming from her chapel were deprived of rank in consequence.

But the terem, with "its twenty-seven locks," was not going to confine the sister of Peter. She met the eyes of men in public; studied them well, too; and then selected the instruments for her designs of effacing Peter and his mother, and herself becoming sovereign indeed. A rumor was circulated that the imbecile Ivan (who was alive) had been strangled by Natalia's family. In the tumult which followed one of her brothers, Peter's uncle, was torn from Natalia's arms and cut to pieces. But this was only one small incident in the horrid tragedy. Then, after discovering that the Prince was not dead, the bloodstains in the palace were washed up, and the two brothers were placed upon the throne under the Regency of Sophia. But while she was outraging the feelings of the people by her contempt for ancient customs, and while her friendship with her Minister, Prince Galitsuin, was becoming a public scandal, Sophia was at the same time being defeated in a campaign against the Turks at the Crimea; and her popularity was gone.

In the meantime Peter was growing. With no training, no education, he was in his own disorderly, undisciplined fashion struggling up into manhood under the tutelage of a quick, strong intelligence, a hungry desire to know, and a hot, imperious temper. His first toys were drums and swords, and he first studied history from colored German prints; and as he grew older never wearied of reading about Ivan the Terrible. His delight was to go out upon the streets of Moscow and pick up strange bits of information from foreign adventurers about the habits and customs of their countries. He played at soldiers with his boy companions, and after finding how they did such things in Germany and in England, drilled his troops after the European fashion. But it was when he first saw a boat so built that it could go with or against the wind, that his strongest instinct was awakened. He would not rest until he had learned how to make and then to manage it. When this strange, passionate, self-willed boy was seventeen years old, he realized that his sister was scheming for the ruin of himself and his mother. In the rupture that followed, the people deserted Sophia and flocked about Peter. He placed his sister in a monastery, where, after fifteen years of fruitless intrigue and conspiracy, she was to die. Then, conjointly with his unfortunate brother, he commenced his reign (1689).

If Sophia had freed herself from the customary seclusion of Princesses, Peter emancipated himself from the usual proprieties of the palace. Both were scandalous. One had harangued soldiers and walked with her veil lifted, the other was swinging an ax like a carpenter, rowing like a Cossack, or fighting mimic battles with his grooms, who not infrequently knocked him down. In 1693 he gratified one great thirst and longing. With a large suite he went up to Archangel—and for the first time a Tsar looked out upon the sea! He ate and drank with the foreign merchants, and took deep draughts of the stimulating air from the west. He established a dock-yard, and while his first ship was building made perilous trips upon that unknown ocean from which Russia had all its life been shut out! His ship was the first to bear a Russian flag into foreign waters, and now Peter had taken the first step toward learning how to build a navy, but he had no place yet to use one. So he turned his nimble activities toward the Black Sea. He had only to capture Azof in the Crimea from the Turks, and he would have a sea for his navy—and then might easily make the navy for his sea! So he went down, carrying his soldiers and his new European tactics—in which no one believed—gathered up his Cossacks, and the attack was made, first with utter failure—all on account of the new tactics—and then at last came overwhelming success; and a triumphant return (1676) to Moscow under arches and garlands of flowers. Three thousand Russian families were sent to colonize Azof, which was guarded by some regiments of the Streltsui and by Cossacks—and now there must be a navy.

There must be nine ships of the line, and twenty frigates carrying fifty guns, and bombships, and fireships. That would require a great deal of money. It was then that the utility of the system of serfdom became apparent. The prelates and monasteries were taxed—one vessel to every eighty thousand serfs!—according to their wealth all the orders of nobility to bear their portion in the same way, and the peasants toiled on, never dreaming that they were building a great navy for the great Tsar. Peter then sent fifty young nobles of the court to Venice, England, and the Netherlands to learn the arts of shipbuilding and seamanship and gunnery. But how could he be sure of the knowledge and the science of these idle youths—unless he himself owned it and knew better than they? The time had come for his long-indulged dream of visiting the Western kingdoms.

But while there were rejoicings at the victory over the Turks, there was a feeling of universal disgust at the new order of things; with the militia (the Streltsui) because foreigners were preferred to them and because they were subjected to an unaccustomed discipline; with the nobles because their children were sent into foreign lands among heretics to learn trades like mechanics; and with the landowners and clergy because the cost of equipping a great fleet fell upon them. All classes were ripe for a revolt.

Sophia, from her cloister, was in correspondence with her agents, and a conspiracy ripened to overthrow Peter and his reforms. As the Tsar was one evening sitting down to an entertainment with a large party of ladies and gentlemen, word was brought that someone desired to see him privately upon an important matter. He promptly excused himself and was taken in a sledge to the appointed place. There he graciously sat down to supper with a number of gentlemen, as if perfectly ignorant of their plans. Suddenly his guard arrived, entered the house, and arrested the entire party, after which Peter returned in the best of humor to his interrupted banquet, quite as if nothing had happened. The next day the prisoners under torture revealed the plot to assassinate him and then lay it to the foreigners, this to be followed, by a general massacre of Europeans—men, women, and children. The ringleaders were first dismembered, then beheaded—their legs and arms being displayed in conspicuous places in the city, and the rest of the conspirators, excepting his sister Sophia, were sent to Siberia.

With this parting and salutary lesson to his subjects in 1697, Peter started upon his strange travels—in quest of the arts of civilization!

The embassy was composed of 270 persons. Among them was a young man twenty-five years old, calling himself Peter Mikhailof, who a few weeks later might have been seen at Saardam in Holland, in complete outfit of workman's clothes, in dust and by the sweat of his brow learning the art of ship-carpentry. Such was the first introduction to Europe of the Tsar of Russia! They had long heard of this autocrat before whom millions trembled, ruling like a savage despot in the midst of splendors rivaling the Arabian Nights. Now they saw him! And the amazement can scarcely be described. He dined with the Great Electress Sophia, afterwards first Queen of Prussia, and she wrote of him: "Nature has given him an infinity of wit. With advantages he might have been an accomplished man. What a pity his manners are not less boorish!"

But Peter was not thinking of the impression he made. With an insatiable inquisitiveness and an omnivorous curiosity, he was looking for the secret of power in nations. Nothing escaped him—cutlery, rope-making, paper manufacture, whaling industry, surgery, microscopy; he was engaging artists, officers, engineers, surgeons, buying models of everything he saw—or standing lost in admiration of a traveling dentist plying his craft in the market, whom he took home to his lodgings, learned the use of the instruments himself, then practiced his new art upon his followers.

At The Hague he endured the splendid public reception, then hurried off his gold-trimmed coat, his wig and hat and white feathers, and was amid grime and dust examining grist-mills, and ferry-boats, and irrigating machines. To a lady he saw on the street at Amsterdam he shouted "Stop!" then dragged out her enameled watch, examined it, and put it back without a word. A nobleman's wig in similar unceremonious fashion he snatched from his head, turned it inside out, and, not being pleased with its make, threw it on the floor.

Perhaps Holland heard without regret that her guest was going to England, where he was told the instruction was based upon the principles of ship-building and he might learn more in a few weeks than by a year's study elsewhere. King William III. placed a fleet at his disposal, and also a palace upon his arrival in London. A violent storm alarmed many on the way to England, but Peter enjoyed it and humorously said, "Did you ever hear of a Tsar being lost in the North Sea?" England was no less astonished than Holland at her guest, but William III., the wisest sovereign in Europe, we learn was amazed at the vigor and originality of his mind. The wise Bishop Burnet wrote of him: "He is mechanically turned, and more fitted to be a carpenter than a Prince. He told me he designed a great fleet for attacking the Turkish Empire, but he does not seem to me capable of so great an enterprise." This throws more light upon the limitations of Bishop Burnet than those of Peter the Great, and fairly illustrates the incompetency of contemporary estimates of genius; or, perhaps, the inability of talent to take the full measure of genius at any time. The good Bishop adds that he adores the wise Providence which "has raised up such a furious man to reign over such a part of the world." Louis XIV. "had procured the postponement of the honor of his visit"; so Peter prepared, after visiting Vienna, to go to Venice, but receiving disturbing news of matters at home, this uncivilized civilizer, this barbarian reformer of barbarism, turned his face toward Moscow.

There was widespread dissatisfaction in the empire. The Streltsui (militia) was rebellious, the heavily taxed landowners were angry, and the people disgusted by the prevalence of German clothes and shaved faces. Had not the wise Ivan IV. said: "To shave is a sin that the blood of all the martyrs could not cleanse"! And who had ever before seen a Tsar of Moscow quit Holy Russia to wander in foreign lands among Turks and Germans? for both were alike to them. Then it was rumored that Peter had gone in disguise to Stockholm, and that the Queen of Sweden had put him into a cask lined with nails to throw him into the sea, and he had only been saved by one of his guards taking his place; and some years later many still believed that it was a false Tsar who returned to them in 1700—that the true Tsar was still a prisoner at Stockholm, attached to a post. Sophia wrote to the Streltsui—"You suffer—but you will suffer more. Why do you wait? March on Moscow. There is no news of the Tsar." The army was told that he was dead, and that the boyars were scheming to kill his infant son Alexis and then get into power again. Thousands of revolted troops from Azof began to pour into Moscow, then there was a rumor that the foreigners and the Germans—who were introducing the smoking of tobacco and shaving, to the utter destruction of the holy faith—were planning to seize the town. Peter returned to find Moscow the prey to wild disorder, in the hands of scheming revolutionists and mutineers. He concluded it was the right time to give a lesson which would never be forgotten. He would make the partisans of Old Russia feel the weight of his hand in a way that would remind them of Ivan IV.

On the day of his return the nobles all presented themselves, laying their faces, as was the custom, in the dust. After courteously returning their salutations, Peter ordered that every one of them be immediately shaved; and as this was one of the arts he had practiced while abroad he initiated the process by skillfully applying the razor himself to a few of the long-beards. Then the inquiry into the rebellion commenced. The Patriarch tried to appease the wrath of the Tsar, who answered; "Know that I venerate God and his Mother as much as you do. But also know that I shall protect my people and punish rebels." The "chastisement" was worthy of Ivan the Terrible. The details of its infliction are too dreadful to relate, and we read with incredulous horror that "the terrible carpenter of Saardam plied his own ax in the horrible employment"—and that on the last day Peter himself put to death eighty-four of the Streltsui, "compelling his boyars to assist"—in inflicting this "chastisement!"



CHAPTER XV

CHARLES XII.—NARVA—ST. PETERSBURG

The Baltic was at this time a Swedish sea. Finland, Livonia, and all the territory on the eastern coast, where once the Russians and the German knights had struggled, was now under the sovereignty of an inexperienced young king who had just ascended the throne of his father Charles XI., King of Sweden. If Peter ever "opened a window" into the West, it must be done by first breaking through this Swedish wall. Livonia was deeply aggrieved just now because of some oppressive measures against her, and her astute minister, Patkul, suggested to the King of Poland that he form a coalition between that kingdom, Denmark, and Russia for the purpose of breaking the aggressive Scandinavian power in the North. The time was favorable, with disturbed conditions in Sweden, and a youth of eighteen without experience upon the throne. The Tsar, who had recently returned from abroad and had settled matters with his Streltsui in Moscow, saw in this enterprise just the opportunity he desired, and joined the coalition.

At the Battle of Narva (1700) there were two surprises: one when Peter found that he knew almost nothing about the art of warfare, and the other when it was revealed to Charles XII. that he was a military genius and his natural vocation was that of a conqueror. But if Charles was intoxicated by his enormous success, Peter accepted his humiliating defeat almost gratefully as a harsh lesson in military art. The sacrifice of men had been terrible, but the lesson was not lost. The next year there were small Russian victories, and these crept nearer and nearer to the Baltic, until at last the river upon which the great Nevski won his surname was reached—and the Neva was his! Peter lost no time. He personally superintended the building of a fort and then a church which were to be the nucleus of a city; and there may be seen in St. Petersburg to-day the little hut in which lived the Tsar while he was founding the capital which bears his name (1703). No wonder it seemed a wild project to build the capital of an empire, not only on its frontier, but upon low marshy ground subject to the encroachments of the sea from which it had only half emerged; and in a latitude where for two months of the year the twilight and the dawn meet and there is no night, and where for two other months the sun rises after nine in the morning and sets before three. Not only must he build a city, but create the dry land for it to stand upon; and it is said that six hundred acres have been reclaimed from the sea at St. Petersburg since it was founded.

Charles XII. was too much occupied to care for these insignificant events. He sent word that when he had time he would come and burn down Peter's wooden town. He was leading a victorious army toward Poland, he had beheaded the traitorous Patkul, and everything was bowing before him. The great Marlborough was suing for his aid in the coalition against Louis XIV. in the War of the Spanish Succession. Flushed with victory, Charles felt that the fate of Europe was lying in his hands. He had only to decide in which direction to move—whether to help to curb the ambition of the Grand Monarque in the West, or to carry out his first design of crushing the rising power of the Great Autocrat in the East. He preferred the latter. The question then arose whether to enter Russia by the North or by way of Poland, where he was now master. The scale was turned probably by learning that the Cossacks in Little Russia were growing impatient and were ripe for rebellion against the Tsar.

Peter was anxious to prevent the invasion. He had a wholesome admiration for the terrible Swedish army, not much confidence in his own, and his empire was in disorder. He sent word to Charles that he would be satisfied to withdraw from the West if he could have one port on the Baltic. The king's haughty reply was: "Tell your Tsar I will treat with him in Moscow," to which Peter rejoined: "My brother Charles wants to play the part of an Alexander, but he will not find in me a Darius."

It is possible that upon Ivan Mazeppa, who was chief or Hetman of the Cossacks at this time, rests the responsibility of the crushing defeat which terminated the brilliant career of Charles XII. Mazeppa was the Polish gentleman whose punishment at the hands of an infuriated husband has been the subject of poems by Lord Byron and Pushkin, and also of a painting by Horace Vernet. This picturesque traitor, who always rose upon the necks of the people who trusted him, whose friendships he one after another invariably betrayed, reached a final climax of infamy by offering to sacrifice the Tsar, the friend who believed in him so absolutely that he sent into exile or to death anyone who questioned his fidelity. Mazeppa had been with Peter at Azof, and abundant honors were waiting for him; but he was dazzled by the career of the Swedish conqueror, and believed he might rise higher under Charles XII. than under his rough, imperious master at Moscow. So he wrote the King that he might rely upon him to join him with 40,000 Cossacks in Little Russia. He thought it would be an easy matter to turn the irritated Cossacks from the Tsar. They were restive under the severity of the new military regime, and also smarting under a decree forbidding them to receive any more fugitive peasants fleeing from serfdom. But he had miscalculated their lack of fidelity and his own power over them.

It was this fatal promise, which was never to be kept, that probably lured Charles to his ruin. After a long and disastrous campaign he met his final crushing defeat at Poltova in 1709. The King and Mazeppa, companions in flight, together entered the Sultan's dominions as fugitives, and of the army before which a short time ago Europe had trembled—there was left not one battalion.

The Baltic was passing into new hands. "The window" opening upon the West was to become a door, and the key of the door was to be kept upon the side toward Russia! Sweden, which under Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XI., and Charles XII. had played such a glorious part, was never to do it again; and the place she had left vacant was to be filled by a new and greater Power. Russia had dispelled the awakened dream of a great Scandinavian Empire and—so long excluded and humiliated—was going to make a triumphal entry into the family of European nations.

The Tsar, with his innovations and reforms, was vindicated. For breadth of design and statesmanship there was not one sovereign in the coalition who could compare with this man who, Bishop Burnet thought, was better fitted for a mechanic than a Prince—and "incapable of a great enterprise."

Of Charles XII. it has been said that "he was a hero of the Scandinavian Edda set down in the wrong century," and again that he was the last of the Vikings, and of the Varangian Princes. But Mazeppa said of him, when dying in exile: "How could I have been seduced in my old age by a military vagabond!"

Ivan, Peter's infirm brother and associate upon the throne, had died in 1696. Another oppressive tie had also been severed. He had married at seventeen Eudoxia, belonging to a proud conservative Russian family. He had never loved her, and when she scornfully opposed his policy of reform, she became an object of intense aversion. After his triumph at Azof, he sent orders that the Tsaritsa must not be at the palace upon his return, and soon thereafter she was separated from her child Alexis, placed in a monastery, and finally divorced. At the surrender of Marienburg in Livonia (1702) there was among the captives the family of a Lutheran pastor named Glueck. Catherine, a young girl of sixteen, a servant in the family, had just married a Swedish soldier, who was killed the following day in battle. We would have to look far for a more romantic story than that of this Protestant waiting-maid. Menschikof, Peter's great general, was attracted by her beauty and took the young girl under his protection. But when the Tsar was also fascinated by her artless simplicity, she was transferred to his more distinguished protection. Little did Catherine think when weeping for her Swedish lover in Pastor Glueck's kitchen that she was on her way to the throne of Russia. But such was her destiny. She did not know how to write her name, but she knew something which served her better. She knew how to establish an influence possessed by no one else over the strange husband to whom in 1707 she was secretly married.



CHAPTER XVI

RUSSIA KNOUTED INTO CIVILIZATION—PETER DEAD

While Peter was absorbing more territory on the Baltic, and while he was with frenzied haste building his new city, Charles XII. was still hiding in Poland. The Turks were burning with desire to recapture Azof, and the Khan of Tartary had his own revenges and reprisals at heart urging him on; so, at the instigation of Charles and the Khan, the Sultan declared war against Russia in 1710.

It seemed to the Russian people like a revival of their ancient glories when their Tsar, with a great army, was following in the footsteps of the Grand Princes to free the Slav race from its old infidel enemies. Catherine, from whom Peter would not be separated, was to be his companion in the campaign. But the enterprise, so fascinating in prospect, was attended with unexpected disaster and suffering; and the climax was finally reached when Peter was lying ill in his tent, with an army of only 24,000 men about to face one of over 200,000—Tatars and Turks—commanded by skilled generals, adherents of Charles XII. This was probably the darkest hour in Peter's career. The work of his life was about to be overthrown; it seemed as if a miracle could not save him. Someone suggested that the cupidity of the Grand Vizier, Balthazi, was the vulnerable spot. He loved gold better than glory. Two hundred thousand rubles were quickly collected—Catherine throwing in her jewels as an added lure. The shining gold, with the glittering jewels on top, averted the inevitable fate. Balthazi consented to treat for peace upon condition that Charles XII. be permitted to go back to Sweden unmolested, and that Azof be relinquished (Treaty of Pruth). Peter's heart was sorely wrung by giving up Azof, and his fleet, and his outlet to the Southern seas. The peace was costly, but welcome; and Catherine had earned his everlasting gratitude.

The Tsar now returned to the task of reforming his people. There were to be no more prostrations before him: the petitioner must call himself "subject," not "slave," and must stand upright like a man in his presence, even if he had to use his stick to make him do so! The Asiatic caftan and the flowing robes must go along with the beards; the terem, with its "twenty-seven locks," must be abolished; the wives and daughters dragged from their seclusion must be clothed like Europeans. Marriage must not be compelled, and the betrothed might see each other before the wedding ceremony.

If it is difficult to civilize one willing barbarian, what must it have been to compel millions to put on the garment of respectability which they hated! Never before was there such a complete social reorganization, so entire a change in the daily habits of a whole people; and so violently effected. It required a soul of iron and a hand of steel to do it; and it has been well said that Russia was knouted into civilization. A secret service was instituted to see that the changes were adopted, and the knout and the ax were the accompaniment of every reforming edict. This extraordinary man was by main force dragging a sullen and angry nation into the path of progress, and by artificial means trying to accomplish in a lifetime what had been the growth of centuries in other lands. Then there must be no competing authorities—no suns shining near to the Central Sun. The Patriarchate—which, after Nikon's attempt in the reign of his grandfather, had been shorn of authority—was now abolished, and a Holy Synod of his own appointing took its place. For the Sobor or States-General there was substituted a Senate, also of his own appointing. The Streltsui, or militia, was swept out of existence; the military Cossacks were deprived of their Hetman or leader; and a standing army, raised by recruiting, replaced these organizations. Nobility meant service. Every nobleman while he lived must serve the state, and he held his fief only upon condition of such service; while a nobleman who could not read or write in a foreign tongue forfeited his birthright. This was the way Peter fought idleness and ignorance in his land! New and freer municipal organizations were given to the cities, enlarging the privileges of the citizens; schools and colleges were established; the awful punishment for debtors swept away. He was leveling up as well as leveling down—trying to create a great plateau of modern society, in which he alone towered high, rigid, and inexorable.

If the attempt was impossible and against nature, if Peter violated every law of social development by such a monstrous creation of a modern state, what could have been done better? How long would it have taken Russia to grow into modern civilization? And what would it be now if there had not been just such a strange being—with the nature and heart of a barbarian joined with a brain and an intelligence the peer of any in Europe, capable of seeing that the only hope for Russia was by force to convert it from an Asiatic into a European state?

One act bore with extreme severity upon the free peasantry. They were compelled to enroll themselves with the serfs in their Communes, or to be dealt with as vagrants. Peter has been censured for this and also for not extending his reforming broom to the Communes and overthrowing the whole patriarchal system under which they existed—a system so out of harmony with the modern state he was creating. But it seems to the writer rather that he was guided by a sure instinct when he left untouched the one thing in a Slavonic state, which was really Slavonic. He and the long line of rulers behind him had been ruling by virtue of an authority established by aliens. Russia had from the time of Rurik been governed and formed after foreign models. Peter was at least choosing better models than his predecessors. If it was an apparent mistake to build a modern, centralized state in the eighteenth century upon a social organization belonging to the eleventh century, it may be that in so doing, an inspired despot builded wiser than he knew. May it not be that the final regeneration of that land is to come some day, from the leaven of native instincts in her peasantry, which have never been invaded by foreign influences and which have survived all the vicissitudes of a thousand years in Russia?

The Raskolniks, composed chiefly of free peasants and the smaller merchant class, had fled in large numbers from these blasphemous changes—some among the Cossacks, and many more to the forests, hiding from persecution and from this reign of Satan. The more they studied the Apocalypse the plainer became the signs of the times. Satan was being let loose for a period. They had been looking for the coming of Antichrist and now he had come! The man in whom the spirit of Satan was incarnate was Peter the Great. How else could they explain such impious demeanor in a Tsar of Russia—except that he was of Satanic origin, and was the Devil in disguise? By his newly invented census had he not "numbered the people"—a thing expressly forbidden? And his new "calendar," transferring September to January, was it not clearly a trick of Satan to steal the days of the Lord? And his new title Imperator (Emperor), had it not a diabolic sound? And his order to shave, to disfigure the image of God! How would Christ recognize his own at the Last Day?

Hunted like beasts, these people were living in wild communities, dying often by their own hands rather than yield the point of making the sign of the cross with two fingers instead of three—2700 at one time voluntarily perishing in the flames, in a church where they had taken refuge. Peter put an end to their persecution. They were permitted to practice their ancient rites in the cities and to wear beards without molestation, upon condition of paying a double poll-tax.

The millions of Raskolniks in Russia to-day still consider New Russia a creation of the evil one, and the Tsar as Antichrist. They yield a sullen compliance—pray for the Tsar, then in private throw away the handle of door if a heretic has touched it. It is a conservative Slavonic element which every Tsar since Mikhail Romanoff has had to deal with.

Not one of the reforms was more odious to the people than the removal of the capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg. It violated the most sacred feelings of the nation; and many a soul was secretly looking forward to the time when there would be no Peter, and they would return to the shrine of revered associations. But the new city grew in splendor—a city not of wood, to be the prey of conflagrations like Moscow; but of stone, the first Russia had yet possessed. The great Nevski was already there lying in a cathedral bearing his name, and the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul was ready to entomb the future Tsars. And Peter held his court, a poor imitation of Versailles, and gave great entertainments at which the shy and embarrassed ladies in their new costumes kept apart by themselves, and the attempt to introduce the European dances was a very sorry failure. In 1712 Peter planned a visit to Paris, with two ends in view—a political alliance and a matrimonial one. He ardently desired to arrange for the future marriage of his little daughter Elizabeth with Louis XV., the infant King of France. Neither suit was successful, but it is interesting to learn how different was the impression he produced from the one twelve years before. Saint-Simon writes of him: "His manner was at once the most majestic, the proudest, the most sustained, and at the same time the least embarrassing." That he was still eccentric may be judged from his call upon Mme. de Maintenon. She was ill in bed, and could not receive him; but he was not to be baffled. He drew aside the bed-curtains and stared at her fixedly, while she in speechless indignation glared at him. So, without one word, these two historic persons met—and parted! He probably felt curious to see what sort of a woman had enthralled and controlled the policy of Louis XIV. Peter did not intend to subject his wife to the criticism of the witty Frenchwomen, so prudently left her at home.

Charles XII. died in 1718, and in 1721 there was at last peace with Sweden. But the saddest war of all, and one which was never to cease, was that in Peter's own household. His son Alexis, possibly embittered by his mother's fate, and certainly by her influence, grew up into a sullen, morose, and perverse youth. In vain did his father strive to fit him for his great destiny. By no person in the empire—unless, perhaps, his mother—were Peter's reforms more detested than by the son and heir to whom he expected to intrust them. He was in close communication with his mother Eudoxia, who in her monastery, holding court like a Tsaritsa, was surrounded by intriguing and disaffected nobles—all praying for the death of Peter. Every method for reaching the head or heart of this incorrigible son utterly failed. During Peter's absence abroad in 1717, Alexis disappeared. Tolstoi, the Tsar's emissary, after a long search tracked him to his hiding place and induced him to return. There was a terrible scene with his father, who had discovered that his son was more than perverse, he was a traitor—the center of a conspiracy, and in close relations with his enemies at home and abroad, betraying his interests to Germany and to Sweden.

The plan, instigated by Eudoxia, was that Alexis, immediately upon the death of his father—which God was importuned to hasten—should return to Moscow, restore the picturesque old barbarism, abandon the territory on the Baltic, and the infant navy, and the city of his father's love; in other words, that he should scatter to the winds the prodigious results of his father's reign! It was monstrous—and so was its punishment! Eudoxia was whipped and placed in close confinement, and thirty conspirators, members of her "court," were in various ways butchered. Then Alexis, the confessed traitor, was tried by a tribunal at the head of which was Menschikof—and sentenced to death.

On the morning of the 27th of June, 1718, the Tsar summoned his son to appear before nine of the greatest officers of the state. Concerning what happened, the lips of those nine men were forever sealed. But the day following it was announced that Alexis, the son of the emperor, was dead; and it is believed that he died under the knout.

The question of succession now became a very grave one. Alexis, who had under compulsion married Charlotte of Brunswick, left a son Peter. The only other heirs were the Tsar's two daughters Anna and Elizabeth, the children of Catherine. Shortly after the tragedy of his son's death, Peter caused Catherine to be formally crowned Empress, probably in anticipation of his own death, which occurred in 1725.



CHAPTER XVII

GERMINATING OF SEED—CATHERINE EMPRESS

The chief objection to a wise and beneficent despotism is that its creator is not immortal. The trouble with the Alexanders and the Charlemagnes and the Peters is that the span of human life is too short for their magnificent designs, which fall, while incomplete, into incompetent or vicious hands, and the work is overthrown. Peter's rest in his mausoleum at Sts. Peter and Paul must have been uneasy if he saw the reigns immediately succeeding his own. Not one man capable of a lofty patriotism like his, not one man working with unselfish energy for Russia; but, just as in the olden time, oligarchic factions with leaders striving for that cause which would best protect and elevate themselves. Menschikof, Apraxin, Tolstoi promoting the cause of Catherine that they may not suffer for the death sentence passed upon Alexis; Galitsuin and others seeing their interests in the succession of Peter, son of Alexis and grandson of the Emperor.

Catherine's harmless reign was over in two years (1727) and was followed by another, equally brief and harmless, by the young Peter II. The wily Menschikof succeeded in betrothing his daughter to the young Emperor, but not in retaining his ascendency over the self-willed boy.

We wonder if Peter saw his great minister scheming for wealth and for power, and then his fall, like Wolsey's, from his pinnacle. We wonder if he saw him with his own hands building his hut on the frozen plains of Siberia, clothed, not in rich furs and jewels, but bearded and in long, coarse, gray smock-frock; his daughter, the betrothed of an Emperor, clad, not in ermine, but in sheep-skin. Perhaps the lesson with his master the Carpenter of Saardam served him in building his own shelter in that dread abode. Nor was he alone. He had the best of society, and at every turn of the wheel at St. Petersburg it had aristocratic recruits. The Galitsuins and the Dolgorukis would have joined him soon had they not died in prison, and many others had they not been broken on the wheel or beheaded by Anna, the coarse and vulgar woman who succeeded Peter II., when he suddenly died in 1730.

Anna Ivanovna was the daughter of Peter's brother Ivan V., who was associated with him upon the throne. She had the force to defeat an oligarchic attempt to tie her hands. The plan had originated with the Galitsuins and Dolgorukis, and was really calculated to benefit the state in a period of incompetent or vicious rulers by having the authority of the Crown limited by a council of eight ministers. But it was reactionary. It was introducing a principle which had been condemned, and was a veiled attempt to undo the work of the Ivans and the Romanoffs, and to place the real power as of old in the hands of ruling families. The plan fell, and the leaders fell with it, and a host of their followers. The executioners were busy at St. Petersburg, and the aristocratic colony in Siberia grew larger.

Anna's reign was the period of a preponderating German influence in politics and at court. Germans held high positions; one of them, Gustav Biron, the highest and most influential of all. Anna's infatuation for this man made him the ruling spirit in her reign and the Regent in the next, until he had his turn in disgrace and exile. Added to the dissatisfaction on account of German ascendency was a growing feeling that the succession should come through Peter, instead of through Ivan, his insignificant associate upon the throne. Such was the prevailing sentiment at the time of Anna's death (1740). The Tsaritsa named Ivan, a grand-nephew, the infant son of her niece Anna, her successor under the Regency of Biron, the man who had controlled the policy of the administration during her reign.

This was only a brief and tragic episode. Biron was swiftly swept out of power and into exile, and succeeded in the Regency by Anna, the mother of the infant Emperor; then, following quickly upon that, was a carefully matured conspiracy formed in the interest of Elizabeth Petrovna, the beautiful daughter whose marriage with the young Louis XV. had been an object of the great Peter's hopes.

In this connection it is well to mention that the terminations vich and vna, so constantly met in Russian names, have an important significance—vich meaning son of, and vna daughter of. Elizabeth Petrovna is Elizabeth the daughter of Peter, and Peter Alexievich is Peter the son of Alexis. In like manner Tsarevich and Tsarevna are respectively the son and daughter of the Tsar; Czar, Czarevich, and Czarevna being the modern form, and Czarina instead of Tsaritsa. The historian may for convenience omit the surname thus created, but in Russia it would be a great breach of decorum to do so.

By a sudden coup d'etat, Elizabeth Petrovna took her rightful place upon the throne of her father (1741). In the dead of night the unfortunate Anna and her husband were awakened, carried into exile, and their infant son Ivan VI. was immured in a prison, where he was to grow up to manhood,—shattered in mind by his horrible existence of twenty years,—and then to be mercifully put out of the way as a possible menace to the ambitious plans of a woman.

Of the heads that dropped by orders of Elizabeth it is needless to speak; but of one that was spared there is an interesting account. Ostermann, a German, had been vice chancellor to the Empress Anna, and had also brought about the downfall of Biron the Regent. Now his turn had come. He was taken to the place of execution with the rest; his gray head was laid upon the block, his collar unbuttoned and gown drawn back by the executioner—when a reprieve was announced. Her Gracious Majesty was going to permit him to go to Siberia. He arose, bowed, said: "I pray you give me back my wig," calmly put it on the head he had not lost, buttoned his shirt, replaced his gown, and started to join his company of friends—and of enemies—in exile.

Elizabeth was a vain voluptuary. If any glory attaches to her reign it came from the stored energies left by her great father. The marvel is that in this succession of vicious and aimless tyrannies by shameless women and incompetent men, Russia did not fall into anarchy and revolution. But nothing was undone. The dignity of Moscow was preserved by the fact that the coronations must take place there. But there was no longer a reactionary party scheming for a return to the Ancient City. The seed scattered by Peter had everywhere taken hold upon the soil, and now began to burst into flower. A university was founded at Moscow. St. Petersburg was filled with French artists and scholars, and had an Academy of Art and of Science, which the great Voltaire asked permission to join, while conferring with Ivan Shuvalof over the History of Peter the Great which he was then engaged in writing. There were no more ugly German costumes; French dress, manners and speech were the fashion. Russia was assimilating Europe: it had tried Holland under Peter, then Germany under Empress Anna; but found its true affinity with France under Elizabeth, when to write and speak French like a Parisian became the badge of high station and culture.

So of its own momentum Russia had moved on without one strong competent personality at its head, and had become a tremendous force which must be reckoned with by the nations of Europe. In every great political combination the important question was, on which side she would throw her immense weight; and Elizabeth was courted and flattered to her heart's content by foreign diplomatists and their masters. Frederick the Great had reason to regret that he had been witty at her expense. It was almost his undoing by turning the scale against him at a critical moment. Elizabeth did not forget it and had her revenge when she joined Maria Theresa in the final struggle with Frederick in 1757. And Frederick also remembered it in 1760, when, as he dramatically expressed it, "The Barbarians were in Berlin engaged in digging the grave of humanity."