The people soon became exasperated by the haughtiness and insolence of the duumvirate, and murmurs growing deeper and louder, ere long led to an insurrection. On the 6th of July, 1648, the tzar, engaged in some civic celebration, was escorted in a procession to one of the monasteries of Moscow. The populace assembled in immense numbers to see him pass. On his return the crowd broke through the attendant guards, seized the bridle of his horse, and entreated him to listen to their complaints concerning the outrages perpetrated by his ministers. The tzar, much alarmed by their violence, listened impatiently to their complaints and promised to render them satisfaction. The people were appeased, and were quietly retiring when the partisans of the ministers rode among them, assailing them with abusive language, crowding them with their horses, and even striking at them with their whips. The populace, incensed, began to pelt them with stones, and though the guard of the tzar came to their rescue, they escaped with difficulty to the palace. The mob was now thoroughly aroused. They rushed to the palace of Moroson, burst down the doors, and sacked every apartment. They even tore from the person of his wife her jewels, throwing them into the street, but in other respects treating her with civility. They then passed to the palace of Miloslauski, treating it in the same manner. The mob had now possession of Moscow. Palace after palace of the partisans of the ministers was sacked, and several of the most distinguished members of the court were massacred.

The tzar, entirely deficient in energy, remained trembling in the Kremlin during the whole of the night of the 6th of July, only entreating his friends to strengthen the guards and to secure the palace from the outrages of the populace. Afraid to trust the Russian troops, who might be found in sympathy with the people, Alexis sent for a regiment of German troops who were in his employ, and stationed them around the palace. He then sent out an officer to disperse the crowd, assuring them that the disorders of which they complained should be redressed. They demanded that the offending ministers should be delivered to them, to be punished for the injuries they had inflicted upon the empire. Alexis assured them, through his messenger, upon his oath, that Moroson and Miloslauski had escaped, but promised that the third minister whom they demanded, a noble by the name of Plesseon, who was judge of the supreme court of judicature of Moscow, should be brought out directly, and that those who had escaped should be delivered up as soon as they could be arrested. The guilty, wretched man, thus doomed to be the victim to appease the rage of the mob, in a quarter of an hour was led out bareheaded by the servants of the tzar to the market-place. The mob fell upon him with clubs, beat him to the earth, dragged him over the pavements, and finally cut off his head. Thus satiated, about eleven o'clock in the morning they dispersed and returned to their homes.

In the afternoon, however, the reign of violence was resumed. The city was set on fire in several places, and the mob collected for plunder, making no effort to extinguish the flames. The fire spread with such alarming rapidity that the whole city was endangered. At length, however, after terrible destruction of property and the loss of many lives, the fury of the conflagration was arrested. The affrighted tzar now filled the important posts of the ministry with men who had a reputation for justice, and the clergy immediately espousing the cause of order, exhorted the populace to that respect and obedience to the higher powers which their religion enjoined. Alexis personally appeared before the people and addressed them in a speech, in which he made no apology for the outrages which had been committed by the government, but, assuming that the people were right in their demands, promised to repeal the onerous duties, to abolish the obnoxious monopolies, and even to increase the privileges which they had formerly enjoyed. The people received this announcement with great applause. The tzar, taking advantage of this return to friendliness, remarked,

"I have promised to deliver up to you Moroson and his confederates in the government. Their acts I admit to have been very unjust, but their personal relations to me renders it peculiarly trying for me to condemn them. I hope the people will not deny the first request I have ever made to them, which is, that these men, whom I have displaced, may be pardoned. I will answer for them for the future, and assure you that their conduct shall be such as to give you cause to rejoice at your lenity."

The people were so moved by this address, which the tzar pronounced with tears, that, as with one accord, they shouted, "God grant his majesty a long and happy life. The will of God and of the tzar be done." Peace was thus restored between the government and the people, and great good accrued to Russia from this successful insurrection.

During the early reign of Alexis, there were no foreign wars of any note. The Poles were all the time busy in endeavors to beat back the Turks, who, in wave after wave of invasion, were crossing the Danube. Upon the death of Ladislaus, King of Poland, Alexis, who had then a fine army at his command, offered to march to repel the Turks, if the Poles would choose him King of Poland. But at the same time France made a still more alluring offer, in case they would choose John Casimir, a prince in the interests of France, as their sovereign. The choice fell upon John Casimir. The provinces of Smolensk, Kiof and Tchernigov were then in possession of the Poles, having been, in former wars, wrested from Russia. The Poles had conquered them by taking advantage of internal troubles in Russia, which enabled them with success to invade the empire.

Alexis now thought it right, in his turn, to take advantage of the weakness of Poland, harassed by the Turks, to recover these lost provinces. He accordingly marched to the city of Smolensk, and encamped before it with an army of three hundred thousand men. Smolensk was one of the strongest places which military art had then been able to rear. The Poles had received sufficient warning of the attack to enable them to garrison the fortifications to their utmost capacity and to supply the town abundantly with all the materials of war. The siege was continued for a full year, with all the usual accompaniments of carnage and misery which attend a beleaguered fortress. At last the city, battered into ruins, surrendered, and the victorious Russians immediately swept over Lithuanian Poland, meeting no force to obstruct its march. Another army, equally resistless, swept the banks of the Dnieper, and recovered Tchernigov and Kiof.

Misfortunes seemed now to be falling like an avalanche upon Poland. While the Turks were assailing them on the south, and the Russians were wresting from them opulent and populous provinces on the north, Charles Gustavus of Sweden, was crossing her eastern frontiers with invading hosts. The impetuous Swedish king, in three months, overran nearly the whole of Poland, threatening the utter extinction of the kingdom. This alarmed the surrounding kingdoms, lest Sweden should become too powerful for their safety. Alexis immediately entered into a truce with Poland, which guaranteed to him the peaceable possession of the provinces he had regained, and then united his armies with those of his humiliated rival, to arrest the strides of the Swedish conqueror.

Sieges, cannonades and battles innumerable ensued, over hundreds of leagues of territory, bordering the shores of the Baltic. For several years the maddened strife continued, producing its usual fruits of gory fields, smouldering cities, desolated homes, with orphanage, widowhood, starvation, pestilence, and every conceivable form of human misery. At length, all parties being exhausted, peace was concluded on the 2d of June, 1661.

The great insurrection in Moscow had taught the tzar Alexis a good lesson, and he profited by it wisely. He was led to devote himself earnestly to the welfare of his people. His recovery of the lost provinces of Russia was considered just, and added immeasurably to his renown. Conscious of the imperfection of his education, he engaged earnestly in study, causing many important scientific treatises to be translated into the Russian language, and perusing them with diligence and delight. He had the laws of the several provinces collected and published together. Many new manufactures were introduced, particularly those of silk and linen. Though rigidly economical in his expenses, he maintained a magnificent court and a numerous army. He took great interest in the promotion of agriculture, bringing many desert wastes into cultivation, and peopling them with the prisoners taken in the Polish and Swedish wars. It was the custom in those barbaric times to drive, as captives of war, the men, women and children of whole provinces, to be slaves in the territory of the conqueror. Often they occupied the position of a vassal peasantry, tilling the soil for the benefit of their lords. With singular foresight, Alexis planned for the construction of a fleet both on the Caspian and the Black Sea. With this object in view, he sent for ship carpenters from Holland and other places.

All Europe was now trembling in view of the encroachments of the Turks. Several very angry messages had passed between the sultan and the tzar, and the Turks had proved themselves ever eager to combine with the Tartars in bloody raids into the southern regions of the empire. Alexis resolved to combine Christian Europe, if possible, in a war of extermination against the Turks. To this end he sent embassadors to every court in Christendom. As his embassador was presented to Pope Clement X., the pope extended his foot for the customary kiss. The proud Russian drew back, exclaiming,

"So ignoble an act of homage is beneath the dignity of the prince whom I have the honor to serve."

He then informed the pope that the Emperor of Russia had resolved to make war against the Turks, that he wished to see all Christian princes unite against those enemies of humanity and religion, that for that purpose he had sent embassadors to all the potentates of Europe, and that he exhorted his holiness to place himself at the head of a league so powerful, so necessary for the protection of the church, and from which every Christian State might derive the greatest advantages. Foolish punctilios of etiquette interfered with any efficient arrangements with the court of Rome, and though the embassadors of other powers were received with the most marked respect, these powers were all too much engrossed with their own internal affairs to enlist in this enterprise for the public good. The Turks were, however, alarmed by these formidable movements, and, fearing such an alliance, were somewhat checked in their career of conquest.

On the 10th of November, 1674, the King of Poland died, and again there was an attempt on the part of Russia to unite Poland and the empire under the same crown. All the monarchies in Europe were involved in intrigues for the Polish crown. The electors, however, chose John Sobieski, a renowned Polish general, for their sovereign. The tzar was very apprehensive that the Poles would make peace with the Turks, and thus leave the sultan at liberty to concentrate all his tremendous resources upon Russia. Alexis raised three large armies, amounting in all to one hundred and fifty thousand men, which he sent into the Ukraine, as the frontier country, watered by the lower Dnieper, was then called.

The Turkish army, which was spread over the country between the Danube and the Dniester, now crossed this latter stream, and, in solid battalions, four hundred thousand strong, penetrated the Ukraine. They immediately commenced the fiend-like work of reducing the whole province to a desert. The process of destruction is swift. Flames, in a few hours, will consume a city which centuries alone have reared. A squadron of cavalry will, in a few moments, trample fields of grain which have been slowly growing and ripening for months. In less than a fortnight nearly the whole of the Ukraine was a depopulated waste, the troops of the tzar being shut up in narrow fortresses. The King of Poland, apprehensive that this vast Turkish army would soon turn with all their energies of destruction upon his own territories, resolved to march, with all the forces of his kingdom, to the aid of the Russians. One hundred thousand Polish troops immediately besieged the great city of Humau, which the Turks had taken, midway between the Dnieper and the Dniester.

John Sobieski, the newly-elected King of Poland, was a veteran soldier of great military renown. He placed himself at the head of other divisions of the army, and endeavored to distract the enemy and to divide their forces. At the same time, Alexis himself hastened to the theater of war that he might animate his troops by his presence. The Turks, finding themselves unable to advance any further, sullenly returned to their own country by the way of the Danube. Upon the retirement of the Turks, the Russians and the Poles began to quarrel respecting the possession of the Ukraine. Affairs were in this condition when the tzar Alexis, in all the vigor of manhood, was taken sick and died. He was then in the forty-sixth year of his age. His first wife, Maria Miloslouski, had died several years before him, leaving two sons and four daughters. His second wife, Natalia Nariskin, to whom he was married in the year 1671, still lived with her two children, a son, Peter, who was subsequently entitled the Great, as being the most illustrious monarch Russia has known, and a daughter Natalia.

Alexis, notwithstanding the unpropitious promise of his youth, proved one of the wisest and best princes Russia had known for years. He was a lover of peace, and yet prosecuted war with energy when it was forced upon him. His oldest surviving son, Feodor, who was but eighteen years of age at the time of his father's death, succeeded to the crown. Feodor, following the counsel which his father gave him on his dying bed, soon took military possession of nearly all of the Ukraine. The Turks entered the country again, but were repulsed with severe loss. Apprehensive that they would speedily return, the tzar made great efforts to secure a friendly alliance with Poland, in which he succeeded by paying a large sum of money in requital for the provinces of Smolensk and Kiof which his arms had recovered.

In the spring of 1678, the Turks again entered the Ukraine with a still more formidable army than the year before. The campaign was opened by laying siege to the city Czeherin, which was encompassed by nearly four hundred thousand men, and, after a destructive cannonade, was carried by storm. The garrison, consisting of thirty thousand men, were put to the sword. The Russian troops were so panic-stricken by this defeat, that they speedily retreated. The Turks pursued them a long distance, constantly harassing their rear. But the Turks, in their turn, were compelled to retire, being driven back by famine, a foe against whom their weapons could make no impression.

The Ottoman Porte soon found that little was gained by waging war with an empire so vast and sparsely settled as Russia, and that their conquest of the desolated and depopulated lands of the Ukraine, was by no means worth the expenses of the war. The Porte was therefore inclined to make peace with Russia, that the Turkish armies might fall upon Poland again, which presented a much more inviting field of conquest. The Poles were informed of this through their embassador at Constantinople, and earnestly appealed to the tzar of Russia, and to all the princes in Christendom to come to their aid. The selfishness which every court manifested is humiliating to human nature. Each court seemed only to think of its own aggrandizement. Feodor consented to aid them only on condition that the Poles should renounce all pretension to any places then in possession of Russia. To this the Polish king assented, and the armies of Russia and Poland were again combined to repel the Turks.



CHAPTER XVIII.

THE REGENCY OF SOPHIA.

From 1680 to 1697.

Administration of Feodor.—Death of Feodor.—Incapacity of Ivan.—Succession of Peter.—Usurpation of Sophia.—Insurrection of the Strelitzes.—Massacre in Moscow.—Success of the Insurrection.—Ivan and Peter Declared Sovereigns under the Regency of Sophia.—General Discontent.—Conspiracy against Sophia.—Her Flight to the Convent.—The Conspiracy Quelled.—New Conspiracy.—Energy of Peter.—He Assumes the Crown.—Sophia Banished to a Convent.—Commencement of the Reign of Peter.

Feodor, influenced by the wise counsels of his father, devoted much attention to the beautifying of his capital, and to developing the internal resources of the empire. He paved the streets of Moscow, erected several large buildings of stone in place of the old wooden structures. Commerce and arts were patronized, he even loaning, from the public treasury, sums of money to enterprising men to encourage them in their industrial enterprises. Foreigners of distinction, both scholars and artisans, were invited to take up their residence in the empire. The tzar was particularly fond of fine horses, and was very successful in improving, by importations, the breed in Russia.

Feodor had always been of an exceedingly frail constitution, and it was evident that he could not anticipate long life. In the year 1681 he married a daughter of one of the nobles. His bride, Opimia Routoski, was also frail in health, though very beautiful. Six months had hardly passed away ere the youthful empress exchanged her bridal robes and couch for the shroud and the tomb. The emperor himself, grief-stricken, was rapidly sinking in a decline. His ministers almost forced him to another immediate marriage, hoping that, by the birth of a son, the succession of his half brother Peter might be prevented. The dying emperor received into his emaciate, feeble arms the new bride who had been selected for him, Marva Matweowna, and after a few weeks of languor and depression died. He was deeply lamented by his subjects, for during his short reign of less than three years he had developed a noble character, and had accomplished more for the real prosperity of Russia than many a monarch in the longest occupation of the throne.

Feodor left two brothers—Ivan, a brother by the same mother, Eudocia, and Peter, the son of the second wife of Alexis. Ivan was very feeble in body and in mind, with dim vision, and subject to epileptic fits. Feodor consequently declared his younger brother Peter, who was but ten years of age, his successor. The custom of the empire allowed him to do this, and rendered this appointment valid. It was generally the doom of the daughters of the Russian emperors, who could seldom find a match equal to their rank, to pass their lives immured in a convent.

Feodor had a sister, Sophia, a very spirited, energetic woman, ambitious and resolute, whose whole soul revolted against such a moping existence. Seeing that Feodor had but a short time to live, she left her convent and returned to the Kremlin, persisting in her resolve to perform all sisterly duties for her dying brother. Ivan, her own brother, was incapable of reigning, from his infirmities. Peter, her half-brother, was but a child. Sophia, with wonderful energy, while tending at the couch of Feodor, made herself familiar with the details of the administration, and, acting on behalf of the dying sovereign, gathered the reins of power into her own hands.

As soon as Feodor expired, and it was announced that Peter was appointed successor to the throne, to the exclusion of his elder brother Ivan, Sophia, through her emissaries, excited the militia of the capital to one of the most bloody revolts Moscow had ever witnessed. It was her intention to gain the throne for the imbecile Ivan, as she doubted not that she could, in that event, govern the empire at her pleasure. Peter, child as he was, had already developed a character of self-reliance which taught Sophia that he would speedily wrest the scepter from her hands.

The second day after the burial of Feodor, the militia, or strelitzes as they were called, a body of citizen soldiers in Moscow, corresponding very much with the national guard of Paris, surrounded the Kremlin, in a great tumult, and commenced complaining of nine of their colonels, who owed them some arrears of pay. They demanded that these officers should be surrendered to them, and their demand was so threatening that the court, intimidated, was compelled to yield. The wretched officers were seized by the mob, tied to the ground naked, upon their faces, and whipped with most terrible severity. The soldiers thus overawed opposition, and became a power which no one dared resist. Sophia was their inspiring genius, inciting and directing them through her emissaries. Though some have denied her complicity in these deeds of violence, still the prevailing voice of history is altogether against her.

Sophia, having the terrors of the mob to wield, as her executive power, convened an assembly of the princes of the blood, the generals, the lords, the patriarch and the bishops of the church, and even of the principal merchants. She urged upon them that Ivan, by right of birth, was entitled to the empire. The mother of Peter, Natalia Nariskin, now empress dowager, was still young and beautiful. She had two brothers occupying posts of influence at court. The family of the Nariskins had consequently much authority in the empire. Sophia dreaded the power of her mother-in-law, and her first efforts of intrigue were directed against the Nariskins. Her agents were everywhere busy, in the court and in the army, whispering insinuations against them. It was even intimated that they had caused the death of Feodor, by bribing his physician to poison him, and that they had attempted the life of Ivan. At length Sophia gave to her agents a list of forty lords whom they were to denounce to the insurgent soldiery as enemies to them and to the State.

This was the signal for their massacre. Two were first seized in the palace of the Kremlin, and thrown out of the window. The soldiers received them upon their pikes, and dragged their mutilated corpses through the streets to the great square of the city. They then rushed back to the palace, where they found Athanasius Nariskin, one of the brothers of the queen dowager. He was immediately murdered. They soon after found three of the proscribed in a church, to which they had fled as a sanctuary. Notwithstanding the sacredness of the church, the unhappy lords were instantly hewn to pieces by the swords of the assassins. Thus frenzied with blood, they met a young lord whom they mistook for Ivan Nariskin, the remaining brother of the mother of Peter. He was instantly slain, and then the assassins discovered their error. With some slight sense of justice, perhaps of humanity, they carried the bleeding corpse of the young nobleman to his father. The panic-stricken, heartbroken parent dared not rebuke them for the murder, but thanked them for bringing to him the corpse of his child. The mother, more impulsive and less cautious, broke out into bitter and almost delirious reproaches. The father, to appease her, said to her, in an under tone, "Let us wait till the hour shall come when we shall be able to take revenge."

Some one overheard the imprudent words, and reported them to the mob. They immediately returned, dragged the old man down the stairs of his palace by the hair, and cut his throat upon his own door sill. They were now searching the city, in all directions, for Von Gaden the German physician of the late tzar, who was accused of administering to him poison. They met in the streets, the son of the physician, and demanded of him where his father was. The trembling lad replied that he did not know. They cut him down. Soon they met another German physician.

"You are a doctor," they said. "If you have not poisoned our sovereign you have poisoned others, and deserve death."

He was immediately murdered. At length they discovered Von Gaden. He had attempted to disguise himself in a beggar's garb. The worthy old man, who, like most eminent physicians, was as distinguished for humanity as for eminent medical skill, was dragged to the Kremlin. The princesses themselves came out and mingled with the crowd, begging for the life of the good man, assuring them that he had been a faithful physician and that he had served their sovereign with zeal. The soldiers declared that he deserved to die, as they had positive proof that he was a sorcerer, for, in searching his apartments, they had found the skin of a snake and several reptiles preserved in bottles. Against such proof no earthly testimony could avail.

They also demanded that Ivan Nariskin, whom they had been seeking for two days, should be delivered up to them. They were sure that he was concealed somewhere in the Kremlin, and they threatened to set fire to the palace and burn it to the ground unless he were immediately delivered to them. It was evident that these threats would be promptly put into execution. Firing the palace would certainly insure his death. There was the bare possibility of escape by surrendering him to the mob. The empress herself went to her brother in his concealment and informed him of the direful choice before him. The young prince sent for the patriarch, confessed his sins, partook of the Lord's Supper, received the sacrament of extreme unction in preparation for death, and was then led out, by the patriarch himself, dressed in his pontifical robes and bearing an image of the Virgin Mary, and was delivered by him to the soldiers. The queen and the princesses accompanied the victim, surrounding him, and, falling upon their knees before the soldiers, they united with the patriarch in pleading for his life. But the mob, intoxicated and maddened, dragged the young prince and the physician before a tribunal which they had constituted on the spot, and condemned them to what was expressively called the punishment of "ten thousand slices." Their bodies were speedily cut into the smallest fragments, while their heads were stuck upon the iron spikes of the balustrade.

These outrages were terminated by a proclamation from the soldiery that Ivan and Peter should be joint sovereigns under the regency of Sophia. The regent rewarded her partisans liberally for their efficient and successful measures. Upon the leaders she conferred the confiscated estates of the proscribed. A monument of shame was reared, upon which the names of the assassinated were engraved as traitors to their country. The soldiers were rewarded with double pay.

Sophia unscrupulously usurped all the prerogatives and honors of royalty. All dispatches were sealed with her hand. Her effigy was stamped upon the current coin. She took her seat as presiding officer at the council. To confer a little more dignity upon the character of her imbecile brother, Ivan, she selected for him a wife, a young lady of extraordinary beauty whose father had command of a fortress in Siberia. It was on the 25th of June, 1682, that Sophia assumed the regency. In 1684 Ivan was married. The scenes of violence which had occurred agitated the whole political atmosphere throughout the empire. There was intense exasperation, and many conspiracies were formed for the overthrow of the government. The most formidable of these conspiracies was organized by Couvanski, commander-in-chief of the strelitzes. He was dissatisfied with the rewards he had received, and, conscious that he had placed Sophia upon the throne through the energies of the soldiers he commanded, he believed that he might just as easily have placed himself there. Having become accustomed to blood, the slaughter of a few more persons, that he might place the crown upon his own brow, appeared to him a matter of but little moment. He accordingly planned to murder the two tzars, the regent Sophia and all the remaining princes of the royal family. Then, by lavishing abundant rewards upon the soldiers, he doubted not that he could secure their efficient cooeperation in maintaining him on the throne.

The conspiracy was discovered upon the eve of its accomplishment. Sophia immediately fled with the two tzars and the princes, to the monastery of the Trinity. This was a palace, a convent and a fortress. The vast pile, reared of stone, was situated thirty-six miles from Moscow, and was encompassed with deep ditches, and massive ramparts bristling with cannon. The monks were in possession of the whole country for a space of twelve miles around this almost impregnable citadel. From this safe retreat Sophia opened communications with the rebel chief. She succeeded in alluring him to come half way to meet her in conference. A powerful band of soldiers, placed in ambush, seized him. He was immediately beheaded, with one of his sons, and thirty-seven strelitzes who had accompanied him.

As soon as the strelitzes in Moscow, numbering many thousands, heard of the assassination of their general and of their comrades, they flew to arms, and in solid battalions, with infantry, artillery and cavalry, marched to the assault of the convent. The regent rallied her supporters, consisting of the lords who were her partisans, and their vassals, and prepared for a vigorous defense. Russia seemed now upon the eve of a bloody civil war. The nobles generally espoused the cause of the tzars under the regency of Sophia. Their claims seemed those of legitimacy, while the success of the insurrectionary soldiers promised only anarchy. The rise of the people in defense of the government was so sudden and simultaneous, that the strelitzes were panic-stricken, and soon, in the most abject submission, implored pardon, which was wisely granted them. Sophia, with the tzars, surrounded by an army, returned in triumph to Moscow. Tranquillity was thus restored.

Sophia still held the reins of power with a firm grasp. The imbecility of Ivan and the youth of Peter rendered this usurpation easy. Very adroitly she sent the most mutinous regiments of the strelitzes on apparently honorable missions to the distant provinces of the Ukraine, Kesan, and Siberia. Poland, menaced by the Turks, made peace with Russia, and purchased her alliance by the surrender of the vast province of Smolensk and all the conquered territory in the Ukraine. In the year 1687, Sophia sent the first Russian embassy to France, which was then in the meridian of her splendor, under the reign of Louis XIV. Voltaire states that France, at that time, was so unacquainted with Russia, that the Academy of Inscriptions celebrated this embassy by a medal, as if it had come from India.[10] The Crimean Tartars, in confederacy with the Turks, kept Russia, Poland, Hungary, Transylvania, and the various provinces of the German empire in perpetual alarm. Poland and Russia were so humiliated, that for several years they had purchased exemption from these barbaric forays by paying the Tartars an annual tribute amounting to fifty thousand dollars each. Sophia, anxious to wipe out this disgrace, renewed the effort, which had so often failed, to unite all Europe against the Turks. Immense armies were raised by Russia and Poland and sent to the Tauride. For two years a bloody war raged with about equal slaughter upon both sides, while neither party gained any marked advantage.

[Footnote 10: "La France n'avait eu encore aucune correspondance avec la Russie; on ne le connaissait pas; et l'Academie des Inscriptions celebra par une medaille cette ambassade, comme si elle fut venue des Indes."—Histoire de l'Empire de Russie, sous Pierre le Grand, page 93.]

Peter had now attained his eighteenth year, and began to manifest pretty decisively a will of his own. He fell in love with a beautiful maiden, Ottokesa Lapuchin, daughter of one of his nobles, and, notwithstanding all the intriguing opposition of Sophia, persisted in marrying her. This marriage increased greatly the popularity of the young prince, and it was very manifest that he would soon thrust Sophia aside, and with his own vigorous arm, wield the scepter alone.

The regent, whose hands were already stained with the blood of assassination, now resolved to remove Peter out of the way. The young prince, with his bride, was residing at his country seat, a few miles out from Moscow. Sophia, in that corrupt, barbaric age, found no difficulty in obtaining, with bribes, as many accomplices as she wanted. Two distinguished generals led a party of six hundred strelitzes out of the city, to surround the palace of Peter and to secure his death. The soldiers had already commenced their march, when Peter was informed of his danger. The tzar leaped upon a horse, and spurring him to his utmost speed, accompanied by a few attendants, escaped to the convent of the Trinity, to which we have before alluded as one of the strongest fortresses of Russia. The mother, wife and sister of the tzar, immediately joined him there.

The soldiers were not aware of the mission which their leaders were intending to accomplish. When they arrived at the palace, and it was found that the tzar had fled, and it was whispered about that he had fled to save his life, the soldiers, by nature more strongly attached to a chivalrous young man than to an intriguing, ambitious woman, whose character was of very doubtful reputation, broke out into open revolt, and, abandoning their officers, marched directly to the monastery and offered their services to Peter. The patriarch, whose religious character gave him almost unbounded influence with the people, also found that he was included as one of the victims of the conspiracy; that he was to have been assassinated, and his place conferred upon one of the partisans of Sophia. He also fled to the convent of the Trinity.

Sophia now found herself deserted by the soldiery and the nation. She accordingly, with the most solemn protestations, declared that she had been accused falsely, and after sending messenger after messenger to plead her cause with her brother, resolved to go herself. She had not advanced more than half way, ere she was met by a detachment of Peter's friends who informed her, from him, that she must go directly back to Moscow, as she could not be received into the convent. The next day Peter assembled a council, and it was resolved to bring the traitors to justice. A colonel, with three hundred men, was sent to the Kremlin to arrest the officers implicated in the conspiracy. They were loaded with chains, conducted to the Trinity, and in accordance with the barbaric custom of the times were put to the torture. In agony too dreadful to be borne, they of course made any confession which was demanded.

Peter was reluctant to make a public example of his sister. There ensued a series of punishments of the conspirators too revolting to be narrated. The mildest of these punishments was exile to Siberia, there, in the extremest penury, to linger through scenes of woe so long as God should prolong their lives. The executions being terminated and the exiles out of sight, Sophia was ordered to leave the Kremlin, and retire to the cloisters of Denitz, which she was never again to leave. Peter then made a triumphal entry into Moscow. He was accompanied by a guard of eighteen thousand troops. His feeble brother Ivan received him at the outer gate of the Kremlin. They embraced each other with much affection, and then retired to their respective apartments. The wife and mother of Peter accompanied him on his return to Moscow.

Thus terminated the regency of Sophia. From this time Peter was the real sovereign of Russia. His brother Ivan took no other share in the government than that of lending his name to the public acts. He lived for a few years in great seclusion, almost forgotten, and died in 1696. Peter was physically, as well as intellectually, a remarkable man. He was tall and finely formed, with noble features lighted up with an extremely brilliant eye. His constitution was robust, enabling him to undergo great hardship, and he was, by nature, a man of great activity and energy. His education, however, was exceedingly defective. The regent Sophia had not only exerted all her influence to keep him in ignorance, but also to allure him into the wildest excesses of youthful indulgence. Even his recent marriage had not interfered with the publicity of his amours, and all distinguished foreigners in Moscow were welcomed by him to scenes of feasting and carousing.

Notwithstanding these deplorable defects of character, for which much allowance is to be made from the neglect of his education and his peculiar temptations, still it was manifest to close observers even then, that the seeds of true greatness were implanted in his nature. When five years of age, he was riding with his mother in a coach, and was asleep in her arms. As they were passing over a bridge where there was a heavy fall of water from spring rains, the roar of the cataract awoke him. The noise, with the sudden aspect of the rushing torrent, created such terror that he was thrown into a fever, and, for years, he could not see any standing water, much less a running stream, without being thrown almost into convulsions. To overcome this weakness, he resolutely persisted in plunging into the waves until his aversion was changed into a great fondness for that element.

Ashamed of his ignorance, he vigorously commenced studying German, and, notwithstanding all the seductions of the court, succeeded in acquiring such a mastery of the language as to be able both to speak and write it correctly. Peter's father, Alexis, had been anxious to open the fields of commerce to his subjects. He had, at great expense, engaged the services of ship builders and navigators from Holland. A frigate and a yacht had been constructed, with which the Volga had been navigated to its mouth at Astrachan. It was his intention to open a trade with Persia through the Caspian Sea. But, in a revolt at Astrachan, the vessels were seized and destroyed, and the captain killed. Thus terminated this enterprise. The master builder, however, remained in Russia, where he lived a long time in obscurity.

One day, Peter, at one of his summer palaces of Ismaelhof, saw upon the shore of the lake the remains of a pleasure boat of peculiar construction. He had never before seen any boat but such as was propelled by oars. The peculiarity of the structure of this arrested his attention, and being informed that it was constructed for sails as well as oars, he ordered it to be repaired, that he might make trial of it. It so chanced that the shipwright, Brandt, from Holland, who had built the boat, was found, and the tzar, to his great delight, enjoyed, for the first time in his life, the pleasures of a sail. He immediately gave directions for the boat to be transported to the great lake near the convent of the Trinity, and here he ordered two frigates and three yachts to be built. For months he amused himself piloting his little fleet over the waves of the lake. Like many a plebeian boy, the tzar had now acquired a passion for the sea, and he longed to get a sight of the ocean.

With this object in view, in 1694 he set out on a journey of nearly a thousand miles to Archangel, on the shores of the White Sea. Taking his shipwrights with him, he had a small vessel constructed, in which he embarked for the exploration of the Frozen Ocean, a body of water which no sovereign had seen before him. A Dutch man-of-war, which chanced to be in the harbor at Archangel, and all the merchant fleet there accompanied the tzar on this expedition. The sovereign himself had already acquired much of the art of working a ship, and on this trip devoted all his energies to improvement in the science and practical skill of navigation.

While the tzar was thus turning his attention to the subject of a navy, he at the same time was adopting measures of extraordinary vigor for the reorganization of the army. Hitherto the army had been composed of bands of vassals, poorly armed and without discipline, led by their lords, who were often entirely without experience in the arts of war. Peter commenced, at his country residence, with a company of fifty picked men, who were put through the most thorough drill by General Gordon, a Scotchman of much military ability, who had secured the confidence of the tzar. Some of the sons of the lords were chosen as their officers, but these young nobles were all trained by the same military discipline, Peter setting them the example by passing through all the degrees of the service from the very lowest rank. He shouldered his musket, and commencing at the humblest post, served as sentinel, sergeant and lieutenant. No one ventured to refuse to follow in the footsteps of his sovereign. This company, thus formed and disciplined, was rapidly increased until it became the royal guard, most terrible on the field of battle. When this regiment numbered five thousand men, another regiment upon the same principle was organized, which contained twelve thousand. It is a remarkable fact stated by Voltaire, that one third of these troops were French refugees, driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

One of the first efforts of the far-sighted monarch was to consolidate the army and to bring it under the energy of one mind, by breaking down the independence of the nobles, who had heretofore acted as petty sovereigns, leading their contingents of vassals. Peter was thus preparing to make the influence of Russia felt among the armies of Europe as it had never been felt before.

The Russian empire, sweeping across Siberian Asia, reached down indefinitely to about the latitude of fifty-two degrees, where it was met by the Chinese claims. Very naturally, a dispute arose respecting the boundaries, and with a degree of good sense which seems almost incredible in view of the developments of history, the two half-civilized nations decided to settle the question by conference rather than by war. A place of meeting, for the embassadors, was appointed on the frontiers of Siberia, about nine hundred miles from the great Chinese wall. Fortunately for both parties, there were some Christian missionaries who accompanied the Chinese as interpreters. Probably through the influence of these men of peace a treaty was soon formed. Both parties pledged themselves to the observance of the treaty in the following words, which were doubtless written by the missionaries:

"If any of us entertain the least thought of renewing the flames of war, we beseech the supreme Lord of all things, who knows the heart of man, to punish the traitor with sudden death."

Two large pillars were erected upon the spot to mark the boundaries between the two empires, and the treaty was engraved upon each of them. Soon after, a treaty of commerce was formed, which commerce, with brief interruptions, has continued to flourish until the present day. Peter now prepared, with his small but highly disciplined army, to make vigorous warfare upon the Turks, and to obtain, if possible, the control of the Black Sea. Early in the summer of 1695 the Russian army commenced its march. Striking the head waters of the Don, they descended the valley of that river to attack the city of Azov, an important port of the Turks, situated on an island at the mouth of the Don.

The tzar accompanied his troops, not as commander-in-chief, but a volunteer soldier. Generals Gordon and Le Fort, veteran officers, had the command of the expedition. Azov was a very strong fortress and was defended by a numerous garrison. It was found necessary to invest the place and commence a regular siege. A foreign officer from Dantzic, by the name of Jacob, had the direction of the battering train. For some violation of military etiquette, he had been condemned to ignominious punishment. The Russians were accustomed to such treatment, but Jacob, burning with revenge, spiked his guns, deserted, joined the enemy, adopted the Mussulman faith, and with great vigor conducted the defense.

Jacob was a man of much military science, and he succeeded in thwarting all the efforts of the besiegers. In the attempt to storm the town the Russians were repulsed with great loss, and at length were compelled to raise the siege and to retire. But Peter was not a man to yield to difficulties. The next summer he was found before Azov, with a still more formidable force. In this attempt the tzar was successful, and on the 28th of July the garrison surrendered without obtaining any of the honors of war. Elated with success Peter increased the fortifications, dug a harbor capable of holding large ships, and prepared to fit out a strong fleet against the Turks; which fleet was to consist of nine sixty gun ships, and forty-one of from thirty to fifty guns. While the fleet was being built he returned to Moscow, and to impress his subjects with a sense of the great victory obtained, he marched the army into Moscow beneath triumphal arches, while the whole city was surrendered to all the demonstrations of joy. Characteristically Peter refused to take any of the credit of the victory which had been gained by the skill and valor of his generals. These officers consequently took the precedency of their sovereign in the triumphal procession, Peter declaring that merit was the only road to military preferment, and that, as yet, he had attained no rank in the army. In imitation of the ancient Romans, the captives taken in the war were led in the train of the victors. The unfortunate Jacob was carried in a cart, with a rope about his neck, and after being broken upon the wheel was ignominiously hung.



CHAPTER XIX.

PETER THE GREAT.

From 1697 to 1702.

Young Russians Sent to Foreign Countries.—The Tzar Decides Upon a Tour of Observation.—His Plan of Travel.—Anecdote.—Peter's Mode of Life in Holland.—Characteristic Anecdotes.—The Presentation of the Embassador.—The Tzar Visits England.—Life at Deptford.—Illustrious Foreigners Engaged in His Service.—Peter Visits Vienna.—The Game of Landlord.—Insurrection in Moscow.—Return of the Tzar, and Measures of Severity.—War with Sweden.—Disastrous Defeat of Narva.—Efforts to Secure the Shores of the Baltic.—Designs Upon the Black Sea.

It was a source of mortification to the tzar that he was dependent upon foreigners for the construction of his ships. He accordingly sent sixty young Russians to the sea-ports of Venice and Leghorn, in Italy, to acquire the art of ship-building, and to learn scientific and practical navigation. Soon after this he sent forty more to Holland for the same purpose. He sent also a large number of young men to Germany, to learn the military discipline of that warlike people.

He now adopted the extraordinary resolve of traveling himself, incognito, through most of the countries of Europe, that he might see how they were governed, and might become acquainted with the progress they had made in the arts and sciences. In this European tour he decided to omit Spain, because the arts there were but little cultivated, and France, because he disliked the pompous ceremonials of the court of Louis XIV. His plan of travel was as ingenuous as it was odd. An extraordinary embassage was sent by him, as Emperor of Russia, to all the leading courts of Europe. These embassadors received minute instructions, and were fitted out for their expedition with splendor which should add to the renown of the Russian monarchy. Peter followed in the retinue of this embassage as a private gentleman of wealth, with the servants suitable for his station.

Three nobles of the highest dignity were selected as embassadors. Their retinue consisted of four secretaries, twelve gentlemen, two pages for each embassador, and a company of fifty of the royal guard. The whole embassage embraced two hundred persons. The tzar was lost to view in this crowd. He reserved for himself one valet de chambre, one servant in livery, and a dwarf. "It was," says Voltaire, "a thing unparalleled in history, either ancient or modern, for a sovereign, of five and twenty years of age, to withdraw from his kingdoms, only to learn the art of government." The regency, during his absence, was entrusted to two of the lords in whom he reposed confidence, who were to consult, in cases of importance, with the rest of the nobility. General Gordon, the Scotch officer, was placed in command of four thousand of the royal troops, to secure the peace of the capital.

The embassadors commenced their journey in April, 1697. Passing directly west from Moscow to Novgorod, they thence traversed the province of Livonia until they reached Riga, at the mouth of the Dwina. Peter was anxious to examine the important fortifications of this place, but the governor peremptorily forbade it, Riga then belonging to Sweden. Peter did not forget the affront. Continuing their journey, they arrived at Konigsburg, the capital of the feeble electorate of Brandenburg, which has since grown into the kingdom of Prussia. The elector, an ambitious man, who subsequently took the title of king, received them with an extravagant display of splendor. At one of the bacchanalian feasts, given on the occasion, the bad and good qualities of Peter were very conspicuously displayed. Heated with wine, and provoked by a remark made by La Fort, who was one of his embassadors, he drew his sword and called upon La Fort to defend himself. The embassador humbly bowed, folded his hands upon his breast, and said,

"Far be it from me. Rather let me perish by the hand of my master." The tzar, enraged and intoxicated, raised his arm to strike, when one of the retinue seized the uplifted hand and averted the blow. Peter immediately recovered his self-possession, and sheathing his sword said to his embassador,

"I ask your pardon. It is my great desire to reform my subjects, and yet I am ashamed to confess that I am unable to reform myself."

From Konigsburg they continued their route to Berlin, and thence to Hamburg, near the mouth of the Elbe, which was, even then, an important maritime town. They then turned their steps towards Amsterdam. As soon as they reached Emmeric, on the Rhine, the tzar, impatient of the slow progress of the embassage, forsook his companions, and hiring a small boat, sailed down the Rhine and proceeded to Amsterdam, reaching that city fifteen days before the embassy. "He flew through the city," says one of the annalists of those days, "like lightning," and proceeded to a small but active sea-port town on the coast, Zaandam. The first person they saw here was a man fishing from a small skiff, at a short distance from the shore. The tzar, who was dressed like a common Dutch skipper, in a red jacket and white linen trowsers, hailed the man, and engaged lodgings of him, consisting of two small rooms with a loft over them, and an adjoining shed. Strangely enough, this man, whose name was Kist, had been in Russia working as a smith, and he knew the tzar. He was strictly enjoined on no account to let it be known who his lodger was.

A group soon gathered around the strangers, with many questions. Peter told them that they were carpenters and laborers from a foreign country in search of work. But no one believed this, for the attendants of the tzar still wore the rich robes which constituted the costume of Russia. With sympathy as beautiful as it is rare, Peter called upon several families of ship carpenters who had worked for him and with him at Archangel, and to some of these families he gave valuable presents, which he said that the tzar of Russia had sent to them. He clothed himself, and ordered his companions to clothe themselves, in the ordinary dress of the dockyard, and purchasing carpenters' tools they all went vigorously to work.

The next day was the Sabbath. The arrival of these strangers, so peculiar in aspect and conduct, was noised abroad, and when Peter awoke in the morning he was greatly annoyed by finding a large crowd assembled before his door. Indeed the rumor of the Russian embassage, and that the tzar himself was to accompany it, had already reached Amsterdam, and it was shrewdly suspected that these strangers were in some way connected with the expected arrival of the embassadors. One of the barbers in Amsterdam had received from a ship carpenter in Archangel a portrait of the tzar, which had been for some time hanging in his shop. He was with the crowd around the door. The moment his eye rested upon Peter, he exclaimed, with astonishment, "that is the tzar!" His form, features and character were all so marked that he could not easily be mistaken.

No further efforts were made at concealment, though Peter was often very much annoyed by the crowds who followed his footsteps and watched all his actions. He was persuaded to change his lodgings to more suitable apartments, though he still wore his workman's dress and toiled in the ship-yard with energy, and also with skill which no one could surpass. The extraordinary rapidity of his motions astonished and amused the Dutch. "Such running, jumping and clambering over the shipping," they said, "we never witnessed before." To the patriarch in Moscow he wrote,

"I am living in obedience to the commands of God, which were spoken to father Adam: 'In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread.'"

Very many anecdotes are related of Peter during this portion of his life, which, though they may be apochryphal, are very characteristic of his eccentric nature. At one time he visited a celebrated iron manufactory, and forged himself several bars of iron, directing his companions to assist him in the capacity of journeymen blacksmiths. Upon the bars he forged, he put his own mark, and then he demanded of Muller, the proprietor, payment for his work, at the same rate he paid other workmen. Having received eighteen altins, he said, looking at the patched shoes on his feet,

"This will serve me to buy a pair of shoes, of which I stand in great need. I have earned them well, by the sweat of my brow, with hammer and anvil."

When the embassadors entered Amsterdam, Peter thought it proper to take a part in the procession, which was arranged in the highest style of magnificence. The three embassadors rode first, followed by a long train of carriages, with servants in rich livery on foot. The tzar, dressed as a private gentleman, was in one of the last carriages in the train of his embassadors. The eyes of the populace searched for him in vain. From this fete he returned eagerly to his work, with saw, hammer and adz, at Zaandam. He persisted in living like the rest of the workmen, rising early, building his own fire, and often cooking his own meals. One of the inhabitants of Zaandam thus describes his appearance at that time:

"The tzar is very tall and robust, quick and nimble of foot, dexterous and rapid in all his actions. His face is plump and round; fierce in his look, with brown eyebrows, and short, curly hair of a brownish color. He is quick in his gait, swinging his arms, and holding in one of them a cane."

The Dutch were so much interested in him, that a regular diary was kept in Zaandam of all he said and did. Those who were in daily intercourse with him preserved a memorandum of all that occurred. He was generally called by the name of Master Peter. While hard at work in the ship-yard, he received intelligence of troubles in Poland. The renowned king, John Sobieski, died in 1696. The electors were divided in the choice of a successor. Augustus II., Elector of Saxony, by means of bribes and his army, obtained the vote. But there was great dissatisfaction, and a large party of the nation rallied around the prince of Conti, the rival candidate. Peter, learning these facts, immediately sent word, from his carpenter's shop, to Augustus, offering to send an army of thirty thousand men to his assistance. He frequently went from Zaandam to Amsterdam, to attend the anatomical lectures of the celebrated Ruisch. His thirst for knowledge appeared to be universal and insatiable. He even performed, himself, several surgical operations. He also studied natural philosophy under Witsen. Most minds would have been bewildered by such a multiplicity of employments, but his mental organization was of that peculiar class which grasps and retains all within its reach. He worked at the forge, in the rope-walks, at the sawing mills, and in the manufactures for wire drawing, making paper and extracting oil.

While at Zaandam, Peter finished a sixty gun ship, upon which he had worked diligently from the laying of the keel. As the Russians then had no harbor in the Baltic, this ship was sent to Archangel, on the shores of the White Sea. Peter also engaged a large number of French refugees, and Swiss and German artists, to enter his service and sent them to Moscow. Whenever he found a mechanic whose work testified to superior skill, he would secure him at almost any price and send him to Moscow. To geography he devoted great attention, and even then devised the plan of uniting the Caspian and the Black Sea by a ship canal.

Early in January, 1698, Peter, having passed nine months at Zaandam, left for the Hague. King William III. sent his yacht to the Hague, to convey the tzar to England, with a convoy of two ships of war. Peter left the Hague on the 18th of January, and arrived in London on the 21st. Though he attempted here no secrecy as to his rank, he requested to be treated only as a private gentleman. A large mansion was engaged for him, near the royal navy yard at Deptford, a small town upon the Thames, about four miles from London. The London Postman, one of the leading metropolitan journals of that day, thus announces this extraordinary visit:

"The tzar of Muscovy, desiring to raise the glory of his nation, and avenge the Christians of all the injuries they have received from the Turks, has abrogated the wild manners of his predecessors, and having concluded, from the behavior of his engineers and officers, who were sent him by the Elector of Brandenburg, that the western nations of Europe understood the art of war better than others, he resolved to take a journey thither, and not wholly to rely upon the relations which his embassadors might give him; and, at the same time, to send a great number of his nobility into those parts through which he did not intend to travel, that he might have a complete idea of the affairs of Europe, and enrich his subjects with the arts of all other Christian nations; and as navigation is the most useful invention that ever was yet found out, he seems to have chosen it as his own part in the general inquiry he is about. His design is certainly very noble, and discovers the greatness of his genius. But the model he has proposed himself to imitate is a convincing proof of his extraordinary judgment; for what other prince, in the world, was a fitter pattern for the great Emperor of Muscovy, than William the Third, King of Great Britain?"[11]

[Footnote 11: Postman, No. 417.]

In London and Deptford Peter followed essentially the same mode of life which he had adopted in Amsterdam. There was not a single article belonging to a ship, from the casting of a cannon to the making of cables, to which he did not devote special attention. He also devoted some time to watch making. A number of English artificers, and also several literary and scientific gentlemen from England, were taken into his service. He made arrangements with a distinguished Scotch geometrician and two mathematicians from Christ Church hospital, to remove to Moscow, who laid the foundation in Russia of the Marine Academy. To astronomy, the calculation of eclipses, and the laws of gravitation he devoted much thought, guided by the most scientific men England could then produce. Perry, an English engineer, was sent to Russia to survey a route for a ship canal from the ocean to the Caspian and from the Caspian to the Black Sea. A company of merchants paid the tzar seventy-five thousand dollars for permission to import tobacco into Russia. The sale of this narcotic had heretofore been discouraged in Russia, by the church, as demoralizing in its tendency and inducing untidy habits. Peter was occasionally induced to attend the theater, but he had no relish for that amusement. He visited the various churches and observed the mode of conducting religious worship by the several sects.

Before leaving England the tzar was entertained by King William with the spectacle of a sham sea fight. In this scene Peter was in his element, and in the excess of his delight he declared that an English admiral must be a happier man than even the tzar of Russia. His Britannic majesty made his guest also a present of a beautiful yacht, called the Royal Transport. In this vessel Peter returned to Holland, in May, 1698, having passed four months in England. He took with him quite a colony of emigrants, consisting of three captains of men of war, twenty-five captains of merchant ships, forty lieutenants, thirty pilots, thirty surgeons, two hundred and fifty gunners, and three hundred artificers. These men from Holland sailed in the Royal Transport to Archangel, from whence they were sent to different places where their services were needed. The officers whom the tzar sent to Italy, also led back to Russia many artists from that country.

From Holland the Emperor of Russia, with his suite, repaired to Vienna to observe the military discipline of the Germans, who had then the reputation of being the best soldiers in Europe. He also wished to enter into a closer alliance with the Austrian court as his natural ally against the Turks. Peter, however, insisted upon laying aside all the ceremonials of royalty, and, as a private person, held an interview with the Emperor Leopold.

Nothing of especial interest occurred during the brief residence of Peter in Vienna. The Emperor of Germany paid the tzar every possible attention which could be conferred upon one who had the strongest reluctance to be gazed upon, or to take part in any parade. For the amusement of the tzar the emperor revived the ancient game of landlord. The royal game is as follows. The emperor is landlord, the empress landlady, the heir apparent to the throne, the archdukes and archduchesses are generally their assistants. They entertain people of all nations, dressed after the most ancient fashion of their respective countries. The invited guests draw lots for tickets, on each of which is written the name or the nation of the character they are to represent. One is a Chinese mandarin, another a Persian mirza, another a Roman senator. A queen perhaps represents a dairy maid or a nursery girl. A king or prince represents a miller, a peasant or a soldier. Characteristic amusements are introduced. The landlord and landlady, with their family, wait upon the table.

On this occasion the emperor's eldest son, Joseph, who was the heir apparent, represented, with the Countess of Traun, the ancient Egyptians. His brother, the Archduke Charles, and the Countess of Walstein appeared as Flemings in the reign of Charles V. His sister Mary and Count Fraun were Tartars. Josephine, another daughter of Leopold, with the Count of Workla, represented Persians. Marianne, a third daughter, and Prince Maximilian of Hanover were North Holland peasants. Peter presented himself as a Friesland boor, a character, we regret to say, which the tzar could personify without making the slightest change in his usual habits, for Peter was quite a stranger to the graces of the polished gentleman.

This game seems to have been quite a favorite in the Austrian court. Maria Antoinette introduced it to Versailles. The tourist is still shown the dairy where that unhappy queen made butter and cheese, the mill where Louis XVI. ground his grist, and the mimic village tavern where the King and Queen of France, as landlord and landlady, received their guests.

Peter was just leaving Vienna to go to Venice when he received intelligence that a rebellion had broken out in Moscow. His ambitious sister Sophia, who had been placed with a shaven head in the cloisters of a monastery, took advantage of the tzar's absence to make another attempt to regain the crown. She represented that the nation was in danger of being overrun with foreigners, that their ancient customs would all be abolished, and that their religion would be subverted. She involved several of the clergy in her plans, and a band of eight thousand insurgents were assembled, who commenced their march towards Moscow, hoping to rouse the metropolis to unite with them. General Gordon, whom Peter had left in command of the royal guard, met them, and a battle ensued in which a large number of the insurgents were slain, and the rest were taken prisoners and conducted to the capital. Hearing these tidings Peter abandoned all plans for visiting Italy, and set out impetuously for Moscow, and arrived at the Kremlin before it was known that he had left Germany.

Peter was a rough, stern man, and he determined to punish the abettors of this rebellion with severity, which should appall all the discontented. General Gordon, in the battle, had slain three thousand of the insurgents and had taken five thousand captive. These prisoners he had punished, decimating them by lot and hanging every tenth man. Peter rewarded magnificently the royal guard, and then commenced the terrible chastisement of all who were judged guilty of sympathizing in the conspiracy. Some were broken on the wheel and then beheaded. Others were hung in chains, on gibbets near the gates of the city, and left, frozen as solid as marble, to swing in the wind through the long months of winter. Stone monuments were erected, on which were engraved the names, the crimes and the punishment of the rebels. A large number were banished to Siberia, to Astrachan, and to the shores of the Sea of Azof. The entire corps of the strelitzes was abolished, and their place supplied by the new guard, marshaled and disciplined on the model of the German troops. The long and cumbersome robes which had been in fashion were exchanged for a uniform better adapted for rapid motion. The sons of the nobles were compelled to serve in the ranks as common soldiers before they could be promoted to be officers. Many of the young nobles were sent to the tzar's fleet in the Sea of Azof to serve their apprenticeship for the navy. The revenue of the empire had thus far been raised by the payment of a stipulated sum from each noble according to his amount of land. The noble collected this sum from his vassals or bondmen; but they often failed of paying in the amount demanded. Peter took now the collection of the revenue into his own hands, appointing officers for that purpose.

Reforms in the church he also undertook. The patriarch, Adrian, who was the pope of the Greek church, dying about this time, Peter declared that he should have no successor. Virtually assuming the authority of the head of the church, he gathered the immense revenues of the patriarchal see into the royal treasury. Though professedly intrusting the government of the church to the bishops, he controlled them with despotism which could brook no opposition. Anxious to promote the population of his vast empire, so sparsely inhabited, he caused a decree to be issued, that all the clergy, of every, grade, should be married; and that whenever one of the clergy lost a wife his clerical functions should cease until he obtained another. Regarding the monastic vow, which consigned young men and young women to a life of indolence in the cloister, as alike injurious to morality and to the interests of the State, he forbade any one from taking that vow until after the age of fifty had been passed. This salutary regulation has since his time been repealed.

The year, in Russia, had for ages commenced with the 1st of September. Peter ordered that, in conformity with the custom in the rest of Europe, the year should commence with the 1st of January. This alteration took place in the year 1700, and was celebrated with the most imposing solemnities. The national dress of the Russians was a long flowing robe, which required no skill in cutting or making. Razors were also scarce, and every man wore his beard. The tzar ordered long robes and beards to be laid aside. No man was admitted to the palace without a neatly shaven face. Throughout the empire a penalty was imposed upon any one who persisted in wearing his beard. A smooth face thus became in Russia, and has continued, to the present day, the badge of culture and refinement. Peter also introduced social parties, to which ladies with their daughters were invited, dressed in the fashions of southern Europe.

Heretofore, whenever a Russian addressed the tzar, he always said, "Your slave begs," etc. Peter abolished this word, and ordered subject to be used instead. Public inns were established on the highways, and relays of horses for the convenience of travelers. Conscious of the power of splendor to awe the public mind, he added very considerably to the magnificence of his court, and instituted an order of knighthood. In all these measures Peter wielded the energies of an unrelenting despotism, and yet of a despotism which was constantly devoted, not to his own personal aggrandizement, but to the welfare of his country.

The tzar established his great ship-yard at Voronise, on the Don, from which place he could float his ships down to the Sea of Azof, hoping to establish there a fleet which would soon give him the command of the Black Sea. In March, 1699, he had thirty-six ships launched and rigged, carrying each from thirty to sixty guns; and there were then twenty more ships on the stocks. There were, also, either finished or in process of construction, eighteen large galleys, one hundred smaller brigantines, seven bomb ships and four fire ships. At the same time Peter was directing his attention to the Volga and the Caspian, and still more vigorously to the Baltic, upon whose shores he had succeeded in obtaining a foothold.

And now the kingdom of Sweden came, with a rush, into the political arena. Poland had ceded to Sweden nearly the whole of Livonia. The Livonians were very much dissatisfied with the administration of the government under Charles XI., and sent a deputation to Stockholm to present respectful remonstrances. The indignant king consigned all of the deputation, consisting of eight gentlemen, to prison, and condemned the leader, John Patgul, to an ignominious death. Patgul escaped from prison, and hastening to Poland, urged the new sovereign, Augustus, to reconquer the province of Livonia, which Poland had lost, assuring him the Livonians would aid with all their energies to throw off the Swedish yoke. Patgul hastened from Poland to Moscow, and urged Peter to unite with Augustus, in a war against Sweden, assuring him that thus he could easily regain the provinces of Ingria and Carelia, which Sweden had wrested from his ancestors. Denmark also, under its new sovereign, Frederic IV., was induced to enter into the alliance with Russia and Poland against Sweden. Just at that time, Charles XI. died, and his son, Charles XII., a young man of eighteen, ascended the throne. The youth and inexperience of the new monarch encouraged the allies in the hope that they might make an easy conquest.

Charles XII., a man of indomitable, of maniacal energy, and who speedily infused into his soldiers his own spirit, came down upon Denmark like northern wolves into southern flocks and herds. In less than six weeks the war was terminated and the Danes thoroughly humbled. Then with his fleet of thirty sail of the line and a vast number of transports, he crossed the Baltic, entered the Gulf of Finland, and marching over ice and snow encountered the Russians at Narva, a small town about eighty miles south-west of the present site of the city of St. Petersburg. The Russians were drawn up eighty thousand strong, behind intrenchments lined with one hundred and forty-five pieces of artillery; Charles XII. had but nine thousand men. Taking advantage of one of the fiercest of wintry storms, which blew directly into the faces of the Russians, smothering them with snow and sleet mingled with smoke, and which concealed both the numbers and the movements of the Swedes, Charles XII. hurled his battalions with such impetuosity upon the foe, that in less than an hour the camp was taken by storm. One of the most awful routs known in the annals of war ensued. The Swedes toiled to utter exhaustion in cutting down the flying fugitives. Thirty thousand Russians perished on that bloody field. Nearly all of the remainder were taken captive, with all their artillery. Disarmed and with uncovered heads, thirty thousand of these prisoners defiled before the victorious king.[12]

[Footnote 12: These are the numbers as accurately as they can now be ascertained by the most careful sifting of the contradictory accounts. The forces of the Russians have been variously estimated at from forty thousand to one hundred thousand. That the Swedes had but nine thousand is admitted on all hands.]

Peter, the day before this disastrous battle, had left the intrenchments at Narva to go to Novgorod, ostensibly to hasten forward the march of some reinforcements. When Peter was informed of the annihilation of his army he replied, with characteristic coolness,

"I know very well that the Swedes will have the advantage of us for a considerable time; but they will teach us, at length, to beat them."

He immediately collected the fragments of his army at Novgorod, and repairing to Moscow issued orders for a certain proportion of the bells of the churches and convents throughout the empire to be cast into cannon and mortars. In a few months one hundred pieces of cannon for sieges, and forty-two field pieces, with twelve mortars and thirteen howitzers, were sent to the army, which was rapidly being rendezvoused at Novgorod.

Charles XII., having struck this terrific blow, left the tzar to recover as best he could, and turned his attention to Poland, resolved to hurl Augustus from the throne. Peter himself hurried to Poland to encourage Augustus to the most vigorous prosecution of the war, promising to send him speedily twenty thousand troops. In the midst of these disasters and turmoil, the tzar continued to prosecute his plans for the internal improvement of his empire, and commenced the vast enterprise of digging a canal which should unite the waters of the Baltic with the Caspian, first, by connecting the Don with the Volga, and then by connecting the Don with the Dwina, which empties into the Baltic near Riga.

War continued to rage very fiercely for many months between the Swedes on one side, and Russia and Poland on the other, Charles XII. gaining almost constant victories. The Swedes so signally proved their superiority in these conflicts, that when, on one occasion, eight thousand Russians repulsed four thousand Swedes, the tzar said,

"Well, we have at last beaten the Swedes, when we were two to one against them. We shall by and by be able to face them man to man."

In these conflicts, it was the constant aim of Peter to get a foothold upon the shores of the Baltic, that he might open to his empire the advantages of commerce. He launched a large fleet upon Lake Ladoga, a large inland sea, which, by the river Neva, connects with the Gulf of Finland. The fleets of Sweden penetrated these remote waters, and for months their solitudes resounded with the roar of naval conflicts. We can not refrain from recording the heroic conduct of Colonel Schlippenbuch, the Swedish commander of the town of Notteburg, on this lake. The town was invested by a large Russian army. For a month the Russians battered the town night and day, until it presented the aspect of a pile of ruins, and the garrison was reduced to one hundred men. Yet, so indomitable was this little band, that, standing in the breaches, they extorted honorable terms of capitulation from their conqueror. They would not surrender but on condition of being allowed to send for two Swedish officers, who should examine their remaining means of defense, and inform their master, Charles XII., that it was impossible for them any longer to preserve the town.

Peter was a man of too strong sense to be elated and vainglorious in view of such success. He knew full well that Charles XII., since the battle of Narva, looked with utter contempt upon the Russian soldiers, and he was himself fully conscious of the vast superiority of the Swedish troops. But while Charles XII., with a monarch's energies, was battering down the fortresses and cutting to pieces the armies of Poland, Peter had gained several victories over small detachments of Swedish troops left in Russia. To inspire his soldiers with more confidence, he ordered a very magnificent celebration of these victories in Moscow. It was one of the most gorgeous fete days the metropolis had ever witnessed. The Swedish banners, taken in several conflicts on sea and land, were borne in front of the procession, while all the prisoners, taken in the campaign, were marched in humiliation in the train of the victors.

While thus employed, the stern, indefatigable tzar was pressing forward the building of his fleet on the Don for the conquest of the Black Sea, and was unwearied in his endeavors to promote the elevation of his still semi-barbaric realms, by the introduction of the sciences, the arts, the manufactures and the social refinements of southern Europe.



CHAPTER XX.

CONQUESTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF PETER THE GREAT.

From 1702 TO 1718.

Peter takes Lake Lagoda and the Neva.—Foundation of St. Petersburg.—Conquest of Livonia.—Marienburg Taken by Storm.—The Empress Catharine.—Extraordinary Efforts in Building St. Petersburg.—Threat of Charles XII.—Deposition of Augustus.—Enthronement of Stanislaus.—Battle of Pultowa.—Flight of Charles XII. to Turkey.—Increased Renown of Russia.—Disastrous Conflict with the Turks.—Marriage of Alexis.—His Character.—Death of his Wife.—The Empress Acknowledged.—Conquest of Finland.—Tour of the Tzar to Southern Europe.

Charles XII., despising the Russians, devoted all his energies to the humiliation of Augustus of Poland, resolving to pursue him until he had driven him for ever from his throne. Peter was thus enabled to get the command of the lake of Ladoga, and of the river Neva, which connects that lake with the Baltic. He immediately laid the foundations of a city, St. Petersburg, to be his great commercial emporium, at the mouth of the Neva, near the head of the Gulf of Finland. The land was low and marshy, but in other respects the location was admirable. Its approaches could easily be defended against any naval attack, and water communications were opened with the interior through the Neva and lake Ladoga.

Livonia was a large province, about the size of the State of Maine, nearly encircled by the Gulf of Riga, the Baltic, the Gulf of Finland and Lake Tchude. The possession of this province, which contained some five hundred thousand inhabitants, was essential to Peter in the prosecution of his commercial enterprises. During the prosecution of this war the small town of Marienburg, on the confines of Livonia, situated on the shores of a lake, was taken by storm. The town was utterly destroyed and nearly all the inhabitants slain, a few only being taken prisoners. The Russian commanding officer saw among these captives a young girl of extraordinary beauty, who was weeping bitterly. Attracted by such rare loveliness and uncontrollable grief he called her to him, and learned from her that she was born in a village in the vicinity on the borders of the lake; that she had never known her father, and that her mother died when she was but three years of age. The protestant minister of Marienburg, Dr. Gluck, chancing to see her one day, and ascertaining that she was left an orphan and friendless, received her into his own house, and cherished her with true parental tenderness.

The very evening before the town of Marienburg was assaulted and taken by storm, she was married to a young Livonian sergeant, a very excellent young man, of reputable family and possessing a little property. In the horrors of the tempest of war which immediately succeeded the nuptial ceremonies, her husband was slain, and as his body could never be found, it probably was consumed in the flames, which laid the town in ashes. General Boyer, moved with compassion, took her under his protection. He ascertained that her character had always been irreproachable, and he ever maintained that she continued to be a pattern of virtue. She was but seventeen years of age when Peter saw her. Her beauty immediately vanquished him. His wife he had repudiated after a long disagreement, and she had retired to a convent. Peter took the lovely child, still a child in years, under his own care, and soon privately married her, with how much sacredness of nuptial rites is not now known. Such was the early history of Catharine, who subsequently became the recognized and renowned Empress of Russia.

"That a poor stranger," says Voltaire, "who had been discovered amid the ruins of a plundered town, should become the absolute sovereign of that very empire into which she was led captive, is an incident which fortune and merit have never before produced in the annals of the world."

The city of Petersburg was founded on the 22d of May, 1703, on a desert and marshy spot of ground, in the sixtieth degree of latitude. The first building was a fort which now stands in the center of the city. Though Peter was involved in all the hurry and confusion of war, he devoted himself with marvelous energy to the work of rearing an imperial city upon the bogs and the swamps of the Neva. It required the merciless vigor of despotism to accomplish such an enterprise. Workmen were marched by thousands from Kesan, from Astrachan, from the Ukraine, to assist in building the city. No difficulties, no obstacles were allowed to impede the work. The tzar had a low hut, built of plank, just sufficient to shelter him from the weather, where he superintended the operations. This hut is still preserved as one of the curiosities of St. Petersburg. In less than a year thirty thousand houses were reared, and these were all crowded by the many thousands Peter had ordered to the rising city, from all parts of the empire. Death made terrible ravages among them; but the remote provinces furnished an abundant supply to fill the places of the dead. Exposure, toil, and the insalubrity of the marshy ground, consigned one hundred thousand to the grave during this first year.

The morass had to be drained, and the ground raised by bringing earth from a distance. Wheelbarrows were not in use there, and the laborers conveyed the earth in baskets, bags and even in the skirts of their clothes, scooping it up with their hands and with wooden paddles. The tzar always manifested great respect for the outward observances of religion, and was constant in his attendance upon divine service. As we have mentioned, the first building the tzar erected was a fort, the second was a church, the third a hotel. In the meantime private individuals were busily employed, by thousands, in putting up shops and houses. The city of Amsterdam was essentially the model upon which St. Petersburg was built. The wharves, the canals, the bridges and the rectangular streets lined with trees were arranged by architects brought from the Dutch metropolis. When Charles XII. was informed of the rapid progress the tzar was making in building a city on the banks of the Neva, he said,

"Let him amuse himself as he thinks fit in building his city. I shall soon find time to take it from him and to put his wooden houses in a blaze."

Five months had not passed away, from the commencement of operations upon these vast morasses at the mouth of the Neva, ere, one day, it was reported to the tzar that a large ship under Dutch colors was in full sail entering the harbor. Peter was overjoyed at this realization of the dearest wish of his heart. With ardor he set off to meet the welcome stranger. He found that the ship had been sent by one of his old friends at Zaandam. The cargo consisted of salt, wine and provisions generally. The cargo was landed free from all duties and was speedily sold to the great profit of the owners. To protect his capital, Peter immediately commenced his defenses at Cronstadt, about thirty miles down the bay. From that hour until this, Russia has been at work upon those fortifications, and they can now probably bid defiance to all the navies of the world.

Charles XII., sweeping Poland with fire and the sword, drove Augustus out of the kingdom to his hereditary electorate of Saxony, and then, convening the Polish nobles, caused Stanislaus Leszczynski, one of his own followers, to be elected sovereign, and sustained him on the throne by all the power of the Swedish armies.[13] The Swedish warrior now fitted out a fleet for the destruction of Cronstadt and Petersburg. The defense of the province was intrusted to Menzikoff. This man subsequently passed through a career so full of vicissitudes that a sketch of his varied life thus far seems important. He was the son of one of the humblest of the peasants living in the vicinity of Moscow. When but thirteen years of age he was taken into the service of a pastry cook to sell pies and cakes about the streets, and he was accustomed to attract customers by singing jocular songs. The tzar chanced to hear him one day, and, diverted by his song and struck by his bright, intelligent appearance, called for the boy, and offered to purchase his whole stock, both cakes and basket.

[Footnote 13: See Empire of Austria, page 382.]

The boy replied,

"It is my business to sell the cakes, and I have no right to sell the basket without my master's permission. Yet, as every thing belongs to our prince, your majesty has only to give the command, and it is my duty to obey."

This adroit, apt answer so pleased the tzar that he took the lad into his service, giving him at first some humble employment. But being daily more pleased with his wit and shrewdness, he raised him, step by step, to the highest preferment. Under the tuition of General Le Fort, he attained great skill in military affairs, and became one of the bravest and most successful of the Russian generals.

Early in the spring of 1705 the Swedish fleet, consisting of twenty-two ships of war, each carrying about sixty guns, besides six frigates, two bomb ketches and two fire ships, approached Cronstadt. At the same time a large number of transports landed a strong body of troops to assail the forts in the rear. This was the most formidable attack Charles XII. had yet attempted in his wars. Though the Swedes almost invariably conquered the Russians in the open field, Menzikoff, from behind his well-constructed redoubts, beat back his assailants, and St. Petersburg was saved. The summer passed away with many but undecisive battles, until the storms of the long northern winter separated the combatants. The state of exasperation was now such that the most revolting cruelties were perpetrated on both sides.