A Short History of Russia Part 5

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 va.s.sals, 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 Const.i.tution 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 embarra.s.sed 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 _navely_ 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 emanc.i.p.ate 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 n.o.bles 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, pa.s.sionate, 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 n.o.bility 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 n.o.bles 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 n.o.bles 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sa.s.sinate him and then lay it to the foreigners, this to be followed, by a general ma.s.sacre 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 emba.s.sy 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 n.o.bleman's wig in similar unceremonious fashion he s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 ill.u.s.trates 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 n.o.bles 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 G.o.d and his Mother as much as you do. But also know that I shall protect my people and punish rebels." The "chastis.e.m.e.nt" 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 a.s.sist"--in inflicting this "chastis.e.m.e.nt!"

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 lat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sing 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!"