General History for Colleges and High Schools Part 60

PETER'S FIRST VISIT TO THE WEST (1697-1698).--With a view to advancing his naval projects, Peter about this time sent a large number of young Russian n.o.bles to Italy, Holland, and England to acquire in those countries a knowledge of naval affairs, forbidding them to return before they had become good sailors.

Not satisfied with thus sending to foreign parts his young n.o.bility, Peter formed the somewhat startling resolution of going abroad himself, and learning the art of ship-building by personal experience in the dockyards of Holland. Accordingly, in the year 1697, leaving the government in the hands of three n.o.bles, he set out _incognito_ for the Netherlands. Upon arriving there he proceeded to Zaandam, a place a short distance from Amsterdam, and there hired out as a common laborer to a Dutch shipbuilder.

Notwithstanding his disguise it was well enough known who the stranger was. Indeed there was but little chance of Peter's being mistaken for a Dutchman. The way in which he flew about, and the terrible energy with which he did everything, set him quite apart from the easy-going, phlegmatic Hollanders.

To escape the annoyance of the crowds at Zaandam, Peter left the place, and went to the docks of the East India Company in Amsterdam, who set about building a frigate that he might see the whole process of constructing a vessel from the beginning. Here he worked for four months, being known among his fellow-workmen as Baas or Master Peter.

It was not alone the art of naval architecture in which Peter interested himself; he attended lectures on anatomy, studied surgery, gaining some skill in pulling teeth and bleeding, inspected paper-mills, flour-mills, printing-presses, and factories, and visited cabinets, hospitals, and museums, thus acquainting himself with every industry and art that he thought might be advantageously introduced into his own country.

From Holland Master Peter went to England to study her superior naval establishment. Here he was fittingly received by King William III., who had presented Peter while in Holland with a splendid yacht fully armed, and who now made his guest extremely happy by getting up for him a sham sea-fight.

Returning from England to Holland, Peter went thence to Vienna, intending to visit Italy; but hearing of an insurrection at home, he set out in haste for Moscow.

PETER'S REFORMS.--The revolt which had hastened Peter's return from the West was an uprising among the Strelitzes, a body of soldiers numbering 20,000 or 30,000, organized by Ivan the Terrible as a sort of imperial body-guard. In their ungovernable turbulence, they remind us of the Praetorians of Rome. The mutiny settled Peter in his determination to rid himself altogether of the insolent and refractory body. Its place was taken by a well-disciplined force trained according to the tactics of the Western nations.

The disbanding of the seditious guards was only one of the many reforms effected by Peter. So intent was he upon thoroughly Europeanizing his country, that he resolved that his subjects should literally clothe themselves in the "garments of Western Civilization." Accordingly he abolished the long-sleeved, long-skirted Oriental robes that were at this time worn, and decreed that everybody save the clergy should shave, or pay a tax on his beard. We are told that Peter stationed tailors and barbers at the gates of Moscow to cut off the skirts and to train the beards of those who had not conformed to the royal regulations, and that he himself sheared off with his own hands the offending sleeves and beards of his reluctant courtiers. The law was gradually relaxed, but the reform became so general that in the best society in Russia at the present day one sees only smooth faces and the Western style of dress.

As additional outgrowths of what he had seen, or heard, or had suggested to him on his foreign tour, Peter issued a new coinage, introduced schools, built factories, constructed roads and ca.n.a.ls, established a postal system, opened mines, framed laws modelled after those of the West, and reformed the government of the towns in such a way as to give the citizens some voice in the management of their local affairs, as he had observed was done in the Netherlands and in England.

CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN.--Peter's history now becomes intertwined with that of a man quite as remarkable as himself, Charles XII. of Sweden, the "Madman of the North." Charles was but fifteen years of age when, in 1697, the death of his father called him to the Swedish throne. The dominions which came under his sway embraced not only Sweden, but Finland, and large possessions along the Southern Baltic,--territory that had been won by the arms of his ancestors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of the BALTIC ISLANDS]

Taking advantage of Charles's extreme youth, three sovereigns, Frederick IV. of Denmark, Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and Peter the Great of Prussia, leagued against him (1700), for the purpose of appropriating such portions of his dominions as they severally desired to annex to their own.

THE BATTLE OF NARVA (1700).--But the conspirators had formed a wrong estimate of the young Swedish monarch. Notwithstanding the insane follies in which he was accustomed to indulge, he possessed talent; he had especially a remarkable apt.i.tude for military affairs. With a well-trained force--a veteran army that had not yet forgotten the discipline of the hero Gustavus Adolphus--Charles now threw himself first upon the Danes, and in two weeks forced the Danish king to sue for peace; then he turned his little army of 8,000 men upon the Russian forces of 20,000, which were besieging the city of Narva, on the Gulf of Finland, and inflicted upon them a most ignominious defeat. The only comment of the imperturbable Peter upon the disaster was, "The Swedes will have the advantage of us at first, but they will teach us how to beat them."

THE FOUNDING OF ST. PETERSBURG (1703).--After chastising the Czar [Footnote: Czar is probably a contraction of _Caesar_. The t.i.tle was adopted by the rulers of Russia because they regarded themselves as the successors and heirs of the Caesars of Rome and Constantinople.] at Narva, the Swedish king turned south and marched into Poland to punish Augustus for the part he had taken in the conspiracy against him. While Charles was busied in this quarter, Peter was gradually making himself master of the Swedish lands on the Baltic, and upon a marshy island at the mouth of the Neva was laying the foundations of the great city of St. Petersburg, which he proposed to make the western gateway of his empire.

The spot selected by Peter as the site of his new capital was low and subject to inundation, so that the labor requisite to make it fit for building purposes was simply enormous. But difficulties never dismayed Peter. In spite of difficulties the work was done, and the splendid city stands to-day one of the most impressive monuments of the indomitable and despotic energy of Peter.

INVASION OF RUSSIA BY CHARLES XII.--Meanwhile Charles was doing very much as he pleased with the king of Poland. He defeated his forces, overran his dominions, and forced him to surrender the Polish crown in favor of Stanislaus Lesczinski (1706). With sufficient punishment meted out to Frederick Augustus, Charles was ready to turn his attention once more to the Czar. So marvellous had been the success attendant upon his arms for the past few years, nothing now seemed impossible to him. Deluded by this belief, he resolved to march into Russia and dethrone the Czar, even as he had dethroned the king of Poland.

In 1708, with an army of barely 40,000 men, Charles marched boldly across the Russian frontier. At Pultowa the two armies met in decisive combat (1709). It was Charles's Waterloo. The Swedish army was virtually annihilated. Escaping with a few soldiers from the field, Charles fled southward, and found an asylum in Turkey. [Footnote: After spending five years in Turkey, Charles returned to Sweden, and shortly afterwards was killed at the siege of Frederickshall, in Norway (1718). At the moment of his death he was only thirty-six years of age. He was the strangest character of the eighteenth century. Perhaps we can understand him best by regarding him, as his biographer Voltaire says we must regard him, as an old Norse sea-king, born ten centuries after his time.]

CLOSE OF PETER'S REIGN.--In 1721 the Swedish wars which had so long disturbed Europe were brought to an end by the Peace of Nystadt, which confirmed Russia's t.i.tle to all the Southern Baltic lands that Peter had wrested from the Swedes. The undisputed possession of so large a strip of the Baltic seaboard vastly increased the importance and influence of Russia, which now a.s.sumed a place among the leading European powers.

In 1723 troubles in Persia that resulted in the ma.s.sacre of some Russians afforded Peter a pretext for sailing down the Volga and seizing the southern sh.o.r.e of the Caspian Sea, which now became virtually a Russian lake. This ended Peter's conquests. The Russian colossus now "stood astride, with one foot on the Baltic and the other upon the Caspian."

Two years later, being then in his fifty-fourth year, Peter died of a fever brought on by exposure while aiding in the rescue of some sailors in distress, in the Gulf of Finland (1725).

PETER'S CHARACTER AND WORK.--Peter's character stands revealed in the light of his splendid achievements. Like Charlemagne he was a despotic reformer. His theory of government was a rough, brutal one, yet the exclamation which broke from him as he stood by the tomb of Richelieu [Footnote: In 1716 Peter made a second journey to the West, visiting France, Denmark, and Holland.] discloses his profound desire to rule well: "Thou great man," he exclaimed, "I would have given thee half of my dominion to have learned of thee how to govern the other half." He planted throughout his vast empire the seeds of Western civilization, and by his giant strength lifted the great nation which destiny had placed in his hands out of Asiatic barbarism into the society of the European peoples.

The influence of Peter's life and work upon the government of Russia was very different from what he intended. It is true that his aggressive, arbitrary rule strengthened temporarily autocratic government in Russia.

He destroyed all checks, ecclesiastical and military, upon the absolute power of the crown. But in bringing into his dominions Western civilization, he introduced influences which were destined in time to neutralize all he had done in the way of strengthening the basis of despotism. He introduced a civilization which fosters popular liberties, and undermines personal, despotic government.

REIGN OF CATHERINE THE GREAT (1762-1796).--From the death of Peter on to the close of the eighteenth century the Russian throne was held, the most of the time, by women, the most noted of whom was Catherine II., the Great, "the greatest woman probably," according to the admission of an English historian (McCarthy), "who ever sat on a throne, Elizabeth of England not even excepted." But while a woman of great genius, she had most serious faults of character, being incredibly profligate and unscrupulous.

Carrying out ably the policy of Peter the Great, Catherine extended vastly the limits of Russian dominion, and opened the country even more thoroughly than he had done to the entrance of Western influences. The most noteworthy matters of her reign were the conquest of the Crimea and the dismemberment of Poland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA, IN HUSSAR UNIFORM. (After a painting by Schebanow.) ]

It was in the year 1783 that Catherine effected the subjugation of the Crimea. The possession of this peninsula gave Russia dominion on the Black Sea, which once virtually secured by Peter the Great had been again lost through his misfortunes. Catherine greatly extended the limits of her dominion on the west at the expense of Poland, the part.i.tion of which state she planned in connection with Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria Theresa of Austria. On the first division, which was made in 1772, the imperial robbers each took a portion of the spoils. In 1793 a second part.i.tion was made, this time between Russia and Prussia; and then, in 1795, after the suppression of a determined revolt of the Poles under the lead of the patriot Kosciusko, a third and final division among the three powers completed the dismemberment of the unhappy state, and erased its name from the roll of the nations. The territory gained by Russia in these transactions brought her western frontier close alongside the civilization of Central Europe. In Catherine's phrase, Poland had become her "door mat," upon which she stepped when visiting the West.

Besides thus widening her empire, Catherine labored to reform its inst.i.tutions and to civilize her subjects. Her labors in bettering the laws and improving the administration of the government, have caused her to be likened to Solon and to Lycurgus; while her enthusiasm for learning and her patronage of letters led Voltaire to say, "Light now comes from the North."

By the close of Catherine's reign Russia was beyond question one of the foremost powers of Europe, the weight of her influence being quite equal to that of any other nation of the continent.

CHAPTER LVII.

THE RISE OF PRUSSIA: FREDERICK THE GREAT. (1740-1786.)

THE BEGINNINGS OF PRUSSIA.--The foundation of the Prussian Kingdom was laid in the beginning of the seventeenth century (1611) by the union of two small states in the North of Germany. These were the Mark, or Electorate, of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia. Brandenburg had been gradually growing into prominence since the tenth century. Its ruler at this time was a prince of the now noted House of Hohenzollern, and was one of the seven princes to whom belonged the right of electing the emperor.

THE GREAT ELECTOR, FREDERICK WILLIAM (1640-1688).--Although this new Prussian power was destined to become the champion of German Protestantism, it acted a very unworthy and vacillating part in the Thirty Years' War. But just before the close of that struggle a strong man came to the throne, Frederick William, better known as the Great Elector. He infused vigor and strength into every department of the State, and acquired such a position for his government that at the Peace of Westphalia he was able to secure new territory, which greatly enhanced his power and prominence among the German princes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREAT ELECTOR. (From a battle-piece.)]

The Great Elector ruled for nearly half a century. He laid the basis of the military power of Prussia by the formation of a standing army, and transmitted to his son and successor a strongly centralized and despotic authority.

HOW THE ELECTOR OF BRANDENBURG ACQUIRED THE t.i.tLE OF KING.--Frederick III.

(1688-1713), son of the Great Elector, was ambitious for the t.i.tle of king, a dignity that the weight and influence won for the Prussian state by his father fairly justified him in seeking. He saw about him other princes less powerful than himself enjoying this dignity, and he too "would be a king and wear a crown." The recent elevation of William of Orange, Stadtholder of Holland, to royal honors in England (see p. 624), stimulated the Elector's ambition.

It was necessary of course for Frederick to secure the consent of the emperor, a matter of some difficulty, for the Catholic advisers of the Austrian court were bitterly opposed to having an heretical prince thus honored and advanced, while the emperor himself was not at all pleased with the idea. But the War of the Spanish Succession was just about to open, and the emperor was extremely anxious to secure Frederick's a.s.sistance in the coming struggle. Therefore, on condition of his furnishing him aid in the war, the emperor consented to Frederick's a.s.suming the new t.i.tle and dignity _in the Duchy of Prussia_, which, unlike Brandenburg, did not form part of the empire.

Accordingly, early in the year 1701, Frederick, amidst imposing ceremonies, was crowned and hailed as king at Konigsberg. Hitherto he had been Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia; now he is Elector of Brandenburg and King of Prussia.

Thus was a new king born among the kings of Europe. Thus did the house of Austria invest with royal dignity the rival house of Hohenzollern. The event is a landmark in German, and even in European history. The cue of German history from this on is the growth of the power of the Prussian kings, and their steady advance to imperial honors, and to the control of the affairs of the German race.

FREDERICK WILLIAM I. (1713-1740).-The son and successor of the first Prussian king, known as Frederick William I., was one of the most extraordinary characters in history. He was a strong, violent, brutal man, full of the strangest freaks, yet in many respects just the man for the times. He would tolerate no idlers. He carried a heavy cane, which he laid upon the back of every unoccupied person he chanced to find, whether man, woman, or child.

Frederick William had a mania for big soldiers. With infinite expense and trouble he gathered a regiment of the biggest men he could find, which was known as the "Potsdam Giants,"--a regiment numbering 2400 men, some of whom were eight feet in height. Not only were the Goliaths of his own dominions impressed into the service, but big men in all parts of Europe were coaxed, bribed, or kidnapped by Frederick's recruiting officers. No present was so acceptable to him as a giant, and by the gift of a six- footer more than one prince bought his everlasting favor.

Rough, brutal tyrant though he was, Frederick William was an able and energetic ruler. He did much to consolidate the power of Prussia, and at his death in 1740 left to his successor a considerably extended dominion, and a splendid army of 80,000 men.

FREDERICK THE GREAT (1740-1786).--Frederick William was followed by his son Frederick II., to whom the world has agreed to give the t.i.tle of "Great." Frederick had a genius for war, and his father had prepared to his hand one of the most efficient instruments of the art since the time of the Roman legions. The two great wars in which he was engaged, and which raised Prussia to the first rank among the military powers of Europe, were the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War.

WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION (1740-1748).--Through the death of Charles VI. the Imperial office became vacant on the very year that Frederick II.

ascended the Prussian throne. Charles was the last of the direct male line of the Hapsburgs, and disputes straightway arose respecting the possessions of the House of Austria, which resulted in the long struggle known as the War of the Austrian Succession.

Now, not long before the death of Charles, he had bound all the leading powers of Europe in a sort of agreement called the Pragmatic Sanction, by the terms of which, in case he should leave no son, all his hereditary dominions--that is, the kingdom of Hungary, the kingdom of Bohemia, the archduchy of Austria, and the other possessions of the House of Austria-- should be bestowed upon his daughter Maria Theresa. But no sooner was Charles dead than a number of princes immediately laid claim to greater or lesser portions of these territories. Prominent among these claimants was Frederick of Prussia, who claimed Silesia. [Footnote: Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria, set up a claim to the Austrian States. France, ever the sworn enemy of the House of Austria, lent her armies to aid the Elector in making good his pretensions] Before Maria Theresa could arm in defence of her dominions, Frederick pushed his army into Silesia and took forcible possession of it.

Queen Theresa, thus stripped of a large part of her dominions, fled into Hungary, and with all of a beautiful woman's art of persuasion appealed to her Hungarian subjects to avenge her wrongs. Her unmerited sufferings, her beauty, her tears, the little princess in her arms, stirred the resentment and kindled the ardent loyalty of the Hungarian n.o.bles, and with one voice, as they rang their swords in their scabbards, they swore to support the cause of their queen with their estates and their lives. England and Sardinia also threw themselves into the contest on Maria Theresa's side.

The war lasted until 1748, when it was closed by the Peace of Aix-la- Chapelle, which left Silesia in the hands of Frederick.