Historical Tales Volume Viii Part 12

For Peter to shave was easy, as he had little beard and a very thin moustache. But by the old-fashioned Russian of his day the beard was cherished as the Turk now cherishes his hirsute symbol of dignity or the Chinaman his long-drawn-out queue. Shortly after Peter came to the throne the patriarch Adrian had delivered himself in words of thunder against all who were so unholy and heretical as to cut or shave their beards, a G.o.d-given ornament, which had been worn by prophets and apostles and by Christ himself. Only heretics, apostates, idol-worshippers, and image-breakers among monarchs had forced their subjects to shave, he declared, while all the great and good emperors had indicated their piety in the length of their beards.

To Peter, on the contrary, the beard was the symbol of barbarity. He was not content to say that his subjects might shave, he decreed that they _must_ shave. It began half in jest, it was continued in solid earnest.

He could not well execute the non-shavers, or cut off the heads of those who declined to cut off their beards, but he could fine them, and he did. The order was sent forth that all Russians, with the exception of the clergy, should shave. Those who preferred to keep their beards could do so by paying a yearly tax into the public treasury. This was fixed at a kopeck (one penny) for peasants, but for the higher cla.s.ses varied from thirty to a hundred rubles (from sixty dollars to two hundred dollars). The merchants, being at once the richest and most conservative cla.s.s, paid the highest tax. Every one who paid the tax was given a bronze token, which had to be worn about the neck and renewed every year.

The czar would allow no one to be about him who did not shave, and many submitted through "terror of having their beards (in a merry humor) pulled out by the roots, or taken so rough off that some of the skin went with them." Many of those who shaved continued to do reverence to their beards by carrying them within their bosoms as sacred objects, to be buried in their graves, in order that a just account might be rendered to St. Nicholas when they should come to the next world.

The ukase against the beard was soon followed by one against the caftan, or long cloak, the old Russian dress. The czar and the leading officers of his emba.s.sy set the example of wearing the German dress, and he cut off, with his own hands, the long sleeves of some of his officers.

"Those things are in your way," he would say. "You are safe nowhere with them. At one moment you upset a gla.s.s, then you forgetfully dip them in the sauce. Get gaiters made of them."

On January 14, 1700, a decree was issued commanding all courtiers and officials throughout the empire to wear the foreign dress. This decree had to be frequently repeated, and models of the clothing exposed. It is said that patterns of the garments and copies of the decrees were hung up together at the gates of the towns, while all who disobeyed the order were compelled to pay a fine. Those who yielded were obliged "to kneel down at the gates of the city and have their coats cut off just even with the ground," the part that lay on the ground as they kneeled being condemned to suffer by the shears. "Being done with a good humor, it occasioned mirth among the people, and soon broke the custom of their wearing long coats, especially in places near Moscow and those towns wherever the czar came."

This demand did not apply to the peasantry, and was therefore more easily executed. Even the women were required to change their Russian robes for foreign fashions. Peter's sisters set the example, which was quickly followed, the women showing themselves much less conservative than the men in the adoption of new styles of dress.

The reform did not end here. Decrees were issued against the high Russian boots, against the use of the Russian saddle, and even against the long Russian knife. Peter seemed to be infected with a pa.s.sion for reform, and almost everything Russian was ordered to give way before the influx of Western modes. Western ideas did not come with them. To change the dress does not change the thoughts, and it does not civilize a man to shave his chin. Though outwardly conforming to the advanced fashions of the West, inwardly the Russians continued to conform to the unprogressive conceptions of the East.

It may be said that these changes did not come to stay. They were too revolutionary to take deep root. There is no disputing the fact that a coat down to the heels is more comfortable in a cold climate than one ending at the knees, and is likely to be worn in preference. Students in Russia to-day wear the red shirt, the loose trousers tucked into the high boots, and the sleeveless caftan of the peasant, to show that they are Slavs in feeling, while the old Russian costume is the regulation court dress for ladies on occasions of state.

We cannot here name the host of other reforms which Peter introduced.

The army was dressed and organized in the fashion of the West. A navy was rapidly built, and before many years Russia was winning victories at sea. Peter had not worked at Amsterdam and Deptford in vain. The money of the country was reorganized, and new coins were issued. The year, which had always begun in Russia on September 1, was now ordered to begin on January 1, the first new year on the new system, January 1, 1700, being introduced with impressive ceremonies. Up to this time the Russians had counted their year from the supposed date of creation. They were now ordered to date their chronology from the birth of Christ, the first year of the new era being dated 1700 instead of 7208. Unluckily, the Gregorian calendar was not at the same time introduced, and Russia still clings to the old style, so that each date in that country is twelve days behind the same date in the rest of the Christian world.

Another reform of an important character was introduced. Peter had observed the system of local self-government in other countries, and resolved to have something like it in his realm. In Little Russia the people already had the right of electing their local officials. A similar system was extended to the whole empire, the merchants in the towns being permitted to choose good and honest men, who formed a council which had general charge of munic.i.p.al affairs. Where bribery and corruption were discovered among these officials the knout and exile were applied as inducements to honesty in office. Even death was threatened; yet bribery went on. Honesty in office cannot be made to order, even by a czar.

_MAZEPPA, THE COSSACK CHIEF._

Among the romantic characters of history none have attained higher celebrity than the hero of our present tale, whose remarkable adventure, often told in story, has been made immortal in Lord Byron's famous poem of "Mazeppa." Those who wish to read it in all its dramatic intensity must apply to the poem. Here it can only be given in plain prose.

Mazeppa was a scion of a poor but n.o.ble Polish family, and became, while quite young, a page at the court of John Casimir, King of Poland. There he remained until he reached manhood, when he returned to the vicinity of his birth. And now occurred the striking event on which the fame of our hero rests. The court-reared young man is said to have engaged in an intrigue with a Polish lady of high rank, or at least was suspected by her jealous husband of having injured him in his honor.

Bent upon a revenge suitable to the barbarous ideas of that age, the furious n.o.bleman had the young man seized, cruelly scourged, and in the end stripped naked and firmly bound upon the back of an untamed horse of the steppes. The wild animal, terrified by the strange burden upon its back, was then set free on the borders of its native wilds of the Ukraine, and, uncontrolled by bit or rein, galloped madly for miles upon miles through forest and over plain, until, exhausted by the violence of its flight, it halted in its wild career. For a dramatic rendering of this frightful ride our readers must be referred to Byron's glowing verse.

The savage Polish lord had not dreamed that his victim would escape alive, but fortune favored the poor youth. He was found, still fettered to the animal's back, insensible and half dead, by some Cossack peasants, who rescued him from his fearful situation, took him to their hut, and eventually restored him to animation.

Mazeppa was well educated and fully versed in the art of war of that day. He made his home with his new friends, to whom his courage, agility, and sagacity proved such warm recommendations that he soon became highly popular among the Cossack clans. He was appointed secretary and adjutant to Samilovitch, the hetman or chief of the Cossacks, and on the disgrace and exile of this chief in 1687 Mazeppa succeeded him as leader of the tribe. He distinguished himself particularly in the war waged by the army of the Princess Sophia against the Turks and Tartars of the Crimea, in which Mazeppa led his Cossack followers with the greatest courage and skill.

On the return of the army to Moscow, Prince Galitzin, its leader, brought into the capital a strong force of Cossacks, with Mazeppa at their head. It was the first time the Cossacks had been allowed to enter Moscow, and their presence gave great offence. It was supposed to be a part of the plot of Sophia to dethrone her young brother and seize the throne for herself. It was known that they would execute to the full any orders given them by their chief; but their motions were so restricted by the indignant people that the ambitious woman, if she entertained such a design, found herself unable to employ them in it.

The daring hetman of the Cossacks became afterwards a cherished friend of Peter the Great, who conferred on him the t.i.tle of prince, and severely punished those who accused him of conspiring with the enemies of Russia. Having the fullest confidence in his good faith, Peter banished or executed his foes as liars and traitors. Yet they seem to have been the true men and Mazeppa the traitor, for at length, when sixty-four years of age, he threw off allegiance to Russia and became an ally of the Swedish enemies of the realm.

The fiery and ungovernable temper of Peter is said to have been the cause of this. The story goes that one day, when Mazeppa was visiting the Russian court, and was at table with the czar, Peter complained to him of the lawless character of the Cossacks, and proposed that Mazeppa should seek to bring them under better control by a system of organization and discipline.

The chief replied that such measures would never succeed. The Cossacks were so fierce and uncontrollable by nature, he said, and so fixed in their irregular habits of warfare, that it would be impossible to get them to submit to military discipline, and they must continue to fight in their old, wild way.

These words were like fire to flax. Peter, who never could bear the least opposition to any of his plans or projects, and was accustomed to have everybody timidly agree with him, broke into a furious rage at this contradiction, and visited his sudden wrath on Mazeppa, as usual, in the most violent language. He was an enemy and a traitor, who deserved to be and should be impaled alive, roared the furious czar, not meaning a t.i.the of what he said, but saying enough to turn the high-spirited chief from a friend to a foe.

Mazeppa left the czar's presence in deep offence, muttering the displeasure which it would have been death to speak openly, and bent on revenge. Soon after he entered into communication with Charles XII. of Sweden, the bitter enemy of Russia, which he was then invading. He suggested that the Swedish army should advance into Southern Russia, where the Cossacks would be sure to be sent to meet it. He would then go over with all his forces to the Swedish side, so strengthening it that the army of the czar could not stand against it. The King of Sweden might retain the territory won by his arms, while the Cossacks would retire to their own land, and become again, as of old, an independent tribe.

The plot was well laid, but it failed through the loyalty of the Cossacks. They broke into wild indignation when Mazeppa unfolded to them his plan, most of them refusing to join in the revolt, and threatening to seize him and deliver him, bound hand and foot, to the czar. Some two thousand in all adhered to Mazeppa, and for a time it seemed as if a b.l.o.o.d.y battle would take place between the two sections of the tribe, but in the end the chief and his followers made their way to the Swedish camp, while the others marched back and put themselves under the command of the nearest Russian general.

Mazeppa was now sentenced to death, and executed,--luckily for him, in effigy only. In person he was out of the reach of his foes. A wooden image was made to represent the culprit, and on this dumb block the penalties prescribed for him were inflicted. A pretty play--for a savage horde--they made of it. The image was dressed to imitate Mazeppa, while representations of the medals, ribbons, and other decorations he usually wore were placed upon it. It was then brought out before the general and leading officers, the soldiers being drawn up in a square around it. A herald now read the sentence of condemnation, and the mock execution began. First Mazeppa's patent of knighthood was torn to pieces and the fragments flung into the air. Then the medals and decorations were rent from the image and trampled underfoot. Finally the image itself was struck a blow that toppled it over into the dust. The hangman now took it in hand, tied a rope round its neck, and dragged it to a gibbet, on which it was hung. The affair ended in the Cossacks choosing a new chief.

The remainder of Mazeppa's story may soon be told. The battle of Pultowa, fought, it is said, by his advice, ended the military career of the great Swedish general. The Cossack chief made his escape, with the King of Sweden, into Turkish territory, and the reward which the czar offered for his body, dead or alive, was never claimed. Mentchikof took what revenge he could by capturing and sacking his capital city, Baturin, while throughout Russia his name was anathematized from the pulpit. Traitor in his old days, and a fugitive in a foreign land, the disgrace of his action seemed to weigh heavily upon the mind of the old chief of the Ukraine, and in the following year he put an end to the wretchedness of his life by poison.

_A WINDOW OPEN TO EUROPE._

Peter the Great hated Moscow. It was to him the embodiment of that old Russia which he was seeking to reform out of existence. Had he been able to work his own will in all things, he would never have set foot within its walls; but circ.u.mstances are stronger than men, even though the latter be Russian czars. In one respect Peter set himself against circ.u.mstance, and built Russia a capital in a locality seemingly lacking in all natural adaptation for a city.

In the early days of the eighteenth century his armies captured a small Swedish fort on Lake Ladoga near the river Neva. The locality pleased him, and he determined to build on the Neva a city which should serve Russia as a naval station and commercial port in the north. Why he selected this spot it is not easy to say. Better localities for his purpose might have been easily chosen. There was old Novgorod, a centre of commerce during many centuries of the past, which it would have been a n.o.ble tribute to ancient Russian history to revive. There was Riga, a city better situated for the Baltic commerce. But Peter would have none of these; he wanted a city of his own, one that should carry his name down through the ages, that should rival the Alexandria of Alexander the Great, and he chose for it a most inauspicious and inhospitable site.

The Neva, a short but deep and wide stream, which carries to the sea the waters of the great lakes Ladoga, Onega, and Ilmen, breaks up near its mouth and makes its way into the Gulf of Finland through numerous channels, between which lie a series of islands. These then bore Finnish names equivalent to Island of Hares, Island of Buffaloes, and the like.

Overgrown with thickets, their surfaces marshy, liable to annual overflow, inhabited only by a few Finnish fishermen, who fled from their huts to the mainland when the waters rose, they were far from promising; yet these islands took Peter's fancy as a suitable site for a commercial port, and with his usual impetuosity he plunged into the business of making a city to order.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. PETERSBURG HARBOR, NEVA RIVER.]

In truth, he fell in love with the spot, though what he saw in it to admire is not so clear. In summer mud ruled there supreme: the very name Neva is Finnish for "mud." During four months of the year ice took the place of mud, and the islands and stream were fettered fast. The country surrounding was largely a desert, its barren plains alternating with forests whose only inhabitants were wolves. Years after the city was built, wolves prowled into its streets and devoured two sentries in front of one of the government buildings. Moscow lay four hundred miles away, and the country between was bleak and almost uninhabited. Even to-day the traveller on leaving St. Petersburg finds himself in a desert. The great plain over which he pa.s.ses spreads away in every direction, not a steeple, not a tree, not a man or beast, visible upon its bare expanse. There is no pasturage nor farming land. Fruits and vegetables can scarcely be grown; corn must be brought from a distance.

Rye is an article of garden culture in St. Petersburg, cabbages and turnips are its only vegetables, and a beehive there is a curiosity.

Yet, as has been said, Peter was attracted to the place, which in one of his letters he called his "paradise." It may have reminded him of Holland, the scene of his nautical education. The locality had a certain sacredness in Russian tradition, being looked upon as the most ancient Russian ground. By the mouth of the Neva had pa.s.sed Rurik and his fellows in their journeys across the Varangian sea,--_their own sea_.

The czar was willing to restore to Sweden all his conquests in Livonia and Esthonia, but the Neva he would not yield. From boyhood he had dreamed of giving Russia a navy and opening it up to the world's commerce, and here was a ready opening to the waters of the Baltic and the distant Atlantic.

St. Petersburg owed its origin to a whim; but it was the whim of a man whose will swayed the movements of millions. He was not even willing to begin his work on the high ground of the mainland, but chose the Island of Hares, the nearest of the islands to the gulf. It was a seaport, not a capital, that he at first had in view. Legend tells us that he s.n.a.t.c.hed a halberd from one of his soldiers, cut with it two strips of turf, and laid them crosswise, saying, "Here there shall be a town."

Then, dropping the halberd, he seized a spade and began the first embankment. As he dug, an eagle appeared and hovered above his head.

Shot by one of the men, it fluttered to his feet. Picking up the wounded bird, he set out in a boat to explore the waters around. To this event is given the date of May 16, 1703.

The city began in a fortress, for the building of which carpenters and masons were brought from distant towns. The soldiers served as laborers.

In this labor tools were notable chiefly for their absence. Wheelbarrows were unknown; they are still but little used in Russia. Spades and baskets were equally lacking, and the czar's impatience could not wait for them to be procured. The men sc.r.a.ped up the earth with their hands or with sticks and carried it in the skirts of their caftans to the ramparts. The czar sent orders to Moscow that two thousand of the thieves and outlaws destined for Siberia should be despatched the next summer to the Neva.

The fort was at first built of wood, which was replaced by stone some years afterwards. Logs served for all other structures, for no stone was to be had. Afterwards every boat coming to the town was required to bring a certain number of stones, and, to attract masons to the new city, the building of stone houses in Moscow or elsewhere was forbidden.

As for the fortress, which was erected at no small cost in life and money, it soon became useless, and to-day it only protects the mint and cathedral of St. Petersburg.

The new city, named Petersburg from its founder, has long been known as St. Petersburg. While the fort was in process of erection a church was also built, dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul. The site of this wooden edifice is now occupied by the cathedral, begun in 1714, ten years later. As regarded a home for himself, Peter was easily satisfied. A hut of logs--his palace he called it--was built near the fortress, fifty-five feet long by twenty-five wide, and containing but three rooms. At a later date, to preserve this his first place of residence in his new city, he enclosed it within another building. Thus it still remains, a place of pilgrimage for devout Russians. It contains many relics of the great czar. His bedroom is now a chapel.

Such a city, in such a situation, should have taken years to build.

Peter wished to have it done in months, and he pushed the labor with little regard for its cost in life and treasure. Men were brought from all sections of Russia and put to work. Disease broke out among them, engendered by the dampness of the soil; but the work went on. Floods came and covered the island, drowning some of the sick in their beds; but there was no alleviation. History tells us that Swedish prisoners were employed, and that they died by thousands. Death, in Peter's eyes, was only an unpleasant incident, and new workmen were brought in mult.i.tudes, many of them to perish in their turn. It has been said that the building of the city cost two hundred thousand lives. This is, no doubt, an exaggeration, but it indicates a frightful mortality. But the feverish impatience of the czar told in results, and by 1714 the city possessed over thirty-four thousand buildings, with inhabitants in proportion.

The floods came and played their part in the work of death. In that of 1706, Peter measured water twenty-one inches deep on the floor of his hut. He thought it "extremely amusing" as men, women, and children were swept past his windows on floating wreckage down the stream. What the people themselves thought of it history does not say.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SLEIGHING IN RUSSIA.]

As yet Peter had no design of making St. Petersburg the capital of his empire. That conception seems not to have come to him until after the crushing defeat of the Swedish monarch Charles XII. at the battle of Pultowa. And indeed it was not until 1817 that it was made the capital.

It was the fifth Russian capital, its predecessors in that honor having been Novgorod, Kief, Vladimir, and Moscow.