The Empire of Russia Part 21

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 Emba.s.sador.--The Tzar Visits England.--Life at Deptford.--Ill.u.s.trious 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 Sh.o.r.es 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 emba.s.sage was sent by him, as Emperor of Russia, to all the leading courts of Europe. These emba.s.sadors 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 emba.s.sage as a private gentleman of wealth, with the servants suitable for his station.

Three n.o.bles of the highest dignity were selected as emba.s.sadors.

Their retinue consisted of four secretaries, twelve gentlemen, two pages for each emba.s.sador, and a company of fifty of the royal guard.

The whole emba.s.sage 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 n.o.bility.

General Gordon, the Scotch officer, was placed in command of four thousand of the royal troops, to secure the peace of the capital.

The emba.s.sadors commenced their journey in April, 1697. Pa.s.sing 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 t.i.tle of king, received them with an extravagant display of splendor.

At one of the baccha.n.a.lian 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 emba.s.sadors, he drew his sword and called upon La Fort to defend himself. The emba.s.sador 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 emba.s.sador,

"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 emba.s.sage, forsook his companions, and hiring a small boat, sailed down the Rhine and proceeded to Amsterdam, reaching that city fifteen days before the emba.s.sy. "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 sh.o.r.e. 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 const.i.tuted 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 a.s.sembled before his door. Indeed the rumor of the Russian emba.s.sage, 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 emba.s.sadors. 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 surpa.s.s. 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.sist 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 emba.s.sadors entered Amsterdam, Peter thought it proper to take a part in the procession, which was arranged in the highest style of magnificence. The three emba.s.sadors 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 emba.s.sadors. 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 a.s.sistance. 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 cla.s.s 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 sh.o.r.es 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 ca.n.a.l.

Early in January, 1698, Peter, having pa.s.sed 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 emba.s.sadors might give him; and, at the same time, to send a great number of his n.o.bility 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 n.o.ble, 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 ca.n.a.l 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 pa.s.sed 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 archd.u.c.h.esses are generally their a.s.sistants. 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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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 b.u.t.ter 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 a.s.sembled, 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 chastis.e.m.e.nt 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 sh.o.r.es 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 c.u.mbersome robes which had been in fashion were exchanged for a uniform better adapted for rapid motion. The sons of the n.o.bles were compelled to serve in the ranks as common soldiers before they could be promoted to be officers. Many of the young n.o.bles 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 n.o.ble according to his amount of land. The n.o.ble collected this sum from his va.s.sals 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 a.s.suming 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 spa.r.s.ely 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 pa.s.sed. 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 inst.i.tuted 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 sh.o.r.es 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, a.s.suring 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, a.s.suring 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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.