met at dinner at the house of the Danish envoy, that he was made
acquainted with the superior discipline of the troops of France and
Germany, and the mercantile greatness of Holland and England,--the two
things which he was most anxious to understand; since, as he believed,
on the discipline of an army and the efficiency of a navy the political
greatness of his country must rest. A disciplined army would render
secure the throne of absolutism, and an efficient navy would open and
protect his ports for the encouragement of commerce,--one of the great
sources of national wealth. Without commerce and free intercourse with
other countries no nation could get money; and without money even an
absolute monarch could not reign as he would.
So these two young men took counsel together; and the conviction was
settled in the minds of each that there could be no military discipline
and no efficient military power so long as the Streltzi--those
antiquated and turbulent old guards--could depose and set up monarchs.
They settled it, and with the enthusiasm of young men, that before they
could get rid of these dangerous troops,--only fit for Oriental or
barbaric fighting,--they must create a regiment after their own liking,
large enough to form the nucleus of a real European army, and yet not
large enough to excite jealousy,--for Sophia was then still regent, and
the youthful Peter was supposed to be merely amusing himself. The Swiss
"adventurer"--one of the most enlightened men of his age, and full of
genius--became colonel of this regiment; and Peter, not thinking he
knew anything about true military tactics, and wishing to learn,--and
not too proud to learn, being born with disdain of conventionalities and
precedents,--entered the regiment as drummer, in sight of his own
subjects, who perhaps looked upon the act as a royal freak,--even as
Nero practised fiddling, and Commodus archery, before the Roman people.
From drummer he rose to the rank of corporal, and from corporal to
sergeant, and so on through all the grades.
That is the way Peter began,--as all great men begin, at the foot of the
ladder; for great as it was to be born a prince, it was greater to learn
how to be a general. In this fantastic conduct we see three things: a
remarkable sagacity in detecting the genius of Lefort, a masterly power
over his own will, and a willingness to learn anything from anybody able
and willing to teach him,--even as a rich and bright young lady, now and
then, when about to assume the superintendence of a great household,
condescends to study some of the details of a kitchen, those domestic
arts on which depend something of that happiness which is the end and
aim of married life. Many a promising domestic hearth is wrecked--such
is the weakness of human nature--by the ignorance or disdain of humble
acquirements, or what seem humble to fortunate women, and yet which are
really steps to a proud ascendency.
We trace the ambition of Peter for commercial and maritime greatness
also to a very humble beginning. Whether it was a youthful sport,
subsequently directed into a great enterprise, or the plodding intention
to create a navy and open seaports under his own superintendence, it
would be difficult to settle. We may call this beginning a decree of
Providence, an inspiration of genius, or a passion for sailing a boat;
the end was the same, as it came about,--the entrance of Russia into the
family of European States.
It would seem that one day, by chance, Peter's attention was directed to
a little boat laid up on the banks of a canal which ran through his
pleasure-grounds. It had been built by a Dutch carpenter for the
amusement of his father. This boat had a keel,--a new thing to him,--and
attracted his curiosity, Lefort explained to him that it was constructed
to sail against the wind. So the carpenter was summoned, with orders to
rig the boat and sail it on the Moskva, the river which runs through
Moscow. Peter was delighted; and he soon learned to manage it himself.
Then a yacht was built, manned by two men, and it was the delight of
Peter to take the helm himself. Shortly five other vessels were built to
navigate Lake Peipus; and the ambition of Peter was not satisfied until
a still larger vessel was procured at Archangel, in which he sailed on a
cruise upon the Frozen Ocean. His taste for navigation became a passion;
and once again he embarked on the Frozen Ocean in a ship, determined to
go through all the gradations of a sailor's life. As he began as drummer
in Lefort's regiment, so he first served as a common drudge who swept
the cabin in a Dutch vessel; then he rose to the rank of a servant who
kept up the fire and lighted the pipe of the Dutch skipper; then he was
advanced to the duty of unfurling and furling the sails,--and so on,
until he had mastered the details of a sailor's life.
Why did he condescend to these mean details? The ambition was planted in
him to build a navy under his own superintendence. Wherefore a navy,
when he had no seaports? But he meant to have seaports. He especially
needed a fleet on the Volga to keep the Turks and Tartars in awe, and
another in the Gulf of Finland to protect his territories from the
Swedes. We shall see how subsequently, and in due time, he conquered the
Baltic from the Swedes and the Euxine from the Turks. He did not seem to
have an ambition for indefinite territorial aggrandizement, but simply
to extend his empire to these seas for the purpose of having a free
egress and ingress to it by water. He could not Europeanize his empire
without seaports, for unless Russia had these, she would remain a
barbarous country, a vast Wallachia or Moldavia. The expediency and the
necessity of these ports were most obvious. But how was he to get them?
Only by war, aggressive war. He would seize what he wanted, since he
could attain his end in no other way.
Now, I do not propose to whitewash this enlightened but unscrupulous
robber. On no recognized principles of morality can he be defended, any
more than can Louis XIV. for the invasion of Flanders, or Frederic II.
for the seizure of Silesia. He first resolved to seize Azof, the main
port on the little sea of that name which opens out into the Black Sea,
and which belonged to the Turks. It was undoubted robbery; but its
possession would be an immense advantage to Russia. Of course, that
seizure could not be justified either by the laws of God or the laws of
nations. "Thou shalt not steal" is an eternally binding law for nations
and for individuals. Peter knew that he had no right to this important
city; but at the same time he knew that its possession would benefit
Russia. So we are compelled to view this monarch as a robber, taking
what was not his, as Ahab seized Naboth's vineyard; but taking it for
the benefit of his country, which Ahab did not. He knew it was a
political crime, but a crime to advance the civilization of his empire.
The only great idea of his life was the welfare of his country, by any
means. For his country he would sacrifice his character and public
morality. Some might call this an exalted patriotism,--I call it
unmitigated Jesuitism; which seems to have been the creed of
politicians, and even of statesmen, for the last three hundred years.
All that Peter thought of was _the end_; he cared nothing for the
_means_. I wonder why Carlyle or Froude has not bolstered up and
defended this great hyperborean giant for doing evil that good may come.
Casuistry is in their line; the defence of scoundrels seems to be
their vocation.
Well, then, bear in mind that Peter, feeling that he must have Azof for
the good of Russia, irrespective of right or wrong, went straight
forward to his end. Of course he knew he must have a fight with Turkey
to gain this prize, and he prepared for such a fight. Turkey was not
then what it is now,--ripe fruit to be gobbled up by Russia when the
rest of Europe permits it; but Turkey then was a great power. At that
very time two hundred thousand Turks were besieging Vienna, which would
have fallen but for John Sobieski. But obstacles were nothing to Peter;
they were simply things to be surmounted, at any sacrifice of time or
money or men. So with the ships he had built he sailed down the River
Don and attacked Azof. He was foiled, not beaten. He never seemed to
know when he was beaten, and he never seemed to care. That hard, iron
man marched to his object like a destiny. What he had to do was to take
Azof against an army of Turks. So, having failed in the first campaign,
through the treachery of one Jacobs who had been employed in the
artillery, he tried it again the next year and succeeded, his army being
commanded by General Gordon, a Scotchman, while he himself served only
as ensign or lieutenant. This port was the key of Palus Maeotis, and
opened to him the Black Sea, on which he resolved to establish a navy.
He had now an army modelled after the European fashion, according to the
suggestions of Lefort, whose regiment became the model of other
regiments. Five thousand men were trained and commanded by General
Gordon. Lefort raised another corps of twelve thousand, from the
Streltzi chiefly. These were the forces, in conjunction with the navy,
with which he reduced Azof. He now returns to Moscow, and receives the
congratulations of the boyars, or nobles,--that class who owned the
landed property of Russia and cultivated it by serfs. He made heavy
contributions on these nobles, and also on the clergy,--for it takes
money to carry on a war, and money he must have somehow.
These forced contributions and the changes which were made in the army
were not beheld with complacency. The old guard, the Streltzi, were
particularly disgusted. The various innovations were very unpopular,
especially those made in reference to the dress of the new soldiers. The
result of all these innovations and discontents was a conspiracy to take
his life; which, however, was seasonably detected and severely punished.
An extraordinary purpose now seized the mind of the Czar, which was to
travel in the various countries of Europe, and learn something more
especially about ship-building, on which his heart was set. He also
wished to study laws, institutions, sciences, and arts; and in order to
study them effectually, he resolved to travel incognito. Hitherto he had
not been represented in the European courts; so he appointed an embassy
of extraordinary magnificence to proceed in the first instance to
Holland, then the foremost mercantile state of Europe. The retinue
consisted of four secretaries, at the head of whom was Lefort, twelve
nobles, fifty guards, and other persons,--altogether to the number of
two hundred. As they travelled through Prussia they were received with
great distinction, and the whole journey seems to have been a
Bacchanalian progress. There were nothing _lout, fêtes_ and banquets to
his honor, and the Russians proved to have great capacity for drinking.
At Königsberg he left his semi-barbaric embassy to their revels, and
proceeded rapidly and privately to Holland, hired a small room--kitchen
and garret--for lodgings, and established himself as journeyman
carpenter, with a resolute determination to learn the trade of a
ship-carpenter. He dressed like a common carpenter, and lived like one,
with great simplicity. When he was not at work in the dock-yard with his
broad axe, he amused himself by sailing a yacht, dressed like a Dutch
skipper, with a red jacket and white trousers. He was a marked
personage, even had it not been known that he was the Czar,--a tall,
robust, active man of twenty-five, with a fierce look and curling brown
locks, free from all restraint, seeing but little of the ambassadors who
had followed him, and passing his time with ship-builders and merchants,
and adhering rigidly to all the regulations of the dock-yards. He spent
nine months in this way at hard labor, and at the end of that time
had mastered the art of ship-building in all its details, had
acquired the Dutch language, and had seen what was worth seeing of
Amsterdam,--showing an unbounded curiosity and indefatigable zeal,
frequenting the markets and the shops, attending lectures in anatomy and
surgery, learning even how to draw teeth; visiting museums and
manufactories, holding intercourse with learned men, and making
considerable proficiency in civil engineering and the science of
fortification. Nothing escaped his eager inquiries. "Wat is dat?" was
his perpetual exclamation. "He devoured every morsel of knowledge with
unexampled voracity." Never was seen a man on this earth with a more
devouring appetite for knowledge of every kind; storing up in his mind
everything he saw, with a view of introducing improvements into Russia.
To see this barbaric emperor thus going to school, and working with his
own hands, insensible to heat and cold and weariness, with the single
aim of benefiting his countrymen when he should return, is to me one of
the most wonderful sights of history.
His chosen companion in these labors and visits and pleasures was also
one of the most remarkable men of his age. His name was
Mentchikof,--originally a seller of pies in the streets of Moscow, who
attracted, by his beauty and brightness, the attention of General
Lefort, and was made a page in his household, and was as such made known
to the Czar, who took a fancy to him, and soon detected his great
talents; so that he rose as rapidly as Joseph did in the court of
Pharaoh, and became general, governor, prince, regent, with almost
autocratic power. The whole subsequent reign of Peter, and of his
successor, became identified with Prince Mentchikof, who was prime
minister and grand vizier, and who forwarded all the schemes of his
master with consummate ability.
After leaving Holland, Peter accepted an invitation of William III. to
visit England, and thither he went with his embassy in royal ships, yet
still affecting to travel as a private gentleman. He would accept no
honors, no public receptions, no state banquets. He came to England, not
to receive honors, but to add to his knowledge, and he wished to remain
unfettered in his sight-seeing. In England, the same insatiable
curiosity marked him as in Holland. He visits the dock-yards, and goes to
the theatre and the opera, and holds interviews with Quakers and attends
their meetings, as well as the churches of the Establishment. The
country-houses of nobles, with their parks and gardens and hedges,
filled him with admiration. He was also greatly struck with Greenwich
Hospital, which looked to him like a royal palace (as it was
originally), and he greatly wondered that the old seedy and frowsy
pensioners should be lodged so magnificently. The courts of Westminster
surprised him. "Why," said he, in reference to the legal gentlemen in
wigs and gowns, "I have but two lawyers in my dominions, and one of them
I mean to hang as soon as I return." But while he visited everything,
generally in a quiet way, avoiding display and publicity, he was most
interested in mechanical inventions and the dock-yards and mock naval
combats. It would seem that his private life was simple, although he is
accused of eating voraciously, and of drinking great quantities of
brandy and sack. If this be true, he certainly reformed his habits, and
learned to govern himself, for he was very temperate in his latter days.
Men who are very active and perform herculean labors, do not generally
belong to the class of gluttons or drunkards. I have read of but few
great generals, like Caesar, or Charlemagne, or William III., or
Gustavus Adolphus, or Marlborough, or Cromwell, or Turenne, or
Wellington, or Napoleon, who were not temperate in their habits.
After leaving England, the Czar repaired to Vienna, _via_ Holland,
sending to Russia five hundred persons whom he took in his
employ,--navy captains, pilots, surgeons, gunners, boat-builders,
blacksmiths, and various other mechanics,--having an eye to the
industrial development of his country; which was certainly better than
driving out of his kingdom four hundred thousand honest people, as Louis
XIV. did because they were Protestants. But Peter did not tarry long in
Vienna, whose military establishments he came to study, being compelled
to return hastily to Moscow to suppress a rebellion. He returned a much
wiser man; I doubt if any person ever was more improved than he by his
travels. What an example to tourists in these times! All travelling
(except explorations) is a dissipation and waste of time unless
self-improvement is the main object. Pleasure-seeking is the greatest
vanity on this earth, for he who _seeks_ pleasure never finds it; but it
comes when it is a minor consideration.
The apprenticeship of Peter is now completed, and he enters more
seriously upon those great labors which have given him an immortality. I
am compelled to be brief in stating them.
The first thing he did, on his return, was finally to crush the
Streltzi, who fomented treasons and were hostile to reform. He had
wisely left General Gordon at Moscow with six thousand soldiers,
disciplined after the European fashion. In abolishing the turbulent and
prejudicial Streltzi, he is accused of great cruelties. He summarily
executed or imprisoned some four thousand of them caught in acts of
treason and rebellion, and drafted the rest into distant regiments. He
may have been unnecessarily cruel, as critics have accused Oliver
Cromwell of being in his treatment of the Irish. But, cruel or not, he
got rid of troops he could not trust, and organized soldiers whom he
could,--for he must have tools to work with if he would do his work. I
neither praise nor condemn his mode of working; I seek to show how he
performed his task.
After disbanding rebellious soldiers, he sought to make his army more
efficient by changing the dress of the entire army. He did away with the
long coat reaching to the heels, something like that which ladies wear
in rainy days; and the drawers not unlike petticoats; and the long,
bushy beards. He found more difficulty in making this reform than in
taking Azof, although aided by Mentchikof, his favorite,
fellow-traveller, and prime minister. He was not content with cutting
off the beards of the soldiers and shortening their coats,--he wished to
make private citizens do the same; but the uproar and discontent were so
great that he was obliged to compromise the matter, and allow the
citizens to wear their beards and robes on condition of a heavy tax,
graded on ability to pay it. The only class he exempted from the tax
were the clergy and the serfs.
Among other reforms he changed the calendar, making the year to begin
with January, and abolished the old laws with reference to marriage, by
which young people had no power of choice; but he decreed that no
marriage should take place unless an intimacy had existed between the
parties for at least six months. He instituted balls and assemblies, to
soften the manners of the people. He encouraged the theatre, protected
science, invited eminent men to settle in Russia, improved the courts of
justice, established posts and post-offices, boards of trade, a vigorous
police, hospitals, and alms-houses. He imported Saxony sheep, erected
linen, woollen, and paper mills, dug canals, suppressed gambling, and
fostered industry and art. He aimed to do for Russia what Richelieu and
Colbert did for France.
The greatest opposition to his reforms came from the clergy, with the
Patriarch at their head,--a personage of great dignity and power, ruling
an _imperium in imperio_. Peter had no hostility to the Greek religion,
nor to the clergy. Like Charlemagne, he was himself descended from an
ecclesiastical family. But finding the clergy hostile to civil and
social reforms, he sought to change the organization of the Church
itself. He did not interfere with doctrines, nor discipline, nor rites,
nor forms of worship; but he unseated the Patriarch, and appointed
instead a consistory, the members of which were nominated by himself.
Like Henry VIII., he virtually made himself the head of the
Church,--that is, the supreme direction of ecclesiastical affairs was
given to those whom he controlled, and not to the Patriarch, whose power
had been supreme in religious matters,--more than Papal, almost
Druidical. In former reigns the Patriarch had the power of life and
death in his own tribunals; and when he rode to church on Palm Sunday,
in his emblazoned robes, the Czar walked uncovered at his side, and held
the bridle of his mule. It is a mark of the extraordinary power of Peter
that he was enabled to abolish this great dignity without a revolution
or bloodshed; and he not only abolished the patriarchal dignity, but he
seized the revenues of the Patriarch, taxed the clergy, and partially
suppressed monasteries, decreeing that no one should enter them under
fifty years of age; yea, he even decreed universal toleration of
religion, except to the Jesuits, whom he hated, as did William III. and
Frederic II. He caused the Bible to be translated into the Slavonic
language, and freely circulated it. And he prosecuted these reforms
while he was meditating, or was engaged in, great military enterprises.
I approach now the great external event of Peter's life, his war with
Charles XII., brought about in part by his eagerness to get a seaport on
the Baltic, and in part by the mad ambition of the Swedish king,
determined to play the part of Alexander. The aggressive party in this
war, however, was Peter. He was resolved to take part of the Swedish
territories for mercantile and maritime purposes; so he invaded Sweden
with sixty thousand men. Charles, whose military genius was not
appreciated by the Czar, had only eight thousand troops to oppose the
invasion; but they were veterans, and fought on the defensive, and had
right on their side. This latter is a greater thing in war than is
generally supposed; for although war is in our own times a mechanism in
a great measure, still moral considerations underlie even physical
forces, and give a sort of courage which is hard to resist. The result
of this invasion was the battle of Narva, when Peter was disgracefully
beaten, as he ought to have been. But he bore his defeat complacently.
He is reported as saying that he knew the Swedes would have the
advantage at first, but that they would teach him how to beat them at
last. I doubt this. I do not believe a general ever went into battle
with a vastly overwhelming force when he did not expect victory. But the
great victory won by Charles (a mere stripling king, scarcely nineteen)
turned his head. Never was there a more intoxicated hero. He turned his
victorious army upon Poland, dethroned the king, invaded Saxony, and
prepared to invade Russia with an army of eighty thousand troops. His
cool adversary, who since his defeat at Narva had been prosecuting his
reforms and reorganizing his army and building a navy, was more of a
wily statesman than a successful general. He retreated before Charles,
avoided battles, tempted him in the pursuit to dreary and sparsely
inhabited districts, decoyed him into provinces remote from his base of
supplies; so that at the approach of winter Charles found himself in a
cold and desolate country (as Napoleon was afterwards tempted to _his_
ruin), with his army dwindled down to twenty-five thousand men, while
Peter had one hundred thousand, with ample provisions and military
stores. The generals of Charles now implore him to return to Sweden, at
least to seek winter quarters in the Ukraine; but the monarch,
infatuated, lays siege to Pultowa, and gives battle to Peter, and is not
only defeated, but his forces are almost annihilated, so that he finds
the greatest difficulty in escaping into Turkey with a handful of
followers. That battle settled the fortunes of both Charles and Peter.
The one was hopelessly ruined; the other was left free to take as much
territory from Sweden as he wished, to open his seaports on the Baltic,
and to dig canals from river to river.