territory on the Black Sea, and who had already declared war. Flushed
with conquest, Peter in his turn became rash. He advanced to the
Turkish territory with forty thousand men, and was led into the same
trap which proved the ruin of Charles XII. He suddenly finds himself in
a hostile country, beyond the Pruth, between an army of Turks and an
army of Tartars, with a deep and rapid river in his rear. Two hundred
thousand men attack his forty thousand. He cannot advance, he cannot
retreat; he is threatened with annihilation. He is driven to despair.
Neither he nor his generals can see any escape, for in three days he has
lost twenty thousand men,--one half his army. In all probability he and
his remaining men will be captured, and he conducted as a prisoner to
Constantinople, and perhaps be shown to the mocking and jeering people
in a cage, as Bajazet was. In this crisis he shuts himself up in his
tent, and refuses to see anybody.
He is saved by a woman, and a great woman, even Catherine his wife, who
originally was a poor peasant girl in Livonia, and who after various
adventures became the wife of a young Swedish officer killed at the
battle of Marienburg, and then the mistress of Prince Mentchikof, and
then of Peter himself, who at length married her,--"an incident," says
Voltaire, "which fortune and merit never before produced in the annals
of the world," She suggested negotiation, when Peter was in the very
jaws of destruction, and which nobody had thought of. She collects
together her jewels and all the valuables she can find, and sends them
to the Turkish general as a present, and favorable terms are secured.
But Peter loses Azof, and is shut out from the Black Sea, and is
compelled to withdraw from the vicinity of the Danube. The Baltic is
however still open to him; and in the mean time he has transferred his
capital to a new city, which he built on the Gulf of Finland.
It was during his Swedish war, about the year 1702, when he had driven
the Swedes from Ladoga and the Neva, that he fixed his eyes upon a
miserable morass, a delta, half under water, formed by the dividing
branches of the Neva, as the future seat of his vast empire. It was a
poor site for a capital city, inaccessible by water half the year,
without stones, without wood, without any building materials, with a
barren soil, and liable to be submerged in a storm. Some would say it
was an immense mistake to select such a place for the capital of an
empire stretching even to the Pacific ocean. But it was the only place
he could get which opened a water communication with Western Europe. He
could not Europeanize his empire without some such location for his new
capital. So St. Petersburg arose above the marshes of the Neva as if by
magic, built in a year, on piles, although it cost him the lives of one
hundred thousand men. "We never could look on this capital," says
Motley, "with its imposing though monotonous architecture, its colossal
squares, its vast colonnades, its endless vistas, its spires and
minarets sheathed in barbaric gold and flashing in the sun, and remember
the magical rapidity with which it was built, without recalling Milton's
description of Pandemonium:--
"'As bees
In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters: they among fresh dews and flowers
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
Now rubbed with balm, expatiate, and confer
Their state affairs: so thick the aery crowd
Swarm'd and were straighten'd; till, the signal given,
Behold a wonder!'
"The transfer of the seat of government, by the removal of the senate
from Moscow, was effected a few years afterwards. Since that time, the
repudiated Oriental capital of the ancient Czars, with her golden tiara
and Eastern robe, has sat, like Hagar in the wilderness, deserted and
lonely in all her barbarian beauty. Yet even now, in many a backward
look and longing sigh, she reads plainly enough that she is not
forgotten by her sovereign, that she is still at heart preferred, and
that she will eventually triumph over her usurping and artificial rival."
So writes a great historian; but to me it seems that the longing eyes of
the Emperor of Russia are not turned to the old barbaric capital, but
to a still more ancient capital,--that which Constantine, with
far-seeing vision, selected as the central city of the decaying empire
of the Romans, easily defended, resting on both Europe and Asia, with
access to the Mediterranean and Black seas; the most magnificent site
for the capital of a great empire on the face of the globe, which is
needed by Russia if she is to preserve her maritime power, and which
nothing but the jealousy of the Western nations has prevented her from
twice seizing within a single generation. We say, "Westward, the star of
empire takes its way." But an empire larger in its territories than all
Europe, and constantly augmenting its resources, although still Cossack,
still undeveloped, has its eye on Eastern, not Western extension, until
China herself, with her four thousand years of civilization and her four
hundred millions of people, may become a spoil to be divided between the
Emperor of Russia and the Empress of India; not as banded and united
robbers divide their spoil, but the one encroaching from the West and
North, and the other from the West and South.
Peter, after having realized the great objects to which he early
aspired, after having founded a navy and reorganized his army, and added
provinces to his empire, and partially civilized it, and given to it a
new capital, now meditated a second tour of Europe, this time to be
accompanied by his wife. Thirteen years had elapsed since he worked as a
ship-carpenter in the dock-yards of Holland. He was now forty-three years
old, still manly, vigorous, and inquiring. In 1715, just as Louis had
completed his brilliant and yet unfortunate career, Peter first
revisited the scene of his early labors, where he was enthusiastically
received, and was afterwards entertained with great distinction at
Paris. He continued his studies in art, in science, and laws, saw
everything, and was particularly impressed with the tomb of Richelieu.
"Great man!" apostrophizes the Czar, "I would give half of my kingdom to
learn from thee how to govern the other half." Such remarks indicate
that he knew something of history, and comprehended the mission of the
great cardinal,--which was to establish absolutism as one of the needed
forces of the seventeenth century; for it was Richelieu, hateful as is
his character, who built up the French monarchy.
From Paris, Peter proceeded to Berlin, where he was received with equal
attentions. He inspired universal respect, although his aspect was
fierce, his habits rough, and his manners uncouth. The one thing which
marked him as a great man was his force of character. He was undazzled
and unseduced; plain, simple, temperate, self-possessed, and
straightforward. He had not worked for himself, but for his country, and
everybody knew it. His wife Catherine, also a great woman, did not make
so good an impression as he did, being fat, vulgar, and covered with
jewels and orders and crosses. I suppose both of them were what we now
should call "plain people." Station, power, and wealth seem to have very
little effect on the manners and habits of those who have arisen by
extraordinary talents to an exalted position. Nor does this position
develop pride as much as is generally supposed. Pride is born in a man,
and will appear if he is ever so lowly; as also vanity, the more amiable
quality, which expends itself in hospitalities and ostentations. The
proud Gladstone dresses like a Methodist minister, and does not seem to
care what kind of a hat he wears. The vain Beaconsfield loved honors and
stars and flatteries and aristocratic insignia: if he had been rich he
would have been prodigal, and given great banquets. Peter made no
display, and saved his money for useful purposes. It would seem that
most of the Russian monarchs have retained simplicity in their
private lives.
The closing years of Peter were saddened by a great tragedy, as were
those of David. Both these monarchs had the misfortune to have
rebellious and unworthy sons, who were heirs to the throne. Alexis was
as great a trial to Peter as Absalom was to David. He was hostile to
reforms, was in league with his father's enemies, and was hopelessly
stupid and profligate. He was not vain, ambitious, and beautiful, like
the son of David; but coarse, in bondage to priests, fond of the
society of the weak and dissipated, and utterly unfitted to rule an
empire. Had he succeeded Peter, the life-work of Peter would have been
wasted. His reign would have been as disastrous to Russia as that of
Mary Queen of Scots would have been to England, had she succeeded
Elizabeth. The patience of the father was at last exhausted. He had
remonstrated and threatened to no purpose. The young man would not
reform his habits, or abstain from dangerous intrigues. He got beastly
drunk with convivial friends, and robbed and cheated his father whenever
he got a chance.
What was Peter to do with such a rebellious, undutiful, profligate,
silly youth as Alexis,--a sot, a bigot, and a liar? Should he leave to
him the work of carrying out his policy and aims? It would be weakness
and madness. It seemed to him that he had nothing to do but disinherit
him. In so doing, he would render no injustice. Alexis had no claim to
the throne, like the eldest son of Victoria. The throne belonged to
Peter. He had no fetters on him like a feudal sovereign; he could elect
whom he pleased to inherit his vast empire. It was not his son he loved
best, but his country. He had the right to appoint any successor he
pleased, and he would naturally select one who would carry out his plans
and rule ably. So he disinherited his eldest son Alexis, and did it in
virtue of the power which he imagined he had received, like an old
Jewish patriarch, from God Almighty. There was no law of Russia
designating the eldest son as the Czar's successor. No one can
reasonably blame Peter for disinheriting this worthless son, whom he had
ceased to love,--whom he even despised.
Having disinherited him, out of regard to public interests more than
personal dislike, the question arises, what shall he do with him? Shall
he shut him in a state-prison, or confine him to a convent, or make way
with him? One of these terrible alternatives he must take. What
struggles of his soul to decide which were best! We pity a man compelled
to make such a choice. Any choice was bad, and full of perils and
calumnies. Whatever way he turned was full of obstacles. If he should
shut him up, the priests and humiliated boyars and other intriguing
rascals might make him emperor after Peter's death, and thus create a
counter reformation, and upset the work of Peter's life. If he should
make way with Alexis, the curses of his enemies and the execrations of
Europe and posterity would follow him as an unnatural father. David,
with his tender nature and deep affection, would have spared Absalom if
all the hosts of Israel had fallen and his throne were overturned. But
Peter was not so weak as David; he was stern and severe. He decided to
bring his son to trial for conspiracy and rebellion. The court found
him guilty. The ministers, generals, and senators of the empire
pronounced sentence of death upon him. Would the father have used his
prerogative and pardoned him? That we can never know. Some think that
Peter did not intend to execute the sentence. At any rate, he was
mercifully delivered from his dilemma. Alexis, frightened and apparently
contrite, was seized with a fit of apoplexy, and died imploring his
father's pardon.
This tragedy is regarded as the great stain on the reign of Peter. It
shocked the civilized world. I do not wish to exculpate Peter from
cruelty or hardheartedness; I would neither justify him nor condemn him.
In this matter, I think, he is to be judged by the supreme tribunal of
Heaven. I do not know enough to acquit or condemn him. All I know is,
that his treatment of his son was both a misfortune and a stain on his
memory. The people to decide this point are those rich fathers who have
rebellious, prodigal, reckless, and worthless sons, hopelessly
dissipated, and rendered imbecile by self-indulgence and wasteful
revels; or those people who discuss the expediency and apparent state
necessity for the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, when the welfare of
a great kingdom was set against the ties of blood.
After the death of Alexis, a few more years are given to the Czar to
follow out his improvements, centralize his throne, and extend his
territories both on the Baltic and in the East. The death of Charles
XII. enabled him to take what Swedish provinces he needed to protect his
mercantile interests, and to snatch from Persia the southern coast of
the Caspian,--the original kingdom of Cyrus. "It is not land I want,"
said he, "but water." This is the key to all his conquests. He wanted an
outlet to the sea, on both sides his empire. He did not aim at
territorial enlargement so much as at facilities to enrich and civilize
his empire.
Having done his work,--the work, I think, for which he was raised
up,--he sets about the succession to his throne. Amid unprecedented pomp
he celebrates the coronation of his faithful and devoted wife, to whom
he also has been faithful. It is she only who understands and can carry
out his imperial policy. He himself at Moscow, 1724, amid unusual
solemnities, placed the imperial crown upon her brow, and proudly and
yet humbly walked before her in the gorgeous procession as a captain of
her guard. Before all the great dignitaries of his empire he gives the
following reasons for his course:--
"The Empress Catherine, our dearest consort, was an important help to us
in all our dangers, not in war alone, but in other expeditions in which
she voluntarily accompanied us; serving us with her able counsel,
notwithstanding the natural weakness of her sex, more particularly at
the battle of Pruth, when our army was reduced to twenty-two thousand
men, while the Turks were two hundred thousand strong. It was in this
desperate condition, above all others, that she signalized her zeal by a
courage superior to her sex. For which reasons, and in virtue of that
power which God has given us, we thus honor our spouse with the
imperial crown."
Peter died in the following year, after a reign of more than forty
years, bequeathing a centralized empire to his successors, a large and
disciplined army, a respectable navy, and many improvements in
agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and the arts,--yea, schools and
universities for the education of the higher classes.
Whatever may have been the faults of Peter, history cannot accuse him of
ingratitude, or insincerity, or weak affections,--nothing of which is
seen in his treatment of the honest Dutchman, in whose yard he worked as
a common laborer; of Lefort, whom he made admiral of his fleet; or of
Mentchikof, whom he elevated to the second place in his empire. Peter
was not a great warrior, but he created armies. He had traits in common
with barbarians, but he bequeathed a new civilization, and dispelled the
night of hereditary darkness. He owed nothing to art; he looms up as a
prodigy of Nature. He cared nothing for public opinion; he left the
moral influence of a great example. He began with no particular aim
except to join his country to the sea; he bequeathed a policy of
indefinite expansion. He did not leave free institutions, for his
country was not prepared for them; but he animated thirty millions with
an intense and religious loyalty. He did not emancipate serfs; but he
bequeathed a power which enabled his successors to loosen fetters with
safety. He degraded nobles; but his nobles would have prevented if they
could the emancipation of the people. He may have wasted his energies in
condescending to mean details, and insisting on doing everything with
his own hands, from drummer to general, and cabin-boy to admiral,
winning battles with his own sword, and singing in the choir as head of
the Church; but in so doing he made the mistake of Charlemagne, whom he
strikingly resembles in his iron will, his herculean energies, and his
enlightened mind. He could not convert his subjects from cattle into
men, even had he wished, for civilization is a long and tedious process;
but he made them the subjects of a great empire, destined to spread from
sea to sea. Certainly he was in advance of his people; he broke away
from the ideas which enslaved them. He may have been despotic, and
inexorable, and hard-hearted; but that was just such a man as his
country needed for a ruler. Mr. Motley likens him to "a huge engine,
placed upon the earth to effect a certain task, working its mighty arms
night and day with ceaseless and untiring energy, crashing through all
obstacles, and annihilating everything in its path with the unfeeling
precision of gigantic mechanism." I should say he was an instrument of
Almighty power to bring good out of evil, and prepare the way for a
civilization the higher elements of which he did not understand, and
with which he would not probably have sympathized.
Who shall say, as we survey his mighty labors, and the indomitable
energy and genius which inspired them, that he does not deserve the
title which civilization has accorded to him,--yea, a higher title than
that of Great, even that of Father of his country?
AUTHORITIES.
Journal de Pierre le Grand; History of Peter the Great, by Alexander
Gordon; John Bell's Travels in Russia; Henry Bruce's Memoirs of Peter;
Motley's Life of Peter I.; Voltaire's History of the Russian Empire
under Peter the Great; Voltaire's Life of Charles XII.; Biographic
Universelle; Encyclopaedia Britannica,--article "Russia;" Barrow's
Memoir of the Life of Peter the Great; Schuyler's History of Peter
the Great.
FREDERIC THE GREAT.
A.D. 1712-1786.
THE PRUSSIAN POWER.
The history of Frederic the Great is simply that of a man who committed
an outrageous crime, the consequences of which pursued him in the
maledictions and hostilities of Europe, and who fought bravely and
heroically to rescue himself and country from the ruin which impended
over him as a consequence of this crime. His heroism, his fertility of
resources, his unflagging energy, and his amazing genius in overcoming
difficulties won for him the admiration of that class who idolize
strength and success; so that he stands out in history as a struggling
gladiator who baffled all his foes,--not a dying gladiator on the arena
of a pagan amphitheatre, but more like a Judas Maccabaeus, when hunted
by the Syrian hosts, rising victorious, and laying the foundation of a
powerful monarchy; indeed, his fame spread, irrespective of his cause
and character, from one end of Christendom to the other,--not such a
fame as endeared Gustavus Adolphus to the heart of nations for heroic
efforts to save the Protestant religion,--but such a fame as the
successful generals of ancient Rome won by adding territories to a
warlike State, regardless of all the principles of right and wrong. Such
a career is suggestive of grand moral lessons; and it is to teach these
lessons that I describe a character for whom I confess I feel but little
sympathy, yet whom I am compelled to respect for his heroic qualities
and great abilities.
Frederic of Prussia was born in 1712, and had an unhappy childhood and
youth from the caprices of a royal but disagreeable father, best known
for his tall regiment of guards; a severe, austere, prejudiced, formal,
narrow, and hypochondriacal old Pharisee, whose sole redeeming
excellence was an avowed belief in God Almighty and in the orthodox
doctrines of the Protestant Church.
In 1740, this rigid, exacting, unsympathetic king died; and his son
Frederic, who had been subjected to the severest discipline, restraints,
annoyances, and humiliations, ascended the throne, and became the third
King of Prussia, at the age of twenty-eight. His kingdom was a small
one, being then about one quarter of its present size.
And here we pause for a moment to give a glance at the age in which he
lived,--an age of great reactions, when the stirring themes and issues
of the seventeenth century were substituted for mockeries, levities,
and infidelities; when no fierce protests were made except those of
Voltaire against the Jesuits; when an abandoned woman ruled France, as
the mistress of an enervated monarch; when Spain and Italy were sunk in
lethargic forgetfulness, Austria was priest-ridden, and England was
governed by a ring of selfish lauded proprietors; when there was no
marked enterprise but the slave-trade; when no department of literature
or science was adorned by original genius; and when England had no
broader statesman than Walpole, no abler churchman than Warburton, no
greater poet than Pope. There was a general indifference to lofty
speculation. A materialistic philosophy was in fashion,--not openly
atheistic, but arrogant and pretentious, whose only power was in sarcasm
and mockery, like the satires of Lucian, extinguishing faith, godless
and yet boastful,--an Epicureanism such as Socrates attacked and Paul
rebuked. It found its greatest exponent in Voltaire, the oracle and idol
of intellectual Europe. In short, it was an age when general cynicism
and reckless abandonment to pleasure marked the upper-classes; an age
which produced Chesterfield, as godless a man as Voltaire himself.
In this period of religious infidelity, moral torpor, fashionable
mediocrity, unthinking pleasure-seeking, and royal orgies; when the
people were spurned, insuited and burdened,--Frederic ascends an
absolute throne. He is a young and fashionable philosopher. He professes
to believe in nothing that ages of inquiry and study are supposed to
have settled; he even ridicules the religious principles of his father.
He ardently adopts everything which claims to be a novelty, but is not
learned enough to know that what he supposes to be new has been exploded
over and over again. He is liberal and tolerant, but does not see the
logical sequence of the very opinions he indorses. He is also what is
called an accomplished man, since he can play on an instrument, and
amuse a dinner-party by jokes and stories. He builds a magnificent
theatre, and collects statues, pictures, snuff-boxes, and old china. He
welcomes to his court, not stern thinkers, but sneering and amusing
philosophers. He employs in his service both Catholics and Protestants
alike, since he holds in contempt the religion of both. He is free from
animosities and friendships, and neither punishes those who are his
enemies nor rewards those who are his friends. He apes reform, but
shackles the press; he appoints able men in his service, but only those
who will be his unscrupulous tools. He has a fine physique, and
therefore is unceasingly active. He flies from one part of his kingdom
to another, not to examine morals or education or the state of the
people, but to inspect fortresses and to collect camps.
To such a man the development of the resources of his kingdom, the
reform of abuses, and educational projects are of secondary importance;
he gives his primary attention to raising and equipping armies, having
in view the extension of his kingdom by aggressive and unjustifiable
wars. He cares little for domestic joys or the society of women, and is
incapable of sincere friendship. He has no true admiration for
intellectual excellence, although he patronizes literary lions. He is
incapable of any sacrifice except for his troops, who worship him, since
their interests are identical with his own. In the camp or in the field
he spends his time, amusing himself occasionally with the society of
philosophers as cynical as himself. He has dreams and visions of
military glory, which to him is the highest and greatest on this earth,
Charles XII. being his model of a hero.