This abortive crime had made the persecution rage with redoubled fury

when, all at once, a frightful report was spread; it was soon confirmed

that several hundred of these wretched beings had taken refuge in a

church, and, rather than abjure their superstitions, had set fire to

their asylum, leaving nothing but their ashes to their persecutor. A

horrible sacrifice, which, however, was not useless. Peter saw his error;

his intolerance was only political--it was enlightened by these flames,

which religious intolerance witnessed with such atrocious joy.

Yet, unable to forgive these sectaries an obstinacy which was victorious

over his own, he once more tried against them the weapon of ridicule.

He ordered that they should wear a bit of yellow stuff on their backs,

to distinguish them from his other subjects. This mark of humiliation,

however, they considered as a distinction. Some malignant advisers

endeavoured to rouse his anger again, but he replied, “No; I have learned

that they are men of pure morals; they are the most upright merchants

in the empire; and neither honour nor the welfare of the country will

allow of their being martyred for their errors. Besides, that which a

degrading badge and force of reason have been unable to effect will never

be accomplished by punishment; let them, therefore, live in peace.”

These were remarkable words, and worthy the pupil of Holland and England,

worthy of a prince to whom superstition was a most inveterate enemy. In

reality, he was a believer, but not credulous; and even while he knelt

on the field of victory, he gave thanks to God alone for the reward of

so many toils, and could separate the cause of heaven from that of the

priests; it was his wish that they should be citizens. We have seen that

he subjected them to the same taxes as his other subjects; and because

the monks eluded them he diminished their numbers. He unmasked the

superstitious impostures of the priests, who all sought to close up every

cranny by which the light might have a chance of reaching them.

For this reason, they held St. Petersburg in abhorrence. According to

their description of it, this half-built city, by which Russia already

aspired to civilisation, was one of the mouths of hell. It was they

who obtained from the unfortunate Alexis a promise that it should be

destroyed. Their prophecies repeatedly fixed the epoch at which it would

be overthrown by the wrath of heaven. The labours upon it were then

suspended, for so great was the fear thus inspired that the orders of the

terrible czar were issued almost in vain.

On one occasion, these lying priests were for some days particularly

active; they displayed one of their sacred images, from which the tears

flowed miraculously; it wept the fate which impended over those who dwelt

in this new city. “Its hour is at hand,” said they, “and it will be

swallowed up, with all its inhabitants, by a tremendous inundation.” On

hearing of this miracle of the tears, the treacherous construction which

was put upon it, and the perturbation which it occasioned, Peter thought

it necessary to hasten to the spot. There, in the midst of the people,

who were petrified with terror, and of his tongue-tied court, he seized

the miraculous image, and discovered its mechanism; the multitude were

stupefied with a pious horror, but he opened their eyes by showing them,

in those of the idol, the congealed oil, which was melted by the flame

of tapers inside, and then flowed drop by drop through openings artfully

provided for the purpose.

[Sidenote: [1719 A.D.]]

At a later period he did still more; the horrible execution of a young

Russian by the priests was the cause. This unfortunate man had brought

back from Germany a highly valuable knowledge of medicine, and had left

there some superstitious prejudices. For this reason all his motions were

watched by the priests; and they at last caught up some thoughtless words

against their sacred images. They immediately arrested the regenerated

young Russian, sentenced him without mercy, and put him to a torturing

death. But this individual evil produced a general good. Indignant at

their cruelty, Peter deprived the clergy of the right of condemning

to death. The priests lost a jurisdiction which they alleged they had

possessed for seven centuries, from the time of Vladimir the Great, and

thus the source of their power was forever annihilated by this execrable

abuse of it.

It was particularly in that sanguinary year, so fatal to the last hope

which the old Russians placed in his successor, that Peter seemed in

haste to sever them from their ancient customs, by giving an entirely

new form to the administration of his empire. As far back as 1711, he

had already replaced the old supreme court of the boyars by a senate, a

sovereign council, into which merit and services might obtain admission,

independent of noble origin. Subsequently, and every year, other changes

had been effected. Thus, in 1717, he brought from France, along with a

commercial treaty, the institution of a general police. But, in 1718,

instead of the old prikaz, he substituted, at one stroke, colleges for

foreign affairs, naval affairs, finance, justice, and commerce, and

fixed, by a general regulation, and with the utmost minuteness, the

functions and privileges of each of them.

At the same time, when capable Russians were not to be found, he

appointed his Swedish prisoners, and the most eminent of the foreigners,

to fill these administrative and judicial situations. He was careful to

give the highest offices to natives, and the second to foreigners, that

the native officers might support, against the pride and jealousy of

their countrymen, these foreigners who served them as instructors and

guides. For the purpose of forming his young nobles for the service of

the state, he adjoined a considerable number of them to each college; and

there merit alone could raise them from the lowest stations to the first

rank.

RENEWED HOSTILITIES WITH SWEDEN (1719-1721 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1719-1720 A.D.]]

The death of Charles XII was immediately followed by a revolution in

Sweden. His sister Ulrica Eleonora, who was married to the crown prince

of Hesse-Cassel, succeeded him on the throne; but the constitution was

changed, the despotic authority of the crown was reduced to a mere

shadow, and the queen and her husband became the tools of an oligarchy

who usurped all the powers of the state. The czar and the new queen

mutually protested their desire for peace; but Peter at the same time

announced to the Swedish plenipotentiaries that, if the propositions

he had made were not accepted within two months, he would march forty

thousand men into Sweden to expedite the negotiations.

A project for the pacification of the north, the very opposite from that

conceived by Görtz, was formed by the diet of Brunswick. The concocters

of this scheme started from the principle that the German possessions of

Sweden were more onerous than profitable to that power, as the occasions

of interminable wars. It was resolved, therefore, that they should be

abandoned to the powers that had conquered them; but as it was reasonable

that the new possessors should purchase the ratification of their titles

by some services to the common cause, they were required to aid Sweden

in recovering possession of Finland and of Livonia, the granary of that

kingdom. Of all the czar’s conquests nothing was to be left to him but

St. Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Narva; and, if he refused to assent to

this arrangement, all the contracting powers were to unite their forces

and compel him to submit. This was one of those brilliant and chimerical

schemes with which diplomatists sometimes allow their minds to be so

dazzled as not to be convinced of their impracticability until after a

lavish waste of blood.

Whilst the allies were in imagination depriving Peter of his conquests,

Siniavin, his admiral, took from the Swedes two ships of the line and

a brigantine, which were carrying corn to Stockholm. The queen of

Sweden, however, encouraged by the promises made her by Lord Carteret,

the ambassador of George I, intimated to the czar that she would break

off the conferences at Åland if he did not consent to restore all the

provinces he had conquered. By way of reply, Peter went in June, 1719,

with a fleet of 30 ships, 150 galleys, and 300 barges, carrying in all

40,000 men, to Åland, took up his station for a while under the cliffs

of the island of Lämeland, and sent Apraxin to ravage the wastes on

the right of Stockholm, whilst Lessy destroyed everything on the left

of the city. North and south Telge, Nyköping, Norköping, Osthammer,

and Oregrund, together with two small towns, were burned, besides 150

noble mansions, 43 mills, 1,360 villages, 21 copper, iron, and tile

works--among the iron works one was worth 300,000 dollars; 100,000 cattle

were slaughtered, and 80,000 bars of iron thrown into the sea. The

mines were blown up and the woods set on fire, and Stockholm itself was

seriously threatened. Meanwhile, the English fleet under Admiral Norris

again entered the Baltic. Peter sent a message to the English admiral

asking peremptorily whether he came only as a friend to Sweden or as an

enemy to Russia. The admiral’s answer was that as yet he had no positive

orders. This equivocal reply did not hinder Peter from keeping the sea,

and incessantly harassing the Swedes before the eyes of their naval

allies.

The Swedish oligarchs and their mock king[43] had reckoned in vain upon

the intercession of the English ambassador, and the aid of the admiral

and his fleet. Carteret was not even listened to by Peter, and Admiral

Norris did not venture to attack the Russians, because he knew that the

English nation was dissatisfied with the politics of their king and of

his ministers, who favoured his Hanoverian plans. The Swedes were at

length obliged to acquiesce in the Russian demands; negotiations for

peace were again commenced in Nystad at the end of the year 1720, but

their conclusion was only brought about at the close of the following

year by the exercise of some further cruelties on the part of the

Russians. The Swedes had demanded a cessation of hostilities during the

whole time in which the negotiations were pending, but Peter only granted

it till May, 1721, in order to compel the council of state to come to

a resolution by that time; and as they still procrastinated, the whole

coast of Sweden was again plundered and devastated in the month of June.

[Sidenote: [1721 A.D.]]

The Russian incendiaries landed in sight of the English, whose fleet

under Admiral Norris, still continued in the Baltic, but did not venture

to lend any assistance to the Swedes. The whole coast, from Gefle as

far as Umeå, was ravaged; four small towns, nineteen villages, eighty

nobles’ and five hundred peasants’ houses burned; twelve iron-works and

eight saw-mills destroyed; six galleys and other ships carried away.

Peter’s plenipotentiaries at last prevailed--for he so jocularly called

his soldiers and sailors who were committing such horrible destruction

in Sweden. Negotiations were again opened in Nystad, a small town in

Finland, and the war of twenty-one years was closed by a peace dictated

by the conquering czar.

The provinces ceded to Russia by the Peace of Nystad (September 10th,

1721) were Livonia, Esthonia, and Karelia, together with Viborg, Kexholm,

and the island of Ösel; on the other hand, Peter restored Finland, with

the exception of Viborg and Kexholm, and promised to pay two millions of

dollars, but in the first years of the peace scarcely paid off half a

million.

From this time forward, the despotic sway and military oppression of

Russia became the dread of all neighbouring countries and people. All

contributed to the external greatness and splendour of the ruler of a

barbarous but powerful race of slaves, whom he constrained to adopt the

vestments of civilisation. The czar commanded in Poland and Scandinavia,

where weak or wicked governments were constantly in dread from the

discontent of the people. He also gained an influence in Germany, which

ultimately caused no small anxiety to the emperor and the empire. The

Russian minister Bestuzhev played the chief part in Sweden in all

political affairs, sometimes by counsel and sometimes by threats,

sometimes by mediation and sometimes by commands. Bestuzhev was powerful

in the Swedish council, and at the same time, in compliance with the

wishes of his master, allured artists, artisans, workmen, and all those

who had been deprived of occupation or ruined by the late inroads of

the Russians, to remove with their tools, manufactures, and trades to

Russia. Peter employed these people in all parts of his empire to raise

up manufactories, to originate trades, and to set mines and iron-works in

action.

The Russian minister spoke in a no less commanding tone in Copenhagen

than in Sweden, for Denmark was also frightened by Peter’s threats to

adopt and second the cause of the duke of Holstein. The duke was detained

in Russia by repeated promises, of whose fulfilment there was little

prospect. The Poles, through Russian mediation, were at length reconciled

to their king, and the Russians not only kept firm possession of

Courland, but remained in Poland itself, under the pretence of preserving

the peace of the country. Peter, nevertheless, in his negotiations with

Görtz and Charles XII, had showed himself well inclined to sacrifice King

Augustus to his plans; but this scheme was frustrated by the death of

Charles.

PETER AS ADMINISTRATOR

Peter had now achieved a prodigious amount of external and internal

power; yet the original nucleus of it all was nothing more than fifty

young companions in debauchery, whom he transformed into soldiers,

and the remains of a sailing-boat, which had been left forgotten in

a magazine. In twenty-five years this seed, nursed by a skilful and

vigorous hand, had, on the one part, produced two hundred thousand men,

divided into fifty-five regiments, and cantoned, with three hundred field

pieces, in permanent quarters; a body of engineers, and, particularly,

of formidable artillerymen; and fourteen thousand pieces of cannon,

deposited in a great central establishment, in the fortresses, and three

military magazines on the frontiers of the three chief national enemies,

the Turks, the Poles, and the Swedes. On the other hand, from the relics

of the sailing boat had arisen thirty ships of the line, a proportionate

number of frigates and smaller vessels of war, two hundred galleys with

sails and oars, and a multitude of experienced mariners.

But with what treasures did Peter undertake the moral and physical

transformation of such an extensive empire? We behold an entire land

metamorphosed, cities containing a hundred thousand souls, ports,

canals, and establishments of all kinds, created; thousands of skilful

Europeans attracted, maintained and rewarded; several fleets built, and

others purchased; a permanent army of a hundred and twenty thousand men,

trained, equipped, provided with every species of arms and ammunition,

and several times renewed; subsidies of men and money given to Poland;

and four wars undertaken. One of these wars spread over half of Europe

and when it lasted twenty-one years the treasury from which it was fed

still remained full. And Peter, whose revenues on his accession did not

exceed a few hundred thousand pounds, declared to Munich that he could

have carried on the war for twenty-one years longer without contracting

any debt.

Will order and economy be sufficient to account for these phenomena?

We must, doubtless, admire them in the czar, who refused himself every

superfluity at the same time that he spared nothing for the improvement

of his empire. Much must have been gained when, after having wrested the

indirect taxes from the boyars, who were at once civil, military, and

financial managers, and from those to whom the boyars sold in portions

the collecting of them, Peter, in imitation of Holland, entrusted the

finances to committees composed of select merchants. We may also feel

less surprised at the increase of his revenue, after we have seen him

subjecting to taxation the clergy as well as the laity; suppressing a

number of monasteries, by forbidding monastic vows to be taken before

the age of fifty; and uniting their estates to the domains of the crown,

which were swelled by confiscations, by the reversion of his brother

Ivan’s appanage, and by his conquests from the Swedes.

We must remark, at the same time, that he had opened his states to

foreign commerce and to the treasures of Europe, which were carried

thither to be exchanged for the many raw materials which had hitherto

remained valueless; we must consider the augmentation of revenue which

necessarily ensued, and the possibility of requiring to be paid in money

a multitude of taxes which had previously been paid in kind. Thus, in

place of quotas of provisions, which were brought from great distances

and were highly oppressive to the people, he substituted a tax; and the

sum raised was applied to the payment of contractors. It is true that

even under this new system the state was shamefully robbed; for the

nobles contrived in secret to get the contracts into their own hands,

in order to fatten upon the blood of the people; but Peter at length

perceived them; the evil betrayed itself by its own enormity. The czar

then created commissions of inquiry, passed whole days in them, and,

during several years, keeping these great peculators always in sight,

made them disgorge by fines and confiscations, and punished them by the

knout, the halter, and the axe.

To this superintendence by the head of the state, which, subsequently to

1715, the contraction of the war within a narrower circle allowed him

to exert, let us add the increase of salary to the collectors, which

deprived them of all pretext for misconduct. Nor must it be forgotten

that most of the stipends were paid in kind; and that, for several years,

the war, being carried on out of the empire, supplied its own wants. It

must be observed, too, that the cities and provinces in which the troops

were afterwards quartered furnished their pay on the spot, by which the

charge of discount was saved; and that the measures which they adopted

for their subsistence appear to have been municipal, and consequently

as little oppressive as possible. Finally, we must remark, in 1721, the

substitution, in place of the Tatar house-tax, of a poll-tax, which was

a real impost on land, assessed according to a census repeated every

twenty years, the payment of which the agriculturists regulated among

themselves, in proportion to the value of their produce.

At the same time, the reformer refused to foreigners the privilege

of trading with each other in Russia; he even gave to his subjects

exclusively the right of conveying to the frontiers of the empire the

merchandise which foreigners had bought from them in the interior. Thus

he ensured to his own people the profit of carriage. In 1716 he chose

rather to give up an advantageous alliance with the English than to

relinquish this right in their favour.

But all the causes we have enumerated will not yet account for the

possibility of so many gigantic undertakings and such immense results,

with a fixed revenue in specie which, in 1715, was estimated by an

attentive observer at only some millions of roubles. But in the fiscal

expedients of a despotic empire it is to fluctuating revenue, illegal

resources, and arbitrary measures that we must direct our attention;

astonishment then ceases, and then begins pity for one party, indignation

against another, and surprise excited by the ignorance with respect to

commercial affairs which is displayed by the high and mighty geniuses of

despotism, in comparison with the unerring instinct which is manifested

by the humblest community of men who are free.

It is the genius of Russian despotism, therefore, that we must question

as to the means by which it produced such gigantic results; but however

far it may be disposed to push its frightful candour, will it point out

to us its army recruited by men whom the villages sent tied together in

pairs, and at their own expense--soldiers at a penny a day, payable every

four months, and often marching without pay; slaves whom it was thought

quite enough to feed, and who were contented with some handfuls of rye

or of oats made into gruel or into ill-baked bread; unfortunate wretches

who, in spite of the blunders of their generals, were compelled to be

victorious, under pain of being decimated! Or will this despotism confess

that, while it gave nothing to these serfs, who were enlisted for life,

it required everything from them; that, after twenty-one years of war, it

compelled them to dig canals, like miserable bond-slaves? “For they ought

to serve their country,” said Peter, “either by defending or enriching

it; that is what they are made for.”

Could this autocrat pride himself on the perennial fulness of an

exchequer which violated its engagements in such a manner that most of

the foreigners who were in his service were anxious to quit it? What

answer could he make to that hollow and lengthened groan which, even

yet, seems to rise from every house in Taganrog, and in St. Petersburg,

and from his forts, built by the most deadly kind of statute-labour, and

peopled by requisitions? One half of the inhabitants of the villages were

sent to construct them, and were relieved by the other half every six

months; and the weakest and the most industrious of them never more saw

their homes!

These unfortunate beings, whatever might be their calling, from the

common delver to the watchmaker and jeweller, were torn without

mercy from their families, their ploughs, their workshops, and their

counting-houses. They travelled to their protracted torture at their own

expense; they worked without any pay. Some were compelled to fill up

swamps, and build houses on them; others, to remove thither suddenly,

and establish their trade there; and all these hapless men, one part of

whom were bent to the earth with toil, and the other part in a manner

lost in a new world, were so badly fed and sheltered, or breathed such a

pestilential air, that the Russians of that period used to say that St.

Petersburg was built upon a bed of human skeletons.

Listen to the complaints of the nobles and the richest merchants: after

the gift of a hundred vessels had been required from them, they were

forced to unite in this slough to build stone houses, and were also

constrained to live there at a much greater expense than they would

have incurred in their own homes. And when even the clergy remonstrated

against the excessive taxes laid upon the priests (who were able to

indemnify themselves out of their flocks) who can be astonished at the

possibility of so many creations, and at the plenitude of a treasury

which opened so widely to receive and so scantily to disburse?

Personal services, taxes in kind, taxes in money--these were the three

main sources of the power of the czar. We have just seen what estimate

we ought to form as to the manner in which the first of these was

employed. As to the taxes in kind and in money, how could the insulated

cries of such a multitude of taxpayers, who were scattered over so wide

a space, have reached the present age, if the excess of a simultaneous

and universal evil had not blended them into one vast clamour, stronger

than time and space? It is from this we learn the names of the throng

of taxes which were laid upon everything, and at every opportunity,

for the war, the admiralty, the recruiting-service, for the horses

used in the public works, for the brick and lime-kilns required in the

building of St. Petersburg, for the post-office, the government offices,

the extraordinary expenses, for the contributions in kind, for the

requisitions of men and their pay and subsistence, and for the salaries

of those who were in place; to which must be added innumerable other

duties on mills, ponds, baths, beehives, meadows, gardens, and, in the

towns, on every square fathom of land which bore the name of black, or

non-free. And all this was aggravated by other exorbitant and grinding

burdens, and by fleecing the artisans in proportion to their industry and

their assumed wealth--the result of which was that they concealed both;

the most laborious of them buried their earnings that they might hide

them from the nobles; and the nobles intrusted their riches to foreign

banks, that they might hide them from the czar.

To this we have yet to add the secondary oppressions; collectors, whose

annual pay was, for a long time, only six roubles; and who, nevertheless,

accumulated fortunes in four years, for they converted to their own use

two thirds of the sums which they extorted; executing by torture whoever

was unable to pay, they made the most horrible misuse of the unlimited

powers which according to the practice of absolute governments, were

necessarily entrusted to them--despotism being unable to act otherwise

than by delegation.

These men had the right of levying taxes on all the markets of the

country, of laying whatever duties they pleased upon commodities, and

of breaking into houses, for the purpose of preventing or discovering

infractions of their orders, so that the unfortunate people, finding that

they had nought which they could call their own, and that everything,

even to their industry, belonged to the czar, ceased to exert themselves

for more than a mere subsistence, and lost that spirit which only a

man’s personal interest can inspire. Accordingly, the forests were

peopled with men driven to desperation, and those who at first remained

in the villages, finding that they were obliged to pay the taxes of the

fugitives as well as their own, speedily joined their companions.

What can bear witness more strongly to the disordered state of those

times than the facts themselves? They show us grandees, who were

possessed of the highest credit, repeatedly convicted of embezzling the

public money; others hanged or beheaded! and a vice-chancellor himself

daring, without any authority, to give places and pensions, and, in so

poor a country, contriving to purloin nearly a hundred and fifty thousand

pounds. It was not, therefore, the czar alone whom the people accused of

their sufferings. But such is the tenure of despotism that, in depriving

the people of their will, it takes upon itself the whole responsibility.

All, however, agree that, about 1715, they beheld their czar astounded at

the aspect of such numerous evils; they acknowledge the efforts which he

had made, and that all of them had not been fruitless.

But, at the same time, to account for the inexhaustible abundance of the

autocrat’s treasury, they represent him to us as monopolising everything

for his own benefit, giving to the current coin of his empire the

value which suited his purpose, and receiving it from foreigners at no

more than its intrinsic worth. They accuse him of having engrossed the

purchase or sale of numberless native and foreign productions, either by

suddenly taxing various kinds of merchandise or by assuming the right

of being the exclusive purchaser, at his own price, to sell again at an

exorbitant price when he had become the sole possessor. They say also

that, forestalling everything, their czar made himself the sole merchant

trading from European Russia to China and Siberia, as well as the sole

mint-master, the sole trader in tobacco, soap, talc, pitch, and tar; that

having also declared himself the only public-house keeper in an empire

where drunkenness held sovereign sway, this monopoly annually brought

back into his coffers all the pay that had been disbursed from them.

When, in 1716, he wished to defray the expenses of his second journey

to Holland, and at the same time avoid being a loser by the rate of

exchange, what was the plan which he adopted? He laid hands on all the

leather intended for exportation, which he paid for at a maximum fixed by

himself, and then exported it on his own account, the proceeds being made

payable in Holland, where it was purchased by foreigners.

It is thus that many of his contemporaries explain the riches of a prince

who was the principal manufacturer and merchant of a great empire--the

creator, the superintendent of its arts. In his eyes, his subjects were

nothing more than workmen, whose labours he prompted, estimated, and

rewarded according to his own pleasure; he reserved to himself the sale

of the produce of their industry, and the immense profits which he thus

gained he employed in doubling that produce.

What a singular founder of commerce in his empire was a monarch who

drew it all within his own sphere and absorbed it in himself! We may,

however, be allowed to believe that he sometimes became a merchant and

manufacturer, as he became a soldier and a sailor, for the sake of

example, and that the obstinate repugnance of his ignorant subjects to

many branches of industry and commerce long compelled him to retain the

monopoly of them, whether he would or not. It is curious to remark how

his despotism recoiled upon himself when he interfered with matters so

impatient of arbitrary power as trade and credit. Soloviev is an example

of this. Assisted by the privileges which Peter had granted to him, that

merchant succeeded in establishing at Amsterdam the first commercial

Russian factory that had ever been worthy of notice; but in 1717, when

the czar visited Holland for the second time, his greedy courtiers

irritated him against their fellow countryman. Soloviev had not chosen to

ransom himself from the envy which his riches inspired. They therefore

slandered him to their sovereign; he was arrested and sent back to

Russia; his correspondents lost their advances; confidence was ruined,

and the autocrat, by confiscating this source of riches, destroyed his

work with his own hand. Yet he had a glimpse of something like free-trade

principles. He would never impose any higher penalty on smuggling than

confiscation. “Commerce,” he said, “is like a timid maiden, who is scared

by rough usage, and must be won by gentle means. Smuggle who will, and

welcome. The merchant who exposes himself to the chance of having his

goods confiscated runs a greater risk than my treasury. If he cheats me

nine times and I catch him the tenth, I shall be no loser by the game.”

_The Church and the Aristocracy_

Peter had never been at any pains to conceal his indifference or

contempt for the national church; but it was not until that culminating

point in his history at which we are now arrived that he ventured to

accomplish his design of abolishing the office of patriarch. He had left

it unfilled for one-and-twenty years, and he formally suppressed it

after the conclusion of the Peace of Nystad; when heaven had declared

in his favour, as it seemed to the multitude, who always believe the

Deity to be on the strongest side. In the following year, however, the

synod, in spite of Theophanes, its president, whom we may consider as

his minister for religious affairs, dared to desire that a patriarch

might be appointed. But bursting into a sudden passion Peter started up,

struck his breast violently with his hand and the table with his cutlass,

and exclaimed, “Here, here is your patriarch!” He then hastily quitted

the room, casting, as he departed, a stern look upon the panic-struck

prelates.

Of the two conquests which Peter consummated about the same time--that

over Sweden and that by which he annihilated the independence of the

Russian clergy--it is hard to say which was the more gratifying to his

pride. Someone having communicated to him the substance of a paper in the

English _Spectator_, in which a comparison was made between himself and

Louis XIV, entirely to his own advantage, he disclaimed the superiority

accorded to him by the essayist, save in one particular: “Louis XIV,”

said he, “was greater than I, except that I have been able to reduce my

clergy to obedience, while he allowed his clergy to rule him.”

Soon after the abolition of the patriarchate, Peter celebrated the

marriage of Buturlin, the second _kniaz papa_ of his creation, with the

widow of Sotov, his predecessor in that mock dignity. The bridegroom

was in his eighty-fifth year, and the bride nearly of the same age. The

messengers who invited the wedding guests were four stutterers; some

decrepit old men attended the bride; the running footmen were four of

the most corpulent fellows that could be found; the orchestra was placed

on a sledge drawn by bears, which being goaded with iron spikes made

with their horrid roarings an accompaniment suitable to the tunes played

on the sledge. The nuptial benediction was given in the cathedral by a

blind and deaf priest with spectacles on. The procession, the marriage,

the wedding feast, the undressing of the bride and bridegroom, the

ceremony of putting them to bed were all in the same style of repulsive

buffoonery. Among the coarse-minded courtiers this passed for an

ingenious derision of the clergy.

The nobles were another order in the state whose resistance, though

more passive than that of the clergy, was equally insufferable to the

czar. His hand had always been heavy against that stiff-necked race. He

had no mercy upon their indolence and superstition, no toleration for

their pride of birth or wealth. As landed proprietors he regarded them

merely as the possessors of fiefs, who held them by the tenure of being

serviceable to the state. Such was the spirit of the law of 1715 relative

to inheritances, which till then had been equally divided; but from that

date the real estate was to descend to one of the males, the choice of

whom was left to the father, while only the personal property was to pass

to the other children. In this respect the law was favourable to paternal

authority and aristocracy; but its real purpose was rendered obvious

by other clauses. It decreed that the inheritors of personal property

should not be permitted to convert it into real estate until after seven

years of military service, ten years of civil service, or fifteen years’

profession of some kind of art or of commerce. Nay, more, if we may rely

on the authority of Perry, every heir of property to the amount of five

hundred roubles, who had not learned the rudiments of his native language

or of some ancient or foreign language, was to forfeit his inheritance.

The great nobles had ere this been shorn of their train of boyar

followers, or noble domestics, by whom they were perpetually attended,

and these were transformed into soldiers, disciplined in the European

manner. At the same time several thousand cavalry were formed out of

the sons of the priests, who were free men, but not less ignorant and

superstitious than their fathers. Against the inertness of the nobles,

too, Peter made war even in the sanctuary of their families. Every one

of them between the ages of ten and thirty, who evaded an enlistment

which was termed voluntary, was to have his property confiscated to the

use of the person by whom he was denounced. The sons of the nobles were

arbitrarily wrested from them; some were placed in military schools;

others were sent to unlearn their barbarian manners and acquire new

habits and knowledge among polished nations; many of them were obliged

to keep up a correspondence with the czar on the subject of what they

were learning; on their return, he himself questioned them, and if they

were found not to have benefited by their travels, disgrace and ridicule

were their punishment. Given up to the czar’s buffoon, they became the

laughing-stocks of the court, and were compelled to perform the most

degrading offices in the palace. These were the tyrannical punishments of

a reformer who managed that he might succeed in doing violence to nature

by beginning education at an age when it ought to be completed, and by

subjecting grown-up men to chastisements which would scarcely be bearable

for children.

It is with reason that Mannstein reproaches Peter with having expected

to transform, by travels in polished countries, men who were already

confirmed in their habits, and who were steeped to the core in ignorance,

sloth, and barbarism. “The greatest part of them,” he says, “acquired

nothing but vices.” This it was which drew upon Peter a lesson from

his sage; for such was the appellation which he gave to Dolgoruki.

That senator having pertinaciously, and without assigning any reason,

maintained that the travels of the Russian youth would be useless, made

no other reply to an impatient and passionate contradiction from the

despot than to fold the ukase in silence, run his nail forcibly along it,

and then desire the autocrat to try whether, with all his power, he could

ever obliterate the crease that was made in the paper.

[Sidenote: [1722 A.D.]]

At last, by his ukase of January 24th, 1722, Peter annihilated the

privileges of the old Russian aristocracy, and under the specious pretext

of making merit the only source of social distinction, he created a new

order of nobility, divided into eight military and as many civil grades,

all immediately and absolutely dependent on the czar. The only favour

allowed to the old landed aristocracy was that they were not deprived of

the right of appearing at court; but none of them could obtain the rank

and appointments of an officer, nor, in any company, the respect and

distinctions exclusively belonging to that rank, until they had risen

to it by actual service. Such was the fundamental principle of that

notorious system called the _tchin_;[44] and plausible as it may appear

upon a superficial view, it has been fruitful of nothing but hideous

tyranny, corruption, chicanery, and malversation. The modern nobility

of Russia is in fact but a vile bureaucracy. The only thing truly

commendable in the ukase of 1722 is that it degrades to the level of the

rabble every nobleman convicted of crime and sentenced to a punishment

that ought to entail infamy. Previously, as the reader has already seen,

a nobleman might appear unabashed in public, and claim all the privileges

of his birth, with his back still smarting from the executioner’s lash.

_Commerce with the East_

Peter had always encountered great difficulty in attracting to St.

Petersburg the commerce of central Russia, which the merchants

obstinately persisted in throwing away upon Archangel. Yet at St.

Petersburg they enjoyed several privileges, and a milder climate allowed

of two freights a year, while at Archangel the ice would admit of only

one. To this must be added the advantage of a calmer sea, a better port,

lower duties, a much shorter distance, and a much larger concourse of

purchasers; but no persuasion could make the Russians abandon the old

routine, until at last Peter treated them like ignorant and stubborn

children, to whom he would do good in spite of themselves. In 1722 he

expressly prohibited the carrying of any goods to Archangel but such as

belonged to the district of that government. This ordinance at first

raised a great outcry among the traders, both native and foreign, and

caused several bankruptcies; but the merchants, accustoming themselves by

degrees to come to St. Petersburg, at last found themselves gainers by

the change.

The trade with the Mongols and Chinese had been jeopardised by the

extortions of Prince Gagarin, the governor of Siberia, and by acts of

violence committed by the Russians in Peking and in the capital of

Contaish, the prince pontiff of a sect of dissenters from Lamaism.

To check the growth of this evil, Peter sent Ismailov, a captain in

the guards, to Peking, with presents to the emperor, among which were

several pieces of turnery, the work of his own hands. The negotiation

was successful; but the Russians soon lost the fruits of it by fresh

acts of indiscretion, and were expelled from China by order of Kam-hi.

The Russian court alone retained the right of sending a caravan every

three years to Peking; but that right again was subsequently lost in

consequence of new quarrels. The court finally renounced its exclusive

privilege, and granted the subjects leave to trade freely on the Kiakhta.

WAR WITH PERSIA (1722-1724 A.D.)

Peter’s attention had long been directed to the Caspian Sea with a view

to making it more extensively subservient to the trade of Russia with

Persia and central Asia, which as yet had been carried on at Astrakhan

alone, through the medium of Armenian factors. Soon after the Peace of

Nystad had left the czar free to carry his arms towards the East, a

pretext and an opportunity were afforded him for making conquests on the

Caspian shores. The Persian Empire was falling to pieces under the hand

of the enervated and imbecile Husain Shah. The Lesghiians, one of the

tributary nations that had rebelled against him, made an inroad into the

province of Shirvan, sacked the city of Shemakha, put the inhabitants to

the sword, including three hundred Russian traders, and plundered Russian

property to the amount of 4,000,000 roubles. Peter demanded satisfaction;

the shah was willing to grant it, but pleaded his helpless condition, and

entreated the czar to aid him in subduing his rebellious subjects.

This invitation was promptly accepted. Peter set out for Persia on the

15th of May, 1722, his consort also accompanying him on this remote

expedition. He fell down the Volga as far as the city of Astrakhan, and

occupied himself in examining the works for the canals that were to join

the Caspian, Baltic, and White seas, whilst he awaited the arrival of his

forces and material of war. His army consisted of twenty-two thousand

foot, nine thousand dragoons, and fifteen thousand Cossacks, besides

three thousand sailors on board the several vessels, who, in making a

descent, could do the duty of soldiers. The cavalry marched by land

through deserts, which are frequently without water; and beyond those

deserts, they were to pass the mountains of Caucasus, where three hundred

men might keep a whole army at bay; but Persia was in such anarchy that

anything might be attempted.

The czar sailed above a hundred leagues southward from Astrakhan, as

far as the small fortified town of Andreeva, which was easily taken.

Thence the Russian army advanced by land into the province of Daghestan;

and manifestoes in the Persian and Russian language were everywhere

dispersed. It was necessary to avoid giving any offence to the Ottoman

Porte, which besides its subjects, the Circassians and Georgians,

bordering on this country, had in these parts some considerable vassals,

who had lately put themselves under its protection. Among them, one of

the principal was Mahmud D’Utmich, who styled himself sultan, and had the

presumption to attack the troops of the emperor of Russia. He was totally

defeated, and the public account says “his country was made a bonfire.”

In the middle of September, Peter reached Derbent, by the Persians and

Turks called _Demir-kapu_, _i.e._ Iron Gate, because it had formerly such

a gate towards the south; it is a long narrow town, backed against a

steep spur of the Caucasus; and its walls, at the other end, are washed

by the sea, which, in stormy weather, is often known to break over them.

These walls may be justly accounted one of the wonders of antiquity;

they were forty feet high and six broad; flanked with square towers at

intervals of fifty feet. The whole work seemed one single piece, being

built of a kind of brown free-stone, and a mortar of pounded shells, the

whole forming a mass harder than marble itself; it was accessible by sea,

but, on the land side, seemed impregnable. Near it were the ruins of

an old wall, like that of China, unquestionably built in times of the

earliest antiquity; it was carried from the Caspian to the Black Sea, and

probably was a rampart thrown up by the ancient kings of Persia against

the numerous barbarian hordes dwelling between those two seas. There were

formerly three or four other Caspian gates at different passages, and

all apparently built for the same end; the nations west, east, and north

of this sea having ever been formidable barbarians; and from these parts

principally issued those swarms of conquerors which subdued Asia and

Europe.

On the approach of the Russian army, the governor of Derbent, instead

of standing a siege, laid the keys of the city at the emperor’s

feet--whether it was that he thought the place not tenable against such

a force, or that he preferred the protection of the emperor Peter to

that of the Afghan rebel Mahmud. Thus the army quietly took possession

of Derbent, and encamped along the sea-shore. The usurper Mahmud, who

had already made himself master of a great part of Persia, had neglected

nothing to be beforehand with the czar and hinder him from getting into

Derbent; he raised the neighbouring Tatars, and hastened thither himself;

but Derbent was already in the czar’s hands.

[Sidenote: [1723 A.D.]]

Peter was unable to extend his conquests further, for the vessels with

provisions, stores, horses, and recruits had been wrecked near Astrakhan;

and as the unfavourable season had now set in he returned to Moscow and

entered it in triumph (January 5th, 1723), though he had no great reason

to boast of the success of his ill-planned expedition.

Persia was still divided between Husain and the usurper Mahmud; the

former sought the support of the emperor of Russia; the latter feared him

as an avenger who would wrest from him all the fruits of his rebellion.

Mahmud used every endeavour to stir up the Ottoman Porte against Peter.

With this view, he sent an embassy to Constantinople; and the Daghestan

princes, under the sultan’s protection, having been dispossessed of

their dominions by the arms of Russia, solicited revenge. The Divan were

also under apprehensions for Georgia, which the Turks considered part of

their dominions. The sultan was on the point of declaring war, when the

courts of Vienna and Paris diverted him from that measure. The emperor of

Germany made a declaration that if the Turks attacked Russia he should be

obliged to join in its defence; and the marquis de Bonac, ambassador from

France at Constantinople, seconded the German menaces; he convinced the

Porte that their own interest required them not to suffer the usurper of

Persia to set an example of dethroning sovereigns, and that the Russian

Empire had done no more than the sultan should have done.

During these critical negotiations, the rebel Mahmud had advanced to the

gates of Derbent, and laid waste all the neighbouring countries, in order

to distress the Russians. That part of ancient Hyrcania, now known by the

name of Ghilan, was not spared, which so irritated the people that they

voluntarily put themselves under the protection of the Russians. Herein

they followed the example of the shah himself, who had sent to implore

the assistance of Peter the Great; but the ambassador was scarcely on

the road ere the rebel Mahmud seized on Ispahan, and the person of his

sovereign. Thamaseb, son of the captive shah, escaped, and getting

together some troops fought a battle with the usurper. He was not less

eager than his father in urging Peter the Great to protect him, and sent

to the ambassador a renewal of the instructions which the shah Husain had

given.

Though this Persian ambassador, named Ismail Beg, was not yet arrived,

his negotiation had succeeded. On his landing at Astrakhan, he heard

that General Matufkin was on his march with fresh troops to reinforce

the Daghestan army. The town of Baku, from which the Persians called the

Caspian Sea, the sea of Baku, was not yet taken. He gave the Russian

general a letter to the inhabitants, exhorting them, in his master’s

name, to submit to the emperor of Russia; the ambassador continued his

journey to St. Petersburg, and General Matufkin went and sat down before

the city of Baku. The Persian ambassador reached the czar’s court at the

same time as the news of the surrender of that city (August, 1723).

Baku is situated near Shemakha, where the Russian factors were massacred;

and although in wealth and number of people inferior to it, is very

famous for its naphtha, with which it supplies all Persia. Never was

treaty sooner concluded than that of Ismail Beg. The emperor Peter,

desirous of revenging the death of his subjects, engaged to march an army

into Persia, in order to assist Thamaseb against the usurper; and the new

shah ceded to him, besides the cities of Baku and Derbent, the provinces

of Ghilan, Mazandaran, and Astarabath.

Ghilan, as we have already noticed, is the southern Hyrcania; Mazandaran,

which is contiguous to it, is the country of the Mardi; Astarabath

borders on Mazandaran; and these were the three principal provinces of

the ancient kings of the Medes. Thus Peter by his arms and treaties came

to be master of Cyrus’ first monarchy; but this proved to be but a barren

conquest, and the empress Anna was glad to surrender it thirteen years

afterwards in exchange for some commercial advantages.

So calamitous was the state of Persia that the unhappy sophy Thamaseb

wandering about his kingdom, pursued by the rebel Mahmud, the murderer

of his father and brothers, was reduced to supplicate both Russia and

Turkey at the same time, that they would take one part of his dominions

to preserve the other for him. At last it was agreed between the emperor

Peter, the sultan Achmet III, and the sophy Thamaseb, that Russia should

hold the three provinces above mentioned, and that the Porte should have

Kasbin, Tauris, and Erivan, besides what it should take from the usurper.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF PETER

[Sidenote: [1723-1724 A.D.]]

Peter, at his return from his Persian expedition, was more than ever

the arbiter of the north. He openly took into his protection the family

of Charles XII, after having been eighteen years his declared enemy. He

invited to his court the duke of Holstein, that monarch’s nephew, to whom

he betrothed his eldest daughter, and from that time prepared to assert

his rights on the duchy of Schleswig-Holstein, and even bound himself to

it in a treaty which he concluded with Sweden (February, 1724). He also

obtained from that power the title of royal highness for his son-in-law,

which was a recognition of his right to the throne, should King Frederick

die without issue. Meanwhile he held Copenhagen in awe of his fleet, and

ruled there through fear, as he did in Stockholm and Warsaw.

The state of Peter’s health now warned him that his end was near; yet

still he delayed to exercise the right of naming a successor, which he

had arrogated to himself in 1722. The only step he took which might

be interpreted as an indication of his wishes in that respect was

the act of publicly crowning his consort Catherine. The ceremony was

performed at Moscow (May 18th, 1724) in the presence of the czar’s niece,

Anna, duchess of Courland, and of the duke of Holstein, his intended

son-in-law. The manifesto published by Peter on this occasion deserves

notice; after stating that it was customary with Christian monarchs to

crown their consorts, and instancing among the orthodox Greek emperors

Basilides, Justinian, Heraclius, and Leo the Philosopher, he goes on to

say:

“It is also known how far we have exposed our own person, and faced the

greatest dangers in our country’s cause, during the whole course of the

last war, twenty-one years successively, and which, by God’s assistance,

we have terminated with such honour and advantage, that Russia never saw

a like peace, nor gained that glory which has accrued to it by this war.

The empress Catherine, our dearly beloved consort, was of great help to

us in all these dangers, not only in the said war but likewise in other

expeditions, in which, notwithstanding the natural weakness of her sex,

she voluntarily accompanied us, and greatly assisted us with her advice,

particularly at the battle of the river Pruth against the Turks, where

our army was reduced to 22,000 men, and that of the Turks consisted of

270,000. It was in this desperate exigency that she especially signalised

a zeal and fortitude above her sex; and to this all the army and the

whole empire can bear witness. For these causes, and in virtue of the

power which God hath given us, we have resolved, in acknowledgment of all

her fatigues and good offices, to honour our consort with the imperial

crown, which, by God’s permission, shall be accomplished this winter at

Moscow; and of this resolution we hereby give notice to all our faithful

subjects, our imperial affection towards whom is unalterable.”

In this manifesto nothing was said of the empress’ succeeding to the

throne; but the nation were in some degree prepared for that event by

the ceremony itself, which was not customary in Russia, and which was

performed with sumptuous splendour. A circumstance which might further

cause Catherine to be looked upon as the presumptive successor was that

the czar himself, on the coronation day, walked before her on foot, as

first knight of the order of St. Catherine, which he had instituted in

1714 in honour of his consort. In the cathedral he placed the crown on

her head with his own hand. Catherine would then have fallen on her

knees, but he raised her up, and when she came out of the cathedral the

globe and sceptre were carried before her.

It was not long before Peter was with difficulty restrained from sending

to the block the head on which he had but lately placed the crown. We

have already mentioned that the enmity of his first wife is said to

have sprung from her jealousy of Anne de Moens, who was for awhile

the czar’s mistress, and whom, as Villebois tells us, he had serious

thoughts of raising to the throne. But she submitted to his passion only

through fear, and Peter, disgusted with her coldness towards him, left

her to follow her inclinations in marrying a less illustrious lover.

Five-and-twenty years afterwards Eudoxia was avenged through the brother

of her rival. Anne de Moens, then the widow of General Balk, was about

the person of Catherine, and the handsome and graceful young Moens de la

Croix was her chamberlain. A closer intimacy soon arose between them,

and so unguarded were they that Villebois, who saw them together only in

public during a very crowded reception at court, says that their conduct

was such as left no doubt on his mind that the empress was guilty. The

czar’s suspicions were roused, and he set spies upon Catherine.

The court was then at Peterhof; Prince Repnin, president of the war

department, slept not far from the czar; it was two o’clock in the

morning; all at once the marshal’s door was violently thrown open,

and he was startled by abrupt and hasty footsteps: he looked round in

astonishment; it was Peter the Great; the monarch was standing by the

bedside; his eyes sparkled with rage, and all his features were distorted

with convulsive fury. Repnin tells us that at the sight of that

terrible aspect he was appalled, gave himself up for lost, and remained

motionless; but his master, with a broken and panting voice, exclaimed to

him, “Get up! speak to me! there’s no need to dress yourself”; and the

trembling marshal obeyed.

He then learned that, but the instant before, guided by too faithful a

report, the czar had suddenly entered Catherine’s apartment; that the

crime was revealed, the ingratitude proved; that at daybreak the empress

should lose her head--that the emperor was resolved!

The marshal, gradually recovering his voice, agreed that such a monstrous

act of treachery was horrible; but he reminded his master of the fact

that the crime was as yet known to no one, and of the impolicy of making

it public; then, growing bolder, he dared to call to recollection the

massacre of the strelitz, and that every subsequent year had been

ensanguined by executions; that, in fine, after the imprisonment of

his sister, the condemning of his son to death, and the scourging and

imprisonment of his first wife, if he should likewise cut off the head of

his second, Europe would no longer look upon him in any other light than

that of a ferocious prince, who thirsted for the blood of his subjects

and even of those who were a part of himself. Besides, he added, the czar

might have satisfaction by giving up Moens to the sword of the law upon

other charges; and as to the empress, he could find means to rid himself

of her without any prejudice to his glory.

While Repnin was thus advising, the czar, who stood motionless before

him, gazed upon him intently and wildly, and kept a gloomy silence. But

in a short time, as was the case when he was labouring under strong

emotions, his head was twisted to the left side, and his swollen features

became convulsively contracted--signs of the terrible struggle by which

he was tortured. And yet the excessive working of his mind held his body

in a state of frightful immovability. At length, he rushed precipitately

out of the chamber into the adjoining room. For two whole hours he

hastily paced it; then suddenly entering again like a man who had made up

his mind, he said to Repnin, “Moens shall die immediately! I will watch

the empress so closely that her first slip shall cost her life!”

Moens and his sister were at once arrested. They were both confined in

the winter palace, in an apartment to which none had admission except

the emperor himself, who carried them their food. At the same time a

report was spread that the brother and the sister had been bribed by the

enemies of the country, in hopes of bringing the empress to act upon the

mind of the czar prejudicially to the interests of Russia. Moens was

interrogated by the monarch in presence of General Uschakov; and after

having confessed whatever they pleased, he lost his head on the block

(November 27th). At the same time his sister, who was an accomplice in

the crime and a favourite of Catherine, received the knout, and was

banished to Siberia; her property was confiscated; her two sons were

degraded and were sent to a great distance, on the Persian frontier, as

private soldiers.

Moens walked to meet his fate with manly firmness. He always wore a

diamond bracelet, to which was a miniature of Catherine; but, as it was

not perceived at the time of his being seized, he found means to conceal

it under his garter; and when he was on the scaffold he confided this

secret to the Lutheran pastor who accompanied him, and under cover of his

cloak slipped the bracelet into his hand to restore it to the empress.

The czar was a spectator of the punishment of Moens from one of the

windows of the senate. The execution being over, he got upon the

scaffold, took the head of Moens by the hair, and expressed with brutal

energy how delighted he was with the vengeance he had taken. The same

day Peter had the cruelty to conduct Catherine in an open carriage round

the stake on which was fixed the head of her unfortunate lover. He

watched her countenance attentively, but fortunately she had self-command

enough not to betray her grief. Repnin adds that, from that dreadful

night till his death, Peter never more spoke to the empress except in

public, and that, in his dwelling, he always remained separate from

her.[e]

[Sidenote: [1725 A.D.]]

Peter the Great only lived to his fifty-third year. In spite of frequent

attacks of illness and of his calling himself an old man, the emperor

might have hoped to live yet a long while and to be able to dispose of

his great inheritance in accordance with the interests of the state.

But his days were already numbered. When Peter came to St. Petersburg

in March, 1723, on his return from Persia, he appeared in much better

health than before the campaign; in the summer of 1724 he became very

weak, but in the second half of September he grew visibly better, walked

at times in his gardens, and sailed on the Neva. On the 22nd of September

he had a very severe attack; it is said that he fell into such a state of

irritation that he struck the doctors and called them asses; afterwards

he again became better, and on the 29th of September he was present at

the launching of a frigate, although he told the Dutch minister Wild that

he still felt rather weak. In spite of this he set off in the beginning

of October to inspect the Ladoga canal, against the advice of his doctor

Blumentrost; then he went to the Olonetz iron works and hammered out with

his own hands a bar of iron of the weight of three pouds;[45] from there

he went to Starya Rusa to inspect the salt works, and in the beginning

of November he went by water to St. Petersburg. But there, at a place

called Lakta, he saw that a boat coming from Kronstadt with soldiers had

run aground; he allowed no one to restrain him, but went himself to their

assistance and helped to float the boat and save the people, standing

up to his waist in the water. The attacks were speedily renewed; Peter

arrived at St. Petersburg ill and could not regain his health; the affair

of Mons also aggravated his condition. He occupied himself but little

with affairs, although he showed himself as usual in public. On the 17th

of January, 1725, the malady increased; Peter ordered that a movable

church should be constructed near his sleeping room and on the 22nd he

made his confession and received the sacrament; his strength began to

leave him, he no longer cried out as before from the violence of the pain

but only groaned. On the 27th all criminals were pardoned who had been

condemned to death or to the galleys according to the articles of war,

excepting those guilty of the first two offences against the law--murder

and repeated robbery; the noblemen who had not appeared at the military

reviews at the appointed time were also pardoned. On that day, at the

expiration of the second hour, Peter asked for paper and tried to write,

but the pen fell out of his hand; of that which he had written only the

words “give up everything” could be deciphered; he then ordered his

daughter Anna Petrovna to be called so that she might write under his

dictation, but he could not pronounce the words. The following day, the

28th of January, at the beginning of the sixth hour after midnight, Peter

the Great was no more. Catherine was almost unceasingly with him, and it

was she who closed his eyes.

In terrible physical sufferings, in full recognition of the weakness of

humanity, asking for the comfort afforded by religion, died the greatest

of historical workers. We have already spoken in the proper place of

how the work of Peter was prepared by all preceding history; how it

necessarily proceeded from the same; how it was required by the people,

who by means of a tremendous revolution in their existence and customs,

by means of an extraordinary effort of strength, had to be brought forth

from their hopeless condition into a new way, a new life. But this in

nowise diminishes the greatness of the man who in the accomplishment of

so difficult an exploit lent his mighty hand to a great nation, and by

the extraordinary power of his will strained all her forces and gave

direction to the movement.

SOLOVIEV’S ESTIMATE OF PETER’S WORK

Revolutionary epochs constitute a critical time for the life of nations,

and such was the epoch of the reformation of Peter. Complaints of the

great burdens were to be heard from all sides--and not without cause. The

Russian knew no rest from recruiting: recruiting for painful, ceaseless

military service in the infantry, and for the newly created naval

service; recruiting of workmen for new and difficult labour in distant

and unattractive places; recruiting of scholars for the schools, and of

young men to be sent to study abroad. For the army and for the fleet, for

the great works and undertakings, for the schools and the hospitals, for

the maintenance of diplomats and diplomatic bribery, money was necessary.

But there was no money in the impoverished state, and heavy taxes in

money and in kind had to be levied upon all; in necessary cases they

were deducted from the salaries; well-to-do people were ruined by the

construction of houses in St. Petersburg; everything that could be taken

was taken, or farmed out; the poor people had one object of luxury--oak

coffins; but these were confiscated by the fiscus and sold at a high

price; _raskolniki_ (dissenters) had to pay double taxes; the bearded

had to pay for the privilege of wearing their beards. Orders upon orders

were issued; men were to seek for ores and minerals, and for dye-stuffs;

they were to tend their sheep not as they had previously done, to dress

the skins differently, to build boats in a new way, to dare weave no

narrow pieces of cloth, to take their goods to the west instead of to the

north.[46] New government centres were created, new courts established,

the people did not know where to turn, the members of these new

institutions and courts did not know how to go about their novel duties,

and official papers were sent from one place to another.

[Illustration: A BASHKIRIAN WOMAN]

The standing army pressed heavily on the unarmed population. People tried

to escape from the hard service and hide themselves, but all were not

successful, and cruel punishments threatened the disobedient. Illiterate

nobles were forbidden to marry. Meanwhile beneath the new French frocks

and wigs there was the old coarseness of manners; the same want of

respect for human dignity in oneself and in others; the same hideous

drunkenness and noisy brawling with which every festivity was terminated.

Woman was brought into the society of men, but she was not surrounded

with the respect due to her sex and obligations; pregnant women were made

to drink to excess. The members of the highest institutions quarrelled

and abused each other in the coarsest manner; bribery was as bad as

before; the weak were subjected to every violence from the strong, and,

as formerly, the noble was permitted to oppress the _moujik_ (peasant),

the well-born the base-born.

But this is only one side: there is another. The people were passing

through a hard school--the stern teacher was not sparing in punishments

for the idle and those who violated the regulations; but the matter was

not limited to threats and punishments alone. The people were really

learning, learning not only figures and geometry, not only in Russian and

foreign schools; the people were learning the duties of citizens, the

work of citizens. At the emission of every important regulation, at the

inauguration of every great reform, the lawgiver explains why he acts

thus, why the new is better than the old. The Russians then received such

instruction for the first time; what now seems to us so simple and within

the reach of all was first learned by these people from the edicts and

manifestoes of Peter the Great.

[Illustration: A PEASANT OF LITTLE RUSSIA]

For the first time the mind of the Russian was awakened, his attention

directed to the great questions of political and social organisation;

whether he turned sympathisingly or unsympathisingly to the words and

deeds of the czar was a matter of indifference--he was obliged to

think over these words and deeds, and they were continually there to

arouse him. That which might have ruined a decrepit society, a people

incapable of development--the shocks of the epoch of reforms, the utter

restlessness--developed the forces of a vigorous young nation which had

been long asleep and required a violent shock to awaken it. And there

was much to be learned. Above was the governing senate, the synod;

everywhere was collegiate organisation, the advantages of which were

set forth in the church statutes. Everywhere the principle of election

was introduced. The trade guilds were withdrawn from the jurisdiction

of the local governors and given their own independent administration.

Peter’s whole system of government was directed against the chief evils

from which ancient Russia had suffered: the immaturity of forces, the

want of a public spirit, the lack of independence of action, the absence

of initiative capacity. The former council of the czar (_douma_) had

suffered from all the deficiencies enumerated. Peter established the

senate, to which fidelity had to be sworn and the ukases of which had to

be obeyed as the ukases of the czar himself. Peter was not jealous of

the power created by him: he did not limit it; but on the contrary he

continually and without ceremony required that it should profit by its

importance, that it should really be a governing body. Peter’s reproaches

and rebukes to the senate were directed against its slowness, its

languor, its want of management, and its inability to carry its decrees

into immediate effect. The Russian of former times who had received a

commission from the government went about in leading strings. He was not

trusted, his smallest movement was feared, he was swathed like a child in

long detailed instructions, and upon every fresh occasion that presented

itself and was not defined in the instructions, the grown up child

required teaching. This habit of asking for orders greatly angered Peter:

“Act according to your own consideration, how can I tell you from such a

distance!” he wrote to those who asked him for instructions. He employed

the collegiate system--whether he had met with it in the west or whether

it had been advised by Leibnitz is a matter of indifference; he employed

it everywhere as the most powerful method of training the Russian people

to unrestrained public activity. Instead of separate individuals,

institutions came to the front, and over all rose the state, the real

significance of which the people of Russia now learned for the first time

when they had to take the oath.

Having set forth the importance of the state, and demanding that heavy

sacrifices should be made, to this new divinity, himself giving the

example, he nevertheless took measures that the individual should not be

crushed, but should receive the requisite, balancing development. The

first place must here naturally be given to the civilisation introduced

by Peter, to the acquaintance with other nations in advance of Russia. We

know that before the time of Peter the bond of the family was powerfully

maintained in Russia; its prolonged existence is easily explained by the

condition of society, which was unable to safeguard its members, and

who were therefore obliged to seek security in private associations,

chief among which was the natural blood relationship between members of

the same family or clan. The elder protected the younger, and had power

over them because they had to answer to the government for them. It was

thus in every sphere of society; the independent Russian never presented

himself alone, but always accompanied by his brothers and nephews; to be

without clan and family was equivalent to being in the utmost poverty. It

is easy to understand that the clan association hindered the development

of personality; the state could not give to personal merit power over

clan rights; jealous to the last degree of any insult to the honour of

his clan, the ancient Russian was indifferent to his own personal honour.

But by the end of the seventeenth century the demands of the state had so

increased that the unity of the clan could not withstand them, and the

destruction of precedence (_mestnitchestov_) struck a blow to the clan

bond in the highest class of society, among those in the service of the

czar. The reform of Peter struck a final blow by its decided, exclusive

attention to personal merit, by raising persons “above their old parents”

(that is, their kinsfolk), by bringing into the service a large number of

foreigners; it became advantageous for new men to appear to have no clan

relations, and many of them began willingly to trace their origin from

foreign countries.

As to the lower ranks of the population, the blow to the clan bond was

brought about by the poll-tax; the former expression, “such a one with

his brothers and nephews,” began to disappear, for the brothers and

nephews had to pay separately each for himself, and appeared as separate,

independent individuals. And not only did the former clan relations

disappear, but even within the family itself, while requiring the

deepest respect from children to their parents,[47] Peter recognised

the right of the individual, and enjoined that marriages should be

celebrated by the agreement of the children, and not by the will of

their parents; the right of the person was also recognised in the

bond-servant, for the landowner had to swear that he would not compel his

peasants to marry against their will. We have heard the dispassionate

declaration of a contemporary Russian as to the corruption of persons

in the service of the czars in the seventeenth and the beginning of the

eighteenth centuries, of their indifference to honour, so that amongst

them the shameful saying was current: “Flight may be dishonourable, but

it is salutary.” Under Peter this saying was extirpated, and he himself

testified that in the second half of the Northern War flight from

the field of battle had ceased. Finally the personality of woman was

recognised in consequence of her liberation from the _terem_.[48]

Thus were the people of Russia trained in the stern school of reform.

The terrible labour and privations they endured were not in vain. A vast

and comprehensive programme was traced out for many future years, not

on paper but on the earth which must open up its riches to the Russian,

who through science had acquired the full right of disposing of it; on

the sea, where the Russian fleet had now appeared; on the rivers, united

by canals; it was traced out in the state by the new institutions and

regulations; it was traced out in the people by the new civilisation, by

the enlarging of its mental sphere, by the rich stores of mental food

furnished by the west, now disclosed to his view, and by the new world

created within Russia herself. The greater part of all this was only in

its beginnings; the rest in rough outline--for much only the materials

were prepared, only indications made; and therefore we have called the

work of the epoch of reform a programme, which Russia is fulfilling until

now, and will continue to fulfil, and any deviation from which has always

been accompanied by grievous consequences.

Clearly recognising that the Russian people must pass through a hard

school, Peter did not hesitate to subject it to the painful, humiliating

position of a pupil; but at the same time he succeeded in balancing the

disadvantages of such a position by glory and greatness: in converting

it into an active one, he succeeded both in creating the political

importance of Russia and the means for its maintenance. A difficult

problem presented itself to Peter; for the education of the Russian

people it was necessary to call in foreign instructors, directors who

naturally endeavoured to subject their pupils to their influence, to

set themselves above them; but this humiliated the pupils, of whom

Peter wished to make masters as soon as possible. He did not give way

to the temptation, did not accept proposals to carry the work to a

speedy success with the aid of learned foreigners; he desired that his

own Russian subjects should pass through an active, practical school,

even though it might occasion great losses and be accompanied by great

discomforts. We have seen how he hastened to rid himself of a foreign

field-marshal, how he put Russians in all the highest positions and

foreigners only in secondary ones; and we have also seen how he was

rewarded for his faith in his people and his devotion to it.

It was with the same uncommon caution, with the skill required for

remaining within due bounds that Peter solved the difficult problem of

church reform. He destroyed unipersonal government and replaced it by

the collegiate or council system, which fully corresponded with the

spirit of the eastern church; we have seen that one of Peter’s chief

cares was to raise the Russian clergy by means of education; in spite of

his strong and comprehensible aversion to monasticism he did not abolish

this institution as did Henry VIII of England--he only tried to give it a

greater activity corresponding to its character.

From whatever point of view we study the epoch of reforms, we must fall

into wonderment both at the mental and physical powers of Peter. Powers

are developed by their exercise, and we do not know of any historical

worker whose sphere of activity was so vast. Born with an unusually

wide-awake intellect, Peter cultivated this quickness of perception to

the highest degree. From his youth he listened and looked to everything

himself, was not guided or restricted by anyone, but was excited and

aroused by the state of society, already then on the threshold of changes

and hesitating between two directions, agitated by the question of the

old and new, when by the side of ancient Moscow the advance guard of the

west, the German suburb, was already in view. Peter’s nature was cast in

the old Russian heroic mould, he loved breadth and scope; this explains

the fact that besides his conscious attraction for the sea he had also an

unconscious attraction for it: the heroes of ancient Russia yearned for

the wide steppes--the new hero yearned after the broad ocean; places shut

in by mountains were displeasing and wearisome to him. Thus he complained

to his wife of the situation of Karlsbad: “This place is so merry that

it might almost be called an honorable prison, for it is so squeezed in

between mountains that the sun can hardly be seen.” In another letter he

calls Karlsbad a hole in the ground.

To the powers of a hero of ancient times corresponded passions not

moderated by any regular, skilful education. We are aware to what lengths

the unbridled passions of a vigorous man could be carried in ancient

Russian society, unrestrained as it was by due bounds: how then could

such a society put a check upon the passions of a man who stood at the

very summit of power? But an observant contemporary woman has very justly

declared with regard to Peter that he was both a very good and a very bad

man. Without denying or diminishing the dark side of Peter the Great’s

character, let us not forget the brighter side, which outweighed the dark

and was able to attach people so strongly to him. If his wrath burst

forth at times so terribly against those whom he regarded as the enemies

of the country and of the general welfare, yet he attached to himself

strongly, and was strongly attached to persons of opposite tendencies.

An unusual greatness, joined to the recognition of the insignificance

of mere human intellect, a stern insistence on the fulfilment of

duties, a stern demand for truth, the capacity of listening to the

harshest objections, an extraordinary simplicity, sociability, and kind

heartedness--all these qualities powerfully attached to Peter the best of

the men who had occasion to come in contact with him; and it is therefore

easy to understand the impression produced upon them by the news of the

death of the great emperor. Nepluev writes as follows: “In the month

of February, of the year 1725, I received the lamentable news that the

father of the country, the emperor Peter I had departed this life. I

watered this paper with my tears, both out of duty to my sovereign and

in remembrance of his many kindnesses and favours to me; verily I do not

lie when I say that I was unconscious for more than twenty-four hours,

for it would have been sinful for me to have been otherwise. This monarch

brought our country into equality with others; he taught us to know that

we, too, are men; in a word, whatever you look upon in Russia was all

begun by him, and whatever will be done in future will be drawn from the

same source; as to me personally, above what I have already written, the

sovereign was a good and merciful father. May the Lord grant to his soul,

which laboured so greatly for the common good, rest with the righteous!”

Another person who was in close contact with Peter (Nartov) says: “If

it should ever happen to a philosopher to look through the archives

of Peter’s secret acts, he would shudder with horror at what was done

against the monarch. We who were the servants of that great sovereign

sigh and shed tears, when we sometimes hear reproaches against the

hard-heartedness and cruelty which were not in reality to be met with

in him. If many knew what he endured and by what sorrows he was cut

to the heart, if they knew how indulgent he was to the weaknesses of

humanity and how he forgave crimes that did not deserve mercy they would

be amazed. And although Peter the Great is no longer with us, yet his

spirit lives in our souls, and we, who had the felicity of being near

this monarch, shall die faithful to him, and the ardent love we had for

our earthly god will be buried together with us. We are not afraid to

proclaim the deeds of our father, in order that a noble fearlessness and

truth shall be learned from them.”[i]

KOSTOMAROV’S ESTIMATE OF PETER

As an historical character Peter presents an original phenomenon, not

only in the history of Russia but in the history of all humanity, of all

ages and all nations. The immortal Shakespeare by his artistic genius

created in Hamlet an inimitable type of a man in whom reflection takes

the ascendancy over his will and does not permit him to give substance

or effect to his desires and intentions. In Peter not the genius of

the artist, understanding the meaning of human nature, but nature

herself created the opposite type--that of a man with an irresistible,

indefatigable will in whom every thought was at once transformed into

action. “I will it, because I count it good, and what I will must

infallibly be”--such was the device of the whole life and work of this

man.

[Illustration: A KABARDINIAN]

He was distinguished by an aptitude and enterprise unattainable for

ordinary mortals. Not having received any regular education, he wished

to know everything and was obliged to study a great deal; however, the

Russian czar was gifted with such a wealth of capacities that even with

his short preparation he astounded persons who had spent their lives over

what Peter only studied by the way. All that he learned he endeavoured

to apply in Russia in order to transform her into a mighty European

state. This was the thought that he cherished sincerely and wholly during

the continuation of his entire life. Peter lived at a time when it was

impossible for Russia to remain in the same beaten track, but must

necessarily enter upon the path of renovation. Being gifted with mental

clearsightedness, he recognised this necessity of his fatherland and set

about the task with all the force of his gigantic will.

Peter’s autocracy, inherited from his forefathers, helped him more than

anything. He created the army and the fleet, although for this was

required an innumerable multitude of human sacrifices and the fruits of

many years of national labour. All was offered by the people for this

object, although the people itself did not clearly understand it and

therefore did not desire it; but everything was given because the czar

wished it. Incredible taxes were imposed, hundreds of thousands of the

healthy young generation were sent to the war or to hard and painful

labour never to return again. The people were ruined and impoverished in

order that Russia might gain the sea, that she might extend her frontiers

and organise an army capable of being measured against its neighbours.

The Russians had grown attached to their ancient manners and customs,

they hated everything foreign; immersed in outward forms of piety, they

showed an aversion to the sciences. The autocratic czar compelled them to

adopt foreign dress, to study foreign sciences, to disdain the customs of

their forefathers, and to forswear their most sacred traditions. And the

Russians mastered themselves; they were obedient because it was the wish

of their autocratic sovereign.

During the whole of his reign Peter struggled against the prejudices and

evil nature of his subjects and dependants; he prosecuted embezzlers

of the public funds, takers of bribes, imposters, and lamented that

things were not done in Russia as he could have wished. His partisans

sought and even now seek to find in all this the cause of the obdurate

vices and defects of the ancient Russian. But looking into the matter

dispassionately, it follows that much must be ascribed to the character

of Peter’s action. It is impossible to make a man happy against his own

will or to force his nature. History shows us that, in a despotically

ruled society, the vices that chiefly hinder the fulfilment of the

most laudable and salutary preconceived designs of the power are most

frequently and saliently manifested. What were the measures that Peter

employed for bringing his great reforms to fulfilment? The tortures

of the Preobrajenski Edict and the secret chancery, sentences of a

painful death, prisons, the galleys, the knout, the tearing of the

nostrils, espionage, the encouragement by rewards of informers. It is

comprehensible that by such means Peter could inoculate neither civil

courage, nor the feeling of duty, nor that love for one’s neighbour

which is above all material or intellectual forces and more powerful

than knowledge itself; in a word, although he established a multitude of

institutions and created a new political organisation for Russia, yet

Peter was not able to create a living, new Russia.

Possessed by the abstract idea of the state and sacrificing to this idea

the temporary prosperity of the people, Peter did not act sincerely by

the people. For him they only existed as the ciphers in a total--as the

material good for the construction of the edifice of the state. He valued

the Russian people as far as they were necessary to him in creating

soldiers, masons, excavators, sailors; or, by their laboriously earned

kopeck, in furnishing him with means for the maintenance of the state

mechanism. Peter himself by his personality might serve as a model for

the people he ruled over and transformed only in his boundless, untiring

love of work; but in nowise by the moral qualities of his character. He

did not even endeavour to restrain his passions, which not unfrequently

led him to furious outbursts and bloody actions, although he severely

punished like actions in those he ruled over. Peter allowed drunkenness

and double dealing in himself, yet he prosecuted these same vices in his

subjects. Many shocking actions that he committed have been justified by

the sophisms of political necessity. To what an extent his ferocity and

bloodthirstiness were carried is shown by the fact that he was not afraid

to lower his royal dignity by taking upon himself the office of hangman

during the time of the savage execution of the strelitz. Throughout his

reign a bloody vapour arose from those who were tortured and put to death

in accordance with the Preobrajenski Edict and contaminated the air of

Russia, but it evidently did not trouble the slumbers of her sovereign.

Peter himself justified his cruel punishments by the requirements of

justice, but facts prove that he was not equally inflexible in his

justice to all and did not set an example to others in the indulgence

he showed to his favourite, Menshikov, at whose hands such iniquities

were committed as would have cost others their lives. His own outward

political actions were not distinguished by irreproachable integrity and

rectitude; the Northern War can never be justified from the point of view

of justice. It is also impossible to call honourable the expedient Peter

made use of with the English king George when, in spite of the clearest

evidence, he assured him of his devotion and non-participation in the

pretender’s designs. How far Peter respected the rights of neighbouring

foreign nations when he had no reason to fear them is shown by his savage

behaviour to the uniat monks of Polosk--an action for which he himself

would have probably punished by death any one of his subjects who had

thus dared to take the law into his own hands in a foreign land.

All the dark sides of Peter’s character may of course be easily excused

by the features of the age in which he lived; it may justly be pointed

out to us that for the greater part such traits are also to be found in

the characters of his contemporaries. It remains indubitable that Peter

surpassed the sovereigns contemporary with him by the vastness of his

intellect and by his untiring love of work; but in moral respects he was

not better than many of them; and it was for this reason that the society

which he wished to re-create did not rise superior to those societies

which were governed by Peter’s contemporaries. Until Peter’s reign Russia

was plunged in ignorance; and, boasting of her bigoted, ceremonial piety,

glorified herself with the name of the New Israel, whilst in reality she

was by no means a “new Israel.” By his despotic measures Peter created

out of her a monarchy that was a terror to foreigners by her army and

fleet; he communicated to the upper class of her people the outward marks

of European civilisation; yet Russia after Peter did not in reality

become the “new Israel” that she had desired to be before his time.

All Peter’s pupils, the men of new Russia who outlived him, were

entangled in their own snares; following their own egotistical aims, they

perished on the scaffold or in exile, and the Russian public man adopted

in his conscience the rule that he might do anything he found profitable,

although it might be immoral, justifying himself by the fact that other

nations did the same. Yet, in spite of all this, as a historical royal

worker Peter has preserved for us in his personality such an exalted

moral trait that it involuntarily draws our heart to him; this trait is

his devotion to the ideal to which he wholly consecrated his soul during

all his lifetime. He loved Russia, loved the Russian people, loved it

in the sense of the mass of Russian men who were his contemporaries and

subjects in the sense of that ideal to which he desired to bring his

people; and this love constitutes in him that great quality which incites

us, beyond our own will, to love his personality, setting aside both his

bloody tribunal and all his demoralising despotism reflecting a baneful

influence even on posterity. Because of Peter’s love for the ideal of the

Russian people, the Russians will love Peter until he himself loses the

national ideal, and for the sake of this love they will forgive him all

that a heavy burden has laid upon his memory.[d]

HAXTAUSEN’S ESTIMATE OF PETER’S INFLUENCE

From the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries a national spirit

dominated entirely. Moreover, Russian sovereigns had, for many years,

perceived that the people were behind other nations who had sprung into

being as late as themselves or who were inferior either in origin or in

physical or intellectual faculties. To remedy this tardy growth they

conceived it necessary to put themselves into direct contact with the

west in order to borrow its light and imitate its progress. The best

way of accomplishing this was, they thought, to get as many foreigners

as possible into the country to train the young; to give the state

new institutions, and remodel the old on western principles. Ivan

Vasilievitch had already drawn a crowd of foreigners, and particularly

Germans; had even tried to put his army on a European footing. The

successors of the Romanov branch followed zealously in this path, but no

prince felt more strongly than Peter I the necessity of letting Russia

take a foremost place in Europe. His quick impetuous nature detested slow

and incomplete measures. To him, to sow without reaping, or prune without

tasting the fruits, was labour provoking all his repugnance.

The impetus he gave Russia is that in which she still continues.

Everywhere in the public and social life of this people is to be noticed

the impulse he gave. It is an accomplished fact that no human power

can annul; so all inquiry to find out if this impetus was necessary

and favourable to Russia would be inopportune and sterile. There is,

however, no doubt that in Peter’s haste in his work of reform he did

not sufficiently consider national things both great and good; that he

introduced a crowd of foreign innovations, some mediocre, some positively

bad, without pausing to think whether they were suitable to the climate,

the established order of things, or if they would fit in harmoniously

with Russian nationality.[j]

FOOTNOTES

[39] A verst is 3500 English feet and a sazhen 7 feet.

[40] The ancient Borysthenes.

[41] [Porte is the name given to the chief office of the Ottoman

government, so called from the gate of the palace at which justice

was administered. The name is applied also to the Ottoman court--the

government of the Turkish Empire.]

[42] Bruce, who was in the battle of the Pruth, asserts his belief

that this negotiation was conducted without Peter’s knowledge; and the

_Journal de Pierre le Grand_ alludes to the transmission of the letter,

but is silent as to the share Catherine took in the affair. There is no

doubt, however, that the details of her interference are correct, and

Peter afterwards appears to have confirmed them by his declaration at the

coronation of the empress in 1723, that she “had been of great assistance

to the empire in all times of danger, but particularly at the battle of

the Pruth.”

[43] Ulrica had ceded the crown to her husband.

[44] The men who have no _tchin_, the _tchornii narod_, that is, the

black people, or blackguards.

[45] A poud contains forty Russian pounds, or about thirty-six pounds

avoirdupois.

[46] [That is, to St. Petersburg instead of to Archangel.]

[47] Peter’s own words were as follows: “Those who do not respect them

that have given them life are most ungrateful creatures, and ingratitude

is the most abominable of all vices.”--GOLIKOV.[m]

[48] [The separate female apartments, corresponding to the Attic

γὔναικών.]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]