RUSSIA AND SWEDEN FIGHT MANY WARS TO DECIDE WHO SHALL BE THE LEADING
POWER OF NORTH-EASTERN EUROPE
IN the year 1698, Tsar Peter set forth upon his first voyage to western
Europe. He travelled by way of Berlin and went to Holland and to
England. As a child he had almost been drowned sailing a homemade boat
in the duck pond of his father's country home. This passion for water
remained with him to the end of his life. In a practical way it showed
itself in his wish to give his land-locked domains access to the open
sea.
While the unpopular and harsh young ruler was away from home, the
friends of the old Russian ways in Moscow set to work to undo all
his reforms. A sudden rebellion among his life-guards, the Streltsi
regiment, forced Peter to hasten home by the fast mail. He appointed
himself executioner-in-chief and the Streltsi were hanged and quartered
and killed to the last man. Sister Sophia, who had been the head of the
rebellion, was locked up in a cloister and the rule of Peter be-gan in
earnest. This scene was repeated in the year 1716 when Peter had gone
on his second western trip. That time the reactionaries followed the
leadership of Peter's half-witted son, Alexis. Again the Tsar returned
in great haste. Alexis was beaten to death in his prison cell and the
friends of the old fashioned Byzantine ways marched thousands of dreary
miles to their final destination in the Siberian lead mines. After that,
no further outbreaks of popular discontent took place. Until the time of
his death, Peter could reform in peace.
It is not easy to give you a list of his reforms in chronological order.
The Tsar worked with furious haste. He followed no system. He issued
his decrees with such rapidity that it is difficult to keep count.
Peter seemed to feel that everything that had ever happened before was
entirely wrong. The whole of Russia therefore must be changed within the
shortest possible time. When he died he left behind a well-trained army
of 200,000 men and a navy of fifty ships. The old system of government
had been abolished over night. The Duma, or convention of Nobles, had
been dismissed and in its stead, the Tsar had surrounded himself with an
advisory board of state officials, called the Senate.
Russia was divided into eight large "governments" or provinces. Roads
were constructed. Towns were built. Industries were created wherever it
pleased the Tsar, without any regard for the presence of raw material.
Canals were dug and mines were opened in the mountains of the east. In
this land of illiterates, schools were founded and establishments
of higher learning, together with Universities and hospitals and
professional schools. Dutch naval engineers and tradesmen and artisans
from all over the world were encouraged to move to Russia. Printing
shops were established, but all books must be first read by the imperial
censors. The duties of each class of society were carefully written
down in a new law and the entire system of civil and criminal laws was
gathered into a series of printed volumes. The old Russian costumes
were abolished by Imperial decree, and policemen, armed with scissors,
watching all the country roads, changed the long-haired Russian mou-jiks
suddenly into a pleasing imitation of smooth-shaven west. Europeans.
In religious matters, the Tsar tolerated no division of power. There
must be no chance of a rivalry between an Emperor and a Pope as had
happened in Europe. In the year 1721, Peter made himself head of the
Russian Church. The Patriarchate of Moscow was abolished and the Holy
Synod made its appearance as the highest source of authority in all
matters of the Established Church.
Since, however, these many reforms could not be success-ful while the
old Russian elements had a rallying point in the town of Moscow, Peter
decided to move his government to a new capital. Amidst the unhealthy
marshes of the Baltic Sea the Tsar built this new city. He began to
reclaim the land in the year 1703. Forty thousand peasants worked for
years to lay the foundations for this Imperial city. The Swedes attacked
Peter and tried to destroy his town and illness and misery killed tens
of thousands of the peasants. But the work was continued, winter and
summer, and the ready-made town soon began to grow. In the year 1712, it
was officially de-clared to be the "Imperial Residence." A dozen years
later it had 75,000 inhabitants. Twice a year the whole city was flooded
by the Neva. But the terrific will-power of the Tsar created dykes and
canals and the floods ceased to do harm. When Peter died in 1725 he was
the owner of the largest city in northern Europe.
Of course, this sudden growth of so dangerous a rival had been a source
of great worry to all the neighbours. From his side, Peter had watched
with interest the many adventures of his Baltic rival, the kingdom
of Sweden. In the year 1654, Christina, the only daughter of Gustavus
Adolphus, the hero of the Thirty Years War, had renounced the throne
and had gone to Rome to end her days as a devout Catholic. A Protestant
nephew of Gustavus Adolphus had succeeded the last Queen of the House of
Vasa. Under Charles X and Charles XI, the new dynasty had brought
Sweden to its highest point of development. But in 1697, Charles XI died
suddenly and was succeeded by a boy of fifteen, Charles XII.
This was the moment for which many of the northern states had waited.
During the great religious wars of the seventeenth century, Sweden had
grown at the expense of her neighbours. The time had come, so the owners
thought, to balance the account. At once war broke out between Russia,
Poland, Denmark and Saxony on the one side, and Sweden on the other. The
raw and untrained armies of Peter were disastrously beaten by Charles in
the famous battle of Narva in November of the year 1700. Then Charles,
one of the most interesting military geniuses of that century, turned
against his other enemies and for nine years he hacked and burned his
way through the villages and cities of Poland, Saxony, Denmark and
the Baltic provinces, while Peter drilled and trained his soldiers in
distant Russia.
As a result, in the year 1709, in the battle of Poltawa, the Moscovites
destroyed the exhausted armies of Sweden. Charles continued to be a
highly picturesque figure, a wonderful hero of romance, but in his vain
attempt to have his revenge, he ruined his own country. In the year
1718, he was accidentally killed or assassinated (we do not know which)
and when peace was made in 1721, in the town of Nystadt, Sweden had lost
all of her former Baltic possessions except Finland. The new Russian
state, created by Peter, had become the leading power of northern
Europe. But already a new rival was on the way. The Prussian state was
taking shape.