PETER STUDIES EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
A history of Russia _naïvely_ designates one of its chapters "The
Period of Troubles"! When was there not a period of troubles in this
land? The historian wearies, and doubtless the reader too, of such
prolonged disorder and calamity. But a chapter telling of peace and
tranquillity would have to be invented. The particular sort of trouble
that developed upon the death of Feodor was of a new variety. Alexis
had left two families of children, one by his first wife and the other
by Natalia. There is not time to tell of all the steps by which
Sophia, daughter of the first marriage, came to be the power behind the
throne upon which sat her feeble brother Ivan, and her half-brother
Peter, aged ten years. Sophia was an ambitious, strong-willed,
strong-minded woman, who dared to emancipate herself from the tyranny
of Russian custom.
The _terem_, of which we hear so much, was the part of the palace
sacred to the Tsaritsa and the Princesses--upon whose faces no man ever
looked. If a physician were needed he might feel the pulse and the
temperature through a piece of gauze--but see the face never. It is
said that two nobles who one day accidentally met Natalia coming from
her chapel were deprived of rank in consequence.
But the _terem_, with "its twenty-seven locks," was not going to
confine the sister of Peter. She met the eyes of men in public;
studied them well, too; and then selected the instruments for her
designs of effacing Peter and his mother, and herself becoming
sovereign indeed. A rumor was circulated that the imbecile Ivan (who
was alive) had been strangled by Natalia's family. In the tumult which
followed one of her brothers, Peter's uncle, was torn from Natalia's
arms and cut to pieces. But this was only one small incident in the
horrid tragedy. Then, after discovering that the Prince was not dead,
the bloodstains in the palace were washed up, and the two brothers were
placed upon the throne under the Regency of Sophia. But while she was
outraging the feelings of the people by her contempt for ancient
customs, and while her friendship with her Minister, Prince Galitsuin,
was becoming a public scandal, Sophia was at the same time being
defeated in a campaign against the Turks at the Crimea; and her
popularity was gone.
In the meantime Peter was growing. With no training, no education, he
was in his own disorderly, undisciplined fashion struggling up into
manhood under the tutelage of a quick, strong intelligence, a hungry
desire to know, and a hot, imperious temper. His first toys were drums
and swords, and he first studied history from colored German prints;
and as he grew older never wearied of reading about Ivan the Terrible.
His delight was to go out upon the streets of Moscow and pick up
strange bits of information from foreign adventurers about the habits
and customs of their countries. He played at soldiers with his boy
companions, and after finding how they did such things in Germany and
in England, drilled his troops after the European fashion. But it was
when he first saw a boat so built that it could go with or against the
wind, that his strongest instinct was awakened. He would not rest
until he had learned how to make and then to manage it. When this
strange, passionate, self-willed boy was seventeen years old, he
realized that his sister was scheming for the ruin of himself and his
mother. In the rupture that followed, the people deserted Sophia and
flocked about Peter. He placed his sister in a monastery, where, after
fifteen years of fruitless intrigue and conspiracy, she was to die.
Then, conjointly with his unfortunate brother, he commenced his reign
(1689).
If Sophia had freed herself from the customary seclusion of Princesses,
Peter emancipated himself from the usual proprieties of the palace.
Both were scandalous. One had harangued soldiers and walked with her
veil lifted, the other was swinging an ax like a carpenter, rowing like
a Cossack, or fighting mimic battles with his grooms, who not
infrequently knocked him down. In 1693 he gratified one great thirst
and longing. With a large suite he went up to Archangel--and for the
first time a Tsar looked out upon the sea! He ate and drank with the
foreign merchants, and took deep draughts of the stimulating air from
the west. He established a dock-yard, and while his first ship was
building made perilous trips upon that unknown ocean from which Russia
had all its life been shut out! His ship was the first to bear a
Russian flag into foreign waters, and now Peter had taken the first
step toward learning how to build a navy, but he had no place yet to
use one. So he turned his nimble activities toward the Black Sea. He
had only to capture Azof in the Crimea from the Turks, and he would
have a sea for his navy--and then might easily make the navy for his
sea! So he went down, carrying his soldiers and his new European
tactics--in which no one believed--gathered up his Cossacks, and the
attack was made, first with utter failure--all on account of the new
tactics--and then at last came overwhelming success; and a triumphant
return (1676) to Moscow under arches and garlands of flowers. Three
thousand Russian families were sent to colonize Azof, which was guarded
by some regiments of the _Streltsui_ and by Cossacks--and now there
must be a navy.
There must be nine ships of the line, and twenty frigates carrying
fifty guns, and bombships, and fireships. That would require a great
deal of money. It was then that the utility of the system of serfdom
became apparent. The prelates and monasteries were taxed--_one vessel
to every eighty thousand serfs_!--according to their wealth all the
orders of nobility to bear their portion in the same way, and the
peasants toiled on, never dreaming that _they_ were building a great
navy for the great Tsar. Peter then sent fifty young nobles of the
court to Venice, England, and the Netherlands to learn the arts of
shipbuilding and seamanship and gunnery. But how could he be sure of
the knowledge and the science of these idle youths--unless he himself
owned it and knew better than they? The time had come for his
long-indulged dream of visiting the Western kingdoms.
But while there were rejoicings at the victory over the Turks, there
was a feeling of universal disgust at the new order of things; with the
militia (the _Streltsui_) because foreigners were preferred to them and
because they were subjected to an unaccustomed discipline; with the
nobles because their children were sent into foreign lands among
heretics to learn trades like mechanics; and with the landowners and
clergy because the cost of equipping a great fleet fell upon them. All
classes were ripe for a revolt.
Sophia, from her cloister, was in correspondence with her agents, and a
conspiracy ripened to overthrow Peter and his reforms. As the Tsar was
one evening sitting down to an entertainment with a large party of
ladies and gentlemen, word was brought that someone desired to see him
privately upon an important matter. He promptly excused himself and
was taken in a sledge to the appointed place. There he graciously sat
down to supper with a number of gentlemen, as if perfectly ignorant of
their plans. Suddenly his guard arrived, entered the house, and
arrested the entire party, after which Peter returned in the best of
humor to his interrupted banquet, quite as if nothing had happened.
The next day the prisoners under torture revealed the plot to
assassinate him and then lay it to the foreigners, this to be followed,
by a general massacre of Europeans--men, women, and children. The
ringleaders were first dismembered, then beheaded--their legs and arms
being displayed in conspicuous places in the city, and the rest of the
conspirators, excepting his sister Sophia, were sent to Siberia.
With this parting and salutary lesson to his subjects in 1697, Peter
started upon his strange travels--in quest of the arts of civilization!
The embassy was composed of 270 persons. Among them was a young man
twenty-five years old, calling himself Peter Mikhailof, who a few weeks
later might have been seen at Saardam in Holland, in complete outfit of
workman's clothes, in dust and by the sweat of his brow learning the
art of ship-carpentry. Such was the first introduction to Europe of
the Tsar of Russia! They had long heard of this autocrat before whom
millions trembled, ruling like a savage despot in the midst of
splendors rivaling the Arabian Nights. Now they saw him! And the
amazement can scarcely be described. He dined with the Great Electress
Sophia, afterwards first Queen of Prussia, and she wrote of him:
"Nature has given him an infinity of wit. With advantages he might
have been an accomplished man. What a pity his manners are not less
boorish!"
But Peter was not thinking of the impression he made. With an
insatiable inquisitiveness and an omnivorous curiosity, he was looking
for the secret of power in nations. Nothing escaped him--cutlery,
rope-making, paper manufacture, whaling industry, surgery, microscopy;
he was engaging artists, officers, engineers, surgeons, buying models
of everything he saw--or standing lost in admiration of a traveling
dentist plying his craft in the market, whom he took home to his
lodgings, learned the use of the instruments himself, then practiced
his new art upon his followers.
At The Hague he endured the splendid public reception, then hurried off
his gold-trimmed coat, his wig and hat and white feathers, and was amid
grime and dust examining grist-mills, and ferry-boats, and irrigating
machines. To a lady he saw on the street at Amsterdam he shouted
"Stop!" then dragged out her enameled watch, examined it, and put it
back without a word. A nobleman's wig in similar unceremonious fashion
he snatched from his head, turned it inside out, and, not being pleased
with its make, threw it on the floor.
Perhaps Holland heard without regret that her guest was going to
England, where he was told the instruction was based upon the
principles of ship-building and he might learn more in a few weeks than
by a year's study elsewhere. King William III. placed a fleet at his
disposal, and also a palace upon his arrival in London. A violent
storm alarmed many on the way to England, but Peter enjoyed it and
humorously said, "Did you ever hear of a Tsar being lost in the North
Sea?" England was no less astonished than Holland at her guest, but
William III., the wisest sovereign in Europe, we learn was amazed at
the vigor and originality of his mind. The wise Bishop Burnet wrote of
him: "He is mechanically turned, and more fitted to be a carpenter than
a Prince. He told me he designed a great fleet for attacking the
Turkish Empire, but he does not seem to me capable of so great an
enterprise." This throws more light upon the limitations of Bishop
Burnet than those of Peter the Great, and fairly illustrates the
incompetency of contemporary estimates of genius; or, perhaps, the
inability of talent to take the full measure of genius at any time.
The good Bishop adds that he adores the wise Providence which "has
raised up such a furious man to reign over such a part of the world."
Louis XIV. "had procured the postponement of the honor of his visit";
so Peter prepared, after visiting Vienna, to go to Venice, but
receiving disturbing news of matters at home, this uncivilized
civilizer, this barbarian reformer of barbarism, turned his face toward
Moscow.
There was widespread dissatisfaction in the empire. The _Streltsui_
(militia) was rebellious, the heavily taxed landowners were angry, and
the people disgusted by the prevalence of German clothes and shaved
faces. Had not the wise Ivan IV. said: "To shave is a sin that the
blood of all the martyrs could not cleanse"! And who had ever before
seen a Tsar of Moscow quit Holy Russia to wander in foreign lands among
Turks and Germans? for both were alike to them. Then it was rumored
that Peter had gone in disguise to Stockholm, and that the Queen of
Sweden had put him into a cask lined with nails to throw him into the
sea, and he had only been saved by one of his guards taking his place;
and some years later many still believed that it was a false Tsar who
returned to them in 1700--that the true Tsar was still a prisoner at
Stockholm, attached to a post. Sophia wrote to the _Streltsui_--"You
suffer--but you will suffer more. Why do you wait? March on Moscow.
There is no news of the Tsar." The army was told that he was dead, and
that the _boyars_ were scheming to kill his infant son Alexis and then
get into power again. Thousands of revolted troops from Azof began to
pour into Moscow, then there was a rumor that the foreigners and the
Germans--who were introducing the smoking of tobacco and shaving, to
the utter destruction of the holy faith--were planning to seize the
town. Peter returned to find Moscow the prey to wild disorder, in the
hands of scheming revolutionists and mutineers. He concluded it was
the right time to give a lesson which would never be forgotten. He
would make the partisans of Old Russia feel the weight of his hand in a
way that would remind them of Ivan IV.
On the day of his return the nobles all presented themselves, laying
their faces, as was the custom, in the dust. After courteously
returning their salutations, Peter ordered that every one of them be
immediately shaved; and as this was one of the arts he had practiced
while abroad he initiated the process by skillfully applying the razor
himself to a few of the long-beards. Then the inquiry into the
rebellion commenced. The Patriarch tried to appease the wrath of the
Tsar, who answered; "Know that I venerate God and his Mother as much as
you do. But also know that I shall protect my people and punish
rebels." The "chastisement" was worthy of Ivan the Terrible. The
details of its infliction are too dreadful to relate, and we read with
incredulous horror that "the terrible carpenter of Saardam plied his
own ax in the horrible employment"--and that on the last day Peter
himself put to death eighty-four of the _Streltsui_, "compelling his
_boyars_ to assist"--in inflicting this "chastisement!"