CHARLES XII.--NARVA--ST. PETERSBURG
The Baltic was at this time a Swedish sea. Finland, Livonia, and all
the territory on the eastern coast, where once the Russians and the
German knights had struggled, was now under the sovereignty of an
inexperienced young king who had just ascended the throne of his father
Charles XI., King of Sweden. If Peter ever "opened a window" into the
West, it must be done by first breaking through this Swedish wall.
Livonia was deeply aggrieved just now because of some oppressive
measures against her, and her astute minister, Patkul, suggested to the
King of Poland that he form a coalition between that kingdom, Denmark,
and Russia for the purpose of breaking the aggressive Scandinavian
power in the North. The time was favorable, with disturbed conditions
in Sweden, and a youth of eighteen without experience upon the throne.
The Tsar, who had recently returned from abroad and had settled matters
with his _Streltsui_ in Moscow, saw in this enterprise just the
opportunity he desired, and joined the coalition.
At the Battle of Narva (1700) there were two surprises: one when Peter
found that he knew almost nothing about the art of warfare, and the
other when it was revealed to Charles XII. that he was a military
genius and his natural vocation was that of a conqueror. But if
Charles was intoxicated by his enormous success, Peter accepted his
humiliating defeat almost gratefully as a harsh lesson in military art.
The sacrifice of men had been terrible, but the lesson was not lost.
The next year there were small Russian victories, and these crept
nearer and nearer to the Baltic, until at last the river upon which the
great Nevski won his surname was reached--and the Neva was his! Peter
lost no time. He personally superintended the building of a fort and
then a church which were to be the nucleus of a city; and there may be
seen in St. Petersburg to-day the little hut in which lived the Tsar
while he was founding the capital which bears his name (1703). No
wonder it seemed a wild project to build the capital of an empire, not
only on its frontier, but upon low marshy ground subject to the
encroachments of the sea from which it had only half emerged; and in a
latitude where for two months of the year the twilight and the dawn
meet and there is no night, and where for two other months the sun
rises after nine in the morning and sets before three. Not only must
he build a city, but create the dry land for it to stand upon; and it
is said that six hundred acres have been reclaimed from the sea at St.
Petersburg since it was founded.
Charles XII. was too much occupied to care for these insignificant
events. He sent word that when he had time he would come and burn down
Peter's wooden town. He was leading a victorious army toward Poland,
he had beheaded the traitorous Patkul, and everything was bowing before
him. The great Marlborough was suing for his aid in the coalition
against Louis XIV. in the War of the Spanish Succession. Flushed with
victory, Charles felt that the fate of Europe was lying in his hands.
He had only to decide in which direction to move--whether to help to
curb the ambition of the Grand Monarque in the West, or to carry out
his first design of crushing the rising power of the Great Autocrat in
the East. He preferred the latter. The question then arose whether to
enter Russia by the North or by way of Poland, where he was now master.
The scale was turned probably by learning that the Cossacks in Little
Russia were growing impatient and were ripe for rebellion against the
Tsar.
Peter was anxious to prevent the invasion. He had a wholesome
admiration for the terrible Swedish army, not much confidence in his
own, and his empire was in disorder. He sent word to Charles that he
would be satisfied to withdraw from the West if he could have one port
on the Baltic. The king's haughty reply was: "Tell your Tsar I will
treat with him in Moscow," to which Peter rejoined: "My brother Charles
wants to play the part of an Alexander, but he will not find in me a
Darius."
It is possible that upon Ivan Mazeppa, who was chief or Hetman of the
Cossacks at this time, rests the responsibility of the crushing defeat
which terminated the brilliant career of Charles XII. Mazeppa was the
Polish gentleman whose punishment at the hands of an infuriated husband
has been the subject of poems by Lord Byron and Pushkin, and also of a
painting by Horace Vernet. This picturesque traitor, who always rose
upon the necks of the people who trusted him, whose friendships he one
after another invariably betrayed, reached a final climax of infamy by
offering to sacrifice the Tsar, the friend who believed in him so
absolutely that he sent into exile or to death anyone who questioned
his fidelity. Mazeppa had been with Peter at Azof, and abundant honors
were waiting for him; but he was dazzled by the career of the Swedish
conqueror, and believed he might rise higher under Charles XII. than
under his rough, imperious master at Moscow. So he wrote the King that
he might rely upon him to join him with 40,000 Cossacks in Little
Russia. He thought it would be an easy matter to turn the irritated
Cossacks from the Tsar. They were restive under the severity of the
new military _régime_, and also smarting under a decree forbidding them
to receive any more fugitive peasants fleeing from serfdom. But he had
miscalculated their lack of fidelity and his own power over them.
It was this fatal promise, which was never to be kept, that probably
lured Charles to his ruin. After a long and disastrous campaign he met
his final crushing defeat at Poltova in 1709. The King and Mazeppa,
companions in flight, together entered the Sultan's dominions as
fugitives, and of the army before which a short time ago Europe had
trembled--there was left not one battalion.
The Baltic was passing into new hands. "The window" opening upon the
West was to become a door, and the key of the door was to be kept upon
the side toward Russia! Sweden, which under Gustavus Adolphus, Charles
XI., and Charles XII. had played such a glorious part, was never to do
it again; and the place she had left vacant was to be filled by a new
and greater Power. Russia had dispelled the awakened dream of a great
Scandinavian Empire and--so long excluded and humiliated--was going to
make a triumphal entry into the family of European nations.
The Tsar, with his innovations and reforms, was vindicated. For
breadth of design and statesmanship there was not one sovereign in the
coalition who could compare with this man who, Bishop Burnet thought,
was better fitted for a mechanic than a Prince--and "incapable of a
great enterprise."
Of Charles XII. it has been said that "he was a hero of the
Scandinavian Edda set down in the wrong century," and again that he was
the last of the Vikings, and of the Varangian Princes. But Mazeppa
said of him, when dying in exile: "How could I have been seduced in my
old age by a military vagabond!"
Ivan, Peter's infirm brother and associate upon the throne, had died in
1696. Another oppressive tie had also been severed. He had married at
seventeen Eudoxia, belonging to a proud conservative Russian family.
He had never loved her, and when she scornfully opposed his policy of
reform, she became an object of intense aversion. After his triumph at
Azof, he sent orders that the Tsaritsa must not be at the palace upon
his return, and soon thereafter she was separated from her child
Alexis, placed in a monastery, and finally divorced. At the surrender
of Marienburg in Livonia (1702) there was among the captives the family
of a Lutheran pastor named Glück. Catherine, a young girl of sixteen,
a servant in the family, had just married a Swedish soldier, who was
killed the following day in battle. We would have to look far for a
more romantic story than that of this Protestant waiting-maid.
Menschikof, Peter's great general, was attracted by her beauty and took
the young girl under his protection. But when the Tsar was also
fascinated by her artless simplicity, she was transferred to his more
distinguished protection. Little did Catherine think when weeping for
her Swedish lover in Pastor Glück's kitchen that she was on her way to
the throne of Russia. But such was her destiny. She did not know how
to write her name, but she knew something which served her better. She
knew how to establish an influence possessed by no one else over the
strange husband to whom in 1707 she was secretly married.