The empire of Russia is the largest in the whole globe, extending from
west to east upwards of two thousand common leagues of France,[1] and
about eight hundred in its greatest breadth from north to south. It
borders upon Poland and the Frozen Sea, and joins to Sweden and China.
Its length from the island of Dago, in the westernmost part of Livonia,
to its most eastern limits, takes in near one hundred and seventy
degrees, so that when it is noon in the western parts of the empire, it
is nearly midnight in the eastern. Its breadth from north to south is
three thousand six hundred wersts, which make eight hundred and fifty of
our common French leagues.
The limits of this country were so little known in the last century,
that, in 1689, when it was reported, that the Chinese and the Russians
were at war, and that in order to terminate their differences, the
emperor _Camhi_ on the one hand, and the czars Ivan or John, and Peter,
on the other, had sent their ministers to meet an embassy within three
hundred leagues of Pekin, on the frontiers of the two empires, the
account was at first treated as a fiction.
The country now comprehended under the name of Russia, or the Russias,
is of a greater extent than all the rest of Europe, or than ever the
Roman empire was, or that of Darius subdued by Alexander; for it
contains upwards of one million one hundred thousand square leagues.
Neither the Roman empire, nor that of Alexander, contained more than
five hundred and fifty thousand each; and there is not a kingdom in
Europe the twelfth part so extensive as the Roman empire; but to make
Russia as populous, as plentiful, and as well stored with towns as our
southern countries, would require whole ages, and a race of monarchs
such as Peter the Great.
The English ambassador, who resided at Petersburg in 1733, and who had
been at Madrid, says, in his manuscript relation, that in Spain, which
is the least populous state in Europe, there may be reckoned forty
persons to every square mile, and in Russia not above five. We shall see
in the second chapter, whether this minister was mistaken. Marshal
Vauban, the greatest of engineers, and the best of citizens, computes,
that, in France, every square mile contains two hundred inhabitants.
These calculations are never very exact, but they serve to shew the
amazing disproportion in the population of two different countries.
I shall observe here, that from Petersburg to Pekin, there is hardly one
mountain to be met with in the route which the caravans might take
through independent Tartary, and that from Petersburg to the north of
France, by the road of Dantzic, Hamburg, and Amsterdam, there is not
even a hill of any eminence to be seen. This observation leaves room to
doubt of the truth of that theory, which makes the mountains to have
been formed by the rolling of the waves of the sea, and supposes all
that is at present dry land, to have been for a long time covered with
water: but how comes it to pass, that the waves, which, according to the
supposition, formed the Alps, the Pyrenees, and Mount Taurus, did not
likewise form some eminence or hill from Normandy to China, which is a
winding space of above three thousand leagues? Geography, thus
considered, may furnish lights to natural philosophy, or at least give
room for rational doubts.
Formerly we called Russia by the name of Muscovy, from the city of
Moscow, the capital of that empire, and the residence of the grand
dukes: but at present the ancient name of Russia prevails.
It is not my business in this place to inquire, why the countries from
Smolensko, to the other side of Moscow, were called White Russia, or why
Hubner gives it the name of Black, nor for what reason the government of
Kiow should be named Red Russia.
It is very likely that Madies the Scythian, who made an irruption into
Asia, near seven hundred years before our vulgar æra, might have carried
his arms into these regions, as Gengis-Khan and Tamerlane did
afterwards, and as probably others had done long before Madies. Every
part of antiquity is not deserving of our inquiries; that of the
Chinese, the Indians, the Persians, and the Egyptians, is ascertained
from illustrious and interesting monuments; but these monuments suppose
others of a far more ancient date, since it required many ages to teach
men the art of transmitting their thoughts by permanent signs, and no
less time was required to form a regular language; and yet we have no
such monuments even in this polite part of Europe. The art of writing
was a long time unknown to all the North: the patriarch Constantine, who
wrote the history of Kiow in the Russian language, acknowledges, that
the use of writing was not known in these countries in the fifth
century.
Let others examine whether the Huns, the Slavi, and the Tartars,
formerly led their wandering and famished tribes towards the source of
the Boristhenes;[2] my design is to shew what czar Peter created, and
not to engage in a useless attempt, to clear up the chaos of antiquity.
We should always keep in mind, that no family upon earth knows its first
founder, and consequently, that no nation knows its first origin.
I use the name of Russians to designate the inhabitants of this great
empire. That of Roxolanians, which was formerly given them, would indeed
be more sonorous, but we shall conform to the custom of the language in
which we write. News-papers and other memoirs have for some time used
the word Russians; but as this name comes too near to that of Prussians,
I shall abide by that of Russ, which almost all our writers have given
them. Besides, it appeared to me, that the most extensive people on the
earth ought to be known by some appellation that may distinguish them
absolutely from all other nations.[3]
This empire is at present divided into sixteen large governments, that
will one day be subdivided, when the northern and eastern countries come
to be more inhabited.
These sixteen governments, which contain several immense provinces are
the following:--