The reign of Peter the First.--Beginning of the grand reformation.
Peter the Great was tall, genteel, well made, with a noble aspect,
piercing eyes and a robust constitution, fitted for all kinds of
hardship and bodily exercise. He had a sound understanding, which is the
basis of all real abilities; and to this was joined an active
disposition, which prompted him to undertake and execute the greatest
things. His education was far from being worthy of his genius. The
princess Sophia was, in a peculiar manner, interested to let him remain
in ignorance, and to indulge himself in those excesses which youth,
idleness, custom, and the high rank he held, made but too allowable.
Nevertheless, he had been lately married, (June 1689) like others of his
predecessors, to one of his own subjects, the daughter of colonel
Lapuchin; but, as he was young, and for some time enjoyed none of the
prerogatives of the crown, but that of indulging his pleasures without
restraint, the ties of wedlock were not always sufficient to keep him
within just bounds. The pleasures of the table, in which he indulged
himself rather too freely, with foreigners, who had been invited to
Moscow by prince Galitzin, seemed not to presage that he would one day
become the reformer of his country; however, in spite of bad examples,
and even the allurements of pleasure, he applied himself to the arts of
war and government, and which, even then, shewed that he had the seeds
of greatness in him.
It was still less expected, that a prince, who was subject to such a
constitutional dread of water, as to subject him to cold sweats, and
even convulsions, when he was obliged to cross a small river or brook,
should become one of the best seamen in all the north. In order to
get the better of nature, he began by jumping into the water,
notwithstanding the horror he felt at it, till at length this aversion
was changed into a fondness for that element.[29]
He often blushed at the ignorance in which he had been brought up. He
learned, almost of himself, without the help of a master, enough of
German and high Dutch, to be able to write and explain himself tolerably
well in both those languages. The Germans and Dutch appeared to him as
the most civilized nations, because the former had already erected, in
Moscow, some of those arts and manufactures which he was desirous of
seeing established in his empire, and the latter excelled in the art of
navigation, which he already began to look upon as the most necessary of
all others.
Such were the dispositions which Peter cherished, notwithstanding the
follies of his youth. At the same time, he found himself disturbed by
factions at home, had the turbulent spirit of the strelitzes to keep
under, and an almost uninterrupted war to manage against the Crim
Tartars. For though hostilities had been suspended in 1689, by a truce,
it had no long continuance.
During this interval, Peter became confirmed in his design of
introducing the arts into his country.
His father Alexis had, in his lifetime, entertained the same views, but
he wanted leisure, and a favourable opportunity to carry them into
execution; he transmitted his genius to his son, who was more
clear-sighted, more vigorous, and more unshaken by difficulties and
obstacles.
Alexis had been at a great expense in sending for Bothler,[30] a ship
builder and sea captain, from Holland, together with a number of
shipwrights and sailors. These built a large frigate and a yacht upon
the Wolga, which they navigated down that river to Astracan, where they
were to be employed in building more vessels, for carrying on an
advantageous trade with Persia, by the Caspian Sea. Just at this time
the revolt of Stenko-Rasin broke out, and this rebel destroyed these two
vessels, which he ought to have preserved for his own sake, and murdered
the captain; the rest of the crew fled into Persia, from whence they got
to some settlements belonging to the Dutch East India company. A
master-builder, who was a good shipwright, staid behind in Russia, where
he lived a long time in obscurity.
One day, Peter taking a walk at Ishmaelof, a summer-palace built by his
grandfather, he perceived, among several other rarities, an old English
shallop, which had lain entirely neglected: upon which he asked
Timmerman, a German, and his mathematical teacher, how came that little
boat to be of so different a construction from any he had seen on the
Moska? Timmerman replied, that it was made to go with sails and oars.
The young prince wanted instantly to make a trial of it; but it was
first to be repaired and rigged. Brant, the ship-builder abovementioned,
was by accident found out at Moscow, where he lived retired; he soon put
the boat in order, and worked her upon the river Yauza, which washes the
suburbs of the town.
Peter caused his boat to be removed to a great lake, in the
neighbourhood of the convent of the Trinity; he likewise made Brant
build two more frigates, and three yachts, and piloted them himself. A
considerable time afterwards, viz. in 1694, he made a journey to
Archangel, and having ordered a small vessel to be built in that port,
by the same Brant, he embarked therein on the Frozen Sea, which no
sovereign beside himself had ever beheld. On this occasion, he was
escorted by a Dutch man of war, under the command of captain Jolson, and
attended by all the merchant-vessels then in the port of Archangel. He
had already learned the manner of working a ship; and, notwithstanding
the pains his courtiers took to imitate their master, he was the only
one who made a proficiency in it.
He found it no less difficult to raise a well disciplined body of land
forces, on whom he could depend, than to establish a navy. His first
essay in navigation, on a lake, previous to his journey to Archangel,
was looked upon only as the amusements of a young prince of genius; and
his first attempt to form a body of disciplined troops, likewise
appeared as nothing more than that of diversion. This happened during
the regency of the princess Sophia; and, had he been suspected of
meaning any thing serious by this amusement, it might have been attended
with fatal consequences to him.
He placed his confidence in a foreigner, the celebrated Le Fort, of a
noble and ancient family in Piedmont, transplanted near two centuries
ago to Geneva, where they have filled the most considerable posts in the
state. He was intended to have been brought up to the trade, to which
the town is indebted for the figure it now makes; having formerly been
known only as the seat of religious controversies.
But his genius, which prompted him to the greatest undertakings, engaged
him to quit his father's house at the age of fourteen; and he served
four months[31] in quality of a cadet in the citadel of Marseilles; from
thence he went to Holland, where he served some time as a volunteer, and
was wounded at the siege of Grave, a strong fortified town on the Meuse,
which the prince of Orange, afterwards king of England, retook from
Lewis XIV. in 1674. After this, led by hopes of preferment, wherever he
could find it, he embarked with a German colonel, named Verstin, who had
obtained a commission from Peter's father, the czar Alexis, to raise
soldiers in the Netherlands, and bring them to Archangel. But, when he
arrived at that port, after a most fatiguing and dangerous navigation,
the czar Alexis was no more; the government was changed, and Russia in
confusion. The governor of Archangel suffered Verstin, Le Fort, and his
whole troop, to remain a long time, in the utmost poverty and distress,
and even threatened to send them into the extremity of Siberia; upon
which every man shifted for himself. Le Fort, in want of every thing,
repaired to Moscow, where he waited upon the Danish resident, named De
Horn, who made him his secretary: there he learned the Russian language,
and some time afterwards found means to be introduced to the czar Peter;
the elder brother, Iwan, not being a person for his purpose. Peter was
taken with him, and immediately gave him a company of foot. Le Fort had
seen very little service, he knew but little of letters, not having
studied any particular art or science; but he had seen a great deal, and
had a talent of making the most of what he saw. Like the czar, he owed
every thing to his own genius; he understood the German and Dutch
languages, which Peter was learning, as those of two nations that might
be of service in his designs. Every thing conspired to make him
agreeable to Peter, to whom he strictly attached himself. From being the
companion of his pleasures, he became his favourite, and confirmed
himself in that station by his abilities. The czar made him his
confidant in the most dangerous design that a prince of that country
could possibly form, namely, that of putting himself in a condition to
be able one day to break the seditious and barbarous body of forces
called the strelitzes. It had cost the great sultan or basha Osman his
life, for attempting to disband the janissaries. Peter, young as he was,
went to work in a much abler manner than Osman.
He began with forming, at his country-seat at Preobrazinski, a company
of fifty of his youngest domestics; and some young gentlemen, the sons
of boyards, were chosen for their officers: but, in order to teach these
young noblemen a subordination, to which they were wholly unaccustomed,
he made them pass through all the different military degrees, and
himself set them the example, by serving first as a drum, then as a
private soldier, a serjeant, and a lieutenant of the company. Nothing
was ever more extraordinary, nor more useful, than this conduct. The
Russians had hitherto made war in the same manner as our ancestors at
the time of the feudal tenures, when the unexperienced nobles took the
field at the head of their vassals, undisciplined, and ill armed: a
barbarous method, sufficient indeed to act against the like armies, but
of no use against regular troops.
This company, which was formed wholly by Peter himself, soon increased
in numbers, and became afterwards the regiment of Preobrazinski guards.
Another regiment, formed on the same plan, became in time the regiment
of Semeniousky guards.
The czar had already a regiment of five thousand men that could be
depended upon, trained by general Gordon, a Scotchman, and composed
almost entirely of foreigners. Le Fort, who had borne arms but a short
time, but whose capacity was equal to every thing, undertook to raise a
regiment of twelve thousand men, which he effected: five colonels were
appointed to serve under him, and he saw himself on a sudden general of
this little army, which had been raised, as much to oppose the
strelitzes, as the enemies of the state.
One thing worthy of being remarked,[32] and which fully confutes the
hasty error of those who pretend that France lost very few of its
inhabitants by the revocation of the edict of Nantz, is, that one-third
of his army, which was only called a regiment, consisted of French
refugees. Le Fort disciplined his new troops, as if he had been all his
lifetime a soldier.
Peter was desirous of seeing one of those images of war, the mock
fights, which had lately been introduced in times of peace: a fort was
erected, which was to be attacked by one part of his new troops, and
defended by the other. The difference between this fight, and others of
the like nature, was, that instead of a sham engagement, there was a
real one, in which some of his men were slain, and a great many
wounded.[33] Le Fort, who commanded the attack, received a considerable
wound. These bloody sports were intended to initiate the young troops
into the service of the field; but it required much labour, and even
some degree of sufferings to compass this end.
These warlike amusements did not take off the czar's attention to his
naval project. As he had made Le Fort a general by land, notwithstanding
his having never borne a command; he now made him admiral, though he had
never had the direction of a ship, but he knew him deserving both of the
one and the other. It is true, that he was an admiral without a fleet,
and a general with only his regiment for an army.
By degrees the czar reformed that great abuse in the army, viz. the
independence of the boyards, who, in time of war, used to bring into the
field a multitude of their vassals and peasants: this was exactly the
ancient government of the Franks, Huns, Goths, and Vandals, who indeed
subdued the Roman empire in its state of decline, but would have been
totally destroyed, had they had the warlike disciplined legions of
ancient Rome to encounter, or such armies as are now brought into the
field.
Admiral Le Fort was not long, however, before he had something more than
an empty title. He employed some Dutchmen and Venetians in building a
number of barcolongos, or kind of long barks, and also two ships of
about thirty guns each, at the mouth of the Woronitz, which falls into
the Tanais, or Don: these vessels were to fall down the river, and keep
in awe the Crim Tartars, with whom hostilities had been renewed.
The czar was now to determine (in 1689) against which of the following
powers he would declare war, whether against the Turks, the Swedes, or
the Chinese. But here it will be proper to premise on what terms he then
stood with China, and which was the first treaty of peace concluded by
that nation.