Travels of Peter the Great.
[Sidenote: 1697.]
Having thus determined to visit the several countries and courts
above-mentioned in a private character, he put himself into the retinue
of three ambassadors, in the same manner as he had before mingled in the
train of his generals at his triumphant entry into Moscow.
[43] The three ambassadors were, general Le Fort, the boyard Alexis
Gollowin, commissary-general of war, and governor of Siberia, the same
who signed the perpetual treaty of peace with the plenipotentiaries
of China, on the frontiers of that empire; and Wonitzin, diak, or
secretary of state, who had been long employed in foreign courts. Four
principal secretaries, twelve gentlemen, two pages for each ambassador,
a company of fifty guards, with their officers, all of the regiment
of Preobrazinski, composed the chief retinue of this embassy, which
consisted in the whole of two hundred persons; and the czar, reserving
to himself only one valet de chambre, a servant in livery, and a dwarf,
mingled with the crowd. It was a thing unparalleled in history, for a
king of five-and-twenty years of age, to quit his dominions, in order
to learn the art of governing. His victory over the Turks and Tartars,
the splendour of his triumphant entry into Moscow, the number of foreign
troops attached to his service, the death of his brother John, his
co-partner in the empire, and the confinement of the princess Sophia to
a cloister, and above all the universal respect shewn to his person,
seemed to assure him the tranquillity of his kingdom during his absence.
He intrusted the regency in the hands of the boyard Strechnef, and the
knez or prince Romadonowski, who were to deliberate with the rest of the
boyards in cases of importance.
Two troops raised by general Gordon remained behind in Moscow, to keep
every thing quiet in that capital. Those strelitzes, who were thought
likely to create a disturbance, were distributed in the frontiers of
Crim Tartary, to preserve the conquest of Azoph, and to check the
incursions of the Tartars. Having provided against every incident, he
gave a free scope to his passion and desire of improvement.
As this journey proved the cause, or at least the pretext, of the bloody
war, which so long traversed, but in the end promoted, all the designs
of the czar; which drove Augustus, king of Poland, from the throne;
placed that crown on the head of Stanislaus, and then stript him of it;
which made Charles XII. king of Sweden, the first of conquerors for nine
years, and the most unfortunate of kings for nine more; it is necessary,
in order to enter into a detail of these events, to take a view of the
state of Europe at that time.
Sultan Mustapha II. sat at that time on the Ottoman throne; the weakness
of whose administration would not permit him to make any great efforts,
either against Leopold, emperor of Germany, whose arms were successful
in Hungary, nor against the czar, who had lately taken Azoph from him,
and threatened to make himself master of the Pontus Euxinus; nor even
against the Venetians, who had made themselves masters of all the
Peloponnesus.
John Sobieski, king of Poland, for ever famous by the victory of
Chocksim, and the deliverance of Vienna, died the 17th of June, 1696,
and the possession of that crown was in dispute between Augustus,
elector of Saxony, who obtained it, and Armond, prince of Conti, who had
only the honour of being elected.
1697.] Sweden had lately lost, but without regret, Charles XI. her
sovereign, who was the first king who had ever been really absolute in
that country, and who was the father of a prince still more so, and with
whom all despotic power ceased. He left the crown to his son Charles
XII. a youth of only fifteen years of age. This was in all appearance a
conjuncture the most favourable for the czar's design; he had it in his
power to extend his dominions on the Gulf of Finland, and on the side of
Livonia. But he did not think it enough to harass the Turks on the Black
Sea; the settlements on the Palus Mæotis, and the borders of the Caspian
Sea, were not sufficient to answer his schemes of navigation, commerce,
and power. Besides, glory, which is the darling object of every
reformer, was to be found neither in Persia, nor in Turkey, but in our
parts of Europe, where great talents are rendered immortal. In a word,
Peter did not aim at introducing either the Persian or Turkish manners
among his subjects.
Germany, then at war both with the Turks and with the French, and united
with Spain, England, and Holland, against the single power of Lewis XIV.
was on the point of concluding peace, and the plenipotentiaries were
already met at the castle of Ryswick, in the neighbourhood of the Hague.
It was during this situation of affairs, that Peter and his ambassador
began their journey in the month of April, 1697, by the way of Great
Novogorod: from thence they travelled through Esthonia and Livonia,
provinces formerly disputed by the Russians, Swedes, and Poles, and
which the Swedes at last acquired by superiority of arms.
The fertility of Livonia, and the situation of its capital, Riga, were
temptations to the czar, to possess himself of that country. He
expressed a curiosity to see the fortifications of the citadel. But
count D'Alberg, governor of Riga, taking umbrage at this request,
refused him the satisfaction he desired, and affected to treat the
embassy with contempt. This behaviour did not at all contribute to cool
the inclination the czar might have, to make himself one day master of
those provinces.
From Livonia they proceeded to Brandenburg-Prussia, part of which had
been inhabited by the ancient Vandals; Polish Prussia had been included
in European Sarmatia. Brandenburg-Prussia was a poor country and badly
peopled; but its elector, who afterwards took the name of king,
displayed a magnificence on this occasion, equally new and destructive
to his dominions. He piqued himself upon receiving this embassy in his
city of Konigsberg, with all the pomp of royalty. The most sumptuous
presents were made on both sides. The contrast between the French dress
which the court of Berlin affected, and the long Asiatic robes of the
Russians, with their caps buttoned up with pearls and diamonds, and
their scimitars hanging at their belts, produced a singular effect. The
czar was dressed after the German fashion. The prince of Georgia, who
accompanied him, was clad in a Persian habit, which displayed a
different magnificence. This is the same who was taken prisoner
afterwards at the battle of Narva, and died in Sweden.
Peter despised all this ostentation; it was to have been wished that he
had shewn an equal contempt for the pleasures of the table, in which the
Germans, at that time, placed their chiefest glory. It was at one of
those entertainments,[44] then too much in fashion, and which are alike
fatal to health and morality, that he drew his sword upon his favourite,
Le Fort; but he expressed as much contrition for this sudden sally of
passion, as Alexander did for the murder of Clytus; he asked pardon of
Le Fort, saying, that he wanted to reform his subjects, and could not
yet reform himself. General Le Fort, in his manuscript praises the czar
more for this goodness of heart, than he blames him for his excess of
passion.
The ambassadors then went through Pomerania and Berlin; and, from
thence, one part took its way through Magdeburg, and the other by
Hamburg, a city which already began to be considerable by its extensive
commerce, but not so rich and populous as it has become since. From
thence they directed their route towards Minden, crossed Westphalia, and
at length, by the way of Cleves, arrived at Amsterdam.
The czar reached this city fifteen days before the ambassadors. At his
first coming, he lodged in a house belonging to the East India company;
but soon afterwards he took a small apartment in the dock-yard,
belonging to the admiralty. He then put on the habit of a Dutch skipper,
and in that dress went to the village of Saardam, a place where a great
many more ships were built at that times, than at present. This village
is as large, as populous, and as rich, and much neater, than many
opulent towns. The czar greatly admired the multitude of people who were
constantly employed there, the order and regularity of their times of
working, the prodigious dispatch with which they built and fitted out
ships, the incredible number of warehouses, and machines, for the
greater ease and security of labour. The czar began with purchasing a
bark, to which he made a mast with his own hands; after that, he worked
upon all the different parts in the construction of a vessel, living in
the same manner as the workmen at Saardam, dressing and eating the same
as them, and working in the forges, the rope-walks, and in the several
mills, which are in prodigious numbers in that village, for sawing
timber, extracting oil, making paper, and wire-drawing. He caused
himself to be enrolled in the list of carpenters, by the name of Peter
Michaelhoff, and was commonly called Peter Bas, or Master Peter: the
workmen were at first confounded at having a crowned head for a
fellow-labourer, but soon became familiarized to the sight.
While he was thus handling the compass and the axe at Saardam, a
confirmation was brought him of the division in Poland, and of the
double nomination of the elector Augustus, and the prince of Conti. The
carpenter of Saardam immediately promised king Augustus to assist him
with thirty thousand men; and, from his work-loft, issued out orders to
his army that was assembled in the Ukraine against the Turks.
11th Aug. 1697.] His troops gained a victory over the Tartars near
Azoph, and a few months afterwards took from them the city of Or, or
Orkapi, which we call Precop.[45] As to himself, he still continued
improving in different arts: he went frequently from Saardam to
Amsterdam, to hear the lectures of the celebrated anatomist, Ruysch; and
made himself master of several operations in surgery, which, in case of
necessity, might be of use both to himself and his officers. He went
through a course of natural philosophy, in the house of the burgomaster
Witzen, a person for ever estimable for his patriotic virtue, and the
noble use he made of his immense riches, which he distributed like a
citizen of the world, sending men of abilities, at a great expense, to
all parts of the globe, in search of whatever was most rare and
valuable, and fitting out vessels at his own charge to make new
discoveries.
Peter Bas gave a truce to his labours for a short time, but it was only
to pay a private visit at Utrecht, and at the Hague, to William, king of
England, and stadtholder of the United Provinces. General Le Fort was
the only one admitted to the private conference of the two monarchs.
Peter assisted afterwards at the public entry of his ambassadors, and at
their audience: they presented, in his name, to the deputy of the
states, six hundred of the most beautiful sables that could be procured;
and the states, over and above the customary presents on these
occasions, of a gold chain and a medal, gave them three magnificent
coaches. They received the first visits of all the plenipotentiaries who
were at the congress of Ryswick, excepting those of France, to whom they
had not notified their arrival, not only because the czar espoused the
cause of Augustus against the prince of Conti, but also because king
William, whose friendship he was desirous of cultivating, was averse to
a peace with France.
At his return to Amsterdam he resumed his former occupations, and
completed with his own hands, a ship of sixty guns, that he had begun
himself, and sent her to Archangel; which was the only port he had at
that time on the ocean.
He not only engaged in his service several French refugees, Swiss, and
Germans; but he also sent all sorts of artists over to Moscow, and he
previously made a trial of their several abilities himself. There were
few trades or arts which he did not perfectly well understand, in their
minutest branches: he took a particular pleasure in correcting with his
own hands, the geographical maps, which at that time laid down at hazard
the positions of the towns and rivers in his vast dominions, then very
little known. There is still preserved, a map, on which he marked out,
with his own hand, his projected communication of the Caspian and Black
Seas, the execution of which he had given in charge to Mr. Brekel, a
German engineer. The junction of these two seas was indeed a less
difficult enterprise than that of the Ocean and Mediterranean, which was
effected in France; but the very idea of joining the sea of Azoph with
the Caspian, astonished the imagination at that time: but new
establishments in that country became the object of his attention, in
proportion as his successes begat new hopes.
His troops, commanded by general Schein and prince Dolgorowski, had
lately gained a victory over the Tartars near Azoph, and likewise over a
body of janissaries sent by sultan Mustapha to their assistance. (July
1696.) This success served to make him more respected, even by those who
blamed him, as a sovereign, for having quitted his dominions, to turn
workman at Amsterdam. They now saw, that the affairs of the monarch did
not suffer by the labours of the philosopher, the traveller, and the
artificer.
He remained at Amsterdam, constantly employed in his usual occupations
of shipbuilding, engineering, geography, and the practice of natural
philosophy, till the middle of January 1698, and then he set out for
England, but still as one of the retinue of his ambassadors.
King William sent his own yacht to meet him, and two ships of war as
convoy. In England he observed the same manner of living as at Amsterdam
and Saardam; he took an apartment near the king's dockyard, at Deptford,
where he applied himself wholly to gain instruction. The Dutch
builders had only taught him their method, and the practical part of
shipbuilding. In England he found the art better explained; for there
they work according to mathematical proportion. He soon made himself so
perfect in this science, that he was able to give lessons to others. He
began to build a ship according to the English method of construction,
and it proved a prime sailor. The art of watchmaking, which was already
brought to perfection in London, next attracted his attention, and he
made himself complete master of the whole theory. Captain Perry, the
engineer, who followed him from London to Russia, says, that from the
casting of cannon, to the spinning of ropes, there was not any one
branch of trade belonging to a ship that he did not minutely observe,
and even put his hand to, as often as he came into the places where
those trades were carried on.
In order to cultivate his friendship, he was allowed to engage several
English artificers into his service, as he had done in Holland; but,
over and above artificers, he engaged likewise some mathematicians,
which he would not so easily have found in Amsterdam. Ferguson, a
Scotchman, an excellent geometrician, entered into his service, and was
the first person who brought arithmetic into use in the exchequer in
Russia, where before that time, they made use only of the Tartarian
method of reckoning, with balls strung upon a wire; a method which
supplied the place of writing, but was very perplexing and imperfect,
because, after the calculation, there was no method of proving it, in
order to discover any error. The Indian ciphers, which are now in use,
were not introduced among us till the ninth century, by Arabs; and they
did not make their way into the Russian empire till one thousand years
afterwards. Such has been the fate of the arts, to make their progress
slowly round the globe. He took with him two young students from a
mathematical school,[46] and this was the beginning of the marine
academy, founded afterwards by Peter the Great. He observed and
calculated eclipses with Ferguson. Perry, the engineer, though greatly
discontented at not being sufficiently rewarded, acknowledges, that
Peter made himself a proficient in astronomy; that he perfectly well
understood the motions of the heavenly bodies, as well as the laws of
gravitation, by which they are directed. This force, now so evidently
demonstrated, and before the time of the great Newton so little known,
by which all the planets gravitate towards each other, and which retain
them in their orbits, was already become familiar to a sovereign of
Russia, while other countries amused themselves with imaginary vertices,
and, in Galileo's nation, one set of ignorant persons ordered others, as
ignorant, to believe the earth to be immoveable.
Perry set out in order to effect a communication between rivers, to
build bridges, and construct sluices. The czar's plan was to open a
communication by means of canals between the Ocean, the Caspian, and the
Black Seas.
We must not forget to observe, that a set of English merchants, with the
marquis of Caermarthen[47] at their head, gave Peter fifteen thousand
pounds sterling, for the permission of vending tobacco in Russia. The
patriarch, by a mistaken severity, had interdicted this branch of trade;
for the Russian church forbid smoking, as an unclean and sinful action.
Peter, who knew better things, and who, amongst his many projected
changes, meditated a reformation of the church, introduced this
commodity of trade into his dominions.
Before Peter left England, he was entertained by king William with a
spectacle worthy such a guest: this was a mock sea-fight. Little was it
then imagined, that the czar would one day fight a real battle on this
element against the Swedes, and gain naval victories in the Baltic. In
fine, William made him a present of the vessel in which he used to go
over to Holland, called the Royal Transport, a beautiful yacht, and
magnificently adorned. In this vessel Peter returned to Holland the
latter end of 1698, taking with him three captains of ships of war, five
and twenty captains of merchant ships, forty lieutenants, thirty pilots,
as many surgeons, two hundred and fifty gunners, and upwards of three
hundred artificers. This little colony of persons skilful in all
branches, sailed from Holland to Archangel, on board the Royal
Transport, and from thence were distributed into all the different
places where their services were necessary. Those who had been engaged
at Amsterdam went by the way of Narva, which then belonged to the
Swedes.
While he was thus transplanting the arts and manufacture of England and
Holland into his own country, the officers, whom he had sent to Rome,
and other places in Italy, had likewise engaged some artists in his
service. General Sheremeto, who was at the head of his embassy to Italy,
took the tour of Rome, Naples, Venice, and Malta, while the czar
proceeded to Vienna with his other ambassadors. He had now only to view
the military discipline of the Germans, after having seen the English
fleets, and the dock-yards of Holland. Politics had likewise as great a
share in this journey as the desire of instruction. The emperor was his
natural ally against the Turks. Peter had a private audience of Leopold,
and the two monarchs conferred standing, to avoid the trouble of
ceremony.
There happened nothing worthy remark during his stay at Vienna, except
the celebration of the ancient feast of the landlord and landlady, which
had been disused for a considerable time, and which Leopold thought
proper to revive on the czar's account. This feast, which by the Germans
is called Wurtchafft, is celebrated in the following manner:--
The emperor is landlord and the empress landlady, the king of the
Romans, the archdukes and the archduchesses are generally their
assistants: they entertain people of all nations as their guests, who
come dressed after the most ancient fashion of their respective
countries: those who are invited to the feast, draw lots for tickets, on
each of which is written the name of the nation, and the character or
person they are to represent. One perhaps draws a ticket for a Chinese
mandarin; another for a Tartarian mirza; a third a Persian satrap; and a
fourth for a Roman senator; a princess may, by her ticket, be a
gardener's wife, or a milk-maid; a prince a peasant, or a common
soldier. Dances are composed suitable to all those characters, and the
landlord and landlady with their family wait at table. Such was the
ancient institution; but on this occasion[48] Joseph, king of the
Romans, and the countess of Traun, represented the ancient Egyptians.
The archduke Charles, and the countess of Walstein, were dressed like
Flemings in the time of Charles the Fifth. The archduchess Mary
Elizabeth and count Traun were in the habits of Tartars; the archduchess
Josephina and the count of Workslaw were habited like Persians, and the
archduchess Mariamne and prince Maximilian of Hanover in the character
of North Holland peasants. Peter appeared in the dress of a Friesland
boor, and all who spoke to him addressed him in that character, at the
same time talking to him of the great czar of Muscovy. These are
trifling particulars; but whatever revives the remembrance of ancient
manners and customs, is in some degree worthy of being recorded.
Peter was ready to set out from Vienna, in order to proceed to Venice,
to complete his tour of instruction, when he received the news of a
rebellion, which had lately broke out in his dominions.