THE RISE OF RUSSIA: PETER THE GREAT. (1682-1725.)
GENERAL REMARKS.--The second great struggle between the principles of
Liberalism and of Despotism, as represented by the opposing parties in the
English Revolution, took place in France. But before proceeding to speak
of the French Revolution, we shall first trace the rise of Russia and of
Prussia, as these two great monarchies were destined to play prominent
parts in that tremendous conflict. We left Russia at the close of the
Middle Ages a semi-savage, semi-Asiatic power, so hemmed in by barbarian
lands and hostile races as to be almost entirely cut off from intercourse
with the civilized world (see p. 508). In the present chapter we wish to
tell how she pushed her lines out to the seas on every side,--to the
Caspian, the Euxine, and the Baltic. The main interest of our story
gathers about Peter the Great, whose almost superhuman strength and energy
lifted the great barbarian nation to a prominent place among the powers of
Europe.
ACCESSION OF PETER THE GREAT (1682).--The royal line established in Russia
by the old Norseman Ruric (see p. 508), ended in 1589. Then followed a
period of confusion and of foreign invasion, known as the Troublous Times,
after which a prince of the celebrated house of Romanoff came to the
throne. For more than half a century after the accession of the Romanoffs,
there is little either in the genius or the deeds of any of the line
calculated to draw our special attention. But towards the close of the
seventeenth century there ascended the Russian throne a man whose capacity
and energy and achievements instantly drew the gaze of his contemporaries,
and who has elicited the admiration and wonder of all succeeding
generations. This was Peter I., universally known as Peter the Great, one
of the remarkable characters of history. He was but seventeen years of age
when he assumed the full responsibilities of government.
THE CONQUEST OF AZOF (1696).--At this time Russia possessed only one sea-
port, Archangel, on the White Sea, which harbor for a large part of the
year was sealed against vessels by the extreme cold of that high latitude.
Russia, consequently, had no marine commerce; there was no word for
_fleet_ in the Russian language. Peter saw clearly that the most urgent
need of his empire was outlets upon the sea. Hence, his first aim was to
wrest the Baltic shore from the grasp of Sweden, and the Euxine from the
hands of the Turks.
In 1695 Peter sailed down the Don and made an attack upon Azof; the key to
the Black Sea, but was unsuccessful. The next year, however, repeating the
attempt, he succeeded, and thus gained his first harbor on the south.
[Illustration: PETER THE GREAT. (After a painting at Hampton Court, by G.
Kneller, 1698.)]
PETER'S FIRST VISIT TO THE WEST (1697-1698).--With a view to advancing his
naval projects, Peter about this time sent a large number of young Russian
nobles to Italy, Holland, and England to acquire in those countries a
knowledge of naval affairs, forbidding them to return before they had
become good sailors.
Not satisfied with thus sending to foreign parts his young nobility, Peter
formed the somewhat startling resolution of going abroad himself, and
learning the art of ship-building by personal experience in the dockyards
of Holland. Accordingly, in the year 1697, leaving the government in the
hands of three nobles, he set out _incognito_ for the Netherlands. Upon
arriving there he proceeded to Zaandam, a place a short distance from
Amsterdam, and there hired out as a common laborer to a Dutch shipbuilder.
Notwithstanding his disguise it was well enough known who the stranger
was. Indeed there was but little chance of Peter's being mistaken for a
Dutchman. The way in which he flew about, and the terrible energy with
which he did everything, set him quite apart from the easy-going,
phlegmatic Hollanders.
To escape the annoyance of the crowds at Zaandam, Peter left the place,
and went to the docks of the East India Company in Amsterdam, who set
about building a frigate that he might see the whole process of
constructing a vessel from the beginning. Here he worked for four months,
being known among his fellow-workmen as Baas or Master Peter.
It was not alone the art of naval architecture in which Peter interested
himself; he attended lectures on anatomy, studied surgery, gaining some
skill in pulling teeth and bleeding, inspected paper-mills, flour-mills,
printing-presses, and factories, and visited cabinets, hospitals, and
museums, thus acquainting himself with every industry and art that he
thought might be advantageously introduced into his own country.
From Holland Master Peter went to England to study her superior naval
establishment. Here he was fittingly received by King William III., who
had presented Peter while in Holland with a splendid yacht fully armed,
and who now made his guest extremely happy by getting up for him a sham
sea-fight.
Returning from England to Holland, Peter went thence to Vienna, intending
to visit Italy; but hearing of an insurrection at home, he set out in
haste for Moscow.
PETER'S REFORMS.--The revolt which had hastened Peter's return from the
West was an uprising among the Strelitzes, a body of soldiers numbering
20,000 or 30,000, organized by Ivan the Terrible as a sort of imperial
body-guard. In their ungovernable turbulence, they remind us of the
Prætorians of Rome. The mutiny settled Peter in his determination to rid
himself altogether of the insolent and refractory body. Its place was
taken by a well-disciplined force trained according to the tactics of the
Western nations.
The disbanding of the seditious guards was only one of the many reforms
effected by Peter. So intent was he upon thoroughly Europeanizing his
country, that he resolved that his subjects should literally clothe
themselves in the "garments of Western Civilization." Accordingly he
abolished the long-sleeved, long-skirted Oriental robes that were at this
time worn, and decreed that everybody save the clergy should shave, or pay
a tax on his beard. We are told that Peter stationed tailors and barbers
at the gates of Moscow to cut off the skirts and to train the beards of
those who had not conformed to the royal regulations, and that he himself
sheared off with his own hands the offending sleeves and beards of his
reluctant courtiers. The law was gradually relaxed, but the reform became
so general that in the best society in Russia at the present day one sees
only smooth faces and the Western style of dress.
As additional outgrowths of what he had seen, or heard, or had suggested
to him on his foreign tour, Peter issued a new coinage, introduced
schools, built factories, constructed roads and canals, established a
postal system, opened mines, framed laws modelled after those of the West,
and reformed the government of the towns in such a way as to give the
citizens some voice in the management of their local affairs, as he had
observed was done in the Netherlands and in England.
CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN.--Peter's history now becomes intertwined with that
of a man quite as remarkable as himself, Charles XII. of Sweden, the
"Madman of the North." Charles was but fifteen years of age when, in 1697,
the death of his father called him to the Swedish throne. The dominions
which came under his sway embraced not only Sweden, but Finland, and large
possessions along the Southern Baltic,--territory that had been won by the
arms of his ancestors.
[Illustration: Map of the BALTIC ISLANDS]
Taking advantage of Charles's extreme youth, three sovereigns, Frederick
IV. of Denmark, Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland,
and Peter the Great of Prussia, leagued against him (1700), for the
purpose of appropriating such portions of his dominions as they severally
desired to annex to their own.
THE BATTLE OF NARVA (1700).--But the conspirators had formed a wrong
estimate of the young Swedish monarch. Notwithstanding the insane follies
in which he was accustomed to indulge, he possessed talent; he had
especially a remarkable aptitude for military affairs. With a well-trained
force--a veteran army that had not yet forgotten the discipline of the
hero Gustavus Adolphus--Charles now threw himself first upon the Danes,
and in two weeks forced the Danish king to sue for peace; then he turned
his little army of 8,000 men upon the Russian forces of 20,000, which were
besieging the city of Narva, on the Gulf of Finland, and inflicted upon
them a most ignominious defeat. The only comment of the imperturbable
Peter upon the disaster was, "The Swedes will have the advantage of us at
first, but they will teach us how to beat them."
THE FOUNDING OF ST. PETERSBURG (1703).--After chastising the Czar
[Footnote: Czar is probably a contraction of _Cæsar_. The title was
adopted by the rulers of Russia because they regarded themselves as the
successors and heirs of the Cæsars of Rome and Constantinople.] at Narva,
the Swedish king turned south and marched into Poland to punish Augustus
for the part he had taken in the conspiracy against him. While Charles was
busied in this quarter, Peter was gradually making himself master of the
Swedish lands on the Baltic, and upon a marshy island at the mouth of the
Neva was laying the foundations of the great city of St. Petersburg, which
he proposed to make the western gateway of his empire.
The spot selected by Peter as the site of his new capital was low and
subject to inundation, so that the labor requisite to make it fit for
building purposes was simply enormous. But difficulties never dismayed
Peter. In spite of difficulties the work was done, and the splendid city
stands to-day one of the most impressive monuments of the indomitable and
despotic energy of Peter.
INVASION OF RUSSIA BY CHARLES XII.--Meanwhile Charles was doing very much
as he pleased with the king of Poland. He defeated his forces, overran his
dominions, and forced him to surrender the Polish crown in favor of
Stanislaus Lesczinski (1706). With sufficient punishment meted out to
Frederick Augustus, Charles was ready to turn his attention once more to
the Czar. So marvellous had been the success attendant upon his arms for
the past few years, nothing now seemed impossible to him. Deluded by this
belief, he resolved to march into Russia and dethrone the Czar, even as he
had dethroned the king of Poland.
In 1708, with an army of barely 40,000 men, Charles marched boldly across
the Russian frontier. At Pultowa the two armies met in decisive combat
(1709). It was Charles's Waterloo. The Swedish army was virtually
annihilated. Escaping with a few soldiers from the field, Charles fled
southward, and found an asylum in Turkey. [Footnote: After spending five
years in Turkey, Charles returned to Sweden, and shortly afterwards was
killed at the siege of Frederickshall, in Norway (1718). At the moment of
his death he was only thirty-six years of age. He was the strangest
character of the eighteenth century. Perhaps we can understand him best by
regarding him, as his biographer Voltaire says we must regard him, as an
old Norse sea-king, born ten centuries after his time.]
CLOSE OF PETER'S REIGN.--In 1721 the Swedish wars which had so long
disturbed Europe were brought to an end by the Peace of Nystadt, which
confirmed Russia's title to all the Southern Baltic lands that Peter had
wrested from the Swedes. The undisputed possession of so large a strip of
the Baltic seaboard vastly increased the importance and influence of
Russia, which now assumed a place among the leading European powers.
In 1723 troubles in Persia that resulted in the massacre of some Russians
afforded Peter a pretext for sailing down the Volga and seizing the
southern shore of the Caspian Sea, which now became virtually a Russian
lake. This ended Peter's conquests. The Russian colossus now "stood
astride, with one foot on the Baltic and the other upon the Caspian."
Two years later, being then in his fifty-fourth year, Peter died of a
fever brought on by exposure while aiding in the rescue of some sailors in
distress, in the Gulf of Finland (1725).
PETER'S CHARACTER AND WORK.--Peter's character stands revealed in the
light of his splendid achievements. Like Charlemagne he was a despotic
reformer. His theory of government was a rough, brutal one, yet the
exclamation which broke from him as he stood by the tomb of Richelieu
[Footnote: In 1716 Peter made a second journey to the West, visiting
France, Denmark, and Holland.] discloses his profound desire to rule well:
"Thou great man," he exclaimed, "I would have given thee half of my
dominion to have learned of thee how to govern the other half." He planted
throughout his vast empire the seeds of Western civilization, and by his
giant strength lifted the great nation which destiny had placed in his
hands out of Asiatic barbarism into the society of the European peoples.
The influence of Peter's life and work upon the government of Russia was
very different from what he intended. It is true that his aggressive,
arbitrary rule strengthened temporarily autocratic government in Russia.
He destroyed all checks, ecclesiastical and military, upon the absolute
power of the crown. But in bringing into his dominions Western
civilization, he introduced influences which were destined in time to
neutralize all he had done in the way of strengthening the basis of
despotism. He introduced a civilization which fosters popular liberties,
and undermines personal, despotic government.
REIGN OF CATHERINE THE GREAT (1762-1796).--From the death of Peter on to
the close of the eighteenth century the Russian throne was held, the most
of the time, by women, the most noted of whom was Catherine II., the
Great, "the greatest woman probably," according to the admission of an
English historian (McCarthy), "who ever sat on a throne, Elizabeth of
England not even excepted." But while a woman of great genius, she had
most serious faults of character, being incredibly profligate and
unscrupulous.
Carrying out ably the policy of Peter the Great, Catherine extended vastly
the limits of Russian dominion, and opened the country even more
thoroughly than he had done to the entrance of Western influences. The
most noteworthy matters of her reign were the conquest of the Crimea and
the dismemberment of Poland.
[Illustration: CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA, IN HUSSAR UNIFORM. (After a
painting by Schebanow.) ]
It was in the year 1783 that Catherine effected the subjugation of the
Crimea. The possession of this peninsula gave Russia dominion on the Black
Sea, which once virtually secured by Peter the Great had been again lost
through his misfortunes. Catherine greatly extended the limits of her
dominion on the west at the expense of Poland, the partition of which
state she planned in connection with Frederick the Great of Prussia and
Maria Theresa of Austria. On the first division, which was made in 1772,
the imperial robbers each took a portion of the spoils. In 1793 a second
partition was made, this time between Russia and Prussia; and then, in
1795, after the suppression of a determined revolt of the Poles under the
lead of the patriot Kosciusko, a third and final division among the three
powers completed the dismemberment of the unhappy state, and erased its
name from the roll of the nations. The territory gained by Russia in these
transactions brought her western frontier close alongside the civilization
of Central Europe. In Catherine's phrase, Poland had become her "door
mat," upon which she stepped when visiting the West.
Besides thus widening her empire, Catherine labored to reform its
institutions and to civilize her subjects. Her labors in bettering the
laws and improving the administration of the government, have caused her
to be likened to Solon and to Lycurgus; while her enthusiasm for learning
and her patronage of letters led Voltaire to say, "Light now comes from
the North."
By the close of Catherine's reign Russia was beyond question one of the
foremost powers of Europe, the weight of her influence being quite equal
to that of any other nation of the continent.