other provinces were included in the rank and title; those belonging to the
German empire were thus in a manner chosen out from among the other German
states, and united into a new whole, though, at the same time, care was
taken in other respects to keep up the ancient connection with the empire.
Thus we see that the elevation of the Elector to a royal title was an
important, nay, even a necessary, impulse to the progress of Prussia, which
we cannot even in thought separate from the whole combination of events.
The name of Prussia now became inseparable from an idea of military power
and glory, which was increased by splendid feats of arms, such as those
which we have already enumerated.
%FOUNDING OF ST. PETERSBURG%
A.D. 1703
K. WALISZEWSKI[1]
[Footnote 1: Translated from the Russian by Lady Mary Loyd.]
So radical and so vigorous were the changes made by Peter the Great in
Russia that they roused the opposition of almost the entire nation. Moscow,
the ancient capital, was the chief seat of this protesting conservatism;
and Peter, resolved to teach his opponents how determined he was in his
course and how helpless they were against his absolute power, formed the
tremendous project of building a wholly new capital, one where no voice
could be raised against him, where no traditions should environ him. He
chose an icy desert plain looking out toward the waters which led to that
Western Europe which he meant to imitate, if not to conquer.
No other man--one is almost tempted to say, no sane man--would have
ventured to erect a capital city in such an impossible place and on the
very frontier of his dominions. That Peter not only dared, but succeeded,
though at an almost immeasurable cost, makes the creation of the great
metropolis, St. Petersburg, one of the most remarkable events of history.
It was the chances of the great northern war that led Peter to St.
Petersburg. When he first threw down the gauntlet to Sweden he turned his
eyes on Livonia--on Narva and Riga. But Livonia was so well defended that
he was driven northward, toward Ingria. He moved thither grudgingly,
sending, in the first instance, Apraxin, who turned the easily conquered
province into a desert. It was not for some time, and gropingly, as it
were, that the young sovereign began to see his way, and finally turned
his attention and his longings to the mouth of the Neva. In former years
Gustavus Adolphus had realized the strategical importance of a position
which his successor, Charles XII, did not deem worthy of consideration,
and had himself studied all its approaches. Peter not only took it to be
valuable from the military and commercial point of view: he also found it
most attractive, and would fain have never left it. He was more at home
there than anywhere else, and the historical legends, according to which
it was true Russian ground, filled him with emotion. No one knows what
inspired this fondness on his part. It may have been the vague resemblance
of the marshy flats to the lowlands of Holland; it may have been the
stirring of some ancestral instinct. According to a legend, accepted by
Nestor, it was by the mouth of the Neva that the earliest Norman conquerors
of the country passed on their journeys across the Varegian Sea--_their own
sea_--and so to Rome.
Peter would seem to have desired to take up the thread of that tradition,
nine centuries old; and the story of his own foundation of the town has
become legendary and epic. One popular description represents him as
snatching a halberd from one of his soldiers, cutting two strips of turf,
and laying them crosswise with the words "Here there shall be a town!"
Foundation-stones were evidently lacking, and sods had to take their
place. Then, dropping the halberd, he seized a spade, and began the first
embankment. At that moment an eagle appeared, hovering over the Czar's
head. It was struck by a shot from a musket. Peter took the wounded bird,
set it on his wrist, and departed in a boat to inspect the neighborhood.
This occurred on May 16, 1703.
History adds that the Swedish prisoners employed on the work died in
thousands. The most indispensable tools were lacking. There were no
wheelbarrows, and the earth was carried in the corners of men's clothing.
A wooden fort was first built on the island bearing the Finnish name of
Ianni-Saari (Hare Island). This was the future citadel of St. Peter and St.
Paul. Then came a wooden church, and the modest cottage which was to be
Peter's first palace. Near these, the following year, there rose a Lutheran
church, ultimately removed to the left bank of the river, into the
Liteinaia quarter, and also a tavern, the famous inn of the Four Frigates,
which did duty as a town hall for a long time before it became a place of
diplomatic meeting. Then the cluster of modest buildings was augmented by
the erection of a bazaar. The Czar's collaborators gathered round him, in
cottages much like his own, and the existence of St. Petersburg became an
accomplished fact.
But, up to the time of the battle of Poltava, Peter never thought of making
St. Petersburg his capital. It was enough for him to feel he had a
fortress and a port. He was not sufficiently sure of his mastery over the
neighboring countries, not certain enough of being able to retain his
conquest, to desire to make it the centre of his government and his own
permanent residence. This idea was not definitely accepted till after his
great victory. His final decision has been bitterly criticised, especially
by foreign historians; it has been severely judged and remorselessly
condemned. Before expressing any opinion of my own on the subject, I should
like to sum up the considerations which have been put forward to support
this unfavorable verdict.
The great victory, we are told, diminished the strategic importance of St.
Petersburg, and almost entirely extinguished its value as a port; while
its erection into the capital city of the empire was never anything but
madness. Peter, being now the indisputable master of the Baltic shores, had
nothing to fear from any Swedish attack in the Gulf of Finland. Before any
attempt in that direction, the Swedes were certain to try to recover Narva
or Riga. If in later years they turned their eyes to St. Petersburg, it
was only because that town had acquired undue and unmerited political
importance. It was easy of attack and difficult to defend. There was no
possibility of concentrating any large number of troops there, for the
whole country, forty leagues round, was a barren desert. In 1788 Catharine
II complained that her capital was too near the Swedish frontier, and too
much exposed to sudden movements, such as that which Gustavus III very
nearly succeeded in carrying out. Here we have the military side of the
question.
From the commercial point of view St. Petersburg, we are assured, did
command a valuable system of river communication; but that commanded by
Riga was far superior. The Livonian, Esthonian, and Courland ports of Riga,
Libau, and Revel, all at an equal distance from St. Petersburg and Moscow,
and far less removed from the great German commercial centres, enjoyed
a superior climate, and were, subsequent to the conquest of the
above-mentioned provinces, the natural points of contact between Russia and
the West. An eloquent proof of this fact may be observed nowadays in the
constant increase of their commerce, and the corresponding decrease of that
of St. Petersburg, which has been artificially developed and fostered.
Besides this, the port of St. Petersburg, during the lifetime of its
founder, never was anything but a mere project. Peter's ships were moved
from Kronslot to Kronstadt. Between St. Petersburg and Kronstadt the Neva
was not, in those days, more than eight feet deep, and Manstein tells us
that all ships built at Petersburg had to be dragged, by means of machines
fitted with cables, to Kronstadt, where they received their guns. Once
these had been taken on board, the vessels could not get upstream again.
The port of Kronstadt was closed by ice for six months out of the twelve,
and lay in such a position that no sailing-ship could leave it unless the
wind blew from the east. There was so little salt in its waters that the
ship timbers rotted in a very short time, and, besides, there were no oaks
in the surrounding forests, and all such timber had to be brought from
Kasan. Peter was so well aware of all these drawbacks that he sought and
found a more convenient spot for his shipbuilding yards at Rogerwick,
in Esthonia, four leagues from Revel. But here he found difficulty in
protecting the anchorage from the effects of hurricanes and from the
insults of his enemies. He hoped to insure this by means of two piers,
built on wooden caissons filled with stones. He thinned the forests of
Livonia and Esthonia to construct it, and finally, the winds and the waves
having carried everything away twice over, the work was utterly abandoned.
On the other hand, and from the very outset, the commercial activity of St.
Petersburg was hampered by the fact that it was the Czar's capital. The
presence of the court made living dear, and the consequent expense of labor
was a heavy drawback to the export trade, which, by its nature, called
for a good deal of manual exertion. According to a Dutch resident of that
period, a wooden cottage, very inferior to that inhabited by a peasant in
the Low Countries, cost from eight hundred to one thousand florins a year
at St. Petersburg. A shopkeeper at Archangel could live comfortably on a
quarter of that sum. The cost of transport, which amounted to between nine
and ten copecks a pood (36.07 pounds), between Moscow and Archangel, five
to six between Yaroslaff and Archangel, and three or four between Vologda
and Archangel, came to eighteen, twenty, and thirty copecks a pood in the
case of merchandise sent from any of these places to St. Petersburg. This
accounts for the opposition of the foreign merchants at Archangel to the
request that they should remove to St. Petersburg. Peter settled the matter
in characteristic fashion, by forbidding any trade in hemp, flax, leather,
or corn to pass through Archangel. This rule, though somewhat slackened, in
1714, at the request of the States-General of Holland, remained in force
during the great Czar's reign. In 1718 hemp and some other articles of
commerce were allowed free entrance into the port of Archangel, but only on
condition that two-thirds of all exports should be sent to St. Petersburg.
This puts the case from the maritime and commercial point of view.
As a capital city, St. Petersburg, we are told again, was ill-placed on the
banks of the Neva, not only for the reasons already given, but for others,
geographical, ethnical, and climatic, which exist even in the present day,
and which make its selection an outrage on common-sense. Was it not, we
are asked, a most extraordinary whim which induced a Russian to found the
capital of his Slavonic empire among the Finns, against the Swedes--to
centralize the administration of a huge extent of country in its remotest
corner--to retire from Poland and Germany on the plea of drawing nearer to
Europe, and to force everyone about him, officials, court, and diplomatic
corps, to inhabit one of the most inhospitable spots, under one of the
least clement skies, he could possibly have discovered? The whole place was
a marsh--the Finnish word neva means "mud"; the sole inhabitants of the
neighboring forests were packs of wolves. In 1714, during a winter night,
two sentries, posted before the cannon-foundry, were devoured. Even
nowadays, the traveller, once outside the town, plunges into a desert. Far
away in every direction the great plain stretches; not a steeple, not a
tree, not a head of cattle, not a sign of life, whether human or animal.
There is no pasturage, no possibility of cultivation--fruit, vegetables,
and even corn, are all brought from a distance. The ground is in a sort of
intermediate condition between the sea and _terra firma_.
Up to Catharine's reign inundations were chronic in their occurrence.
On September 11, 1706, Peter drew from his pocket the measure he always
carried about him, and convinced himself that there were twenty-one inches
of water above the floors of his cottage. In all directions he saw men,
women, and children clinging to the wreckage of buildings, which was
being carried down the river. He described his impressions in a letter to
Menshikoff, dated from "Paradise," and declared it was "extremely amusing."
It may be doubted whether he found many persons to share his delight.
Communications with the town, now rendered easy by railways, were in those
days not only difficult, but dangerous. Campredon, when he went from Moscow
to St. Petersburg, in April, 1723, spent twelve hundred rubles. He lost
part of his luggage, eight of his horses were drowned, and after having
travelled for four weeks he reached his destination, very ill. Peter
himself, who arrived before the French diplomat, had been obliged to ride
part of the way, and to swim his horse across the rivers!
But in spite of all these considerations, the importance of which I am far
from denying, I am inclined to think Peter's choice a wise one. Nobody can
wonder that the idea of retaining Moscow as his capital was most repugnant
to him. The existence of his work in those hostile surroundings--in a place
which to this day has remained obstinately reactionary--could never have
been anything but precarious and uncertain. It must, after his death at
least, if not during his life, have been at the mercy of those popular
insurrections before which the sovereign power, as established in the
Kremlin, had already so frequently bowed. When Peter carried Muscovy out of
her former existence, and beyond her ancient frontiers, he was logically
forced to treat the seat of his government in the same manner. His new
undertaking resembled, both in aspect and character, a marching and
fighting formation, directed toward the west. The leader's place, and that
of his chief residence, was naturally indicated at the head of his column.
This once granted, and the principle of the translation of the capital to
the western extremity of the Czar's newly acquired possessions admitted,
the advantages offered by Ingria would appear to me to outweigh all the
drawbacks previously referred to.
The province was, at that period, virgin soil sparsely inhabited by a
Finnish population possessing neither cohesion nor historical consistency,
and, consequently, docile and easily assimilated. Everywhere else--all
along the Baltic coast, in Esthonia, in Carelia, and in Courland--though
the Swedes might be driven out, the Germans still remained firmly settled;
the neighborhood of their native country and of the springs of Teutonic
culture enduing them with an invincible power of resistance. Riga in
the present day, after nearly two centuries of Russian government, is a
thoroughly German town. In St. Petersburg, Russia, as a country, became
European and cosmopolitan, but the city itself is essentially Russian, and
the Finnish element in its neighborhood counts for nothing.
In this matter, though Peter may not have clearly felt and thought it out,
he was actuated by the mighty and unerring instinct of his genius. I am
willing to admit that here, as in everything else, there was a certain
amount of whim, and perhaps some childish desire to ape Amsterdam. I will
even go further, and acknowledge that the manner in which he carried out
his plan was anything but reasonable. Two hundred thousand laborers, we are
told, died during the construction of the new city, and the Russian nobles
ruined themselves to build palaces which soon fell out of occupation. But
an abyss was opened between the past the reformer had doomed and the future
on which he had set his heart, and the national life, thus violently forced
into a new channel, was stamped, superficially at first, but more and more
deeply by degrees, with the Western and European character he desired to
impart.
Moscow, down to the present day, has preserved a religious, almost a
monastic air; at every street corner chapels attract the passers-by, and
the local population, even at its busiest, crosses itself and bends as it
passes before the sacred pictures which rouse its devotion at every turn.
St. Petersburg, from the very earliest days, presented a different and
quite a secular appearance. At Moscow no public performance of profane
music was permitted. At St. Petersburg the Czar's German musicians played
every day on the balcony of his tavern. Toward the middle of the eighteenth
century the new city boasted a French theatre and an Italian opera, and
Schloezer noted that divine service was performed in fourteen languages!
Modern Russia, governed, educated to a certain extent, intellectually
speaking emancipated, and relatively liberal, could not have come into
existence nor grown in stature elsewhere.
And to conclude: Peter was able to effect this singular change without
doing too great violence to the historical traditions of his country. From
the earliest days of Russian history, the capital had been removed from
place to place--from Novgorod to Kiev, from Kiev to Vladimir, from Vladimir
to Moscow. This phenomenon was the consequence of the immense area of the
national territory, and the want of consistency in the elements of the
national life. From the beginning to the end of an evolution which lasted
centuries the centre of gravity of the disjointed, scattered, and floating
forces of ancient Russia perpetually changed its place. Thus the creation
of St. Petersburg was nothing but the working out of a problem in dynamics.
The struggle with Sweden, the conquest of the Baltic provinces, and the
yet more important conquest of a position in the European world naturally
turned the whole current of the national energies and life in that
direction. Peter desired to perpetuate this course. I am inclined to think
he acted wisely.
%BATTLE OF BLENHEIM%
CURBING OF LOUIS XIV
A.D. 1704
SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY
Among the decisive battles of the world, that of Blenheim is regarded by
historians as one of the most far-reaching in results. "The decisive blow
struck at Blenheim," says Alison, "resounded through every part of Europe.
It at once destroyed the vast fabric of power which it had taken Louis XIV
so long to construct." And Creasy himself elsewhere declares: "Had it not
been for Blenheim, all Europe might at this day suffer under the effect of
French conquests resembling those of Alexander in extent and those of the
Romans in durability."
It was the first great battle in the War of the Spanish Succession
(1701-1714), which was carried on mainly in Italy, the Netherlands, and
Germany. This war followed closely upon the War of the Palatinate, which
ended with the Treaty of Ryswick, in 1697. To this peace Louis XIV of
France--the most powerful monarch in Europe, who, in spite of his brutal
conduct of the war, had really been a loser by it--gave his consent. Among
the concessions made by him was his recognition--much against his own
interest--of William III as the rightful King of England.
Louis gave his consent to the Treaty of Ryswick partly because of his
interest in the question of the Spanish succession. Charles II of
Spain--last of the Hapsburg line in that country--was childless, and there
were three claimants for the throne; namely, Philip of Anjou, grandson of
Louis XIV; the Electoral Prince of Bavaria; and Charles, son of Leopold
I of Germany, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The real stake was the
"balance of power" in Europe. At last, after much wrangling and intrigue
among the courts, Charles II bequeathed his throne to the Bavarian Prince,
whose death, in 1699, left Europe still divided over the succession.
Finally, Louis XIV completely won Charles II to his side, and Philip of
Anjou was named in Charles' will as his heir. Louis accepted for Philip,
who was crowned at Madrid, in 1701, as Philip V, and Europe was stirred to
wrath by the greed of the already too powerful French King. Turning now
upon England, Louis, in violation of the Treaty of Ryswick, declared the
son of the exiled James II rightful king of that country. The result of
Louis' acts was the Grand Alliance of The Hague against France, formed
between England, Holland, Prussia, the Holy Roman Empire, Portugal, and
Savoy.
On the side of the allies in the war that followed, the great generals
were the English Duke of Marlborough, Prince Eugene of Savoy, and Hensius,
Pensioner of Holland. France had lost her best generals by death, and Louis
was compelled to rely upon inferior men as leaders of his army. War was
formally declared against France by the allies May 4, 1702. The early
operations were carried on in Flanders, in Germany--on the Upper Rhine--and
in Northern Italy.
Marlborough headed the allied troops in Flanders during the first two
years of the war, and took some towns from the enemy, but nothing decisive
occurred. Nor did any actions of importance take place during this period
between the rival armies in Italy. But in the centre of that line from
north to south, from the mouth of the Schelde to the mouth of the Po, along
which the war was carried on, the generals of Louis XIV acquired advantages
in 1703 which threatened one chief member of the Grand Alliance with utter
destruction.
France had obtained the important assistance of Bavaria as her confederate
in the war. The Elector of this powerful German state made himself master
of the strong fortress of Ulm, and opened a communication with the French
armies on the Upper Rhine. By this junction the troops of Louis were
enabled to assail the Emperor in the very heart of Germany. In the autumn
of 1703 the combined armies of the Elector and French King completely
defeated the Imperialists in Bavaria; and in the following winter they
made themselves masters of the important cities of Augsburg and Passau.
Meanwhile the French army of the Upper Rhine and Moselle had beaten the
allied armies opposed to them, and taken Treves and Landau. At the same
time the discontents in Hungary with Austria again broke out into open
insurrection, so as to distract the attention and complete the terror of
the Emperor and his council at Vienna.
Louis XIV ordered the next campaign to be commenced by his troops on a
scale of grandeur and with a boldness of enterprise such as even Napoleon's
military schemes have seldom equalled. On the extreme left of the line of
the war, in the Netherlands, the French armies were to act only on the
defensive. The fortresses in the hands of the French there were so many and
30 strong that no serious impression seemed likely to be made by the allies
on the French frontier in that quarter during one campaign, and that one
campaign was to give France such triumphs elsewhere as would, it was hoped,
determine the war. Large detachments were therefore to be made from the
French force in Flanders, and they were to be led by Marshal Villeroy to
the Moselle and Upper Rhine.
The French army already in the neighborhood of those rivers was to march
under Marshal Tallard through the Black Forest, and join the Elector of
Bavaria, and the French troops that were already with the Elector under
Marshal Marsin. Meanwhile the French army of Italy was to advance through
the Tyrol into Austria, and the whole forces were to combine between the
Danube and the Inn. A strong body of troops was to be despatched into
Hungary, to assist and organize the insurgents in that kingdom; and the
French grand army of the Danube was then in collected and irresistible
might to march upon Vienna and dictate terms of peace to the Emperor. High
military genius was shown in the formation of this plan, but it was met and
baffled by a genius higher still.