in them. Fugitives would escape through the open country and meet in
these recesses, and the Englishmen would follow, tracking them after
the manner of hunters of wild game. Sometimes they would come to the top
of a cliff, overlooking a cave in which they had seen men hide. Then
they would lower lighted bundles of straw by iron chains until they came
opposite the mouth of the cave. In a short time the men in hiding would
be smoked out, and compelled to surrender. Often they had hidden
treasures of money or plate in the caves, and these would fall into the
captors' hands. This lure of booty added spice to the hunt.
It was rough, wild work, but it was a rough age, and men had few
scruples when it came to dealing with their enemies. Young Raleigh
proved a good fighter, fond of the hunts through the hills, and always
ready for any wild expedition. He cared little enough for the cause for
which the troop was supposed to be fighting. It was the opportunity to
advance himself that concerned him most.
When he came back from France he found that there was no place for him
at the manor-house in Devon. As a younger son he must fight his own way
in the world. He had always loved London next after the Devon coast, and
so he went there now, hoping that he might find some favor with the
court. Queen Elizabeth liked to have youths of good family and good
looks about her, and there were many of them living in London who used
her court as a sort of club.
Walter made many friends of his own age, and lived as most of them did,
mixing in all the excitements of city life. He was now rather a wild,
reckless young blade, as willing to draw his sword in a street fight as
to pay compliments to a pretty maid of honor. One day he got into a
fight at a tavern with a noisy braggart. He managed to throw the man
into a chair and bind him with a rope. Then he knotted the man's beard
and moustache together so that his mouth was sealed. The rest of the
tavern applauded him for his neat manner of silencing the boaster.
He did not always come out on top, however. On one occasion he fought in
the street with Sir Thomas Perrot, and was arrested by the town watch.
He was brought to trial, and sent to the Fleet prison for six days. The
imprisonment meant very little to him, it was simply part of the life of
adventure he was so fond of living.
We must remember that all England, in this age of Elizabeth, was full of
this same spirit of adventure. Young men were rising rapidly; there were
a hundred ways to gain distinction, and many of them, although ways
which we might consider rather doubtful nowadays, were then regarded as
quite proper. Walter Raleigh kept his eyes wide open, and when he saw a
promising chance, he was always ready to accept it. The first adventure
that offered was to take part in a seafaring expedition.
Englishmen of fortune in those days were in the habit of fitting out
privateers to roam the seas, much like pirates. Sir Humphrey Gilbert had
planned to send some such ships to the banks of Newfoundland to capture
any Portuguese or Spanish vessels that might have gone there for the
fishing. He intended to bring his prizes back to some Dutch port, and
there sell them. Walter liked this plan and he talked it over with Sir
Humphrey, but for some reason the plan failed.
A very little while afterward, however, Sir Humphrey asked him to sail
in an expedition that was supposed to be searching for the northwest
passage to Cathay, but which in reality was intended to seize any
heathen lands it might find and occupy them in the name of England. The
fleet sailed, but soon fell in with a Spanish squadron that was looking
for just such English rovers. Sir Humphrey's fleet was beaten, and
forced to return home. So for a time young Raleigh's chances of winning
fortune on the seas were ended.
He went back to London, and took up his former life at court. Very soon
he was sent with some troops to Ireland, and there again he had a chance
at the same sort of fighting he had known in France. He proved himself a
good soldier; he shunned no toil nor danger. But the life he had to lead
was a hard one, and very poorly paid, and Raleigh saw no chance to make
his fortune in that path.
Now, however, Raleigh was known to many powerful men. When he gave up
the Irish fighting and went back to court he found that people there had
heard of what he had accomplished and that he had a reputation for
courage bordering on recklessness. That was a quality the English of
that day much admired. The great lords were almost all reckless
adventurers, plundering wherever they could, and they were glad to find
young men who would do their bidding without asking questions.
By this time young Raleigh had become typical of his age, having its
virtues and its vices. The age was wild, coveting money in order to
fling it away on mad schemes, reveling in the dangers as well as the
glories of battle and exploration, of plundering Spanish galleons, or of
hunting untold riches in the world across the sea. Queen Elizabeth liked
daring men, and Raleigh took every opportunity to bring himself before
her notice.
The young courtier had learned all the arts that helped to make men's
fortunes. He was tall and very handsome, a splendid swordsman, and a wit
who could hold his own with poets and with statesmen. He still spoke
with the strong broad accent of Devon, and when he learned that the
Queen liked his unusual accent he was very careful to see that he never
lost it. He studied each chance to please.
Elizabeth was extremely vain and extremely fond of romance. One day as
she walked with certain of her lords and ladies she came to a marshy
place, and stopped in hesitation, fearing to soil her slippers. This was
the young courtier's chance. Raleigh had been in the background, but
seeing the Queen hesitate he sprang forward, and sweeping his new plush
cloak from his shoulders, spread it in the mire, so that she might
cross. The Queen's face lighted up with pleasure at the graceful act,
and she thanked the youthful gallant. Later she saw that he was given
many court suits for the cloak he had so admirably ruined.
Having thus won her attention Raleigh next sought to fix himself in his
Queen's mind. He wrote on the window of a room in which she passed much
time the line:
"Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall."
Elizabeth learned who was author of the writing, and scratched the
answer underneath:
"If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all."
Raleigh had no fear whatever of falling, but a becoming modesty sat well
upon him. The Queen remembered the young man now for these two
qualities, his gallantry and his becoming modesty, and saw to it that a
man of such spirit should be kept at court. The ardent boy of Devon, the
restless Oxford student, the wild Huguenot trooper, had grown to be a
man worthy of notice.
He was now, as Walter Scott pictures him in "Kenilworth," the young
seeker after royal favor, graceful, slender, restless, somewhat
supercilious, with a sonnet ever ready on his lips to delight his
friends or an epigram to sting his enemies.
We shall see him turn his many talents to great uses. He fell to
planning voyages across the Atlantic to discover and settle parts of
North America much as Sir Humphrey Gilbert had done, and as another
young man about court, Sir Francis Drake, was doing. From the Queen, and
from one noble or another who was interested in his marvelous schemes,
he obtained the money to fit out several expeditions. Each in turn
landed near what is now the Roanoke River, and each brought back rich
gifts to the great English Queen. Among other things the explorer saw
the Indians smoking a dried leaf called tobacco, tried the custom, liked
it, and brought it back with him to England.
Raleigh had a stroke of genius when he named his colony Virginia, in
honor of Elizabeth the Virgin Queen. It pleased her to think that a
great empire in the western world should be named for her. She gave
Raleigh whatever he asked, making him practically governor of all the
English domain in America, and for a long time Virginia was supposed to
cover even part of what later became New England. He started to colonize
the land, but his colonies did not succeed, and he lost all the money he
put into them. Nevertheless his Virginian scheme brought him a great
deal of fame, which he now craved, and kept London talking of him.
London was soon to talk still more about this daring, brave, and
brilliant Westcountryman. The prophecy of the old sailor at Budleigh
Salterton Bay came true, and for a brief time all England held its
breath while the famous Spanish fleet, called the Armada, bore down upon
her coast. Then all over the country gentlemen of fortune manned ships
and put to sea, but especially the men of Devon, of Somerset, and
Cornwall, counties famed for their sailors.
Among these men was Raleigh; his advice was eagerly sought by the
Queen's ministers, and when it came to the actual Channel fighting he
made one of many gallant captains. The great Armada came to grief upon
the English coast, and Raleigh had added another to his record of
achievements.
Having been courtier, colonizer, warrior, Raleigh now blossomed forth as
a poet, and became a friend and patron of Edmund Spenser. He had much
skill in verse, and he was never lacking in imagination. But his real
talents did not lie in that direction, and as in so many other things,
he soon found himself distracted elsewhere.
The story of Raleigh's manhood belongs to history. Turn to tales of
Elizabeth's court and you will find his name on almost every page. Now
he is high in favor, braving it with the great Earl of Leicester, now
down upon his luck, locked in some royal prison, writing verses to his
many friends. His was a strange career; at one time there was no man in
England whose favor was more sought, yet at the end he died upon the
scaffold charged with treason. Time proved him guiltless of the charge,
and almost at once the English people began to realize how great a light
had been extinguished.
Through all his varying career he himself was the same brave, dreamy,
ambitious man, the perfect type of that age which we call the
Elizabethan. He could not stay in his native land of Devon; much as he
loved its moorland and its bays, he had to listen to the call of London
and the sea, and follow where their voices led him. Each way the road
was set with many strange adventures, but he met and passed through them
all with the high spirits that were part of his age. His courage never
failed him, nor his joy in fighting his way to fortune with his own
sharp wits.
IV
Peter the Great
The Boy of the Kremlin: 1672-1725
The halls of the Kremlin, the Czar's palace in Moscow, were filled with
a wild rabble of soldiers on a winter afternoon near the end of the
seventeenth century. The guards of the late Czar Alexis were storming
through the maze of corridors and state apartments, breaking statues,
tearing down tapestries, and piercing and cutting to pieces invaluable
paintings with their spears and swords.
They were big, savage-faced men, pets of the half-civilized Russian
rulers, and were called the Streltsi Guard.
They had broken into the Kremlin in order to see the boy who was now
Czar, so that they might be sure that his stepmother had not hidden him
away, as the rumor went, in order that her own son Peter might have the
throne for himself. But once inside the Kremlin many of the soldiers
devoted themselves to pillage, until the ringleaders raised the cry,
"Where is the Czar Ivan? Show him to us! Show the boy Ivan to us! Where
is he?"
In a small room on one of the higher floors a little group of women and
noblemen, all thoroughly frightened, were gathered about two boys. The
noise of the attack on the palace had come to their ears some time
before; they had seen from the windows the mutinous soldiers climbing
the walls and beating down the few loyal servants who had withstood
them. The din was growing more terrific every instant. It was the matter
of only a few minutes before the rioters would break into the room.
"We must decide at once, friends," said the Czarina Natalia. "If they
enter this room they'll not stop at killing any of us."
The smaller of the two boys, a sturdy lad of eleven years, spoke up:
"Let me go out on to the Red Staircase with Ivan, mother. When they see
that we are both here they'll be satisfied."
A dozen objections were raised by the frightened men and women of the
court. It was much too dangerous to trust the lives of the two boys to
the whim of such a maddened mob.
"Nevertheless Peter is right," said Natalia. "It's the only chance left
to us. They think I have done some harm to Ivan. The only way to prove
that false is for him to stand before them, and my son must go with
him."
The small boy who had spoken before took these words as final. "Come,
Ivan," said he, and took the other's hand in his. Ivan, a tall, delicate
boy, whose face was white with fear, gripped Peter's hand hard. He was
used to trusting implicitly to his half-brother, although the latter was
two years younger than he.
One of the noblemen opened the door, and the two boys went out of the
room and crossed the hall to the top of the great Red Staircase. They
looked down on the mob of soldiers who were gradually surging up the
stairs, brandishing swords and halberds, fighting among each other for
the possession of some treasure, and calling continually, "The Czar!
Where are the boys Ivan and Peter? Where are they?"
At first in their excitement no one noticed the two boys on the
stairway. Ivan, who was by nature timid, shrank away from their sight as
much as he could, but Peter, who was of a different make, stood out in
full view, and held fast to his brother's hand. He had inherited the
iron nerve of the strongest of his ancestors. He looked at the mutinous
rioters with bold, fearless eyes.
Presently a soldier caught sight of the younger boy and raised a cry
loud above the general din. "There is the boy Peter, but where is Ivan?
The Czar! The Czar!"
A score of voices took up the cry as all eyes were turned on the
landing, and many men started up the stairs. "There is Peter, but where
is the boy Ivan?" came the deafening chorus.
"Ivan is here with me," said Peter, his voice clear and high. He tried
to pull Ivan nearer to him so that the men might see him. "Stand up
where they can see you, Ivan!" he begged. "There's nothing to be afraid
of. They only want to see their new Czar."
Trembling with fear the older boy, who had inherited all the weakness of
his race, and none of its strength, was finally induced to step close to
Peter. So, side by side, their hands clasped, the two looked down on the
crowded stairway, and faced the mob of soldiers. They made a strange
picture, two small boys, standing quite alone, fronting that sea of
passionate, angry faces.
At sight of Ivan another cry arose. "There's the Czar! Hail Ivan! Hail
the son of the great Alexis!"
For a moment the onward rush of the mob was checked, but only for a
moment. Three or four soldiers started up the stairs, their lances
pointed at Peter, shouting, "What shall we do with the son of the false
woman Natalia?" They came so close to the boy that their spears almost
touched him before they stopped. Had he turned to run no one can say
what might have happened, but he did not turn, he did not even draw back
nor show a single sign of fear.
"I am the son of the Czar Alexis also, and I am not afraid of any of
you!"
The boy's calm eyes fronted the nearest soldiers steadily. The men heard
his words and hesitated.
"Peter, the son of Alexis, is not afraid of his own father's guards!"
the boy continued. "That is why I came out here when you called me."
In the hush that had followed his first words his voice carried clear to
all the crowding men. When he finished there came a silence, and then of
a sudden cheer on cheer rose on the stairs and through the hall. "Peter,
the son of Alexis! Hail Peter! Hail the two boy Czars!"
The nearest soldiers dropped the points of their spears and joined in
the shouting. A flush came into the younger boy's face and he smiled,
and squeezed Ivan's hand tighter. He knew that the danger had passed.
Slowly the soldiers who had climbed nearest to the boys drew back down
the stairs. Swords were returned to scabbards, harsh voices grew
quieter, and within a quarter of an hour the Red Staircase and the great
hall were empty of men.
Then the door of the room from which the two boys had come opened, and
Natalia and her women stepped out. The Czarina, a woman of courage
herself, took Peter in her arms. "My brave son," she murmured, "thou art
worthy of thy father. I would have stood beside thee, but the people
hate me, and it would have been worse for us all."
"I needed no one, little mother," said Peter. "If I am ever to be a
ruler I must not fear to face my own men." Then his face grew more
serious. "But if I ever am Czar they will not break into the Kremlin
this way, mother, nor wilt thou need to hide thyself from them."
"God grant it be so, Peter!" answered Natalia. "I think they've learned
much from thee this very day."
The Streltsi had indeed learned that the boy Peter was no coward, and
their dislike changed to affection; but there were others in Moscow who
plotted and planned against him, because the family of the late Czar's
first wife were very powerful in Russia and they hated his second wife
Natalia, and her son, who had been his father's favorite.
Everything that conspirators could do to break the boy's spirit was
done; he was time and again placed in peril of his life; he was
threatened and tempted and slandered to the people, but all to no avail.
His mother did her best to shield him from his enemies, but when she
found that her care was not enough she trusted to his own remarkable
judgment and courage. These never failed either the boy or his mother.
As time passed it grew more and more clear that Peter was as strong as
his poor stepbrother Ivan was weak, and in order to satisfy the people
the younger boy was made joint-Czar with the elder.
The real power in Russia then, however, was the Princess Sophia, Peter's
half-sister, a bitter enemy of both the boy and his mother. She did her
best to break her stepbrother's spirit, hoping that he might come to
some untimely end, as so many of the royal family had already done. She
knew that Ivan was simply a weak tool in her hands, and so bent all her
energies to try and ruin the younger Czar by taking away all restraint
from over him, and letting him indulge every pleasure and whim.
He was given a palace of his own in a small village outside Moscow, and
Sophia selected fifty boys of his own age to be his playmates. She had
his former teachers dismissed and chose such comrades for him as she
thought would grow up idle, vicious men.
Fortunately Peter's character was not so easily ruined. His mother and
his old teachers had given him the beginning of an education and instead
of falling into Sophia's snares, he immediately started to turn his
playmates into scholars.
He formed a sort of military school, where the boys practiced all the
discipline necessary in camp. He himself set to work to learn to use
different tools, and in general he studied the trades of his people. He
managed to get teachers who could instruct the boys in history and
geography, and as a result instead of being good for nothing the circle
of boys in the little palace became unusually energetic and
active-minded. When he finally left the palace it had become a
well-organized military school, and continued to be run as such for a
long time afterward.
When the Princess Sophia realized that these plans of hers were failing,
she decided on a more desperate measure. On the night of August 7, 1689,
Peter was suddenly waked in the middle of night by fugitive soldiers
coming from the Kremlin, who warned him that Sophia had gathered a band
of soldiers to come out to his palace and kill him. The boy, realizing
his extreme peril, jumped out of bed, and throwing on a few clothes ran
to the stables, where he found his favorite horse and set out with some
comrades into the neighboring forest.
There they stayed practically in hiding until officers came from the
palace bringing him food and clothing, and gradually gathering about him
until he had quite a small body-guard. By this time he had made up his
mind what to do.
Feeling sufficiently strong with his friends, he finally set out for a
monastery, thinking to find safe refuge there until the storm should
pass. Here more friends came to join him, and as the news of Sophia's
plot to kill the boy Czar was spread through the country, a new
enthusiasm for the youthful Peter sprang up, and the very troops that
had formerly sided with the Princess now denounced her as a traitor to
Russia. Peter wrote to his stepsister asking for explanations about the
plot at the Kremlin, but the Princess could make no satisfactory reply.
The monastery was now crowded with officers of the court who had come to
realize that Sophia's power was gone and that the boy Czar's strength
was rising rapidly. The time had come when he was strong enough to
strike. He marched on the Kremlin and captured Sophia and those who had
been in the conspiracy with her. Some of the Streltsi Guard who had
taken part against him were tried and executed, and the Princess Sophia
was shut up in a convent for the remainder of her life.
Such events did not tend to make the boy a merciful ruler, but
surrounded as he was by traitors and spies he was compelled to rule with
an iron hand if he was to rule at all.
From this time dates the beginning of his real influence in Russia. The
army had been poorly organized. Now the young King set to work to drill
it as effectively as he had drilled his playmates. He learned how cannon
were built, and studied the manufacture of all kinds of firearms. About
the same time he became deeply interested in ship-building, and
determined to build a fleet of war-vessels on Lake Plestchéief.
He took some young men of his own age with him to the bank of the lake
and there built a one-storied wooden house, a very primitive building,
the windows filled with mica instead of glass, and set a double-headed
eagle with a gilt wooden crown over the door to show it was the Czar's
residence. Here he worked hard all one winter, he himself taking a hand
in all the building that was done, laboring like any carpenter and
enjoying the work far more than the state ceremonies he was obliged to
go through with at the Kremlin.
But even when he was so far from Moscow and so actively engaged, he sent
continual messages to the mother who had so often shielded him from
harm. Once he wrote to her as follows:
"To my best beloved, and, while bodily life endures, my dearest
little mother, the Lady Czarina and Grand Duchess Natalia Kirílovna.
Thy little son, now here at work, Petrúshka, asks thy blessing and
wishes news of thy health. We, through thy prayers, are all well, and
the lake has been cleared of ice to-day, and all the boats, except
the big ship, are finished, only we have to wait for ropes. Therefore
I beg thy kindness that these ropes, seven hundred fathoms long, be
sent from the artillery department without delay, for our work is
waiting for them, and our stay here is so much prolonged."
The Russians of that day knew little about building ships, and so Peter
finally went to Amsterdam. Here he dressed like a Dutch sea-captain and
spent his time with sailors and ship-builders, and thoroughly enjoyed
the difference between this new life and that at home. Many of his
native customs he now learned to look upon as uncouth. The Russians had
poor taste in dress; the Imperial Guards wore old-fashioned uniforms
consisting of a long gown, which made it very difficult for them to move
rapidly. Peter saw some French soldiers and at once decided to adopt
their smarter and more serviceable style of dress.
[Illustration: PETER THE GREAT]
In the same way he changed the old Russian military drill to something
resembling that of the other European countries. He had new carriages
and furniture and foods imported from France and England, and tried to
make Moscow more like a modern city than like the semi-barbarous Asiatic
village it had been. The Russian men almost all wore long, flowing
beards, and this fashion Peter quickly changed, insisting that the men
about him should adopt the fashion of the French court.