the Russia of those days was; yet it is due almost entirely to the young
Czar Peter that this great northern country finally came out from
semi-darkness. It must not be supposed that these great changes were at
first popular with the court; there was tremendous opposition to almost
everything Peter did, but the people gradually realized that he was
really working for their benefit and that he was deeply interested in
improving their condition. Slowly his popularity grew with the middle
and lower classes, until finally they spoke of their "little Czar," as
they called him affectionately, almost as though he were really one of
themselves.
Few rulers have had a harder task than did Peter. All during his youth
the nobles plotted against him, and as he grew to manhood he escaped
assassination again and again by the narrowest of chances, but every
time he had to face danger he grew more self-reliant and more
determined, and gradually his grip on the men of both court and army
grew so strong that they realized places had changed, and that they were
as absolutely his servants as he was their master.
In time Peter became a great king, a fearless, purposeful ruler who knit
his people together as no other Czar had ever been able to do. He led
the armies he had himself drilled to many victories. He built a great
fleet in the Baltic Sea. He established a new capital near the shores of
the Baltic, and named it after his own patron saint, St. Petersburg.
The history of his life is full of tremendous difficulties and dangers,
but he fronted each one as he had fronted the riotous Streltsi Guards
when he was a boy of eleven, and so history has given him the title of
most powerful of all Russian Czars and has called him "Peter the
Great."
V
Frederick the Great
The Boy of Potsdam: 1712-1788
A little boy and girl sat playing on a harpsichord in one of the great
stiffly-furnished and lofty-ceilinged rooms of the Potsdam Palace,
outside Berlin. The boy wore his yellow hair in long curls, his eyes
were merry and he laughed often, while his sister, who was a little
older, seemed quite as happy. The children were practicing for their
music lesson, and only too glad to be free of their teachers for a time,
because music was dearest to them both.
Without a word of warning the door of the room was thrown open, and a
big, heavy-faced man stood on the threshold.
"What's all this?" he cried, his voice snarling with anger, and his
small eyes shot with red. "Haven't I given orders that you're never to
touch that thing again?"
At the sound of the man's voice both children had jumped from their
chairs and stood, stiff as ramrods, facing the speaker. The boy had
raised his hand to the side of his head in salute.
"Please, sir," said the girl, "we're both so very fond of music."
"Silence," commanded the man, who was no other than their father,
Frederick William, King of Prussia. "Fritz can speak for himself; he
doesn't need a girl to defend him."
"Wilhelmina has told you, sir," said the boy, "how much we both love
music. Indeed I'd rather listen to it than do anything else, and I want
to learn how to play it for myself. I don't care anything about being a
soldier."
The King's face was almost purple with anger. He looked as though he
would box the boy's ears on the spot, but he held himself in check.
"You little brat!" he cried. "A soldier you shall be, and nothing else!
Do you think the kingdom of Prussia can be ruled by a crazy fool of a
musician? Don't talk to me of harpsichords, or books, or pictures.
You're not to be a woman, but a king!"
The boy knew his father too well to attempt any answer; there was no one
in Prussia who would dare speak freely before King Frederick William.
After scowling at his son in silence for some minutes the man spoke
again. "Listen to my orders and see that you obey them. From to-day your
music-masters are discharged, every instrument is moved from the palace,
and if either of you two is found playing such things I will have you
locked in your rooms for a week to live on barley and water. Now, sir,
step before me to the hair-dresser. I'll have those locks of yours shorn
so that you'll look less like a girl and more like a grenadier."
Fritz, keeping back the tears in mingled shame and terror, walked to
the door and paced down the hall before his father. He tried to hold
himself straight like a soldier, but it was hard when he felt as though
he were being marched to execution.
The King handed the boy over to the hair-dresser, and in fifteen minutes
the curls were all gone and Fritz's hair was close-cropped like a man's.
As soon as he was free he ran to his mother's room, and there the gentle
Queen, Sophia Dorothea, took him in her arms and comforted him. She knew
how sensitive her little son was, how absolutely different from his
father, and she could sympathize with both the children's suffering
under the King's cruelty.
For once the mother dared to disobey her husband. The next week she told
the two children to go to a distant part of the palace grounds where
there was a deep wood, and see what they should find there. They obeyed,
and ran eagerly down the path to the forest where they had often played
under the trees and in the caves in the rocks. They came to a little
greenwood circle completely hidden from the roads and there found their
music-master. He led them to a cave, and showed them Wilhelmina's little
spinnet, and Fritz's flute lying on it. That was their mother's
surprise. She had arranged that the children's music teacher should meet
them out there and give them the lessons they wanted. Boy and girl were
happy again; they took up their music eagerly, and were soon playing as
of old. Perhaps the very secrecy lent the lessons charm.
The hours spent in the forest and cave were a great success, but one
day Fritz found a small drum at the palace, and forgetting the King's
orders he started to march about the halls beating it, followed by the
admiring Wilhelmina. Suddenly, in the middle of the triumphal
procession, the King came upon them. Poor Fritz dropped the drumsticks
and stood at attention, while Wilhelmina, behind him, grew white with
fear of what should happen.
To their amazement the King's stern face softened; he smiled, then he
laughed and clapped his hands. "Ah, Fritz, now you're a soldier! I
mistook you for one of my own guard, boy."
The King was delighted. He thought that at last his son was fired with
martial fervor. While the boy went back through the halls beating his
drum Frederick called the Queen to watch his soldier son, and
immediately ordered the court artist to paint a picture of the scene on
canvas. A day or two later he told Fritz of a plan he had in store. He
would form a military company of boys of his own age for him, build them
an arsenal on the palace grounds, and have them drilled by officers of
the army.
With the King to speak was to act. A month had not passed before the
small boy, dressed in a general's uniform, found himself in command of
about three hundred youths of his own age, all properly equipped with
uniforms and arms, and known as "The Crown Prince Cadets." They made a
remarkable contrast to that other regiment of which King Frederick
William was so proud, which was made up of giants, men all over six feet
six inches tall, seized wherever they were found in Prussia and
elsewhere and forced into his army.
The boy general and his cadets were drilled hours at a time day after
day by the Prussian officers, in the hope of making soldiers of them and
nothing else. Fritz hated it; he wanted to read and to learn music, and
day by day he found less and less time to steal off to those wonderful
meetings in the woods or to romp with Wilhelmina in the schoolroom. The
French governess who had taught him was taken away, and he was placed
under military tutors who made him learn gunnery and battle tactics at
the arsenal which his father had built for him on the grounds.
When the boy was ten the King started to take him to all the military
reviews. In going from garrison to garrison the King rode on a hard
wagon called a sausage-car, which was simply a padded pole about ten
feet long on which the riders sat astride. Ten or more men would jolt
over the roads on such cars with the King summer and winter, and he made
the boy ride in front of him, through the broiling sun or the winter
snow, waking him whenever he fell asleep by pulling his ear and saying,
"Too much sleep stupefies a fellow."
In such iron fashion the father did his best to change the sensitive,
gentle nature of his son to something like his own.
At the age of ten Fritz's days were marked out hour by hour by Frederick
William. Not even Sunday was free. He was marched from teacher to
teacher, all sports were denied him, and he was never allowed to read
or play. His hair was kept close cut, his clothes were heavy and coarse,
he was treated more like a prisoner than a prince. To the boy's masters
the King gave one direction: "Teach him to seek all glory in the soldier
profession." When his mother or sister dared to interfere the King would
turn on them in a rage; Wilhelmina was sent time and again to her room,
to be starved until she grew more docile.
The boy's time was divided between Berlin and the Palace of
Wusterhausen, a country seat some twenty miles outside of the capital.
The palace was a very simple dwelling set in the middle of swampy
fields, with a fringe of thickets. In the grounds were many natural
fish-ponds, and game of all kinds was plentiful in the woods. The somber
old monarch loved this place, and had built there a fountain with stone
steps, where he liked to sit in the evening and smoke his long porcelain
pipe. He often had his dinner served by the fountain, and afterward
would throw himself down on the grass for a nap. Aside from this simple
entertainment, the King's only pleasure lay in hunting in the woods.
The children and their mother found Wusterhausen very unattractive. The
only pets they were allowed were two black bears, very ugly and vicious.
They had no comforts indoors, and were treated as though they were
children of the meanest peasant. Some boys might have found sport in the
fish-ponds, the groves and the streams about the place, filled as they
were with fish and game, but Fritz cared nothing for such things. Their
loneliness drew the two children closer and closer together, and their
dislike of their father increased with each year that he took them out
to Wusterhausen.
The father, on his part, was growing more and more contemptuous of his
son. He found Fritz cared nothing for the army, nothing for the chase,
that the hardship and exposure of rough life were torture to him. Worse
than that, he had discovered some verses in French that Fritz had
written, and spoke of him scornfully to the men of his court as "the
French flute-player and poet." It would have been very hard for the boy
if he had not had a mother and sister who were so devoted to him, and
did everything they possibly could to protect him from his father's
tyranny.
When he was fourteen, Frederick William appointed Fritz captain of his
Grenadier Guards. This was the regiment made up of giants, and was one
of the most singular passions of the very singular old King. He sent men
through the whole of Europe and Asia to search for very tall men. Some
of the regiment were almost nine feet high. When a foreign monarch
wished to curry favor with the King of Prussia he would send him a
giant. The King showered favors on these men. He had court painters
paint portraits of each one of them. They were the very centre of that
great army which was the sole pride of the old warrior, and which he was
building up so that it should become the greatest military force in
Europe.
Fritz tried to do his duty as captain of the regiment, and gradually
acquired something of a military bearing. For a short time his father
was pleased, but his pleasure did not last long; for the boy could not
keep away from the fascinations of music and of books, and all of the
various arts which were constantly coming into Prussia from France.
The flute was Fritz's favorite instrument, and it so happened that a
very celebrated teacher of the flute came from Dresden about this time,
and gave lessons in the Prussian capital. As soon as Fritz learned that
this man was a splendid teacher he arranged to have him come secretly to
his room at Potsdam. The boy's mother knew of this plan, and did her
best to keep his secret; but it was a very dangerous matter, for the old
King was growing more and more suspicious, and also more and more
fierce. A friend of Fritz's, who was about his own age, stood guard
outside the boy's room, while he was having his lessons on the flute,
and another guard was stationed at the entrance to the palace grounds
with orders to send word at once if the King should appear.
When Fritz was satisfied of his safety, he would go up to his own room,
throw aside the tight, heavy military coat which he hated, and put on a
flowing French dressing-gown, scarlet colored, and embroidered with
gold. Then, dressed to suit himself, he would take his music lesson, and
enjoy every minute of the stolen pleasure.
One day, however, in the middle of his playing, the friend at the door
rushed into the room announcing that the King was coming. This boy and
the teacher seized the flutes and music books and ran into a
wood-closet, where they stood shaking with fear. Fritz threw off his
dressing-gown, pulled on his military coat and sat down at a table,
opening a book.
Now the old King, his brows bent with anger, burst into the room. The
sight of his delicate son reading seemed like fuel to his rage. He never
minced his words, and proceeded to heap abuse on the head of the poor
Prince, when all of a sudden he caught sight of the end of the scarlet
gown sticking out from behind a screen. "What is that?" he cried, and
stepping across the room pulled the gown out. Beside himself with rage
he crammed it into the fireplace, and threw after it many of the
ornaments the boy had used to decorate his room. Then he walked to the
bookshelves and swept all the volumes to the floor, saying that he would
have a bookseller buy the library next day, because his son was to be a
soldier and not a scholar. For an hour he stayed there, pacing up and
down the room, lecturing Fritz until the boy was almost sick with shame.
Finally he left, and the two in the wood-closet were able to come out,
both of them almost as badly frightened as the Prince himself.
But if the King treated his son so badly, he treated his daughter
Wilhelmina none the less so. He could hardly stand the sight of her at
times, and her mother had to arrange a series of screens in her room so
that when Frederick William came to see her the daughter could escape
behind them. After such scenes Fritz and Wilhelmina would try to comfort
each other, but the boy was gradually growing more sullen and
rebellious.
Again and again the boy thought of escape; he would have been only too
glad to give up his position as Prince in exchange for the chance to
live simply in some foreign land, free to follow his own tastes as other
boys did theirs. He would have made the attempt, but he knew only too
well that should he escape his father's hand would fall in terrible
wrath on his dear sister Wilhelmina. He decided to stay and bear the
burdens of this life the King had planned for him rather than desert his
mother and sister. He was not a coward even if he was not made of iron.
At last the boy felt that he must act in self-defense. His father,
suffering from the gout, took to flogging Fritz in the very presence of
the lords and ladies of the court. The boy had pride, though his father
had done his best to kill it. Once, after striking blows at Fritz's head
before the assembled court, the King cried, "Had I been so treated by my
father, I would have blown my brains out. But this fellow has no honor.
He takes all that comes."
Fritz could stand such treatment no longer. Praying that Wilhelmina
might not suffer he planned an escape with a friend.
His father was taking him on a journey to the Rhine in the company of a
small guard of soldiers who were told to treat the boy like a prisoner.
Three officers were ordered to ride in the same carriage with Fritz, and
never to leave him alone. The King was a hard traveler, and seemed
positively to wish for extra hardships and fatigues, the party scarcely
stopping for food or sleep. At one place, however, a short stay was
made, and there Fritz planned to escape.
They had arrived at the town very late, and the boy with his officers
slept in a barn, as was not infrequently the case. The usual hour for
starting in the morning was three o'clock. A little after midnight Fritz
saw that his companions were sound asleep, and rose and crept out into
the open air. He had made arrangements with a servant to meet him with
horses on the village green. The boy reached the green and found the
horses, but at the same moment one of the guards, who had been awakened
by the noise Fritz made in leaving the barn, caught up with him, and
demanded of the servant who held the horses: "Sirrah! What are you doing
with those beasts?"
The man answered, "I am getting the horses ready for the start."
"We do not start till five o'clock. Take them back at once to the
stable." The officer pretended not to see Fritz, who had to slink back
at his heels to the barn, fully conscious that his chance to escape was
gone.
News of this attempt reached the King, and the next day, when he met his
son, he said sarcastically, "Ah, you are still here then? I thought that
by this time you would have been in Paris."
All the boy's spirit had not been crushed out of him, and he dared to
answer, "I certainly would have been there now had I really wished it."
Again he tried to escape, and again he was caught, and this time he was
brought directly to the King. The father stared at his son as though he
were some wild beast, and then said angrily: "Why did you attempt to
desert?"
"I wanted to escape because you never treat me like your son, but like
some common slave."
"You're a cowardly deserter," said the King, "without any feelings of
honor."
"I have as much honor as you have," answered Fritz, "and I've done only
what I've heard you say you would have done if you had been treated as I
have."
The King, maddened beyond description, drew his sword, and would have
struck the boy had not a general in attendance thrown himself between
them, exclaiming: "Sire, you may kill me, but spare your son."
The boy was taken out of the room and locked in prison, where he was
guarded by two sentries with fixed bayonets. The King proclaimed him a
deserter from the army, and ordered him tried for that crime. It is
small wonder that Fritz declared he would have been glad to exchange his
place for that of the poorest serf in Prussia.
Fritz was placed in a strongly barred room like a dungeon, with no
furniture in it, and lighted by a single slit in the wall so high that
the boy could not look out of it. The coarsest brown clothes were given
him to wear. He was allowed only one or two books. His food was bought
at a near-by butcher-shop, and was cut for him, for he was not allowed a
knife. The door of his prison was opened three times a day for
ventilation, and he was provided with a single tallow candle which had
to be put out by seven o'clock in the evening. This was the way the
Crown Prince of Prussia lived when he was nineteen years old, and if
the father did not actually succeed in breaking all the boy's spirit,
he was at least changing this lovable, gentle-natured youth into a stern
and gloomy young man.
Eventually the boy was released from his prison, but as long as his
father lived he was treated with all the harshness the King's mind could
devise. His sister Wilhelmina was kept away from him, and finally
married to a man for whom she cared little. Fritz was cut off from all
interests save that of the army, but gradually he began to acquire
something of his father's interest in creating a splendid fighting
machine.
In time he became King of Prussia himself, free at last to do as he
would. He sought out men of genius, musicians, poets, and thinkers. He
offered Voltaire, the great Frenchman, a home with him, and his happiest
hours were spent in his company, or listening to music, or playing the
flute he had loved as a boy. But that was only one side of him, and the
side which was least seen. On the world's side he was the grasping
ruler, the great general who forced war on all his neighbors, and who
came to be known as the conqueror of Europe.
The boy Fritz of Prussia might have become one of Europe's greatest
sovereigns, for he was naturally endowed with a love of all the finer
things of life. Instead he became a despot who plunged Europe for years
into the horrors of useless war. For this misfortune his father was
responsible. The loving mother and sister could not counterbalance the
terrible severity of the cruel King. Gradually Fritz changed from the
sunny lad who had played in the gardens of Potsdam with Wilhelmina to a
severe and arbitrary monarch.
His father had taught him that a country's greatness depended on its
soldiers, and so Fritz made Prussia an army and compelled the world to
admit the might of his troops. To Europe he was the ambitious tyrant,
Frederick the Great. It was only to Wilhelmina and a few friends that he
showed a little of that softer nature which had been his as the boy of
Potsdam.
At the Charlottenburg Palace hangs the famous portrait of him playing
upon the drum. It was a long step from that boy to the man Frederick the
Great.
VI
George Washington
The Boy of the Old Dominion: 1732-1799
A few miles below Mount Vernon, on the Potomac River, was the beautiful
estate of Belvoir, belonging to an English gentleman of rank named Lord
Fairfax. The broad Potomac wound about the base of the lawn that sloped
gently downward from the old colonial mansion which sat upon a height
looking out across the exquisite Virginia country.
The Potomac was not a busy river then, and the only trade that came up
it was such as was needed to supply the rich planters on the shores with
food and clothing. From the porch of Belvoir one might see an occasional
sailing vessel dropping up with the tide, lately come from England to
make a tour of the seaboard states, and to take home cotton and tobacco
in exchange for the silks and satins brought out to the colonies.
A great man in both England and America was Lord Fairfax; he owned many
estates in both countries, but his favorite was this of Belvoir, not
only because of its great natural beauty, but because he liked the
company of the Virginia planters, who joined a certain frankness and
simplicity of life with all the charms of European refinement.
Lord Fairfax kept up all the old English customs in his Potomac home. He
had a passion for horses and for hunting, and his pack of foxhounds was
the best in the colony. Sometimes he had the company of men of his own
age to hunt with him, but he was always sure that he could count upon
the fellowship of a certain boy, the son of a neighbor, named
Washington. Whenever the hunting season arrived, Lord Fairfax sent word
to Mrs. Washington that he would be glad of the company of her eldest
son George, and a day or two later the boy would appear at Belvoir, keen
to mount horse and be off for the chase.
On one such winter day Lord Fairfax and his friend George were hunting
alone. They had had a good run and caught their fox, and were returning
home in a leisurely fashion across the rolling country south of the
hills. They were a curious couple.
The Englishman was nearly sixty years old, more than six feet tall, very
gaunt and big-boned, with gray eyes overhung by bushy brows, sharp
features, and keen, aquiline nose. He had been a great beau in his
youthful days in London, and there was no mistaking the mark of
authority that sat upon him.
The boy who rode by his side was not yet sixteen years old, and yet he
scarcely seemed a boy, nor would his manner have led one to treat him as
such. He was unusually tall and strong for his years, and he had so
trained himself in a strict code of conduct that a singular gravity and
decision marked his bearing. This might have had much to do with the
bond of affection between the man and the youth. Lord Fairfax was not
ashamed to listen seriously to the opinions of young George Washington,
and he had learnt that those opinions were not apt to be trivial, but
the result of deep observation and thought.
[Illustration: MRS. WASHINGTON URGES GEORGE NOT TO ENTER THE NAVY]
As they rode home the man asked the boy what he was planning to do. He
knew that Mrs. Washington was poor and that her son would have to make
his own way in the world.
"What should you like to be, George?" he inquired. "I dare say you've
had enough schooling by this time."