Chapter VI: Peter the Great (4)

Amongst the most pert and lively writers who chronicled the visit and caricatured the czar and his simple train of followers, is the markgräfin von Bayreuth. She gives a very amusing account in her memoirs of the reception at court; and says that when Peter approached to embrace the queen, her majesty looked as if she would rather be excused. Their majesties were attended, she informs us, by a whole train of what were called ladies, as part of their suite, consisting chiefly of young German women, who performed the part of ladies’ maids, chamber-maids, cook-maids, and washerwomen; almost every one of whom had a richly clothed child in her arms. The queen, it is added, refused to salute these creatures. At table the czar was seized with one of his convulsive fits, at a moment when he happened to have a knife in his hand, and the queen was so frightened that she attempted to leave the table; but Peter told her not to be uneasy, assuring her that he would do her no harm. On another occasion, he caught her by the hand with such force that she was obliged to desire him to be more respectful; on which he burst out into a loud fit of laughter, and said that she was much more delicate than his Catherine. But the most entertaining part of the whole is a sketch of the personal appearance of the uncultivated sovereigns. “The czarina,” says the markgräfin, “is short and lusty, remarkably coarse, and without grace or animation. One needs only see her to be satisfied of her low birth. At the first blush one would take her for a German actress. Her clothes looked as if bought at a doll-shop, everything was so old-fashioned and so bedecked with silver and tinsel. She was decorated with a dozen orders, portraits of saints, and relics, which occasioned such a clatter that when she walked one would suppose an ass with bells was approaching. The czar, on the contrary, is tall and well made. His countenance is handsome; but there is something in it so rude that it inspires one with dread. He was dressed like a seaman, in a frock, without lace or ornament.” The spirit of the tiring-woman shines through the whole of this saucy and superficial description. The markgräfin took the measure of the illustrious visitors as she would of her lady’s robe--colour, spangles, and shape. It never occurred to her that, in the little coarse woman who looked so like a German actress, she saw the heroine of the Pruth; and that the rude seaman who frightened the queen was the man who, amidst ignorant wonder and superstitious resistance, laid the foundations of the most gigantic empire that the world has ever seen! But the circumstances under which the markgräfin obtained her impressions were unfavourable to the formation of a just opinion, or, indeed, of any opinion at all. She was only eight years of age when she saw Peter and Catherine, although she had arrived at a mature age when she wrote her memoirs. She retained no more than the silly whispers and jests of the ante-chamber. She noted down what she heard rather than what she thought; but it serves to show very clearly the sort of atmosphere in which the eccentric Frederick moved, and the courtly weaknesses against which, in his own person, he must have been compelled to sustain a continual warfare.

On Peter’s return through Holland, he purchased a variety of pictures of the Dutch and Flemish schools, several zoölogical, entomological, and anatomical cabinets, and a large collection of books. With the treasures thus accumulated he laid the foundation of the imperial Academy of Sciences, the plan of which he drew up himself. He would probably have lingered longer in those countries, but for the intelligence which he received concerning the conduct of his son Alexis, which induced him to hasten to St. Petersburg under the agitation of bitter feelings, in which the natural dispositions of the father were drawn into direct collision with the duty of the sovereign.[c]

THE CZAREVITCH ALEXIS DISINHERITED (1718 A.D.)

The czar arrived at St. Petersburg from his foreign tour on the 21st of October, 1717. Twenty years before he had signalised his return from a first visit to civilised countries by the inhuman butchery of the strelitz, and now he was about to give still more appalling evidence of the deep depravity of his heart.

Peter’s early aversion to Eudoxia had a most deplorable influence on Alexis, the son she bore him in 1690. The dissensions between the father and the mother speedily diminished the father’s affection for Alexis. Moreover, as Peter’s vast labours prevented him from paying much attention to the education of his son, Alexis at first grew up under female tuition, and then fell into the hands of some of the clergy, under whose guidance he daily conceived a greater abhorrence for his father. This being observed by Peter, he put an end to the spiritual education, and appointed Menshikov superintendent of the prince’s preceptors.

Menshikov was no friend to Alexis, and the latter had been early inspired by his mother with contempt and aversion for the favourite of his father. The tutors who were now placed about the prince were not able to eradicate the prejudices impressed on his mind from his infancy, and now grown inveterate; besides, he had an unconquerable dislike to them as foreigners. The future sovereign of so vast an empire that was now reformed in all its parts, and by prosperous wars still further enlarged; the heir of a throne whose possessor ruled over many millions of people, had been brought up from his birth as if designed for a Russian bishop; theology continued to be his favourite study. With a capacity for those sciences which are useful in government, he discovered no inclination to them. Moreover, he addicted himself early in life to drunkenness and other excesses. There were not wanting such as flattered his perverse dispositions, by representing to him that the Russian nation was dissatisfied with his father, that it was impossible for him to be suffered long in his career of innovation, that even his life was not likely to hold out against so many fatigues, with many other things of a like nature.

The conduct of Alexis, particularly his indolence and sloth, were highly displeasing to Peter. Menshikov, from political motives, to preserve himself and Catherine, was constantly employed in fanning the czar’s resentment, while the adherents of Alexis, on the other hand, seized every opportunity to increase the aversion of the prince, who, from his very cradle, had never known what it was to love, and had only dreaded his father. Alexis at times even gave plain intimations that he would hereafter undo all that his father was so sedulously bringing about. Nay, when the latter, in 1711, appointed the prince regent during his absence, in the campaign of the Pruth, Alexis made it his first business to alter many things in behalf of the clergy, so as clearly to evince in what school he had been brought up.

The czar was in hopes of reforming his son by uniting him with a worthy consort; but even this attempt proved fruitless. The princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who was selected for his bride, and to whom Alexis was married at Torgau, in 1711, notwithstanding all her eminent qualities of mind and heart and her great beauty, could make no impression on him, and sank under the load of grief brought on by this unhappy connection, soon after giving birth to a prince, who was called by the name of his grandfather, Peter (1715). By a continuance in his dissolute mode of life, by his bad behaviour towards his spouse, and his intercourse with persons who were notorious for their hatred of Peter and his reforms, Alexis seemed bent upon augmenting his father’s displeasure.

After the death of the princess, Peter wrote his son a letter, the conclusion of which ran thus: “I will still wait awhile, to see if you will amend; if not, know that I will deprive you of the succession, as a useless limb is cut off. Do not imagine I am only frightening you; nor would I have you rely on the title of being my eldest son; for since I do not spare my own life for the good of my country and the prosperity of my people, why should I spare yours? I shall rather commit them to a stranger deserving such a trust than to my own undeserving offspring.”

At this very juncture the empress Catherine was delivered of a prince, who died in 1719. Whether the above letter disheartened Alexis, or whether it was imprudence or bad advice, he wrote to his father that he renounced the crown, and all hopes of reigning. “God is my witness,” said he, “and I swear upon my soul, that I will never claim the succession; I commit my children into your hands, and for myself desire only a subsistence during life.”

His father wrote to him a second time. “I observe,” says he, “that all you speak of in the letter is the succession, as if I stood in need of your consent. I have represented to you what grief your behaviour has given me for so many years, and not a word do you say of it; the exhortations of a father make no impression on you. I have brought myself to write to you once more; but for the last time. If you despise my counsels now I am living, what regard will be paid to them after my death? Though you may now mean not to violate your promises, yet those bushy beards will be able to wind you as they please, and force you to break your word. It is you those people rely on. You have no gratitude to him who gave you life. Since you have been of proper age, did you ever assist him in his labours? Do you not find fault with, do you not detest everything I do for the good of my people? I have all the reason in the world to believe that, if you survive me, you will overthrow all that I have been doing. Amend, make yourself worthy of the succession, or turn monk. Let me have your answer either in writing, or personally, or I will deal with you as a malefactor.”

Though this letter was harsh, the prince might easily have answered that he would alter his behaviour; but he only acquainted his father, in a few lines, that he would turn monk. This assurance did not appear natural; and it is something strange that the czar, going to travel, should leave behind him a son so obstinate, but this very journey proves that the czar was in no manner of apprehension of a conspiracy from his son. He went to see him before he set out for Germany and France; the prince being ill, or feigning to be so, received him in bed, and confirmed to him, by the most solemn oaths, that he would retire into a convent. The czar gave him six months for deliberation, and set out with his consort.

He had scarcely reached Copenhagen when he received advice (which was no more than he might well expect) that Alexis admitted into his presence only evil-minded persons, who humoured his discontent; on this the czar wrote to him that he must choose the convent or the throne, and, if he valued the succession, to come to him at Copenhagen.

The prince’s confidants instilled into him a suspicion that it would be dangerous for him to put himself into the hands of a provoked father and a mother-in-law, without so much as one friend to advise with. He therefore feigned that he was going to wait on his father at Copenhagen, but took the road to Vienna, and threw himself on the protection of the emperor Charles VI, his brother-in-law, intending to continue at his court till the czar’s death.

This was an adventure something like that of Louis XI, who, whilst he was dauphin, withdrew from the court of Charles VII, his father, to the duke of Burgundy. Louis was, indeed, much more culpable than the czarevitch, by marrying in direct opposition to his father, raising troops, and seeking refuge with a prince, his father’s natural enemy, and never returning to court, not even at the king’s repeated entreaties.

Alexis, on the contrary, had married purely in obedience to the czar’s order, and had not revolted nor raised troops; neither, indeed, had he withdrawn to a prince in anywise his father’s enemy; and, on the first letter he received from his father, he went and threw himself at his feet. For Peter, on receiving advice that his son had been at Vienna, and had removed thence to Naples, then belonging to the emperor Charles VI, sent Romanzov, a captain of the guards, and Tolstoi, a privy-councillor, with a letter in his own hand, dated from Spa, the 21st of July, N.S. 1717. They found the prince at Naples, in the castle of St. Elmo, and delivered him the letter, which was as follows:

“I now write to you, and for the last time, to let you know that you had best comply with my will, which Tolstoi and Romanzov will make known to you. On your obedience, I assure you, and promise before God, that I will not punish you; so far from it, that if you return I will love you better than ever. But if you do not, by virtue of the power I have received from God as your father, I pronounce against you my eternal curse; and as your sovereign, I assure you I shall find ways to punish you; in which I hope, as my cause is just, God will take it in hand, and assist me in revenging it. Remember further that I never used compulsion with you. Was I under any obligation to leave you to your own option? Had I been for forcing you, was not the power in my hand? At a word, I should have been obeyed.”

Relying on the faith thus solemnly given by a father and a sovereign, Alexis returned to Russia. On the 11th of February, 1717, N.S., he reached Moscow, where the czar then was, and had a long conference in private with his father. A report immediately was spread through the city that a reconciliation had taken place between the father and son, and that everything was forgotten; but the very next day the regiments of guards were ordered under arms, and the great bell of Moscow tolled. The boyars and privy-councillors were summoned to the castle: the bishops, the archimandrites, and two monks of the order of St. Basil, professors of divinity, met in the cathedral. Alexis was carried into the castle before his father without a sword, and as a prisoner; he immediately prostrated himself, and with a flood of tears delivered to his father a writing, in which he acknowledged his crimes, declared himself unworthy of the succession, and asked only his life. The czar, raising him up, led him to a closet, where he put several questions to him, declaring, that if he concealed anything relating to his escape, his head should answer for it. Afterwards the prince was brought back into the council-chamber, where the czar’s declaration, which had been drawn up beforehand, was publicly read.

The father in this piece reproached his son with his manifold vices, his remissness in improving himself, his intimacy with the sticklers for ancient customs, his misbehaviour towards his consort: “He has,” says he, “violated conjugal faith, taking up with a low-born wench whilst his wife was living.” Alexis might fairly have pleaded that in this kind of debauchery he came immeasurably short of his father’s example. He afterwards reproaches him with going to Vienna, and putting himself under the emperor’s protection. He says that Alexis had slandered his father, intimating to the emperor Charles VI that he was persecuted; and that a longer stay in Muscovy was dangerous, unless he renounced the succession; nay, that he went so far as to desire the emperor openly to defend him by force of arms.[e]

_Death of the Czarevitch Alexis_

[Sidenote: [1718 A.D.]]

The proceedings against the czarevitch and his friends lasted for about half a year: they were begun in Moscow and continued in St. Petersburg; the cells of the fortress of the latter place were filled with prisoners, amongst whom were two members of the royal family--the czarevitch and Marie Alexievna; fresh persons were continually added to their number, denounced under the pressure of unbearable tortures. One of the differences between the legal proceedings of that period and the present consists in the fact that, when we now have the evidence of a crime before us, we endeavour to discover the persons guilty of it, whereas then they sought to find out whether someone had not done something criminal.

In May a “declaration” or manifesto was issued setting forth the czarevitch’s crimes. His whole life was related in the manifesto; mention was made of his idleness in studying, his disobedience to his father’s will, his ill treatment of his wife, and finally his flight and his apparent solicitation of the help of the German emperor and “the protection of an armed hand,”--which was not at all clearly proved by the evidence. There was, however, no mention in the manifesto of the fact that he had been promised an unconditional pardon and the permission to live at a distance with his beloved Euphrosyne. For all these offences, for his disobedience to his father, his treachery and dissimulation, the czarevitch and his “accomplices” were delivered up for judgment to the tribunal; but this tribunal was not an ordinary one: it was a special one, composed of persons named by Peter himself. Why was such a departure made from the usual order of things? In matters of peculiar importance, when it happened that persons in proximity to the throne were to be judged, it was not unfrequent in western Europe that special, so-called supreme tribunals were named. But this custom always gave reason to suppose that the members of those supreme tribunals were only chosen from amongst those who would be ready to fulfil the will of him who had named them.

The committee appointed to judge the czarevitch consisted of 127 members of the clergy and laity; in the instructions given by the czar to the first it was enjoined that they should act “without any hypocrisy or partiality”; in the instructions given to the laity the following was signified: “I ask you in order that this matter may be truthfully accomplished, without seeking to flatter me; without any respect for persons, to act righteously, and not to destroy your souls and mine, so that our consciences may be pure at the terrible day of judgment, and our country secure.” Such were the words that the czar addressed to the tribunal; they were fine in themselves, but their signification could not have been great, because the judges were not independent. The conceptions of the present time require that judges should not be afraid of being dismissed from their functions, of being deprived of the salaries accompanying these functions, and so on--then only can a judge be entirely impartial; but were the judges of the czarevitch and in general all the judges of that time in such a position? They were all persons in the government service and entirely dependent on their chiefs; in the present case whom was it they risked displeasing? The czar himself! It was natural that they should try and read the czar’s will in the eyes of Menshikov, Tolstoi, and others of his intimates.

On the 24th of June, 1718, the sentence of the supreme tribunal was pronounced. The clergy refused to pronounce sentence, but the laity unanimously decreed the penalty of death against the czarevitch. Execution, however, did not follow, but something far more terrible than a public death on the scaffold did--the czarevitch was tortured on the rack. In fact, during the last days of the sitting of the tribunal, he had been several times subjected to it and, he was even tortured after sentence had been passed upon him! All this was more than the feeble organism of the czarevitch could bear, and on the 26th of June he died in a cell of the Petersburg fortress. Amongst the number of his friends and sharers in his flight many were executed, others banished to distant places, to monasteries and fortresses; amongst the latter was also the czarevna Marie Alexievna, who was sent to Schlüsselburg.

Such is one of the darkest episodes of the reign of Peter. The czarevitch Alexis could not have continued the work commenced by his father; he could not have succeeded him; he might have been judged, even condemned, if the tribunal (but an impartial tribunal) had found him guilty, and his head might have fallen at the hands of the public executioner like that of a criminal. But he was promised pardon if he would return, and having returned he was delivered up to the tribunal, he was judged by persons in whose impartiality it is impossible to believe; finally he was tortured after sentence was pronounced, when everywhere, even to the most insignificant of men and the greatest of criminals, time is given to prepare for death. For these things history cannot forgive the czar. Upon contemporaries the judgment and death of the czarevitch produced a deep impression. There were persons who admired the czar’s decision to sacrifice his son to the welfare of the country and his great plans; they compared him to Brutus. But there were but few such persons and they for the greater part were foreigners and not Russians. The greatness of Brutus and civic virtues in general did not powerfully move the hearts of our forefathers; but each of them felt that it was unnatural for a father to take away his son’s life!

Terrible rumours as to the details of the czarevitch’s death began to be current amongst the people; some said that he had been secretly poisoned, others that he had been strangled, and yet others that the czar himself had cut off his head in the cell. All these were fables, but fables which, however, may even now be met with in the works of many foreign authors and which also prove how powerfully the imagination of contemporaries was affected by this event and how much it was talked of. That noble quality of human nature--sympathy with sufferings even when they are deserved--made the czarevitch dearer still to his numerous partisans. The idea that Peter had indeed been “changed” became stronger. The common people, the merchants, the clergy, even distinguished persons, when they were not afraid of being overheard, said: “Would such a thing have been possible if he were the rightful czar--would he have killed his son and made the czarevna take the veil?” In some more fanatical minds the idea became confirmed that the czarevitch was alive and the name of the unfortunate young man became, as did in previous times the name of the czarevitch Dmitri, an ensign for impostors and pretenders.[h]

DOMESTIC AFFAIRS

The appalling episode we have just related was so far from engrossing the thoughts of the czar that it hardly interrupted the course of his ordinary occupations. Nay, as if to darken still more the tragic horrors of the year 1718, by mingling with them the coarsest and most disgusting buffoonery, it was in that very year he instituted the crapulous burlesque of the Conclave. The occasion of it was this: During the czar’s visit to Paris, the doctors of the Sorbonne addressed him with the view of effecting a union between the Russo-Greek church and that of Rome, and they presented to him a memorial full of learned arguments against the schismatical tenets of his co-religionists. This memorial only gave great offence to the court of Rome, without pleasing either the emperor or the church of Russia.

“In this plan of reunion,” says Voltaire, “there were some political matters which they did not understand, and some points of controversy which they said they understood and which each party explained according to its humour. There was a question about the Holy Ghost, who, according to the Latins, proceeds from the Father and the Son; and according to the Greeks, at present, proceeds from the Father, through the Son, after having, for a long time, proceeded from the Father only. They quoted St. Epiphanius, who says that ‘the Holy Ghost is not the Son’s brother, nor the Father’s grandson.’ But the czar, at leaving Paris, had other business than to explain passages from St. Epiphanius; however, he received the Sorbonne’s memorial with great affability. They also wrote to some Russian bishops, who returned a polite answer; but the greater number received the overture with indignation.” It was to dissipate the apprehensions of this reunion that, after expelling the Jesuits from his dominions, he instituted the mock conclave, as he had previously set on foot other burlesque exhibitions, for the purpose of turning the office of patriarch into ridicule.

There was at his court an old man named Sotov, an enormous drunkard, and a court-fool of long standing; he had taught the czar to write, and by this service imagined that he deserved the highest dignities. Peter promised to confer on him one of the most eminent in the known world: he created him _kniaz papa_, that is to say, prince-pope, with a salary of 2,000 roubles, and a palace at St. Petersburg, in the Tatar ward. Sotov was enthroned by buffoons; four fellows, who stammered, were appointed to harangue him on his exaltation; his mock holiness created a number of cardinals, and rode in procession at the head of them, sitting astride on a cask of brandy, which was laid on a sledge drawn by four oxen. They were followed by other sledges loaded with food and drink; and the march was accompanied by the rough music of drums, trumpets, horns, hautboys, and fiddles, all playing out of tune; and the clattering of pots and pans, brandished by a troop of cooks and scullions. The train was swelled by a number of men dressed as monks of various Romish orders, and each carrying a bottle and glass. The czar and his courtiers brought up the rear, the former in the garb of a Dutch skipper, the latter in various comic disguises.

When the procession arrived at the place where the conclave was to be held the cardinals were led into a long gallery, part of which had been boarded off into a range of closets in each of which a cardinal was shut up with plenty of food and intoxicating liquors. To every one of their eminences were attached two conclavists--cunning young fellows, whose business it was to ply their principals well with drink, carry real or pretended messages to and fro between the members of the sacred college, and provoke them to bawl out all sorts of abuse of each other and of their respective families. The czar listened eagerly to all this ribaldry, not forgetting in the midst of his glee to note down on his tablets any hints of which it might be possible for him to make a vindictive use. The cardinals were not released from confinement until they were all agreed upon a number of farcical questions submitted to them by the _kniaz papa_.

The orgie lasted three days and three nights. The doors of the conclave were at last thrown open in the middle of the day, and the pope and his cardinals were carried home dead drunk on sledges--that is to say, such of them as survived; for some had actually died during the debauch, and others never recovered from its effects. This stupid farce was repeated three times; and on the last occasion especially it was accompanied with other abominations, which admit of no description. Peter himself had his death accelerated by his excesses in the last conclave.

From 1714 to 1717 Peter published ninety-two ordinances or regulations; in 1718 alone, in that year of crime, thirty-six ukases, or regulations, were promulgated, and twenty-seven in 1719. The majority of them related directly to his new establishments. The council of mines dates in its origin from that period, as do also the uniformity of weights and measures, the institution of schools for teaching arithmetic in all the towns of the empire; that of orphan-houses and foundling-hospitals, of workshops for the poor, and of manufactories of tapestry, silks, linens, and cloths for soldiers’ clothing; the founding of the city of Ladoga; the canal of the same name, which he began with his own hands; that of Kronstadt; the plan of another, which now unites the Baltic to the Caspian by the intermedium of the Volga; besides numerous measures of detail, including the police, the health of towns, lighting and cleansing, founded upon what he had remarked during the previous year in the great cities of Europe.

At this sanguinary epoch it was that, by this multitude of establishments for the promotion of all kinds of industry, he gave the most rapid impulse to the knowledge, commerce, and civilisation to which he sacrificed his son; as though, by thus redoubling his activity, he had sought to escape from himself, or to palliate, by the importance of the result, the horror of the sacrifice. In several of these ordinances it is remarkable that, either from the inconsistency which is inherent in our nature or from the pride of a despot, which believes itself to be detached from and above everything, he required respect to be paid to religion, at the very moment when, with such cruelty, he was paying no respect to the sanctity of his own oath; and yet the importance of keeping sworn faith must have been well known to a prince who one day said, “The irreligious cannot be tolerated because, by sapping religion, they turn into ridicule the sacredness of an oath, which is the foundation of all society.”

It is true that, on this occasion, pushing right into wrong, as he too often did, he mutilated and banished to Siberia a miserable creature who, when drunk, had been guilty of blasphemy. So intolerant was he against intolerance. The raskolniks were, and still are, the blind and uncompromising enemies of all innovation. One of them, at that period, even believed that he might avenge heaven by an assassination. Under the guise of a suppliant, this fanatic had easily penetrated into the chamber of the prince; he was already within reach of him, and, while he feigned to implore him, his hand was seeking for the dagger under his clothes, when, fortunately, it dropped and betrayed the assassin, by falling at the feet of the czar.

This abortive crime had made the persecution rage with redoubled fury when, all at once, a frightful report was spread; it was soon confirmed that several hundred of these wretched beings had taken refuge in a church, and, rather than abjure their superstitions, had set fire to their asylum, leaving nothing but their ashes to their persecutor. A horrible sacrifice, which, however, was not useless. Peter saw his error; his intolerance was only political--it was enlightened by these flames, which religious intolerance witnessed with such atrocious joy.

Yet, unable to forgive these sectaries an obstinacy which was victorious over his own, he once more tried against them the weapon of ridicule. He ordered that they should wear a bit of yellow stuff on their backs, to distinguish them from his other subjects. This mark of humiliation, however, they considered as a distinction. Some malignant advisers endeavoured to rouse his anger again, but he replied, “No; I have learned that they are men of pure morals; they are the most upright merchants in the empire; and neither honour nor the welfare of the country will allow of their being martyred for their errors. Besides, that which a degrading badge and force of reason have been unable to effect will never be accomplished by punishment; let them, therefore, live in peace.”

These were remarkable words, and worthy the pupil of Holland and England, worthy of a prince to whom superstition was a most inveterate enemy. In reality, he was a believer, but not credulous; and even while he knelt on the field of victory, he gave thanks to God alone for the reward of so many toils, and could separate the cause of heaven from that of the priests; it was his wish that they should be citizens. We have seen that he subjected them to the same taxes as his other subjects; and because the monks eluded them he diminished their numbers. He unmasked the superstitious impostures of the priests, who all sought to close up every cranny by which the light might have a chance of reaching them.

For this reason, they held St. Petersburg in abhorrence. According to their description of it, this half-built city, by which Russia already aspired to civilisation, was one of the mouths of hell. It was they who obtained from the unfortunate Alexis a promise that it should be destroyed. Their prophecies repeatedly fixed the epoch at which it would be overthrown by the wrath of heaven. The labours upon it were then suspended, for so great was the fear thus inspired that the orders of the terrible czar were issued almost in vain.

On one occasion, these lying priests were for some days particularly active; they displayed one of their sacred images, from which the tears flowed miraculously; it wept the fate which impended over those who dwelt in this new city. “Its hour is at hand,” said they, “and it will be swallowed up, with all its inhabitants, by a tremendous inundation.” On hearing of this miracle of the tears, the treacherous construction which was put upon it, and the perturbation which it occasioned, Peter thought it necessary to hasten to the spot. There, in the midst of the people, who were petrified with terror, and of his tongue-tied court, he seized the miraculous image, and discovered its mechanism; the multitude were stupefied with a pious horror, but he opened their eyes by showing them, in those of the idol, the congealed oil, which was melted by the flame of tapers inside, and then flowed drop by drop through openings artfully provided for the purpose.

[Sidenote: [1719 A.D.]]

At a later period he did still more; the horrible execution of a young Russian by the priests was the cause. This unfortunate man had brought back from Germany a highly valuable knowledge of medicine, and had left there some superstitious prejudices. For this reason all his motions were watched by the priests; and they at last caught up some thoughtless words against their sacred images. They immediately arrested the regenerated young Russian, sentenced him without mercy, and put him to a torturing death. But this individual evil produced a general good. Indignant at their cruelty, Peter deprived the clergy of the right of condemning to death. The priests lost a jurisdiction which they alleged they had possessed for seven centuries, from the time of Vladimir the Great, and thus the source of their power was forever annihilated by this execrable abuse of it.

It was particularly in that sanguinary year, so fatal to the last hope which the old Russians placed in his successor, that Peter seemed in haste to sever them from their ancient customs, by giving an entirely new form to the administration of his empire. As far back as 1711, he had already replaced the old supreme court of the boyars by a senate, a sovereign council, into which merit and services might obtain admission, independent of noble origin. Subsequently, and every year, other changes had been effected. Thus, in 1717, he brought from France, along with a commercial treaty, the institution of a general police. But, in 1718, instead of the old prikaz, he substituted, at one stroke, colleges for foreign affairs, naval affairs, finance, justice, and commerce, and fixed, by a general regulation, and with the utmost minuteness, the functions and privileges of each of them.

At the same time, when capable Russians were not to be found, he appointed his Swedish prisoners, and the most eminent of the foreigners, to fill these administrative and judicial situations. He was careful to give the highest offices to natives, and the second to foreigners, that the native officers might support, against the pride and jealousy of their countrymen, these foreigners who served them as instructors and guides. For the purpose of forming his young nobles for the service of the state, he adjoined a considerable number of them to each college; and there merit alone could raise them from the lowest stations to the first rank.

RENEWED HOSTILITIES WITH SWEDEN (1719-1721 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1719-1720 A.D.]]

The death of Charles XII was immediately followed by a revolution in Sweden. His sister Ulrica Eleonora, who was married to the crown prince of Hesse-Cassel, succeeded him on the throne; but the constitution was changed, the despotic authority of the crown was reduced to a mere shadow, and the queen and her husband became the tools of an oligarchy who usurped all the powers of the state. The czar and the new queen mutually protested their desire for peace; but Peter at the same time announced to the Swedish plenipotentiaries that, if the propositions he had made were not accepted within two months, he would march forty thousand men into Sweden to expedite the negotiations.

A project for the pacification of the north, the very opposite from that conceived by Görtz, was formed by the diet of Brunswick. The concocters of this scheme started from the principle that the German possessions of Sweden were more onerous than profitable to that power, as the occasions of interminable wars. It was resolved, therefore, that they should be abandoned to the powers that had conquered them; but as it was reasonable that the new possessors should purchase the ratification of their titles by some services to the common cause, they were required to aid Sweden in recovering possession of Finland and of Livonia, the granary of that kingdom. Of all the czar’s conquests nothing was to be left to him but St. Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Narva; and, if he refused to assent to this arrangement, all the contracting powers were to unite their forces and compel him to submit. This was one of those brilliant and chimerical schemes with which diplomatists sometimes allow their minds to be so dazzled as not to be convinced of their impracticability until after a lavish waste of blood.

Whilst the allies were in imagination depriving Peter of his conquests, Siniavin, his admiral, took from the Swedes two ships of the line and a brigantine, which were carrying corn to Stockholm. The queen of Sweden, however, encouraged by the promises made her by Lord Carteret, the ambassador of George I, intimated to the czar that she would break off the conferences at Åland if he did not consent to restore all the provinces he had conquered. By way of reply, Peter went in June, 1719, with a fleet of 30 ships, 150 galleys, and 300 barges, carrying in all 40,000 men, to Åland, took up his station for a while under the cliffs of the island of Lämeland, and sent Apraxin to ravage the wastes on the right of Stockholm, whilst Lessy destroyed everything on the left of the city. North and south Telge, Nyköping, Norköping, Osthammer, and Oregrund, together with two small towns, were burned, besides 150 noble mansions, 43 mills, 1,360 villages, 21 copper, iron, and tile works--among the iron works one was worth 300,000 dollars; 100,000 cattle were slaughtered, and 80,000 bars of iron thrown into the sea. The mines were blown up and the woods set on fire, and Stockholm itself was seriously threatened. Meanwhile, the English fleet under Admiral Norris again entered the Baltic. Peter sent a message to the English admiral asking peremptorily whether he came only as a friend to Sweden or as an enemy to Russia. The admiral’s answer was that as yet he had no positive orders. This equivocal reply did not hinder Peter from keeping the sea, and incessantly harassing the Swedes before the eyes of their naval allies.

The Swedish oligarchs and their mock king[43] had reckoned in vain upon the intercession of the English ambassador, and the aid of the admiral and his fleet. Carteret was not even listened to by Peter, and Admiral Norris did not venture to attack the Russians, because he knew that the English nation was dissatisfied with the politics of their king and of his ministers, who favoured his Hanoverian plans. The Swedes were at length obliged to acquiesce in the Russian demands; negotiations for peace were again commenced in Nystad at the end of the year 1720, but their conclusion was only brought about at the close of the following year by the exercise of some further cruelties on the part of the Russians. The Swedes had demanded a cessation of hostilities during the whole time in which the negotiations were pending, but Peter only granted it till May, 1721, in order to compel the council of state to come to a resolution by that time; and as they still procrastinated, the whole coast of Sweden was again plundered and devastated in the month of June.

[Sidenote: [1721 A.D.]]

The Russian incendiaries landed in sight of the English, whose fleet under Admiral Norris, still continued in the Baltic, but did not venture to lend any assistance to the Swedes. The whole coast, from Gefle as far as Umeå, was ravaged; four small towns, nineteen villages, eighty nobles’ and five hundred peasants’ houses burned; twelve iron-works and eight saw-mills destroyed; six galleys and other ships carried away. Peter’s plenipotentiaries at last prevailed--for he so jocularly called his soldiers and sailors who were committing such horrible destruction in Sweden. Negotiations were again opened in Nystad, a small town in Finland, and the war of twenty-one years was closed by a peace dictated by the conquering czar.

The provinces ceded to Russia by the Peace of Nystad (September 10th, 1721) were Livonia, Esthonia, and Karelia, together with Viborg, Kexholm, and the island of Ösel; on the other hand, Peter restored Finland, with the exception of Viborg and Kexholm, and promised to pay two millions of dollars, but in the first years of the peace scarcely paid off half a million.

From this time forward, the despotic sway and military oppression of Russia became the dread of all neighbouring countries and people. All contributed to the external greatness and splendour of the ruler of a barbarous but powerful race of slaves, whom he constrained to adopt the vestments of civilisation. The czar commanded in Poland and Scandinavia, where weak or wicked governments were constantly in dread from the discontent of the people. He also gained an influence in Germany, which ultimately caused no small anxiety to the emperor and the empire. The Russian minister Bestuzhev played the chief part in Sweden in all political affairs, sometimes by counsel and sometimes by threats, sometimes by mediation and sometimes by commands. Bestuzhev was powerful in the Swedish council, and at the same time, in compliance with the wishes of his master, allured artists, artisans, workmen, and all those who had been deprived of occupation or ruined by the late inroads of the Russians, to remove with their tools, manufactures, and trades to Russia. Peter employed these people in all parts of his empire to raise up manufactories, to originate trades, and to set mines and iron-works in action.

The Russian minister spoke in a no less commanding tone in Copenhagen than in Sweden, for Denmark was also frightened by Peter’s threats to adopt and second the cause of the duke of Holstein. The duke was detained in Russia by repeated promises, of whose fulfilment there was little prospect. The Poles, through Russian mediation, were at length reconciled to their king, and the Russians not only kept firm possession of Courland, but remained in Poland itself, under the pretence of preserving the peace of the country. Peter, nevertheless, in his negotiations with Görtz and Charles XII, had showed himself well inclined to sacrifice King Augustus to his plans; but this scheme was frustrated by the death of Charles.

PETER AS ADMINISTRATOR

Peter had now achieved a prodigious amount of external and internal power; yet the original nucleus of it all was nothing more than fifty young companions in debauchery, whom he transformed into soldiers, and the remains of a sailing-boat, which had been left forgotten in a magazine. In twenty-five years this seed, nursed by a skilful and vigorous hand, had, on the one part, produced two hundred thousand men, divided into fifty-five regiments, and cantoned, with three hundred field pieces, in permanent quarters; a body of engineers, and, particularly, of formidable artillerymen; and fourteen thousand pieces of cannon, deposited in a great central establishment, in the fortresses, and three military magazines on the frontiers of the three chief national enemies, the Turks, the Poles, and the Swedes. On the other hand, from the relics of the sailing boat had arisen thirty ships of the line, a proportionate number of frigates and smaller vessels of war, two hundred galleys with sails and oars, and a multitude of experienced mariners.

But with what treasures did Peter undertake the moral and physical transformation of such an extensive empire? We behold an entire land metamorphosed, cities containing a hundred thousand souls, ports, canals, and establishments of all kinds, created; thousands of skilful Europeans attracted, maintained and rewarded; several fleets built, and others purchased; a permanent army of a hundred and twenty thousand men, trained, equipped, provided with every species of arms and ammunition, and several times renewed; subsidies of men and money given to Poland; and four wars undertaken. One of these wars spread over half of Europe and when it lasted twenty-one years the treasury from which it was fed still remained full. And Peter, whose revenues on his accession did not exceed a few hundred thousand pounds, declared to Munich that he could have carried on the war for twenty-one years longer without contracting any debt.

Will order and economy be sufficient to account for these phenomena? We must, doubtless, admire them in the czar, who refused himself every superfluity at the same time that he spared nothing for the improvement of his empire. Much must have been gained when, after having wrested the indirect taxes from the boyars, who were at once civil, military, and financial managers, and from those to whom the boyars sold in portions the collecting of them, Peter, in imitation of Holland, entrusted the finances to committees composed of select merchants. We may also feel less surprised at the increase of his revenue, after we have seen him subjecting to taxation the clergy as well as the laity; suppressing a number of monasteries, by forbidding monastic vows to be taken before the age of fifty; and uniting their estates to the domains of the crown, which were swelled by confiscations, by the reversion of his brother Ivan’s appanage, and by his conquests from the Swedes.

We must remark, at the same time, that he had opened his states to foreign commerce and to the treasures of Europe, which were carried thither to be exchanged for the many raw materials which had hitherto remained valueless; we must consider the augmentation of revenue which necessarily ensued, and the possibility of requiring to be paid in money a multitude of taxes which had previously been paid in kind. Thus, in place of quotas of provisions, which were brought from great distances and were highly oppressive to the people, he substituted a tax; and the sum raised was applied to the payment of contractors. It is true that even under this new system the state was shamefully robbed; for the nobles contrived in secret to get the contracts into their own hands, in order to fatten upon the blood of the people; but Peter at length perceived them; the evil betrayed itself by its own enormity. The czar then created commissions of inquiry, passed whole days in them, and, during several years, keeping these great peculators always in sight, made them disgorge by fines and confiscations, and punished them by the knout, the halter, and the axe.

To this superintendence by the head of the state, which, subsequently to 1715, the contraction of the war within a narrower circle allowed him to exert, let us add the increase of salary to the collectors, which deprived them of all pretext for misconduct. Nor must it be forgotten that most of the stipends were paid in kind; and that, for several years, the war, being carried on out of the empire, supplied its own wants. It must be observed, too, that the cities and provinces in which the troops were afterwards quartered furnished their pay on the spot, by which the charge of discount was saved; and that the measures which they adopted for their subsistence appear to have been municipal, and consequently as little oppressive as possible. Finally, we must remark, in 1721, the substitution, in place of the Tatar house-tax, of a poll-tax, which was a real impost on land, assessed according to a census repeated every twenty years, the payment of which the agriculturists regulated among themselves, in proportion to the value of their produce.

At the same time, the reformer refused to foreigners the privilege of trading with each other in Russia; he even gave to his subjects exclusively the right of conveying to the frontiers of the empire the merchandise which foreigners had bought from them in the interior. Thus he ensured to his own people the profit of carriage. In 1716 he chose rather to give up an advantageous alliance with the English than to relinquish this right in their favour.

But all the causes we have enumerated will not yet account for the possibility of so many gigantic undertakings and such immense results, with a fixed revenue in specie which, in 1715, was estimated by an attentive observer at only some millions of roubles. But in the fiscal expedients of a despotic empire it is to fluctuating revenue, illegal resources, and arbitrary measures that we must direct our attention; astonishment then ceases, and then begins pity for one party, indignation against another, and surprise excited by the ignorance with respect to commercial affairs which is displayed by the high and mighty geniuses of despotism, in comparison with the unerring instinct which is manifested by the humblest community of men who are free.

It is the genius of Russian despotism, therefore, that we must question as to the means by which it produced such gigantic results; but however far it may be disposed to push its frightful candour, will it point out to us its army recruited by men whom the villages sent tied together in pairs, and at their own expense--soldiers at a penny a day, payable every four months, and often marching without pay; slaves whom it was thought quite enough to feed, and who were contented with some handfuls of rye or of oats made into gruel or into ill-baked bread; unfortunate wretches who, in spite of the blunders of their generals, were compelled to be victorious, under pain of being decimated! Or will this despotism confess that, while it gave nothing to these serfs, who were enlisted for life, it required everything from them; that, after twenty-one years of war, it compelled them to dig canals, like miserable bond-slaves? “For they ought to serve their country,” said Peter, “either by defending or enriching it; that is what they are made for.”

Could this autocrat pride himself on the perennial fulness of an exchequer which violated its engagements in such a manner that most of the foreigners who were in his service were anxious to quit it? What answer could he make to that hollow and lengthened groan which, even yet, seems to rise from every house in Taganrog, and in St. Petersburg, and from his forts, built by the most deadly kind of statute-labour, and peopled by requisitions? One half of the inhabitants of the villages were sent to construct them, and were relieved by the other half every six months; and the weakest and the most industrious of them never more saw their homes!

These unfortunate beings, whatever might be their calling, from the common delver to the watchmaker and jeweller, were torn without mercy from their families, their ploughs, their workshops, and their counting-houses. They travelled to their protracted torture at their own expense; they worked without any pay. Some were compelled to fill up swamps, and build houses on them; others, to remove thither suddenly, and establish their trade there; and all these hapless men, one part of whom were bent to the earth with toil, and the other part in a manner lost in a new world, were so badly fed and sheltered, or breathed such a pestilential air, that the Russians of that period used to say that St. Petersburg was built upon a bed of human skeletons.