Chapter VI: Peter the Great (5)

Listen to the complaints of the nobles and the richest merchants: after the gift of a hundred vessels had been required from them, they were forced to unite in this slough to build stone houses, and were also constrained to live there at a much greater expense than they would have incurred in their own homes. And when even the clergy remonstrated against the excessive taxes laid upon the priests (who were able to indemnify themselves out of their flocks) who can be astonished at the possibility of so many creations, and at the plenitude of a treasury which opened so widely to receive and so scantily to disburse?

Personal services, taxes in kind, taxes in money--these were the three main sources of the power of the czar. We have just seen what estimate we ought to form as to the manner in which the first of these was employed. As to the taxes in kind and in money, how could the insulated cries of such a multitude of taxpayers, who were scattered over so wide a space, have reached the present age, if the excess of a simultaneous and universal evil had not blended them into one vast clamour, stronger than time and space? It is from this we learn the names of the throng of taxes which were laid upon everything, and at every opportunity, for the war, the admiralty, the recruiting-service, for the horses used in the public works, for the brick and lime-kilns required in the building of St. Petersburg, for the post-office, the government offices, the extraordinary expenses, for the contributions in kind, for the requisitions of men and their pay and subsistence, and for the salaries of those who were in place; to which must be added innumerable other duties on mills, ponds, baths, beehives, meadows, gardens, and, in the towns, on every square fathom of land which bore the name of black, or non-free. And all this was aggravated by other exorbitant and grinding burdens, and by fleecing the artisans in proportion to their industry and their assumed wealth--the result of which was that they concealed both; the most laborious of them buried their earnings that they might hide them from the nobles; and the nobles intrusted their riches to foreign banks, that they might hide them from the czar.

To this we have yet to add the secondary oppressions; collectors, whose annual pay was, for a long time, only six roubles; and who, nevertheless, accumulated fortunes in four years, for they converted to their own use two thirds of the sums which they extorted; executing by torture whoever was unable to pay, they made the most horrible misuse of the unlimited powers which according to the practice of absolute governments, were necessarily entrusted to them--despotism being unable to act otherwise than by delegation.

These men had the right of levying taxes on all the markets of the country, of laying whatever duties they pleased upon commodities, and of breaking into houses, for the purpose of preventing or discovering infractions of their orders, so that the unfortunate people, finding that they had nought which they could call their own, and that everything, even to their industry, belonged to the czar, ceased to exert themselves for more than a mere subsistence, and lost that spirit which only a man’s personal interest can inspire. Accordingly, the forests were peopled with men driven to desperation, and those who at first remained in the villages, finding that they were obliged to pay the taxes of the fugitives as well as their own, speedily joined their companions.

What can bear witness more strongly to the disordered state of those times than the facts themselves? They show us grandees, who were possessed of the highest credit, repeatedly convicted of embezzling the public money; others hanged or beheaded! and a vice-chancellor himself daring, without any authority, to give places and pensions, and, in so poor a country, contriving to purloin nearly a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It was not, therefore, the czar alone whom the people accused of their sufferings. But such is the tenure of despotism that, in depriving the people of their will, it takes upon itself the whole responsibility. All, however, agree that, about 1715, they beheld their czar astounded at the aspect of such numerous evils; they acknowledge the efforts which he had made, and that all of them had not been fruitless.

But, at the same time, to account for the inexhaustible abundance of the autocrat’s treasury, they represent him to us as monopolising everything for his own benefit, giving to the current coin of his empire the value which suited his purpose, and receiving it from foreigners at no more than its intrinsic worth. They accuse him of having engrossed the purchase or sale of numberless native and foreign productions, either by suddenly taxing various kinds of merchandise or by assuming the right of being the exclusive purchaser, at his own price, to sell again at an exorbitant price when he had become the sole possessor. They say also that, forestalling everything, their czar made himself the sole merchant trading from European Russia to China and Siberia, as well as the sole mint-master, the sole trader in tobacco, soap, talc, pitch, and tar; that having also declared himself the only public-house keeper in an empire where drunkenness held sovereign sway, this monopoly annually brought back into his coffers all the pay that had been disbursed from them.

When, in 1716, he wished to defray the expenses of his second journey to Holland, and at the same time avoid being a loser by the rate of exchange, what was the plan which he adopted? He laid hands on all the leather intended for exportation, which he paid for at a maximum fixed by himself, and then exported it on his own account, the proceeds being made payable in Holland, where it was purchased by foreigners.

It is thus that many of his contemporaries explain the riches of a prince who was the principal manufacturer and merchant of a great empire--the creator, the superintendent of its arts. In his eyes, his subjects were nothing more than workmen, whose labours he prompted, estimated, and rewarded according to his own pleasure; he reserved to himself the sale of the produce of their industry, and the immense profits which he thus gained he employed in doubling that produce.

What a singular founder of commerce in his empire was a monarch who drew it all within his own sphere and absorbed it in himself! We may, however, be allowed to believe that he sometimes became a merchant and manufacturer, as he became a soldier and a sailor, for the sake of example, and that the obstinate repugnance of his ignorant subjects to many branches of industry and commerce long compelled him to retain the monopoly of them, whether he would or not. It is curious to remark how his despotism recoiled upon himself when he interfered with matters so impatient of arbitrary power as trade and credit. Soloviev is an example of this. Assisted by the privileges which Peter had granted to him, that merchant succeeded in establishing at Amsterdam the first commercial Russian factory that had ever been worthy of notice; but in 1717, when the czar visited Holland for the second time, his greedy courtiers irritated him against their fellow countryman. Soloviev had not chosen to ransom himself from the envy which his riches inspired. They therefore slandered him to their sovereign; he was arrested and sent back to Russia; his correspondents lost their advances; confidence was ruined, and the autocrat, by confiscating this source of riches, destroyed his work with his own hand. Yet he had a glimpse of something like free-trade principles. He would never impose any higher penalty on smuggling than confiscation. “Commerce,” he said, “is like a timid maiden, who is scared by rough usage, and must be won by gentle means. Smuggle who will, and welcome. The merchant who exposes himself to the chance of having his goods confiscated runs a greater risk than my treasury. If he cheats me nine times and I catch him the tenth, I shall be no loser by the game.”

_The Church and the Aristocracy_

Peter had never been at any pains to conceal his indifference or contempt for the national church; but it was not until that culminating point in his history at which we are now arrived that he ventured to accomplish his design of abolishing the office of patriarch. He had left it unfilled for one-and-twenty years, and he formally suppressed it after the conclusion of the Peace of Nystad; when heaven had declared in his favour, as it seemed to the multitude, who always believe the Deity to be on the strongest side. In the following year, however, the synod, in spite of Theophanes, its president, whom we may consider as his minister for religious affairs, dared to desire that a patriarch might be appointed. But bursting into a sudden passion Peter started up, struck his breast violently with his hand and the table with his cutlass, and exclaimed, “Here, here is your patriarch!” He then hastily quitted the room, casting, as he departed, a stern look upon the panic-struck prelates.

Of the two conquests which Peter consummated about the same time--that over Sweden and that by which he annihilated the independence of the Russian clergy--it is hard to say which was the more gratifying to his pride. Someone having communicated to him the substance of a paper in the English _Spectator_, in which a comparison was made between himself and Louis XIV, entirely to his own advantage, he disclaimed the superiority accorded to him by the essayist, save in one particular: “Louis XIV,” said he, “was greater than I, except that I have been able to reduce my clergy to obedience, while he allowed his clergy to rule him.”

Soon after the abolition of the patriarchate, Peter celebrated the marriage of Buturlin, the second _kniaz papa_ of his creation, with the widow of Sotov, his predecessor in that mock dignity. The bridegroom was in his eighty-fifth year, and the bride nearly of the same age. The messengers who invited the wedding guests were four stutterers; some decrepit old men attended the bride; the running footmen were four of the most corpulent fellows that could be found; the orchestra was placed on a sledge drawn by bears, which being goaded with iron spikes made with their horrid roarings an accompaniment suitable to the tunes played on the sledge. The nuptial benediction was given in the cathedral by a blind and deaf priest with spectacles on. The procession, the marriage, the wedding feast, the undressing of the bride and bridegroom, the ceremony of putting them to bed were all in the same style of repulsive buffoonery. Among the coarse-minded courtiers this passed for an ingenious derision of the clergy.

The nobles were another order in the state whose resistance, though more passive than that of the clergy, was equally insufferable to the czar. His hand had always been heavy against that stiff-necked race. He had no mercy upon their indolence and superstition, no toleration for their pride of birth or wealth. As landed proprietors he regarded them merely as the possessors of fiefs, who held them by the tenure of being serviceable to the state. Such was the spirit of the law of 1715 relative to inheritances, which till then had been equally divided; but from that date the real estate was to descend to one of the males, the choice of whom was left to the father, while only the personal property was to pass to the other children. In this respect the law was favourable to paternal authority and aristocracy; but its real purpose was rendered obvious by other clauses. It decreed that the inheritors of personal property should not be permitted to convert it into real estate until after seven years of military service, ten years of civil service, or fifteen years’ profession of some kind of art or of commerce. Nay, more, if we may rely on the authority of Perry, every heir of property to the amount of five hundred roubles, who had not learned the rudiments of his native language or of some ancient or foreign language, was to forfeit his inheritance.

The great nobles had ere this been shorn of their train of boyar followers, or noble domestics, by whom they were perpetually attended, and these were transformed into soldiers, disciplined in the European manner. At the same time several thousand cavalry were formed out of the sons of the priests, who were free men, but not less ignorant and superstitious than their fathers. Against the inertness of the nobles, too, Peter made war even in the sanctuary of their families. Every one of them between the ages of ten and thirty, who evaded an enlistment which was termed voluntary, was to have his property confiscated to the use of the person by whom he was denounced. The sons of the nobles were arbitrarily wrested from them; some were placed in military schools; others were sent to unlearn their barbarian manners and acquire new habits and knowledge among polished nations; many of them were obliged to keep up a correspondence with the czar on the subject of what they were learning; on their return, he himself questioned them, and if they were found not to have benefited by their travels, disgrace and ridicule were their punishment. Given up to the czar’s buffoon, they became the laughing-stocks of the court, and were compelled to perform the most degrading offices in the palace. These were the tyrannical punishments of a reformer who managed that he might succeed in doing violence to nature by beginning education at an age when it ought to be completed, and by subjecting grown-up men to chastisements which would scarcely be bearable for children.

It is with reason that Mannstein reproaches Peter with having expected to transform, by travels in polished countries, men who were already confirmed in their habits, and who were steeped to the core in ignorance, sloth, and barbarism. “The greatest part of them,” he says, “acquired nothing but vices.” This it was which drew upon Peter a lesson from his sage; for such was the appellation which he gave to Dolgoruki. That senator having pertinaciously, and without assigning any reason, maintained that the travels of the Russian youth would be useless, made no other reply to an impatient and passionate contradiction from the despot than to fold the ukase in silence, run his nail forcibly along it, and then desire the autocrat to try whether, with all his power, he could ever obliterate the crease that was made in the paper.

[Sidenote: [1722 A.D.]]

At last, by his ukase of January 24th, 1722, Peter annihilated the privileges of the old Russian aristocracy, and under the specious pretext of making merit the only source of social distinction, he created a new order of nobility, divided into eight military and as many civil grades, all immediately and absolutely dependent on the czar. The only favour allowed to the old landed aristocracy was that they were not deprived of the right of appearing at court; but none of them could obtain the rank and appointments of an officer, nor, in any company, the respect and distinctions exclusively belonging to that rank, until they had risen to it by actual service. Such was the fundamental principle of that notorious system called the _tchin_;[44] and plausible as it may appear upon a superficial view, it has been fruitful of nothing but hideous tyranny, corruption, chicanery, and malversation. The modern nobility of Russia is in fact but a vile bureaucracy. The only thing truly commendable in the ukase of 1722 is that it degrades to the level of the rabble every nobleman convicted of crime and sentenced to a punishment that ought to entail infamy. Previously, as the reader has already seen, a nobleman might appear unabashed in public, and claim all the privileges of his birth, with his back still smarting from the executioner’s lash.

_Commerce with the East_

Peter had always encountered great difficulty in attracting to St. Petersburg the commerce of central Russia, which the merchants obstinately persisted in throwing away upon Archangel. Yet at St. Petersburg they enjoyed several privileges, and a milder climate allowed of two freights a year, while at Archangel the ice would admit of only one. To this must be added the advantage of a calmer sea, a better port, lower duties, a much shorter distance, and a much larger concourse of purchasers; but no persuasion could make the Russians abandon the old routine, until at last Peter treated them like ignorant and stubborn children, to whom he would do good in spite of themselves. In 1722 he expressly prohibited the carrying of any goods to Archangel but such as belonged to the district of that government. This ordinance at first raised a great outcry among the traders, both native and foreign, and caused several bankruptcies; but the merchants, accustoming themselves by degrees to come to St. Petersburg, at last found themselves gainers by the change.

The trade with the Mongols and Chinese had been jeopardised by the extortions of Prince Gagarin, the governor of Siberia, and by acts of violence committed by the Russians in Peking and in the capital of Contaish, the prince pontiff of a sect of dissenters from Lamaism. To check the growth of this evil, Peter sent Ismailov, a captain in the guards, to Peking, with presents to the emperor, among which were several pieces of turnery, the work of his own hands. The negotiation was successful; but the Russians soon lost the fruits of it by fresh acts of indiscretion, and were expelled from China by order of Kam-hi. The Russian court alone retained the right of sending a caravan every three years to Peking; but that right again was subsequently lost in consequence of new quarrels. The court finally renounced its exclusive privilege, and granted the subjects leave to trade freely on the Kiakhta.

WAR WITH PERSIA (1722-1724 A.D.)

Peter’s attention had long been directed to the Caspian Sea with a view to making it more extensively subservient to the trade of Russia with Persia and central Asia, which as yet had been carried on at Astrakhan alone, through the medium of Armenian factors. Soon after the Peace of Nystad had left the czar free to carry his arms towards the East, a pretext and an opportunity were afforded him for making conquests on the Caspian shores. The Persian Empire was falling to pieces under the hand of the enervated and imbecile Husain Shah. The Lesghiians, one of the tributary nations that had rebelled against him, made an inroad into the province of Shirvan, sacked the city of Shemakha, put the inhabitants to the sword, including three hundred Russian traders, and plundered Russian property to the amount of 4,000,000 roubles. Peter demanded satisfaction; the shah was willing to grant it, but pleaded his helpless condition, and entreated the czar to aid him in subduing his rebellious subjects.

This invitation was promptly accepted. Peter set out for Persia on the 15th of May, 1722, his consort also accompanying him on this remote expedition. He fell down the Volga as far as the city of Astrakhan, and occupied himself in examining the works for the canals that were to join the Caspian, Baltic, and White seas, whilst he awaited the arrival of his forces and material of war. His army consisted of twenty-two thousand foot, nine thousand dragoons, and fifteen thousand Cossacks, besides three thousand sailors on board the several vessels, who, in making a descent, could do the duty of soldiers. The cavalry marched by land through deserts, which are frequently without water; and beyond those deserts, they were to pass the mountains of Caucasus, where three hundred men might keep a whole army at bay; but Persia was in such anarchy that anything might be attempted.

The czar sailed above a hundred leagues southward from Astrakhan, as far as the small fortified town of Andreeva, which was easily taken. Thence the Russian army advanced by land into the province of Daghestan; and manifestoes in the Persian and Russian language were everywhere dispersed. It was necessary to avoid giving any offence to the Ottoman Porte, which besides its subjects, the Circassians and Georgians, bordering on this country, had in these parts some considerable vassals, who had lately put themselves under its protection. Among them, one of the principal was Mahmud D’Utmich, who styled himself sultan, and had the presumption to attack the troops of the emperor of Russia. He was totally defeated, and the public account says “his country was made a bonfire.”

In the middle of September, Peter reached Derbent, by the Persians and Turks called _Demir-kapu_, _i.e._ Iron Gate, because it had formerly such a gate towards the south; it is a long narrow town, backed against a steep spur of the Caucasus; and its walls, at the other end, are washed by the sea, which, in stormy weather, is often known to break over them. These walls may be justly accounted one of the wonders of antiquity; they were forty feet high and six broad; flanked with square towers at intervals of fifty feet. The whole work seemed one single piece, being built of a kind of brown free-stone, and a mortar of pounded shells, the whole forming a mass harder than marble itself; it was accessible by sea, but, on the land side, seemed impregnable. Near it were the ruins of an old wall, like that of China, unquestionably built in times of the earliest antiquity; it was carried from the Caspian to the Black Sea, and probably was a rampart thrown up by the ancient kings of Persia against the numerous barbarian hordes dwelling between those two seas. There were formerly three or four other Caspian gates at different passages, and all apparently built for the same end; the nations west, east, and north of this sea having ever been formidable barbarians; and from these parts principally issued those swarms of conquerors which subdued Asia and Europe.

On the approach of the Russian army, the governor of Derbent, instead of standing a siege, laid the keys of the city at the emperor’s feet--whether it was that he thought the place not tenable against such a force, or that he preferred the protection of the emperor Peter to that of the Afghan rebel Mahmud. Thus the army quietly took possession of Derbent, and encamped along the sea-shore. The usurper Mahmud, who had already made himself master of a great part of Persia, had neglected nothing to be beforehand with the czar and hinder him from getting into Derbent; he raised the neighbouring Tatars, and hastened thither himself; but Derbent was already in the czar’s hands.

[Sidenote: [1723 A.D.]]

Peter was unable to extend his conquests further, for the vessels with provisions, stores, horses, and recruits had been wrecked near Astrakhan; and as the unfavourable season had now set in he returned to Moscow and entered it in triumph (January 5th, 1723), though he had no great reason to boast of the success of his ill-planned expedition.

Persia was still divided between Husain and the usurper Mahmud; the former sought the support of the emperor of Russia; the latter feared him as an avenger who would wrest from him all the fruits of his rebellion. Mahmud used every endeavour to stir up the Ottoman Porte against Peter. With this view, he sent an embassy to Constantinople; and the Daghestan princes, under the sultan’s protection, having been dispossessed of their dominions by the arms of Russia, solicited revenge. The Divan were also under apprehensions for Georgia, which the Turks considered part of their dominions. The sultan was on the point of declaring war, when the courts of Vienna and Paris diverted him from that measure. The emperor of Germany made a declaration that if the Turks attacked Russia he should be obliged to join in its defence; and the marquis de Bonac, ambassador from France at Constantinople, seconded the German menaces; he convinced the Porte that their own interest required them not to suffer the usurper of Persia to set an example of dethroning sovereigns, and that the Russian Empire had done no more than the sultan should have done.

During these critical negotiations, the rebel Mahmud had advanced to the gates of Derbent, and laid waste all the neighbouring countries, in order to distress the Russians. That part of ancient Hyrcania, now known by the name of Ghilan, was not spared, which so irritated the people that they voluntarily put themselves under the protection of the Russians. Herein they followed the example of the shah himself, who had sent to implore the assistance of Peter the Great; but the ambassador was scarcely on the road ere the rebel Mahmud seized on Ispahan, and the person of his sovereign. Thamaseb, son of the captive shah, escaped, and getting together some troops fought a battle with the usurper. He was not less eager than his father in urging Peter the Great to protect him, and sent to the ambassador a renewal of the instructions which the shah Husain had given.

Though this Persian ambassador, named Ismail Beg, was not yet arrived, his negotiation had succeeded. On his landing at Astrakhan, he heard that General Matufkin was on his march with fresh troops to reinforce the Daghestan army. The town of Baku, from which the Persians called the Caspian Sea, the sea of Baku, was not yet taken. He gave the Russian general a letter to the inhabitants, exhorting them, in his master’s name, to submit to the emperor of Russia; the ambassador continued his journey to St. Petersburg, and General Matufkin went and sat down before the city of Baku. The Persian ambassador reached the czar’s court at the same time as the news of the surrender of that city (August, 1723).

Baku is situated near Shemakha, where the Russian factors were massacred; and although in wealth and number of people inferior to it, is very famous for its naphtha, with which it supplies all Persia. Never was treaty sooner concluded than that of Ismail Beg. The emperor Peter, desirous of revenging the death of his subjects, engaged to march an army into Persia, in order to assist Thamaseb against the usurper; and the new shah ceded to him, besides the cities of Baku and Derbent, the provinces of Ghilan, Mazandaran, and Astarabath.

Ghilan, as we have already noticed, is the southern Hyrcania; Mazandaran, which is contiguous to it, is the country of the Mardi; Astarabath borders on Mazandaran; and these were the three principal provinces of the ancient kings of the Medes. Thus Peter by his arms and treaties came to be master of Cyrus’ first monarchy; but this proved to be but a barren conquest, and the empress Anna was glad to surrender it thirteen years afterwards in exchange for some commercial advantages.

So calamitous was the state of Persia that the unhappy sophy Thamaseb wandering about his kingdom, pursued by the rebel Mahmud, the murderer of his father and brothers, was reduced to supplicate both Russia and Turkey at the same time, that they would take one part of his dominions to preserve the other for him. At last it was agreed between the emperor Peter, the sultan Achmet III, and the sophy Thamaseb, that Russia should hold the three provinces above mentioned, and that the Porte should have Kasbin, Tauris, and Erivan, besides what it should take from the usurper.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF PETER

[Sidenote: [1723-1724 A.D.]]

Peter, at his return from his Persian expedition, was more than ever the arbiter of the north. He openly took into his protection the family of Charles XII, after having been eighteen years his declared enemy. He invited to his court the duke of Holstein, that monarch’s nephew, to whom he betrothed his eldest daughter, and from that time prepared to assert his rights on the duchy of Schleswig-Holstein, and even bound himself to it in a treaty which he concluded with Sweden (February, 1724). He also obtained from that power the title of royal highness for his son-in-law, which was a recognition of his right to the throne, should King Frederick die without issue. Meanwhile he held Copenhagen in awe of his fleet, and ruled there through fear, as he did in Stockholm and Warsaw.

The state of Peter’s health now warned him that his end was near; yet still he delayed to exercise the right of naming a successor, which he had arrogated to himself in 1722. The only step he took which might be interpreted as an indication of his wishes in that respect was the act of publicly crowning his consort Catherine. The ceremony was performed at Moscow (May 18th, 1724) in the presence of the czar’s niece, Anna, duchess of Courland, and of the duke of Holstein, his intended son-in-law. The manifesto published by Peter on this occasion deserves notice; after stating that it was customary with Christian monarchs to crown their consorts, and instancing among the orthodox Greek emperors Basilides, Justinian, Heraclius, and Leo the Philosopher, he goes on to say:

“It is also known how far we have exposed our own person, and faced the greatest dangers in our country’s cause, during the whole course of the last war, twenty-one years successively, and which, by God’s assistance, we have terminated with such honour and advantage, that Russia never saw a like peace, nor gained that glory which has accrued to it by this war. The empress Catherine, our dearly beloved consort, was of great help to us in all these dangers, not only in the said war but likewise in other expeditions, in which, notwithstanding the natural weakness of her sex, she voluntarily accompanied us, and greatly assisted us with her advice, particularly at the battle of the river Pruth against the Turks, where our army was reduced to 22,000 men, and that of the Turks consisted of 270,000. It was in this desperate exigency that she especially signalised a zeal and fortitude above her sex; and to this all the army and the whole empire can bear witness. For these causes, and in virtue of the power which God hath given us, we have resolved, in acknowledgment of all her fatigues and good offices, to honour our consort with the imperial crown, which, by God’s permission, shall be accomplished this winter at Moscow; and of this resolution we hereby give notice to all our faithful subjects, our imperial affection towards whom is unalterable.”

In this manifesto nothing was said of the empress’ succeeding to the throne; but the nation were in some degree prepared for that event by the ceremony itself, which was not customary in Russia, and which was performed with sumptuous splendour. A circumstance which might further cause Catherine to be looked upon as the presumptive successor was that the czar himself, on the coronation day, walked before her on foot, as first knight of the order of St. Catherine, which he had instituted in 1714 in honour of his consort. In the cathedral he placed the crown on her head with his own hand. Catherine would then have fallen on her knees, but he raised her up, and when she came out of the cathedral the globe and sceptre were carried before her.

It was not long before Peter was with difficulty restrained from sending to the block the head on which he had but lately placed the crown. We have already mentioned that the enmity of his first wife is said to have sprung from her jealousy of Anne de Moens, who was for awhile the czar’s mistress, and whom, as Villebois tells us, he had serious thoughts of raising to the throne. But she submitted to his passion only through fear, and Peter, disgusted with her coldness towards him, left her to follow her inclinations in marrying a less illustrious lover. Five-and-twenty years afterwards Eudoxia was avenged through the brother of her rival. Anne de Moens, then the widow of General Balk, was about the person of Catherine, and the handsome and graceful young Moens de la Croix was her chamberlain. A closer intimacy soon arose between them, and so unguarded were they that Villebois, who saw them together only in public during a very crowded reception at court, says that their conduct was such as left no doubt on his mind that the empress was guilty. The czar’s suspicions were roused, and he set spies upon Catherine.

The court was then at Peterhof; Prince Repnin, president of the war department, slept not far from the czar; it was two o’clock in the morning; all at once the marshal’s door was violently thrown open, and he was startled by abrupt and hasty footsteps: he looked round in astonishment; it was Peter the Great; the monarch was standing by the bedside; his eyes sparkled with rage, and all his features were distorted with convulsive fury. Repnin tells us that at the sight of that terrible aspect he was appalled, gave himself up for lost, and remained motionless; but his master, with a broken and panting voice, exclaimed to him, “Get up! speak to me! there’s no need to dress yourself”; and the trembling marshal obeyed.

He then learned that, but the instant before, guided by too faithful a report, the czar had suddenly entered Catherine’s apartment; that the crime was revealed, the ingratitude proved; that at daybreak the empress should lose her head--that the emperor was resolved!

The marshal, gradually recovering his voice, agreed that such a monstrous act of treachery was horrible; but he reminded his master of the fact that the crime was as yet known to no one, and of the impolicy of making it public; then, growing bolder, he dared to call to recollection the massacre of the strelitz, and that every subsequent year had been ensanguined by executions; that, in fine, after the imprisonment of his sister, the condemning of his son to death, and the scourging and imprisonment of his first wife, if he should likewise cut off the head of his second, Europe would no longer look upon him in any other light than that of a ferocious prince, who thirsted for the blood of his subjects and even of those who were a part of himself. Besides, he added, the czar might have satisfaction by giving up Moens to the sword of the law upon other charges; and as to the empress, he could find means to rid himself of her without any prejudice to his glory.

While Repnin was thus advising, the czar, who stood motionless before him, gazed upon him intently and wildly, and kept a gloomy silence. But in a short time, as was the case when he was labouring under strong emotions, his head was twisted to the left side, and his swollen features became convulsively contracted--signs of the terrible struggle by which he was tortured. And yet the excessive working of his mind held his body in a state of frightful immovability. At length, he rushed precipitately out of the chamber into the adjoining room. For two whole hours he hastily paced it; then suddenly entering again like a man who had made up his mind, he said to Repnin, “Moens shall die immediately! I will watch the empress so closely that her first slip shall cost her life!”

Moens and his sister were at once arrested. They were both confined in the winter palace, in an apartment to which none had admission except the emperor himself, who carried them their food. At the same time a report was spread that the brother and the sister had been bribed by the enemies of the country, in hopes of bringing the empress to act upon the mind of the czar prejudicially to the interests of Russia. Moens was interrogated by the monarch in presence of General Uschakov; and after having confessed whatever they pleased, he lost his head on the block (November 27th). At the same time his sister, who was an accomplice in the crime and a favourite of Catherine, received the knout, and was banished to Siberia; her property was confiscated; her two sons were degraded and were sent to a great distance, on the Persian frontier, as private soldiers.

Moens walked to meet his fate with manly firmness. He always wore a diamond bracelet, to which was a miniature of Catherine; but, as it was not perceived at the time of his being seized, he found means to conceal it under his garter; and when he was on the scaffold he confided this secret to the Lutheran pastor who accompanied him, and under cover of his cloak slipped the bracelet into his hand to restore it to the empress.

The czar was a spectator of the punishment of Moens from one of the windows of the senate. The execution being over, he got upon the scaffold, took the head of Moens by the hair, and expressed with brutal energy how delighted he was with the vengeance he had taken. The same day Peter had the cruelty to conduct Catherine in an open carriage round the stake on which was fixed the head of her unfortunate lover. He watched her countenance attentively, but fortunately she had self-command enough not to betray her grief. Repnin adds that, from that dreadful night till his death, Peter never more spoke to the empress except in public, and that, in his dwelling, he always remained separate from her.[e]

[Sidenote: [1725 A.D.]]

Peter the Great only lived to his fifty-third year. In spite of frequent attacks of illness and of his calling himself an old man, the emperor might have hoped to live yet a long while and to be able to dispose of his great inheritance in accordance with the interests of the state. But his days were already numbered. When Peter came to St. Petersburg in March, 1723, on his return from Persia, he appeared in much better health than before the campaign; in the summer of 1724 he became very weak, but in the second half of September he grew visibly better, walked at times in his gardens, and sailed on the Neva. On the 22nd of September he had a very severe attack; it is said that he fell into such a state of irritation that he struck the doctors and called them asses; afterwards he again became better, and on the 29th of September he was present at the launching of a frigate, although he told the Dutch minister Wild that he still felt rather weak. In spite of this he set off in the beginning of October to inspect the Ladoga canal, against the advice of his doctor Blumentrost; then he went to the Olonetz iron works and hammered out with his own hands a bar of iron of the weight of three pouds;[45] from there he went to Starya Rusa to inspect the salt works, and in the beginning of November he went by water to St. Petersburg. But there, at a place called Lakta, he saw that a boat coming from Kronstadt with soldiers had run aground; he allowed no one to restrain him, but went himself to their assistance and helped to float the boat and save the people, standing up to his waist in the water. The attacks were speedily renewed; Peter arrived at St. Petersburg ill and could not regain his health; the affair of Mons also aggravated his condition. He occupied himself but little with affairs, although he showed himself as usual in public. On the 17th of January, 1725, the malady increased; Peter ordered that a movable church should be constructed near his sleeping room and on the 22nd he made his confession and received the sacrament; his strength began to leave him, he no longer cried out as before from the violence of the pain but only groaned. On the 27th all criminals were pardoned who had been condemned to death or to the galleys according to the articles of war, excepting those guilty of the first two offences against the law--murder and repeated robbery; the noblemen who had not appeared at the military reviews at the appointed time were also pardoned. On that day, at the expiration of the second hour, Peter asked for paper and tried to write, but the pen fell out of his hand; of that which he had written only the words “give up everything” could be deciphered; he then ordered his daughter Anna Petrovna to be called so that she might write under his dictation, but he could not pronounce the words. The following day, the 28th of January, at the beginning of the sixth hour after midnight, Peter the Great was no more. Catherine was almost unceasingly with him, and it was she who closed his eyes.

In terrible physical sufferings, in full recognition of the weakness of humanity, asking for the comfort afforded by religion, died the greatest of historical workers. We have already spoken in the proper place of how the work of Peter was prepared by all preceding history; how it necessarily proceeded from the same; how it was required by the people, who by means of a tremendous revolution in their existence and customs, by means of an extraordinary effort of strength, had to be brought forth from their hopeless condition into a new way, a new life. But this in nowise diminishes the greatness of the man who in the accomplishment of so difficult an exploit lent his mighty hand to a great nation, and by the extraordinary power of his will strained all her forces and gave direction to the movement.

SOLOVIEV’S ESTIMATE OF PETER’S WORK

Revolutionary epochs constitute a critical time for the life of nations, and such was the epoch of the reformation of Peter. Complaints of the great burdens were to be heard from all sides--and not without cause. The Russian knew no rest from recruiting: recruiting for painful, ceaseless military service in the infantry, and for the newly created naval service; recruiting of workmen for new and difficult labour in distant and unattractive places; recruiting of scholars for the schools, and of young men to be sent to study abroad. For the army and for the fleet, for the great works and undertakings, for the schools and the hospitals, for the maintenance of diplomats and diplomatic bribery, money was necessary. But there was no money in the impoverished state, and heavy taxes in money and in kind had to be levied upon all; in necessary cases they were deducted from the salaries; well-to-do people were ruined by the construction of houses in St. Petersburg; everything that could be taken was taken, or farmed out; the poor people had one object of luxury--oak coffins; but these were confiscated by the fiscus and sold at a high price; _raskolniki_ (dissenters) had to pay double taxes; the bearded had to pay for the privilege of wearing their beards. Orders upon orders were issued; men were to seek for ores and minerals, and for dye-stuffs; they were to tend their sheep not as they had previously done, to dress the skins differently, to build boats in a new way, to dare weave no narrow pieces of cloth, to take their goods to the west instead of to the north.[46] New government centres were created, new courts established, the people did not know where to turn, the members of these new institutions and courts did not know how to go about their novel duties, and official papers were sent from one place to another.

The standing army pressed heavily on the unarmed population. People tried to escape from the hard service and hide themselves, but all were not successful, and cruel punishments threatened the disobedient. Illiterate nobles were forbidden to marry. Meanwhile beneath the new French frocks and wigs there was the old coarseness of manners; the same want of respect for human dignity in oneself and in others; the same hideous drunkenness and noisy brawling with which every festivity was terminated. Woman was brought into the society of men, but she was not surrounded with the respect due to her sex and obligations; pregnant women were made to drink to excess. The members of the highest institutions quarrelled and abused each other in the coarsest manner; bribery was as bad as before; the weak were subjected to every violence from the strong, and, as formerly, the noble was permitted to oppress the _moujik_ (peasant), the well-born the base-born.

But this is only one side: there is another. The people were passing through a hard school--the stern teacher was not sparing in punishments for the idle and those who violated the regulations; but the matter was not limited to threats and punishments alone. The people were really learning, learning not only figures and geometry, not only in Russian and foreign schools; the people were learning the duties of citizens, the work of citizens. At the emission of every important regulation, at the inauguration of every great reform, the lawgiver explains why he acts thus, why the new is better than the old. The Russians then received such instruction for the first time; what now seems to us so simple and within the reach of all was first learned by these people from the edicts and manifestoes of Peter the Great.

For the first time the mind of the Russian was awakened, his attention directed to the great questions of political and social organisation; whether he turned sympathisingly or unsympathisingly to the words and deeds of the czar was a matter of indifference--he was obliged to think over these words and deeds, and they were continually there to arouse him. That which might have ruined a decrepit society, a people incapable of development--the shocks of the epoch of reforms, the utter restlessness--developed the forces of a vigorous young nation which had been long asleep and required a violent shock to awaken it. And there was much to be learned. Above was the governing senate, the synod; everywhere was collegiate organisation, the advantages of which were set forth in the church statutes. Everywhere the principle of election was introduced. The trade guilds were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the local governors and given their own independent administration. Peter’s whole system of government was directed against the chief evils from which ancient Russia had suffered: the immaturity of forces, the want of a public spirit, the lack of independence of action, the absence of initiative capacity. The former council of the czar (_douma_) had suffered from all the deficiencies enumerated. Peter established the senate, to which fidelity had to be sworn and the ukases of which had to be obeyed as the ukases of the czar himself. Peter was not jealous of the power created by him: he did not limit it; but on the contrary he continually and without ceremony required that it should profit by its importance, that it should really be a governing body. Peter’s reproaches and rebukes to the senate were directed against its slowness, its languor, its want of management, and its inability to carry its decrees into immediate effect. The Russian of former times who had received a commission from the government went about in leading strings. He was not trusted, his smallest movement was feared, he was swathed like a child in long detailed instructions, and upon every fresh occasion that presented itself and was not defined in the instructions, the grown up child required teaching. This habit of asking for orders greatly angered Peter: “Act according to your own consideration, how can I tell you from such a distance!” he wrote to those who asked him for instructions. He employed the collegiate system--whether he had met with it in the west or whether it had been advised by Leibnitz is a matter of indifference; he employed it everywhere as the most powerful method of training the Russian people to unrestrained public activity. Instead of separate individuals, institutions came to the front, and over all rose the state, the real significance of which the people of Russia now learned for the first time when they had to take the oath.

Having set forth the importance of the state, and demanding that heavy sacrifices should be made, to this new divinity, himself giving the example, he nevertheless took measures that the individual should not be crushed, but should receive the requisite, balancing development. The first place must here naturally be given to the civilisation introduced by Peter, to the acquaintance with other nations in advance of Russia. We know that before the time of Peter the bond of the family was powerfully maintained in Russia; its prolonged existence is easily explained by the condition of society, which was unable to safeguard its members, and who were therefore obliged to seek security in private associations, chief among which was the natural blood relationship between members of the same family or clan. The elder protected the younger, and had power over them because they had to answer to the government for them. It was thus in every sphere of society; the independent Russian never presented himself alone, but always accompanied by his brothers and nephews; to be without clan and family was equivalent to being in the utmost poverty. It is easy to understand that the clan association hindered the development of personality; the state could not give to personal merit power over clan rights; jealous to the last degree of any insult to the honour of his clan, the ancient Russian was indifferent to his own personal honour. But by the end of the seventeenth century the demands of the state had so increased that the unity of the clan could not withstand them, and the destruction of precedence (_mestnitchestov_) struck a blow to the clan bond in the highest class of society, among those in the service of the czar. The reform of Peter struck a final blow by its decided, exclusive attention to personal merit, by raising persons “above their old parents” (that is, their kinsfolk), by bringing into the service a large number of foreigners; it became advantageous for new men to appear to have no clan relations, and many of them began willingly to trace their origin from foreign countries.

As to the lower ranks of the population, the blow to the clan bond was brought about by the poll-tax; the former expression, “such a one with his brothers and nephews,” began to disappear, for the brothers and nephews had to pay separately each for himself, and appeared as separate, independent individuals. And not only did the former clan relations disappear, but even within the family itself, while requiring the deepest respect from children to their parents,[47] Peter recognised the right of the individual, and enjoined that marriages should be celebrated by the agreement of the children, and not by the will of their parents; the right of the person was also recognised in the bond-servant, for the landowner had to swear that he would not compel his peasants to marry against their will. We have heard the dispassionate declaration of a contemporary Russian as to the corruption of persons in the service of the czars in the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, of their indifference to honour, so that amongst them the shameful saying was current: “Flight may be dishonourable, but it is salutary.” Under Peter this saying was extirpated, and he himself testified that in the second half of the Northern War flight from the field of battle had ceased. Finally the personality of woman was recognised in consequence of her liberation from the _terem_.[48]

Thus were the people of Russia trained in the stern school of reform. The terrible labour and privations they endured were not in vain. A vast and comprehensive programme was traced out for many future years, not on paper but on the earth which must open up its riches to the Russian, who through science had acquired the full right of disposing of it; on the sea, where the Russian fleet had now appeared; on the rivers, united by canals; it was traced out in the state by the new institutions and regulations; it was traced out in the people by the new civilisation, by the enlarging of its mental sphere, by the rich stores of mental food furnished by the west, now disclosed to his view, and by the new world created within Russia herself. The greater part of all this was only in its beginnings; the rest in rough outline--for much only the materials were prepared, only indications made; and therefore we have called the work of the epoch of reform a programme, which Russia is fulfilling until now, and will continue to fulfil, and any deviation from which has always been accompanied by grievous consequences.