[10] "La France n'avait eu encore aucune correspondance avec la Russie; on ne le connaissait pas; et l'Académie des Inscriptions célébra par une médaille cette ambassade, comme si elle fut venue des Indes."—Histoire de l'Empire de Russie, sous Pierre le Grand, page 93.
PETER THE GREAT.
From 1697 to 1702.
Young Russians Sent to Foreign Countries.—The Tzar Decides Upon a
Tour of Observation.—His Plan of Travel.—Anecdote.—Peter's Mode of
Life in Holland.—Characteristic Anecdotes.—The Presentation of the
Embassador.—The Tzar Visits England.—Life at Deptford.—Illustrious
Foreigners Engaged in His Service.—Peter Visits Vienna.—The Game of
Landlord.—Insurrection in Moscow.—Return of the Tzar, and Measures
of Severity.—War with Sweden.—Disastrous Defeat of Narva.—Efforts
to Secure the Shores of the Baltic.—Designs Upon the Black Sea.
It was a source of mortification to the tzar that he was dependent upon foreigners for the construction of his ships. He accordingly sent sixty young Russians to the sea-ports of Venice and Leghorn, in Italy, to acquire the art of ship-building, and to learn scientific and practical navigation. Soon after this he sent forty more to Holland for the same purpose. He sent also a large number of young men to Germany, to learn the military discipline of that warlike people.
He now adopted the extraordinary resolve of traveling himself, incognito, through most of the countries of Europe, that he might see how they were governed, and might become acquainted with the progress they had made in the arts and sciences. In this European tour he decided to omit Spain, because the arts there were but little cultivated, and France, because he disliked the pompous ceremonials of the court of Louis XIV. His plan of travel was as ingenuous as it was odd. An extraordinary embassage was sent by him, as Emperor of Russia, to all the leading courts of Europe. These embassadors received minute instructions, and were fitted out for their expedition with splendor which should add to the renown of the Russian monarchy. Peter followed in the retinue of this embassage as a private gentleman of wealth, with the servants suitable for his station.
Three nobles of the highest dignity were selected as embassadors. Their retinue consisted of four secretaries, twelve gentlemen, two pages for each embassador, and a company of fifty of the royal guard. The whole embassage embraced two hundred persons. The tzar was lost to view in this crowd. He reserved for himself one valet de chambre, one servant in livery, and a dwarf. "It was," says Voltaire, "a thing unparalleled in history, either ancient or modern, for a sovereign, of five and twenty years of age, to withdraw from his kingdoms, only to learn the art of government." The regency, during his absence, was entrusted to two of the lords in whom he reposed confidence, who were to consult, in cases of importance, with the rest of the nobility. General Gordon, the Scotch officer, was placed in command of four thousand of the royal troops, to secure the peace of the capital.
The embassadors commenced their journey in April, 1697. Passing directly west from Moscow to Novgorod, they thence traversed the province of Livonia until they reached Riga, at the mouth of the Dwina. Peter was anxious to examine the important fortifications of this place, but the governor peremptorily forbade it, Riga then belonging to Sweden. Peter did not forget the affront. Continuing their journey, they arrived at Konigsburg, the capital of the feeble electorate of Brandenburg, which has since grown into the kingdom of Prussia. The elector, an ambitious man, who subsequently took the title of king, received them with an extravagant display of splendor. At one of the bacchanalian feasts, given on the occasion, the bad and good qualities of Peter were very conspicuously displayed. Heated with wine, and provoked by a remark made by La Fort, who was one of his embassadors, he drew his sword and called upon La Fort to defend himself. The embassador humbly bowed, folded his hands upon his breast, and said,
"Far be it from me. Rather let me perish by the hand of my master." The tzar, enraged and intoxicated, raised his arm to strike, when one of the retinue seized the uplifted hand and averted the blow. Peter immediately recovered his self-possession, and sheathing his sword said to his embassador,
"I ask your pardon. It is my great desire to reform my subjects, and yet I am ashamed to confess that I am unable to reform myself."
From Konigsburg they continued their route to Berlin, and thence to Hamburg, near the mouth of the Elbe, which was, even then, an important maritime town. They then turned their steps towards Amsterdam. As soon as they reached Emmeric, on the Rhine, the tzar, impatient of the slow progress of the embassage, forsook his companions, and hiring a small boat, sailed down the Rhine and proceeded to Amsterdam, reaching that city fifteen days before the embassy. "He flew through the city," says one of the annalists of those days, "like lightning," and proceeded to a small but active sea-port town on the coast, Zaandam. The first person they saw here was a man fishing from a small skiff, at a short distance from the shore. The tzar, who was dressed like a common Dutch skipper, in a red jacket and white linen trowsers, hailed the man, and engaged lodgings of him, consisting of two small rooms with a loft over them, and an adjoining shed. Strangely enough, this man, whose name was Kist, had been in Russia working as a smith, and he knew the tzar. He was strictly enjoined on no account to let it be known who his lodger was.
A group soon gathered around the strangers, with many questions. Peter told them that they were carpenters and laborers from a foreign country in search of work. But no one believed this, for the attendants of the tzar still wore the rich robes which constituted the costume of Russia. With sympathy as beautiful as it is rare, Peter called upon several families of ship carpenters who had worked for him and with him at Archangel, and to some of these families he gave valuable presents, which he said that the tzar of Russia had sent to them. He clothed himself, and ordered his companions to clothe themselves, in the ordinary dress of the dockyard, and purchasing carpenters' tools they all went vigorously to work.
The next day was the Sabbath. The arrival of these strangers, so peculiar in aspect and conduct, was noised abroad, and when Peter awoke in the morning he was greatly annoyed by finding a large crowd assembled before his door. Indeed the rumor of the Russian embassage, and that the tzar himself was to accompany it, had already reached Amsterdam, and it was shrewdly suspected that these strangers were in some way connected with the expected arrival of the embassadors. One of the barbers in Amsterdam had received from a ship carpenter in Archangel a portrait of the tzar, which had been for some time hanging in his shop. He was with the crowd around the door. The moment his eye rested upon Peter, he exclaimed, with astonishment, "that is the tzar!" His form, features and character were all so marked that he could not easily be mistaken.
No further efforts were made at concealment, though Peter was often very much annoyed by the crowds who followed his footsteps and watched all his actions. He was persuaded to change his lodgings to more suitable apartments, though he still wore his workman's dress and toiled in the ship-yard with energy, and also with skill which no one could surpass. The extraordinary rapidity of his motions astonished and amused the Dutch. "Such running, jumping and clambering over the shipping," they said, "we never witnessed before." To the patriarch in Moscow he wrote,
"I am living in obedience to the commands of God, which were spoken to father Adam: 'In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread.'"
Very many anecdotes are related of Peter during this portion of his life, which, though they may be apochryphal, are very characteristic of his eccentric nature. At one time he visited a celebrated iron manufactory, and forged himself several bars of iron, directing his companions to assist him in the capacity of journeymen blacksmiths. Upon the bars he forged, he put his own mark, and then he demanded of Muller, the proprietor, payment for his work, at the same rate he paid other workmen. Having received eighteen altins, he said, looking at the patched shoes on his feet,
"This will serve me to buy a pair of shoes, of which I stand in great need. I have earned them well, by the sweat of my brow, with hammer and anvil."
When the embassadors entered Amsterdam, Peter thought it proper to take a part in the procession, which was arranged in the highest style of magnificence. The three embassadors rode first, followed by a long train of carriages, with servants in rich livery on foot. The tzar, dressed as a private gentleman, was in one of the last carriages in the train of his embassadors. The eyes of the populace searched for him in vain. From this fête he returned eagerly to his work, with saw, hammer and adz, at Zaandam. He persisted in living like the rest of the workmen, rising early, building his own fire, and often cooking his own meals. One of the inhabitants of Zaandam thus describes his appearance at that time:
"The tzar is very tall and robust, quick and nimble of foot, dexterous and rapid in all his actions. His face is plump and round; fierce in his look, with brown eyebrows, and short, curly hair of a brownish color. He is quick in his gait, swinging his arms, and holding in one of them a cane."
The Dutch were so much interested in him, that a regular diary was kept in Zaandam of all he said and did. Those who were in daily intercourse with him preserved a memorandum of all that occurred. He was generally called by the name of Master Peter. While hard at work in the ship-yard, he received intelligence of troubles in Poland. The renowned king, John Sobieski, died in 1696. The electors were divided in the choice of a successor. Augustus II., Elector of Saxony, by means of bribes and his army, obtained the vote. But there was great dissatisfaction, and a large party of the nation rallied around the prince of Conti, the rival candidate. Peter, learning these facts, immediately sent word, from his carpenter's shop, to Augustus, offering to send an army of thirty thousand men to his assistance. He frequently went from Zaandam to Amsterdam, to attend the anatomical lectures of the celebrated Ruisch. His thirst for knowledge appeared to be universal and insatiable. He even performed, himself, several surgical operations. He also studied natural philosophy under Witsen. Most minds would have been bewildered by such a multiplicity of employments, but his mental organization was of that peculiar class which grasps and retains all within its reach. He worked at the forge, in the rope-walks, at the sawing mills, and in the manufactures for wire drawing, making paper and extracting oil.
While at Zaandam, Peter finished a sixty gun ship, upon which he had worked diligently from the laying of the keel. As the Russians then had no harbor in the Baltic, this ship was sent to Archangel, on the shores of the White Sea. Peter also engaged a large number of French refugees, and Swiss and German artists, to enter his service and sent them to Moscow. Whenever he found a mechanic whose work testified to superior skill, he would secure him at almost any price and send him to Moscow. To geography he devoted great attention, and even then devised the plan of uniting the Caspian and the Black Sea by a ship canal.
Early in January, 1698, Peter, having passed nine months at Zaandam, left for the Hague. King William III. sent his yacht to the Hague, to convey the tzar to England, with a convoy of two ships of war. Peter left the Hague on the 18th of January, and arrived in London on the 21st. Though he attempted here no secrecy as to his rank, he requested to be treated only as a private gentleman. A large mansion was engaged for him, near the royal navy yard at Deptford, a small town upon the Thames, about four miles from London. The London Postman, one of the leading metropolitan journals of that day, thus announces this extraordinary visit:
"The tzar of Muscovy, desiring to raise the glory of his nation, and avenge the Christians of all the injuries they have received from the Turks, has abrogated the wild manners of his predecessors, and having concluded, from the behavior of his engineers and officers, who were sent him by the Elector of Brandenburg, that the western nations of Europe understood the art of war better than others, he resolved to take a journey thither, and not wholly to rely upon the relations which his embassadors might give him; and, at the same time, to send a great number of his nobility into those parts through which he did not intend to travel, that he might have a complete idea of the affairs of Europe, and enrich his subjects with the arts of all other Christian nations; and as navigation is the most useful invention that ever was yet found out, he seems to have chosen it as his own part in the general inquiry he is about. His design is certainly very noble, and discovers the greatness of his genius. But the model he has proposed himself to imitate is a convincing proof of his extraordinary judgment; for what other prince, in the world, was a fitter pattern for the great Emperor of Muscovy, than William the Third, King of Great Britain?"[11]
In London and Deptford Peter followed essentially the same mode of life which he had adopted in Amsterdam. There was not a single article belonging to a ship, from the casting of a cannon to the making of cables, to which he did not devote special attention. He also devoted some time to watch making. A number of English artificers, and also several literary and scientific gentlemen from England, were taken into his service. He made arrangements with a distinguished Scotch geometrician and two mathematicians from Christ Church hospital, to remove to Moscow, who laid the foundation in Russia of the Marine Academy. To astronomy, the calculation of eclipses, and the laws of gravitation he devoted much thought, guided by the most scientific men England could then produce. Perry, an English engineer, was sent to Russia to survey a route for a ship canal from the ocean to the Caspian and from the Caspian to the Black Sea. A company of merchants paid the tzar seventy-five thousand dollars for permission to import tobacco into Russia. The sale of this narcotic had heretofore been discouraged in Russia, by the church, as demoralizing in its tendency and inducing untidy habits. Peter was occasionally induced to attend the theater, but he had no relish for that amusement. He visited the various churches and observed the mode of conducting religious worship by the several sects.
Before leaving England the tzar was entertained by King William with the spectacle of a sham sea fight. In this scene Peter was in his element, and in the excess of his delight he declared that an English admiral must be a happier man than even the tzar of Russia. His Britannic majesty made his guest also a present of a beautiful yacht, called the Royal Transport. In this vessel Peter returned to Holland, in May, 1698, having passed four months in England. He took with him quite a colony of emigrants, consisting of three captains of men of war, twenty-five captains of merchant ships, forty lieutenants, thirty pilots, thirty surgeons, two hundred and fifty gunners, and three hundred artificers. These men from Holland sailed in the Royal Transport to Archangel, from whence they were sent to different places where their services were needed. The officers whom the tzar sent to Italy, also led back to Russia many artists from that country.
From Holland the Emperor of Russia, with his suite, repaired to Vienna to observe the military discipline of the Germans, who had then the reputation of being the best soldiers in Europe. He also wished to enter into a closer alliance with the Austrian court as his natural ally against the Turks. Peter, however, insisted upon laying aside all the ceremonials of royalty, and, as a private person, held an interview with the Emperor Leopold.
Nothing of especial interest occurred during the brief residence of Peter in Vienna. The Emperor of Germany paid the tzar every possible attention which could be conferred upon one who had the strongest reluctance to be gazed upon, or to take part in any parade. For the amusement of the tzar the emperor revived the ancient game of landlord. The royal game is as follows. The emperor is landlord, the empress landlady, the heir apparent to the throne, the archdukes and archduchesses are generally their assistants. They entertain people of all nations, dressed after the most ancient fashion of their respective countries. The invited guests draw lots for tickets, on each of which is written the name or the nation of the character they are to represent. One is a Chinese mandarin, another a Persian mirza, another a Roman senator. A queen perhaps represents a dairy maid or a nursery girl. A king or prince represents a miller, a peasant or a soldier. Characteristic amusements are introduced. The landlord and landlady, with their family, wait upon the table.
On this occasion the emperor's eldest son, Joseph, who was the heir apparent, represented, with the Countess of Traun, the ancient Egyptians. His brother, the Archduke Charles, and the Countess of Walstein appeared as Flemings in the reign of Charles V. His sister Mary and Count Fraun were Tartars. Josephine, another daughter of Leopold, with the Count of Workla, represented Persians. Marianne, a third daughter, and Prince Maximilian of Hanover were North Holland peasants. Peter presented himself as a Friesland boor, a character, we regret to say, which the tzar could personify without making the slightest change in his usual habits, for Peter was quite a stranger to the graces of the polished gentleman.
This game seems to have been quite a favorite in the Austrian court. Maria Antoinette introduced it to Versailles. The tourist is still shown the dairy where that unhappy queen made butter and cheese, the mill where Louis XVI. ground his grist, and the mimic village tavern where the King and Queen of France, as landlord and landlady, received their guests.
Peter was just leaving Vienna to go to Venice when he received intelligence that a rebellion had broken out in Moscow. His ambitious sister Sophia, who had been placed with a shaven head in the cloisters of a monastery, took advantage of the tzar's absence to make another attempt to regain the crown. She represented that the nation was in danger of being overrun with foreigners, that their ancient customs would all be abolished, and that their religion would be subverted. She involved several of the clergy in her plans, and a band of eight thousand insurgents were assembled, who commenced their march towards Moscow, hoping to rouse the metropolis to unite with them. General Gordon, whom Peter had left in command of the royal guard, met them, and a battle ensued in which a large number of the insurgents were slain, and the rest were taken prisoners and conducted to the capital. Hearing these tidings Peter abandoned all plans for visiting Italy, and set out impetuously for Moscow, and arrived at the Kremlin before it was known that he had left Germany.
Peter was a rough, stern man, and he determined to punish the abettors of this rebellion with severity, which should appall all the discontented. General Gordon, in the battle, had slain three thousand of the insurgents and had taken five thousand captive. These prisoners he had punished, decimating them by lot and hanging every tenth man. Peter rewarded magnificently the royal guard, and then commenced the terrible chastisement of all who were judged guilty of sympathizing in the conspiracy. Some were broken on the wheel and then beheaded. Others were hung in chains, on gibbets near the gates of the city, and left, frozen as solid as marble, to swing in the wind through the long months of winter. Stone monuments were erected, on which were engraved the names, the crimes and the punishment of the rebels. A large number were banished to Siberia, to Astrachan, and to the shores of the Sea of Azof. The entire corps of the strelitzes was abolished, and their place supplied by the new guard, marshaled and disciplined on the model of the German troops. The long and cumbersome robes which had been in fashion were exchanged for a uniform better adapted for rapid motion. The sons of the nobles were compelled to serve in the ranks as common soldiers before they could be promoted to be officers. Many of the young nobles were sent to the tzar's fleet in the Sea of Azof to serve their apprenticeship for the navy. The revenue of the empire had thus far been raised by the payment of a stipulated sum from each noble according to his amount of land. The noble collected this sum from his vassals or bondmen; but they often failed of paying in the amount demanded. Peter took now the collection of the revenue into his own hands, appointing officers for that purpose.
Reforms in the church he also undertook. The patriarch, Adrian, who was the pope of the Greek church, dying about this time, Peter declared that he should have no successor. Virtually assuming the authority of the head of the church, he gathered the immense revenues of the patriarchal see into the royal treasury. Though professedly intrusting the government of the church to the bishops, he controlled them with despotism which could brook no opposition. Anxious to promote the population of his vast empire, so sparsely inhabited, he caused a decree to be issued, that all the clergy, of every, grade, should be married; and that whenever one of the clergy lost a wife his clerical functions should cease until he obtained another. Regarding the monastic vow, which consigned young men and young women to a life of indolence in the cloister, as alike injurious to morality and to the interests of the State, he forbade any one from taking that vow until after the age of fifty had been passed. This salutary regulation has since his time been repealed.
The year, in Russia, had for ages commenced with the 1st of September. Peter ordered that, in conformity with the custom in the rest of Europe, the year should commence with the 1st of January. This alteration took place in the year 1700, and was celebrated with the most imposing solemnities. The national dress of the Russians was a long flowing robe, which required no skill in cutting or making. Razors were also scarce, and every man wore his beard. The tzar ordered long robes and beards to be laid aside. No man was admitted to the palace without a neatly shaven face. Throughout the empire a penalty was imposed upon any one who persisted in wearing his beard. A smooth face thus became in Russia, and has continued, to the present day, the badge of culture and refinement. Peter also introduced social parties, to which ladies with their daughters were invited, dressed in the fashions of southern Europe.
Heretofore, whenever a Russian addressed the tzar, he always said, "Your slave begs," etc. Peter abolished this word, and ordered subject to be used instead. Public inns were established on the highways, and relays of horses for the convenience of travelers. Conscious of the power of splendor to awe the public mind, he added very considerably to the magnificence of his court, and instituted an order of knighthood. In all these measures Peter wielded the energies of an unrelenting despotism, and yet of a despotism which was constantly devoted, not to his own personal aggrandizement, but to the welfare of his country.
The tzar established his great ship-yard at Voronise, on the Don, from which place he could float his ships down to the Sea of Azof, hoping to establish there a fleet which would soon give him the command of the Black Sea. In March, 1699, he had thirty-six ships launched and rigged, carrying each from thirty to sixty guns; and there were then twenty more ships on the stocks. There were, also, either finished or in process of construction, eighteen large galleys, one hundred smaller brigantines, seven bomb ships and four fire ships. At the same time Peter was directing his attention to the Volga and the Caspian, and still more vigorously to the Baltic, upon whose shores he had succeeded in obtaining a foothold.
And now the kingdom of Sweden came, with a rush, into the political arena. Poland had ceded to Sweden nearly the whole of Livonia. The Livonians were very much dissatisfied with the administration of the government under Charles XI., and sent a deputation to Stockholm to present respectful remonstrances. The indignant king consigned all of the deputation, consisting of eight gentlemen, to prison, and condemned the leader, John Patgul, to an ignominious death. Patgul escaped from prison, and hastening to Poland, urged the new sovereign, Augustus, to reconquer the province of Livonia, which Poland had lost, assuring him the Livonians would aid with all their energies to throw off the Swedish yoke. Patgul hastened from Poland to Moscow, and urged Peter to unite with Augustus, in a war against Sweden, assuring him that thus he could easily regain the provinces of Ingria and Carelia, which Sweden had wrested from his ancestors. Denmark also, under its new sovereign, Frederic IV., was induced to enter into the alliance with Russia and Poland against Sweden. Just at that time, Charles XI. died, and his son, Charles XII., a young man of eighteen, ascended the throne. The youth and inexperience of the new monarch encouraged the allies in the hope that they might make an easy conquest.
Charles XII., a man of indomitable, of maniacal energy, and who speedily infused into his soldiers his own spirit, came down upon Denmark like northern wolves into southern flocks and herds. In less than six weeks the war was terminated and the Danes thoroughly humbled. Then with his fleet of thirty sail of the line and a vast number of transports, he crossed the Baltic, entered the Gulf of Finland, and marching over ice and snow encountered the Russians at Narva, a small town about eighty miles south-west of the present site of the city of St. Petersburg. The Russians were drawn up eighty thousand strong, behind intrenchments lined with one hundred and forty-five pieces of artillery; Charles XII. had but nine thousand men. Taking advantage of one of the fiercest of wintry storms, which blew directly into the faces of the Russians, smothering them with snow and sleet mingled with smoke, and which concealed both the numbers and the movements of the Swedes, Charles XII. hurled his battalions with such impetuosity upon the foe, that in less than an hour the camp was taken by storm. One of the most awful routs known in the annals of war ensued. The Swedes toiled to utter exhaustion in cutting down the flying fugitives. Thirty thousand Russians perished on that bloody field. Nearly all of the remainder were taken captive, with all their artillery. Disarmed and with uncovered heads, thirty thousand of these prisoners defiled before the victorious king.[12]
Peter, the day before this disastrous battle, had left the intrenchments at Narva to go to Novgorod, ostensibly to hasten forward the march of some reinforcements. When Peter was informed of the annihilation of his army he replied, with characteristic coolness,
"I know very well that the Swedes will have the advantage of us for a considerable time; but they will teach us, at length, to beat them."
He immediately collected the fragments of his army at Novgorod, and repairing to Moscow issued orders for a certain proportion of the bells of the churches and convents throughout the empire to be cast into cannon and mortars. In a few months one hundred pieces of cannon for sieges, and forty-two field pieces, with twelve mortars and thirteen howitzers, were sent to the army, which was rapidly being rendezvoused at Novgorod.
Charles XII., having struck this terrific blow, left the tzar to recover as best he could, and turned his attention to Poland, resolved to hurl Augustus from the throne. Peter himself hurried to Poland to encourage Augustus to the most vigorous prosecution of the war, promising to send him speedily twenty thousand troops. In the midst of these disasters and turmoil, the tzar continued to prosecute his plans for the internal improvement of his empire, and commenced the vast enterprise of digging a canal which should unite the waters of the Baltic with the Caspian, first, by connecting the Don with the Volga, and then by connecting the Don with the Dwina, which empties into the Baltic near Riga.
War continued to rage very fiercely for many months between the Swedes on one side, and Russia and Poland on the other, Charles XII. gaining almost constant victories. The Swedes so signally proved their superiority in these conflicts, that when, on one occasion, eight thousand Russians repulsed four thousand Swedes, the tzar said,
"Well, we have at last beaten the Swedes, when we were two to one against them. We shall by and by be able to face them man to man."
In these conflicts, it was the constant aim of Peter to get a foothold upon the shores of the Baltic, that he might open to his empire the advantages of commerce. He launched a large fleet upon Lake Ladoga, a large inland sea, which, by the river Neva, connects with the Gulf of Finland. The fleets of Sweden penetrated these remote waters, and for months their solitudes resounded with the roar of naval conflicts. We can not refrain from recording the heroic conduct of Colonel Schlippenbuch, the Swedish commander of the town of Notteburg, on this lake. The town was invested by a large Russian army. For a month the Russians battered the town night and day, until it presented the aspect of a pile of ruins, and the garrison was reduced to one hundred men. Yet, so indomitable was this little band, that, standing in the breaches, they extorted honorable terms of capitulation from their conqueror. They would not surrender but on condition of being allowed to send for two Swedish officers, who should examine their remaining means of defense, and inform their master, Charles XII., that it was impossible for them any longer to preserve the town.
Peter was a man of too strong sense to be elated and vainglorious in view of such success. He knew full well that Charles XII., since the battle of Narva, looked with utter contempt upon the Russian soldiers, and he was himself fully conscious of the vast superiority of the Swedish troops. But while Charles XII., with a monarch's energies, was battering down the fortresses and cutting to pieces the armies of Poland, Peter had gained several victories over small detachments of Swedish troops left in Russia. To inspire his soldiers with more confidence, he ordered a very magnificent celebration of these victories in Moscow. It was one of the most gorgeous fête days the metropolis had ever witnessed. The Swedish banners, taken in several conflicts on sea and land, were borne in front of the procession, while all the prisoners, taken in the campaign, were marched in humiliation in the train of the victors.
While thus employed, the stern, indefatigable tzar was pressing forward the building of his fleet on the Don for the conquest of the Black Sea, and was unwearied in his endeavors to promote the elevation of his still semi-barbaric realms, by the introduction of the sciences, the arts, the manufactures and the social refinements of southern Europe.
———
[11] Postman, No. 417.
[12] These are the numbers as accurately as they can now be ascertained by the most careful sifting of the contradictory accounts. The forces of the Russians have been variously estimated at from forty thousand to one hundred thousand. That the Swedes had but nine thousand is admitted on all hands.
CONQUESTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF PETER THE GREAT.
From 1702 TO 1718.
Peter takes Lake Lagoda and the Neva.—Foundation of St.
Petersburg.—Conquest of Livonia.—Marienburg Taken by Storm.—The
Empress Catharine.—Extraordinary Efforts in Building St.
Petersburg.—Threat of Charles XII.—Deposition of
Augustus.—Enthronement of Stanislaus.—Battle of Pultowa.—Flight of
Charles XII. to Turkey.—Increased Renown of Russia.—Disastrous
Conflict with the Turks.—Marriage of Alexis.—His Character.—Death
of his Wife.—The Empress Acknowledged.—Conquest of Finland.—Tour
of the Tzar to Southern Europe.
Charles XII., despising the Russians, devoted all his energies to the humiliation of Augustus of Poland, resolving to pursue him until he had driven him for ever from his throne. Peter was thus enabled to get the command of the lake of Ladoga, and of the river Neva, which connects that lake with the Baltic. He immediately laid the foundations of a city, St. Petersburg, to be his great commercial emporium, at the mouth of the Neva, near the head of the Gulf of Finland. The land was low and marshy, but in other respects the location was admirable. Its approaches could easily be defended against any naval attack, and water communications were opened with the interior through the Neva and lake Ladoga.
Livonia was a large province, about the size of the State of Maine, nearly encircled by the Gulf of Riga, the Baltic, the Gulf of Finland and Lake Tchude. The possession of this province, which contained some five hundred thousand inhabitants, was essential to Peter in the prosecution of his commercial enterprises. During the prosecution of this war the small town of Marienburg, on the confines of Livonia, situated on the shores of a lake, was taken by storm. The town was utterly destroyed and nearly all the inhabitants slain, a few only being taken prisoners. The Russian commanding officer saw among these captives a young girl of extraordinary beauty, who was weeping bitterly. Attracted by such rare loveliness and uncontrollable grief he called her to him, and learned from her that she was born in a village in the vicinity on the borders of the lake; that she had never known her father, and that her mother died when she was but three years of age. The protestant minister of Marienburg, Dr. Gluck, chancing to see her one day, and ascertaining that she was left an orphan and friendless, received her into his own house, and cherished her with true parental tenderness.
The very evening before the town of Marienburg was assaulted and taken by storm, she was married to a young Livonian sergeant, a very excellent young man, of reputable family and possessing a little property. In the horrors of the tempest of war which immediately succeeded the nuptial ceremonies, her husband was slain, and as his body could never be found, it probably was consumed in the flames, which laid the town in ashes. General Boyer, moved with compassion, took her under his protection. He ascertained that her character had always been irreproachable, and he ever maintained that she continued to be a pattern of virtue. She was but seventeen years of age when Peter saw her. Her beauty immediately vanquished him. His wife he had repudiated after a long disagreement, and she had retired to a convent. Peter took the lovely child, still a child in years, under his own care, and soon privately married her, with how much sacredness of nuptial rites is not now known. Such was the early history of Catharine, who subsequently became the recognized and renowned Empress of Russia.
"That a poor stranger," says Voltaire, "who had been discovered amid the ruins of a plundered town, should become the absolute sovereign of that very empire into which she was led captive, is an incident which fortune and merit have never before produced in the annals of the world."
The city of Petersburg was founded on the 22d of May, 1703, on a desert and marshy spot of ground, in the sixtieth degree of latitude. The first building was a fort which now stands in the center of the city. Though Peter was involved in all the hurry and confusion of war, he devoted himself with marvelous energy to the work of rearing an imperial city upon the bogs and the swamps of the Neva. It required the merciless vigor of despotism to accomplish such an enterprise. Workmen were marched by thousands from Kesan, from Astrachan, from the Ukraine, to assist in building the city. No difficulties, no obstacles were allowed to impede the work. The tzar had a low hut, built of plank, just sufficient to shelter him from the weather, where he superintended the operations. This hut is still preserved as one of the curiosities of St. Petersburg. In less than a year thirty thousand houses were reared, and these were all crowded by the many thousands Peter had ordered to the rising city, from all parts of the empire. Death made terrible ravages among them; but the remote provinces furnished an abundant supply to fill the places of the dead. Exposure, toil, and the insalubrity of the marshy ground, consigned one hundred thousand to the grave during this first year.
The morass had to be drained, and the ground raised by bringing earth from a distance. Wheelbarrows were not in use there, and the laborers conveyed the earth in baskets, bags and even in the skirts of their clothes, scooping it up with their hands and with wooden paddles. The tzar always manifested great respect for the outward observances of religion, and was constant in his attendance upon divine service. As we have mentioned, the first building the tzar erected was a fort, the second was a church, the third a hotel. In the meantime private individuals were busily employed, by thousands, in putting up shops and houses. The city of Amsterdam was essentially the model upon which St. Petersburg was built. The wharves, the canals, the bridges and the rectangular streets lined with trees were arranged by architects brought from the Dutch metropolis. When Charles XII. was informed of the rapid progress the tzar was making in building a city on the banks of the Neva, he said,
"Let him amuse himself as he thinks fit in building his city. I shall soon find time to take it from him and to put his wooden houses in a blaze."
Five months had not passed away, from the commencement of operations upon these vast morasses at the mouth of the Neva, ere, one day, it was reported to the tzar that a large ship under Dutch colors was in full sail entering the harbor. Peter was overjoyed at this realization of the dearest wish of his heart. With ardor he set off to meet the welcome stranger. He found that the ship had been sent by one of his old friends at Zaandam. The cargo consisted of salt, wine and provisions generally. The cargo was landed free from all duties and was speedily sold to the great profit of the owners. To protect his capital, Peter immediately commenced his defenses at Cronstadt, about thirty miles down the bay. From that hour until this, Russia has been at work upon those fortifications, and they can now probably bid defiance to all the navies of the world.
Charles XII., sweeping Poland with fire and the sword, drove Augustus out of the kingdom to his hereditary electorate of Saxony, and then, convening the Polish nobles, caused Stanislaus Leszczynski, one of his own followers, to be elected sovereign, and sustained him on the throne by all the power of the Swedish armies. [13] The Swedish warrior now fitted out a fleet for the destruction of Cronstadt and Petersburg. The defense of the province was intrusted to Menzikoff. This man subsequently passed through a career so full of vicissitudes that a sketch of his varied life thus far seems important. He was the son of one of the humblest of the peasants living in the vicinity of Moscow. When but thirteen years of age he was taken into the service of a pastry cook to sell pies and cakes about the streets, and he was accustomed to attract customers by singing jocular songs. The tzar chanced to hear him one day, and, diverted by his song and struck by his bright, intelligent appearance, called for the boy, and offered to purchase his whole stock, both cakes and basket.
The boy replied,
"It is my business to sell the cakes, and I have no right to sell the basket without my master's permission. Yet, as every thing belongs to our prince, your majesty has only to give the command, and it is my duty to obey."
This adroit, apt answer so pleased the tzar that he took the lad into his service, giving him at first some humble employment. But being daily more pleased with his wit and shrewdness, he raised him, step by step, to the highest preferment. Under the tuition of General Le Fort, he attained great skill in military affairs, and became one of the bravest and most successful of the Russian generals.
Early in the spring of 1705 the Swedish fleet, consisting of twenty-two ships of war, each carrying about sixty guns, besides six frigates, two bomb ketches and two fire ships, approached Cronstadt. At the same time a large number of transports landed a strong body of troops to assail the forts in the rear. This was the most formidable attack Charles XII. had yet attempted in his wars. Though the Swedes almost invariably conquered the Russians in the open field, Menzikoff, from behind his well-constructed redoubts, beat back his assailants, and St. Petersburg was saved. The summer passed away with many but undecisive battles, until the storms of the long northern winter separated the combatants. The state of exasperation was now such that the most revolting cruelties were perpetrated on both sides.
The campaign of 1706 opened most disastrously to Russia. In four successive pitched battles the forces of the tzar had been defeated. Augustus was humbled to the dust, and was compelled to write a letter to Stanislaus congratulating him upon his accession to the throne. He also ignominiously consented to deliver up the unfortunate Livonian noble, Patgul, whose only crime was his love for the rights and privileges of his country. Charles XII. caused this unhappy noble to be broken upon the wheel, thus inflicting a stain upon his own character which can never be effaced. The haughty Swedish monarch seemed now to be sovereign over all of northern Europe excepting Russia. Augustus, driven from the throne of Poland, was permitted to hold the electorate of Saxony only in consequence of his abject submission to Charles XII. Stanislaus, the new Polish sovereign, was merely a vassal of Sweden. And even the Emperor Joseph of Germany paid implicit obedience to the will of a monarch who had such terrible armies at his command.
Under these circumstances some of the powers endeavored to secure peace between Sweden and Russia. The French envoy at the court of Sweden introduced the subject. Charles XII. proudly replied, "I shall treat with the tzar in the city of Moscow."
Peter, being informed of this boast and threat, remarked, "My brother Charles wants to act the part of Alexander, but he shall not find in me a Darius."
Charles XII., from his triumphant invasion of Saxony, marched with an army of forty-five thousand men through Poland, which was utterly desolated by war, and crossing the frontiers of Russia, directed his march to Moscow. Driving all opposition before him, he arrived upon the banks of the Dnieper, and without much difficulty effected the passage of the stream. Peter himself, with Menzikoff, now hastened to the theater of conflict, and summoned his mightiest energies to repel the foe. Battle after battle ensued with varying results. But the situation of the Swedish conqueror was fast growing desperate. He was far from home. His regiments were daily diminishing beneath the terrible storms of war, while recruits were pouring in, from all directions, to swell the ranks of the tzar. It was the month of December. The villages had been all burned and the country turned into a desert. The cold was so intense that on one particular march two thousand men dropped down dead in their ranks. The wintry storms soon became so severe that both parties were compelled to remain for some time in inaction. Every poor peasant, within fifty miles, was robbed by detachments of starving soldiers.
The moment the weather permitted, both armies were again in action. Charles XII. had taken a circuitous route towards Moscow, through the Ukraine, hoping to rouse the people of this region to join his standards. This plan, however, proved an utter failure. About the middle of June the two armies, led by their respective sovereigns, met at Pultowa, upon the Worskla, near its point of junction with the Dnieper, about four hundred miles south of Moscow. Several days were passed in maneuvering and skirmishing in preparation for a decisive struggle. It was evident to all Europe that the great battle to ensue would decide the fate of Russia, Poland and Sweden. Thirty thousand war-worn veterans were marshaled under the banners of Charles XII. The tzar led sixty thousand troops into the conflict. Fully aware of the superiority of the Swedish troops, he awaited the attack of his formidable foe behind his redoubts. In one of the skirmishes, two days before the great battle, a bullet struck Charles XII., shattering the bone of his heel. It was an exceedingly painful wound, which was followed by an equally painful operation. Though the indomitable warrior was suffering severely, he caused himself to be borne in a litter to the head of his troops, and led the charge. The attack upon the intrenchments was made with all the characteristic impetuosity of these demoniac fighters. Notwithstanding the storm of grape shot which was hurled into their faces, covering the ground with the mangled and the dead, two of the redoubts were taken, and shouts of victory ran along the lines of the Swedes.
The action continued with fiend-like ferocity for two hours. Charles XII., with a pistol in his hand, was borne on his litter from rank to rank, animating his troops, until a cannon ball, striking down one of his bearers, also shattered the litter into fragments, and dashed the bandaged monarch to the ground. With as much calmness as though this were an ordinary, everyday occurrence, Charles ordered his guards immediately to make another litter with their pikes. He was placed upon it, and continued to direct the battle, paying no more attention to bullets, balls and bombshells, than if they had been snow flakes.
Peter was equally prodigal of danger. Death in that hour was more desirable to him than defeat, for Charles XII., victorious, would march direct to Moscow, and Russia would share the fate of Poland. The tzar was conspicuous at every point where the battle raged most fiercely. Several bullets pierced his clothes; one passing through his hat just grazed the crown of his head. At length, the Swedes, overpowered by numbers, gave way, and fled in great confusion. Charles, though agonized by his wound, was compelled to mount on horseback as the only means of escape from capture. The black hour of woe came, which sooner or later meets almost every warrior, however successful for a time his career may be. The blow was fatal to Charles XII. More than nine thousand of the Swedes were left dead upon the field of battle. Eighteen thousand were taken prisoners. The Swedish king, with a few hundred troops in his retinue, cut off from his retreat towards Sweden, crossed the Dnieper and fled to Turkey. Peter did not pursue him, but being informed of his desperate resolve to seek refuge in the territory of the Turks, he magnanimously wrote a letter to him, urging him not to take so perilous a step, assuring him, upon his honor, that he would not detain him as a prisoner, but that all their difficulties should be settled by a reasonable peace. A special courier was dispatched with this letter, but he could not overtake the fugitives. When the courier arrived at the river Boy, which separates the deserts of Ukraine from the territories of the Grand Seignor, the Swedes had already crossed the river. In the character of Peter there was a singular compound of magnanimity and of the most brutal insensibility and mercilessness. He ordered all the Swedish generals, who were his captives, to be introduced to him, returned to them their swords and invited them to dine. With a gracefulness of courtesy rarely surpassed, he offered as a toast the sentiment, "To the health of my masters in the art of war." And yet, soon after, he consigned nearly all these captives to the horrors of Siberian exile.
This utter defeat of Charles XII. produced a sudden revolution in Poland, Sweden and Saxony. Peter immediately dispatched a large body of cavalry, under Menzikoff, to Poland, to assist Augustus in regaining his crown. Soon after, he followed himself, at the head of an army, and entering Warsaw in triumph, on the 7th of October, 1709, replaced Augustus upon the throne from which Charles XII. had ejected him. The whole kingdom acknowledged Peter for their protector. Peter then marched to the electorate of Brandenburg, which had recently been elevated into the kingdom of Prussia, and performing the functions of his own embassador, entered into a treaty with Frederic I., grandfather of Frederic the Great. He then returned with all eagerness to St. Petersburg, and pressed forward the erection of new buildings and the enlargement of the fleet.
A magnificent festival was here arranged in commemoration of the great victory of Pultowa. Nine arches were reared, beneath which the procession marched, in the most gorgeous array of civic and military pageantry. The artillery of the vanquished, their standards, the shattered litter of the king, and the vast array of captives, soldiers and officers, all on foot, followed in the train of the triumphal procession, while the ringing of bells, the explosion of an hundred pieces of artillery, and the shouts of an innumerable multitude, added to the enthusiasm which the scene inspired.
The battle of Pultowa gave Peter great renown throughout Europe, and added immeasurably to the reputation of Russia. An occurrence had taken place in London which had deeply offended the tzar, who, wielding himself the energies of despotism, could form no idea of that government of law which was irrespective of the will of the sovereign. The Russian embassador at the court of Queen Anne had been arrested at the suit of a tradesman in London, and had been obliged to give bail to save himself from the debtor's prison. Peter, regarding this as a personal insult, demanded of Queen Anne satisfaction. She expressed her regret for the occurrence, but stated, that according to the laws of England, a creditor had a right to sue for his just demands, and that there was no statute exempting foreign embassadors from being arrested for debt. Peter, who had no respect for constitutional liberty, was not at all satisfied with this declaration, but postponed further action until his conflict with Sweden should be terminated.
Now, in the hour of victory, he turned again to Queen Anne and demanded reparation for what he deemed the insult offered to his government. He threatened, in retaliation, to take vengeance upon all the merchants and British subjects within his dominions. This was an appalling menace. Queen Anne accordingly sent Lord Whitworth on a formal embassy to the tzar, with a diplomatic lie in his mouth. Addressing Peter in the flattering words of "most high and mighty emperor," he assured him, that the offending tradesman had been punished with imprisonment and rendered infamous, and that an act of Parliament should be passed, rendering it no longer lawful to arrest a foreign embassador. The offender had not been punished, but the act was subsequently passed.
The acknowledgment, accompanied by such flattering testimonials of respect, was deemed satisfactory. The tzar had demanded the death of the offender. Every Englishman must read with pride the declaration of Queen Anne in reference to this demand.
"There are," said she, "insuperable difficulties with respect to the ancient and fundamental laws of the government of our people, which we fear do not permit so severe and rigorous a sentence to be given, as your imperial majesty first seemed to expect in this case. And we persuade ourselves that your imperial majesty, who are a prince famous for clemency and exact justice, will not require us, who are the guardian and protector of the laws, to inflict a punishment on our subjects which the law does not empower us to do."
The whole of Livonia speedily fell into the hands of the tzar and was reannexed to Russia. Pestilence, which usually follows in the train of war, now rose from the putridity of battle fields, and sweeping, like the angel of death, over the war-scathed and starving inhabitants of Livonia, penetrated Sweden. Whole provinces were depopulated, and in Stockholm alone thirty thousand perished. The war of the Spanish Succession was now raging, and every nation in Europe was engaged in the work of destruction and butchery. Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, the German empire, England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, were all in arms, and hundreds of millions of men were directly or indirectly employed in the work of mutual destruction. The fugitive king, Charles XII., was endeavoring to enlist the energies of the Ottoman Porte in his behalf, and the Grand Seignor had promised to throw his armies also, two hundred thousand strong, into the arena of flame and blood, and to march for the conquest of Russia.
Peter, conscious of the danger of an attack from Turkey, raised an army of one hundred and twenty-five thousand men, when he was informed that the Turks, with a combined army of two hundred and ten thousand troops, were ravaging the province of Azof. Urging his troops impetuously onward, he crossed the Pruth and entered Jassi, the capital of Moldavia. The grand vizier, with an army three times more numerous, crossed the Danube and advanced to meet him. For three days the contending hosts poured their shot into each other's bosoms. The tzar, outnumbered and surrounded, though enabled to hold his position behind his intrenchments, saw clearly that famine would soon compel him to surrender. His position was desperate.
Catharine had accompanied her husband on this expedition, and, at her earnest solicitation, the tzar sent proposals of peace to the grand vizier, accompanied with a valuable present of money and jewels. The Turk, dreading the energies which despair might develop in so powerful a foe, was willing to come into an accommodation, and entered into a treaty, which, though greatly to the advantage of the Ottoman Porte, rescued the tzar from the greatest peril in which he had ever been placed. The grand vizier good-naturedly sent several wagons of provisions to the camp of his humbled foes, and the Russians returned to their homes, having lost twenty thousand men.
Alexis, the oldest son of Peter, had ever been a bad boy, and he had now grown up into an exceedingly dissolute and vicious young man. Indolent, licentious, bacchanalian in his habits, and overbearing, his father had often threatened to deprive him of his right of succession, and to shave his crown and consign him to a convent. Hoping to improve his character, he urged his marriage, and selected for him a beautiful princess of Wolfenbuttle, as the possessions of the dukes of Brunswick were then called. The old ducal castle still stands on the banks of the Oka about forty miles south-east of Hanover. The princess of Wolfenbuttle, who was but eighteen years of age, was sister to the Empress of Germany, consort of Charles VI. The young Russian prince was dragged very reluctantly to this marriage, for he wished to be shackled by no such ties. He was the son of Peter's first wife, not of the Empress Catharine, whom the tzar had now acknowledged. Peter and Catharine attended these untoward nuptials, which were celebrated in the palace of the Queen of Poland, in which a princess as lovely in character as in person was sacrificed to one who made the few remaining months of her life a continued martyrdom. But little more than a year had passed after their marriage ere she was brought to bed of a son. Her heart was already broken, and she was quite unprepared for the anguish of such an hour. Though the sweetness of her disposition and the gentleness of her manners had endeared her to all her household, her husband treated her with the most brutal neglect and cruelty. Unblushingly he introduced into the palace his mistresses, and the saloons ever resounded with the uproar of his drunken companions. The woe-stricken princess, then but twenty years of age, covered her face with the bed clothes, and, weeping bitterly, refused to take any nourishment, and begged the physicians to permit her to die in peace. Intelligence was immediately sent to the tzar of the confinement of his daughter in-law, and of her dangerous situation. He hastened to her chamber. The interview was short, but so affecting that the tzar, losing all self-control, burst into an agony of grief and wept like a child. The dying princess commended to his care her babe and her servants, and, as the clock struck the hour of midnight, her spirit departed, we trust to that world "where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." The orphan babe was baptized as Peter Alexis, and subsequently, on the death of the Empress Catharine, became Emperor of Russia.
On the 20th of February, 1712, Peter, who had previously acknowledged his private marriage with Catharine, had the marriage publicly solemnized at St. Petersburg with the utmost pomp. Soon after this, to the inexpressible joy of both parents, Catharine gave birth to a son. The war with Sweden still continued, notwithstanding Charles XII. was a fugitive in Turkey unable to return to his own country. Finland, a vast realm containing one hundred and thirty-five thousand square miles and almost embraced by the Gulfs of Bothnia and of Finland, then belonged to Sweden. Peter fitted out an expedition from St. Petersburg for the conquest of that country. With three hundred ships, conveying thirteen thousand men, he effected a landing in the vicinity of Abo notwithstanding the opposition of the Swedish force there, and, establishing his troops in redoubts with ample supplies, he returned to St. Petersburg for reinforcements. He soon returned, and, with an army augmented to twenty thousand foot and four thousand horse, with a powerful train of artillery, commenced a career of conquest. The city of Abo, on the coast, the capital of Finland, fell unresistingly into his hands with a large quantity of provisions. There was a flourishing university here containing a valuable library. Peter sent the books to St. Petersburg, and they became the foundation of the present royal library in that place.
The tzar, leaving the prosecution of the war to his generals, returned to St. Petersburg. Many and bloody battles were fought in those northern wilds during the summer, in most of which the Russians had the advantage, gaining citadel after citadel until winter drove the combatants from the field.
With indefatigable zeal Peter pressed forward in his plan to give splendor and power to his new city of Petersburg. One thousand families were moved there from Moscow. Very flattering offers were made to induce foreigners to settle there, and a decree was issued declaring Petersburg to be the only port of entry in the empire. He ordered that no more wooden houses should be built, and that all should be covered with tile; and to secure the best architects from Europe, he offered them houses rent free, and entire exemption from taxes for fourteen years. The campaign of another summer, that of 1714, rendered the tzar the master of the whole province of Finland.
In the autumn of this year, Charles XII., escaped from Turkey, where he had performed pranks outrivaling Don Quixote, and had finally been held a prisoner. He traversed Hungary and Germany in disguise, and traveling day and night, in such haste that but one of his attendants could keep up with him, arrived, exhausted and haggard, in Sweden. He was received with the liveliest demonstrations of joy, and immediately placed himself again at the head of the Swedish armies.
The tzar, however, conscious that he now had not much to fear from Sweden, left the conduct of the desultory war with his generals, and set out on another tour of observation to southern Europe. The lovely Catharine, who, with the fairy form and sylph-like grace of a girl of seventeen, had won the love of Peter, was now a staid and worthy matron of middle life. She had, however, secured the abiding affection of the tzar, and he loved to take her with him on all his journeys. Catharine, though on the eve of again becoming a mother, accompanied her husband as far as Holland. Through Stralsund, Mecklenburg and Hamburg, they proceeded to Rostock, where a fleet of forty-five galleys awaited him. The emperor took the command, and hoisting his flag, sailed to Copenhagen. Here he was entertained for two months with profuse hospitality by the King of Denmark, during which time he studied, with sleepless vigilance, the institutions and the artistic attainments of the country.
About the middle of December he arrived at Amsterdam. The city gave him a splendid reception, and he was welcomed by the Earl of Albemarle in a very complimentary speech, pompous and flowery. The uncourteous tzar bluntly replied,
"I thank you heartily, though I don't understand much of what you say. I learned my Dutch among ship-builders, but the sort of language you have spoken I am sure I never learned."
Some of his old companions, who were ship-builders, and had acquired wealth, invited him to dine. They addressed him as "your majesty." Peter cut them short, saying,
"Come, brothers, let us converse like plain and honest ship-carpenters."
A servant brought him some wine. "Give me the jug," said he laughing, "and then I can drink as much as I please, and no one can tell how much I have taken."
He hastened to Zaandam, where he was received with the utmost joy by his old friends from whom he had parted nineteen years before. An old woman pressed forward to greet him.
"My good woman," said the tzar, "how do you know who I am?"
"I am the widow," she said, "of Baas Pool, at whose table your majesty so often sat nineteen years ago."
The emperor kissed her upon the forehead and invited her to dine with him that very day. One of his first visits was to the little cottage, or rather hut, which he had occupied while residing there. The cottage is still carefully preserved, having been purchased in 1823 by the sister of the Emperor Alexander, and enclosed in another building with large arched windows. The room was even then regarded as sacred. In the center stood the oaken table and the three wooden chairs which constituted the furniture when Peter occupied it. The loft was ascended by a ladder which still remains.
With all the roughness of Peter's exterior, he had always been a man of deep religious feelings, and through all his life was in habits of daily prayer. This loft had been his place of private devotion to which he daily ascended. Upon entering the cottage and finding every thing just as he had left it, the tzar was for a moment much affected. He ascended the ladder to his closet of prayer in the loft, and there remained alone with his God for a full half hour. Eventful indeed and varied had his life been since there, a young man of twenty-five, he had daily sought divine guidance.
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