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Full text of "The City And The Tsar Peter The Great And The Move To The West 1948 1762"

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City and the Tsar Peter the

and the to the West*

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Official portrait of Peter, about 1713. Later given title as "Peter the Great,

Emperor of All the Russias, Father of the Fatherland"

TH CITY

JL 1 1 V^ VM^I 1 1;

AND

THG TSAR

Peter the Qreat

and the JVTove to the "West

1648-4762

HAROLD LAMB

Qarden City, JV.y., 1948

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

FIRST EDITION

FOREWORD

THIS is the story of a man, a city, and a land.

It was not always the same man. For four generations

one man took the place of another, when a son suc-

ceeded his father. At times the man was an imbecile, helped

by others to appear able to do what was expected of him. And

at times daughters or wives of the family contrived to do his

work. The family were the Romanovs.

But always the member of the family served, although often

challenged or endangered, as the master of the Kremyl the

Kremlin. The greatest member of this family, Peter the son of

Alexis, declared himself to be one "who does not have to an-

swer for any of his actions to anyone in the world/' Alone of

the family Peter endeavored to change the Kremlin into some-

thing else; when he could not manage to do that, he deserted it

and built himself a city elsewhere.

For the Kremlin was the citadel of the growing city of

Moscow. Fortified by its medieval walls, it dominated Mos-

cow. Rising above the Moskva River, from which the city had

its name, and the Kitaigorod, the abode of the nobility and

great merchants, it formed the nerve center of the old city of

the White Wall. Beyond that wall of whitish stone lay the

metropolis inhabited by many different people, within the

earthen or Red Wall. And beyond that, the villages and mon-

asteries stretched out into the wooded plain that was the heart

of ancient Rus.

In that plain the Volga took its rise, and the headwaters of

other rivers, the Dvina and Father Dnieper, that had served

Yl FOREWORD

$s tht?rOTighf*^ s F(ir r people in old time. Over those rivers the

KremM% Jield dominion, but not always to where they dis-

charged iiko the outer seas. The dominion had been of Mos-

cowMuscovy.

East of Moscow, beyond the Volga, lay a new land. It

stretched almost interminably along the eastern steppes

through the far rivers and the mountain barriers of the Eura-

sian continent, to the ocean known to the Muscovites as the

Eastern Ocean Sea.

Visitors from Europe in the west called this almost un-

mapped new land Independent Tatary, and they described it

as "an empire of settlements." Certainly it lay within Mos-

cow's grasp. Yet, as the Europeans understood, it was not yet

an empire under Moscow's control. The settlements were too

new and they had stretched thousands of miles away from the

city.

In the middle of the seventeenth century, when Alexis had

become head of the Romanov family and in consequence Tsar

of All of Rus the only name this embryo empire hadit was

by no means certain if he controlled the city itself. He did

hold mastery over the boyars and merchants of the inner

White City.

Nor was it certain during these four generations if the city

would succeed in dominating the vast area of the outer land,

or if in the end the hinterland of the continent would reject

and so destroy the city.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD v

THE Two GATES OF MUSCOVY

Great Master i

Dezhnev the Hunter 10

The Freebooters of Yakutsk 12

The Tsar's Plan and the Bureau's Performance 20

Nikifor Ghernigovsky's Republic 30

The Young Natalia 33

The First Favorites 38

Light -from the West 43

Alexis Asks a Blessing 45

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS

Weakness of the Throne 50

Calling in of the Streltsi 5 1

The Ghosts of the Tatar Khans 55

Journal of Nicholas Spathary 56

What Father Ger billon Witnessed 62

Opening of the Baraba Steppe 66

vii

viii CONTENTS

Sophia's Seat Behind the Two Thrones 69

The Road to the Krim 76

Suburb of the Foreigners 80

The Fort md the Boat 86

Frangois Lefort 92

The Storm on the Frozen Sea 96

The Ships Go Down to Azov 102

Atlasov's Sixty Cossacks 109

III

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION

The Great Embassy 1 14

The Hired Minds 121

Failure of the Mission 123

Patrick Gordon at the Istra 128

Testimony of Johann Korb 1 3 1

The Rise of Alexashka 137

The Compelling Forces 140

The Road to Narva 142

The Church Bells and the Army Cannon 149

How the Foundations of Petersburg Were Laid 155

Poltava 1 60

Revolt of the Southern Frontier 167

Mazeppa and Charles 173

Penetration of the Ukraine and the Baltic 176

Invasion of the Wilderness 180

The Capitulation on the Pruth 186

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN

Alexis in Moscow 191

Testimony of the Tongues 197

CONTENTS ix

The Case of Alexis in Vienna 202

'Peter* s Other Self 205

The Lutheran Church and the Fleet 208

Judgment of a Dolgoruky 214

Purge of Moscow and Execution of Alexis 215

The Venture to Paris 221

Pastor Gluck's A cademy 225

The Ancient Stones and the Strange Bones 228

The Case of Mary Hamilton 23 1

Peace cmd the Great Flood 235

The Silent Migration 242

The Purge of the Favorites 246

THE TURNING TO THE EAST

Little Demidov and the Far Mountains 250

Testimony of Stralenberg 252

What John Bell of Antermony Saw 259

Failure in the Caucasus 268

The Hidden Conflict 27 1

The Birth of a New Nation 278

The Unknown Land 282

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY

Impotency of the Family 286

Return to Moscow 292

Peter's Changes the Legend and the Reality 296

End of the Dynasty 306

Age of Eiron 311

End of the Germans 315

The Bronze Horseman and the New Land 317

X CONTENTS

AFTERWORD

The Different Jitdgments of Peter 325

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 332

NOTES 33 6

INDEX 353

THE CITY AND THE TSAR

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY

Great Master

IN THE YEAR 1648 the long wars had ended in the Ger-

man states. They had lasted for thirty years. Although

peace had been made and signed by the victorious powers,

the Thirty Years'- War had left Europe bleeding and disillu-

sioned. The German states which had served as battlefields

had shrunk within their boundaries and had lost more than

two thirds their population. Even the victorious peoples la-

bored to fight hunger and plague in their homelands.

The Thirty Years' War, however, had not affected Mus-

covy. During that long generation Moscow had become as

isolated from western Europe as at the time of the Tatar con-

quest. Although Muscovy had freed itself from the yoke of

the Tatar khans a good while ago, the older grandfathers of

the city families could still remember how Tatar horsemen

had raided into the suburbs. The yoke of the eastern despots

was gone, yet its impress remained on the minds of the Mus-

covites.

They had had their own Time of Troubles, as they called

it, after the death of the fierce and mystical Ivan the Terrible.

At the end of that time of fear and disintegration they had

chosen a new dynasty to rule in the Kremlin, calling out of

seclusion in a monastery a lame sixteen-year-old boy, Michael

Romanov by name. Michael Romanov had been a mild man,

particularly fond of clocks, and more than ready to be guided

by the patriarch, after he had wept and cried out at being

called to become Great Prince of Moscow and Tsar of All

Rus.

2 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

The year 1648 was the marriage year of Alexis, the son of

Michael Romanov. Gentler even than his father, Alexis let

himself be robed and paraded forth as ancient usage required,

for his councilors and boyars and the men who served him

to see the light of his eyes. In this, his nineteenth year, he had

married the girl of a great family. Maria had been selected

for him by his councilors, and the patriarch himself approved

of her, because both the young people were religious at heart.

Alexis, young, amiable, relishing a sly jest, liking to have

wine poured for him in the company of merry friends, could

recite his prayers without prompting' and he sang well in a

choir, often leading the other singers. Before the throne of

the patriarch the young tsar spoke of himself as "I, the sin-

ner . . ."

"A true servitor of the Most High," another patriarch from

fhe east exclaimed, watching the handsome Alexis moving

quietly about the altar space of a great cathedral while the

choir chanted an age-old Kyrie eleison. The stranger was a

venerable soul, no less a person than Macarius of Antioch,

a visitor from the very gateway of the Holy Land.

When Alexis went forth from a gate of the Kremlin, people

ran and crowded together against the armed guards to catch

a glimpse of his flushed and smiling face. Monks and mer-

chants, soldiers and peasants on pilgrimage to Holy Mother

Moscow of the White Walls they thought themselves fortu-

nate if he glanced their way. To them, Muscovites and visitors

alike, the nineteen-year-old master of the Kremlin was apart

from other human beings. In the opinion of the nobles he had

become the "born tsar"; to the common folk he had become

the Veliki Gosudar, the Great Master. He was at the same

time their prince and their priest. Did he not appear on that

most joyful day, Palm Sunday, with robed clergy swinging

censers before him and behind him? That was a happy time,

when strangers kissed each other and sang at sight of the

waving branches!

Then the most ancient holy pictures of the shrines in the

Kremlin were carried forth for the multitude to behold. If

the sun shone through the clouds over the Red Place, its rays

did not illumine the jeweled hat and collar of Alexis because

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 3

he walked under a canopy held by his servitors, the sons of

the highest noblemen. Only the grandfathers among the crowd

nodded their aged heads and muttered that the Tatar khans

of old days had appeared in like fashion under such canopies.

To most of the Muscovites, dwellers in that human warren

of makeshift wooden houses, the phenomena around them

seemed to be unchanging because nothing had changed within

their memories. The processions of the tsars, the ringing of

the great bells in the Kremlin towers, the incensing of the

priests, the bent heads, the bearded mouths moving in prayer

all this was as it had been in ancient days. A promise and

a testimony of divine protection for their troubled lives. Any

slave of that multitude could go forward and offer a petition

for the eyes of the gentle tsar to read or at least for. the eyes

of his serving folk. To change this ancient usage would be

sinful, a surrender to Antichrist.

So reasoned the majority of the Muscovites, who guided

themselves by precedent and by parables, heedful pf the in-

stinct that led them to seek protection. But some thought

otherwise.

Foreigners in Moscow on business wondered at the Musco-

vites on such festival days, when middle-aged folk amused

themselves by sitting in swing seats, and boys fought mimic

battles with clubs while their fathers got drunk liquor being

allowed them during a feast and stretched out in the snow

or mud before tavern doors. To the foreigners who might

remember the splendor of the court of France under the boy

king, Louis XIV, the Muscovites appeared to be two centuries

behind the times, living still in the faint far dawn of a renais-

sance. "The only modern thing in Muscovy," an Englishman

wrote home, "is the Yam, which is to say the horse-relay post

on the roads. And that they got from the Tatars."

On the rare occasions when he left the Kremlin, Alexis

passed by some landmarks of progress. The tower over the

gate to the Red Place had a giant clock in it, set there by "the

English clockmafker",who had served his father. There was

also Tsar Kapushka, the enormous bronze cannon cast by an

Italian cannon maker for Tsar Ivan the Great. Because Tsar

Kapushka had been too heavy to move and too huge to be

4 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

fired off without endangering the walls around him, he had

been placed on a pedestal for folk to see and admire the only

monument inside the Kremlin.

Still more rarely did Alexis leave Moscow itself, to make

the day's journey to the great Troitsko monastery, to hunt

afield with his following of boyars and dog tenders, or to

visit his rambling summer cottage in Ismailov by the river.

He liked particularly to climb to the Hill of the Sparrows

where he could look across at the blue and gold domes, the

white walls, and the tiny bridges of the city telling himself

in silence that it did resemble Jerusalem.

So when he looked across at his city lying so majestically

beneath its canopy of white clouds the young tsar felt in him

a joy that was like pain. Was not this the Jerusalem of the

years to come? Did not that other hallowed Jerusalem remain

lifeless as a chained slave under the hand of the pagan Turks?

Its glory had passed, by God's will, to other sanctuaries to

ancient Antioch, to Constantinople, and now, with the loss

of Antioch and Constantinople, to his city of Moscow.

For Alexis thought only of simple things. You bowed your

head in prayer to make your submission to the power of the

everlasting God; you drank wine^ with friends because by its

warmth their merriment increased. . . .

Somewhere near the place of the sun's setting in the west

reigned another mighty servitor of God, the Pope of the

Catholic faith pent up within the walls of the dark Vatican;

somewhere in the heights beneath the sun's rising in the east

dwelt still another potentate, the Dalai Lama in his citadel

of Tibet. Of these others Alexis was aware because among

his thirteen books he had one cosmography that explained the

earth and the fortunes of its peoples since the catastrophe of

the Flood. Although this chronicle of the earth had been writ-

ten by a Lithuanian, Alexis could read it. And he read con-

scientiously, comparing the ideas of the Lithuanian scientist

with the jact that Jerusalem, by God's will, would be an ever-

lasting city. It never crossed Alexis' mind that he was himself

as much a prisoner within the walls of the Kremlin as the

popes within the Vatican, or the Dalai Lamas within the cloud-

touching Po-tala.

From mid-seventeenth-century drawing Olearius

The Old Russia; blessing before Moscow church on religious

festival

6 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

It was both simple and comforting to think about Moscow

when he reined in his horse on the Hill of the Sparrows. Yet

he felt troubled in mind when he rode at foot pace through

the mud of Moscow's alleys, in the stench of human dirt.

He felt vaguely that his own sins were responsible for that

stench, and for the sick faces that bowed to himeven in the

feasts of his terem when he shared his own overflowing dishes

with his boyars, Alexis would flash out in temper, rushing to

beat the nearest man with his staff. In such outbreaks he had

never crippled a man, and he sent gifts to the offender after-

ward.

Another impulse seized on him, when he hurried his young

wife out of her apartments upstairs in the terem to a carriage

or sleigh, bidding the driver take the two of them at a gallop

out of the clock gate, along the river to a village or even up to

Troitsko in its gardens. True, in such swift rides utterly dif-

ferent from the pace-by-pace parade into and out of the Red

Place his wife Maria bundled up so that her white face, tinted

with rouge, could hardly be seen. At other times in duty

bound, Maria kept to ancient seclusion within the women's

quarters, looking out at a feast from behind a screen, or out

at a service in the Usspensky cathedral from the grilled gallery

of the imperial ladies.

Alexis was aware, because his body servants told him, of the

jests that foreigners made about this seclusion of Muscovite

noblewomen. The foreign ambassadors and merchants called

it monastic and Byzantine to keep women hidden from the

eyes of other men. But it was an ancient custom in Muscovy,

and who was so bound by it as the tsaritsa herself?

One of the foreigners, a certain Adam Olearius, had pub-

lished a book about the Muscovites in the German language

only the year before. Parts of the book had been read to the

young Alexis, who remembered Adam Olearius vaguely as a

neat foreigner with curled hair and waxed mustache but 'with-

out a beard. Olearius had been forever measuring things and

looking at the sun through a brass instrument called an astro-

labe. Some among the Muscovites believed him to 'be a sor-

cerer. After he had left Muscovy he had written in his book:

"The greatest honor a Muscovite could do a friend is to let

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 7

him see his wife ... a nobleman led me after dinner into

another room where he told me that I could not have a greater

proof of his esteem than this. Immediately, I saw his wife come

in, clad in a festive dress and followed by a girl who carried a

flask of spirits and a silver cup. The lady touched the cup with

her lips and bade me empty it three times. After that the

nobleman wanted me to kiss her, which surprised me greatly

because even in our country of Holstein we do not offer such

civility. That is why I wished to content myself with kissing

her hand. But he forced me so obligingly to kiss her mouth

that it was impossible to refrain from doing so."

Alexis believed that the shrewd scientific Olearius had not

understood his Russian people.

These western notions did not agree, certainly, with ancient

Muscovite usage. It seemed both simple and pleasant to Alexis

to borrow from the west such needful things as clocks and

cannon and books, while still keeping to the way of life of his

father, the first Romanov ... as simple as stealing out to ride

with Maria in the fast sled, where he could feel her shoulder

touching his and watch the steam of her breath merge with

his.

Maria was not with him when the hands touched his reins.

He was riding in at a foot pace from Troitsko with his boyars

and grooms. At the city gate the crowd that waited, instead of

bending heads and shouting "Qosudar!" came around him

complaining, the lined faces sweating, the voices crying out

complaints. Some hands even plucked at his sleeves; after he

had listened to them he told them he was sorry they felt

wronged by the councilors who served him, and that he would

see that any offenders should be made honest.

But the younger boyars with him whipped the nearest of

the common crowd away from him with their nagaikas, and

peasants threw stones at his escort, not harming him but shout-

ing, "The tsar is kind his dog boys bite us. 77

After that day when hands touched him, crowds pressed

against the Kremlin gates, even after meat and beer had been

sent out to them. They demanded that the offending counci-

lors be put to death, and Alexis spoke to them again, feeling

tears in his eyes. . . . Smoke rose over Moscow when whole

8 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

streets burned, and the guards of the gates were replaced by

foreign soldiers who stood their post with flintlocks raised and

drums beating.

Alexis knew little more of the rioting than that. Two of his

councilors were sent away to exile in the east, and he heard

that the leaders of the rioting, had been made to feel their

deaths. After that outcry of the people, his councilors made

new laws, a new

common folk closely to the land on which they worked, and

forbidding them sinful amusements.

Like a wave rising on a wind-swept lake, the disturbance

spread. It spread along the thoroughfares of the rivers. Fisher-

folk of the northern rivers stripped government taxpayers to

their shirts; at Ustiug workers in the textile mills beat up in-

spectors. Cities like Pskov far from Moscow stormed and

raged, and fought soldiery sent to quiet them. On the western

frontier crowds broke into government warehouses and seized

the stores of grain.

The wave of restlessness had no single impulse. It went

against payment of tax money, against "German science" like

that of the mathematician Olearius, against the new laws for-

bidding singing and dancing or the movement of peasant fami-

lies from one property to another.

Not that the stubborn and ignorant people of the hamlets

understood in the least that this new law chained them to their

fields to work henceforth unceasingly as serfs. They simply

resented the ukaz that forbade them to change fields and mas-

ters on St. George's day, after the last of the harvest was in.

The mass of the people held fast to the religion of old time, of

saints, fasts, and miracles. More than that, all these people had

in common a great craving for land, for good land to till.

The old faith and new land such might have been the

creed of the moujik of Muscovy if he had been articulate

enough to utter it. By it he lived, after his fashion, in the toil-

some mir or small community where tasks were shared, and

the folk invoked the village priest for the protection of the

saints of God. The life of the mir had developed not in the

few cities but in the many settlements scattered over a vast

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 9

and inhospitable land. The peasants feared anything that at-

tacked this ancient life of the mir. And when they feared a

thing they were apt to run away from it.

Even at nineteen years of age Alexis Romanov had an un-

derstanding of his people. He himself felt troubled when a

western invention like an astrolabe was held up to the sun, and

Maria protested and wept when the young, sharp-minded pa-

triarch, Nikon, forced people to read from a new book of

prayer. Was it not a sin to change what the saints had fash-

ioned in elder days? What truth could ever be found greater

than the word of ancient truth?

"Be merciful to these rebellious folk," Nikon warned his

young monarch. And Alexis granted mercy.

In the darkness of the Usspensky nave, where the walls

were stained with candle smoke, Alexis prayed for guidance.

He prayed to be preserved from the sickness of mind of the

Romanov family, from the misfortune that had made his

grandfathers exiles in the new land of the east, and, above all,

that his country of Muscovy should be preserved from a

second Time of Troubles such as his father had known.

It was not told him, because even the "eyes" of the govern-

ment hardly perceived it, how masses of people were in mo-

tion from the Moscow area toward the east. They followed

the frozen threads of the northern rivers. They trundled in

carts along the highroad to Kazan and Perm. They escaped

from punishment in the rebellious cities of Novgorod and

Pskov by taking to the forest.

They wandered as only Slavs can wander, growing harvests

on the way, working for food or going without food, but

always tending east, to the water of the Volga.

Beyond the Volga there were fewer government garrisons

to stop them. They rode the empty salt barges up the Kama

River, they climbed the grassy shoulders of the Urals. By the

paths of charcoal burners they crossed the ridges to the eastern

slopes.

Slipping by the customs stations, they followed bands of

hunters or colonists where no roads led, farther to the east.

Here, beyond the customs, they called themselves "free

wandering men."

10 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Dezhnev the Hunter

In June of that year 1648 one hunter, Semyen Dezhnev,

ventured farthest east. On the records of the government post

at Yakutsk he is called a "cossack," which meant a frontiers-

man under hire either as colonist or fighter. And what he ac-

tually did, unwittingly, was extraordinary.

With twenty-five hunters one of the exploring groups by

which the Slavs had penetrated to farther Asia, more than a

year's travel and more than a hundred degrees of longitude

east of Moscow Semyen Dezhnev departed from the block-

house of Yakutsk. Passing through the coldest region on earth

(the Cold Pole), the Dezhnev band built two longboats of

hewn timber bound with hides, using reindeer skins for sails.

In the brief summer thaw when marsh water flooded the dark

rivers flowing toward the Arctic, the two boats of the cossacks

joined the expedition of a merchant Alexiev who had made his

way to this jumping-off place to hunt for a new supply of

sables, the most precious of furs.

Dezhnev had a fancy. On that bleakest of all frontiers he

had heard of a river named the Pogicha where birches grew

and corn could be planted, and sleek deer hunted. So the na-

tives said. But neither cossacks nor Muscovites had been able

to set eyes on the Pogicha. Sables for the merchant Alexiev?

Certainly, Dezhnev swore, there would be sables on the

Pogicha.

So in June the three boats passed down the last explored

river, the Kolima, into the ice-studded waters of the Arctic

where the sky lowered over their heads. Following the bare

coast eastward, they came upon no trace of the elusive

Pogicha, or of Alexiev's sables.

Instead Alexiev was wounded by a spear fighting the fish-

skin-clad natives, the Chukchi whose only wealth consisted of

ivory tusks. And when they tried to round a great cape veiled

in mist, Alexiev's boat was wrecked.

Later Dezhnev said in his report: "This cape is different

. . . lying north by northeast, it turns in a circle. On the near

side there is a stream, and beside the stream the Chukchi have

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY II

built a thing like a tower of whalebone. Out from this cape

are two islands where Chukchi were seen with walrus tusks in

holes in their lips. On its far side the cape turns toward the

river Anadir."

Wind drove Dezhnev's ill-made boats out to those islands,

and then south. Mist hid the shore. Yet the cossacks were sail-

ing south instead of northeast. They did not know where.

In October Dezhnev's boats were wrecked on this southern

shore and his party made their way back where natives told

them a river was. They found it at the tip of a great inlet,

without timber or native villages.

They had no gear for fishing. Twelve of the party sent up-

river died, all but two or three, from starvation. Dezhnev built

huts to winter in, and found out that his river was named the

Anadir. Next year they made a new boat and discovered a

sandbank where "sea cows" gathered and tusks were to be

picked up. This was all the wealth that Semyen Dezhnev had

in his quest of six years for the Pogicha.

Still, he kept alive with his surviving comrades, exploring

their barren southern coast, finding more ivory or collecting

it by guns from the natives, who fought them savagely.

After 1650 other cossack bands reached them, coming

down the Anadir, overland from the Kolima. And with these

Dezhnev struggled for possession of his sandbank with its

yearly trove of a few walrus tusks.

When at last he returned to Yakutsk, he made his famous

report which fills about a page and a half. This he did because

he wanted it clearly understood that he had reached the sand-

bank by sea, in boats from the Kolima, while the other inter-

lopers had come across the heights by land. So the sandbank

and its tusks belonged to him, by right of discovery.

Unknowing, Dezhnev had made a greater discovery. His

"impassable" cape is actually the tip of Asia: its islands are

those in Bering Strait between the cape and the western tip of

America. The cossack Dezhnev had discovered the end of the

Asiatic continent.

His report, written down, and signed, was put away among

piles of documents in the Yakutsk office, and there it lay for-

12 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

gotten for nearly a century, until 1736. Of his discovery and

the forgetfulness of Yakutsk much was to come later on. 1

Semyen Dezhnev, who had made the passage of an ice-filled

polar sea, to emerge in the mist-veiled waters of the Pacific

Ocean, survived the ordeal. But he was the only leader who

survived this particular quest for the elusive river Pogicha.

Alexiev, the merchant adventurer, had died of his wound. So a

Chukchi woman explained to Dezhnev. As for Alexiev's com-

panions, "Their teeth fell out of their gums" which meant

that scurvy had carried them off. As for the other explorers

who arrived at the sandbank on the Pacific side, Michael

Staduchin, a cossack from Yakutsk, disappeared on a venture

inland; Motora, another cossack, was killed by tribes up the

Anadir River from whom he had taken captives to sell And

few of Dezhnev's surviving companions returned to Yakutsk,

because the stubborn cossack spent years building more long-

boats in the limbo of the Arctic to search by sea for the miss-

ing Pogicha.

The Freebooters of Yakutsk

Few among the inhabitants of Yakutsk could have had any

interest in the story of Semyen Dezhnev when he found his

way back to that frontier town on the frozen Lena River.

The inhabitants of that blockhouse town known as an

ostroghad other more important matters to occupy them.

The handful of Muscovite soldiers, armed with matchlocks,

had the wooden towers of the gates to guard against hostile

tribesmen no natives were allowed to spend the night within

the gates, except captured young women. The "Liths," or for-

eign soldiersprisoners of war shipped out from Moscow had

their own barracks and families to provide for.

On the crest of the hill within the stockade, the voevode or

military governor had his "palace," like a citadel, guarding the

priceless stocks of grain, honey, and wine shipped out so la-

boriously on heavy barges from river to river. The dyak or

secretary-inspector had all he could do to watch the governor.

The priests built a towering log church with whitewashed

cupola, and they quarreled with the governor who endeavored

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 13

to- exact furs by force from the natives instead of converting

them.

Icebound during the long winter months, and left to their

own devices for the most part by the far-off government at

Moscow, the people of Yakutsk struggled among themselves

Isbrandt Ides

Russian explorers in Siberia, with short skis and dog sleds

and contrived ways to keep warm and alive, while they

dreamed of lush rivers, of gold and silver mines, of troves of

sables, ermine or black fox furs, the finding of which meant a

fortune gained and the chance to live, released from their

exile, in the comfortable cities of the west.

When they sallied out in bands to search through the snow-

bound forests for such will-o'-the-wisps, they found only the

reality of beaver skins, small hoards of silver coins to be plun-

dered, or fish-ivory and the tusks of mammoths buried in per-

petually frozen ground.

14 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Beyond the Urals, ghosts walked the forestshades of great

conquistadors. The ghost of Irmak, the son of the Don, who

had driven the Tatars from the threshold of Sibir, and the

shade of that other ataman, Poyarkov, who had built a fleet

out of forest timber to sail down the last river, the Amur, and

come back alive with a thousand souls to sell as slaves.

Beyond the Urals such men as these gained dominions or

fortunes by their ready wit and tough consciences. Squire

Honey was one of them. A Pole, Khmielnevsky, a learned

soul who could read books in Latin, and quote an authority

named Ovid on the twin joys of life, drunkenness and love.

He had made a great name for himself in Moscow during the

late Time of Troubles. So he had been exiled beyond the

Urals, and jailed as well But how could a log jail hold a man

of such superior education? After only a few years at the ter-

minus of Tobolsk the disciple of Ovid was given the rank of

squire and sent farther east to inspect the newest ostrog, which

was then Yeniseisk. Tobolsk, it seemed, was glad to be rid of

Squire Honey.

Thus freed, Squire Honey made an inspection journey that

became the talk of the folk from Tobolsk to Yeniseisk. First

he had only a few men to follow him, then he had an army;

first he had at his side only one Lithuanian girl, then she was

joined by a bevy of Tataresses.

Apparently he started with a portable still as well. By bor-

rowing stocks of government grain, he obtained a supply of

corn brandy. At that time a glass of brandy was worth a sable

skin, and ten sable skins could buy a woman. As he proceeded

on his journey, Squire Honey acquired a thousand sable skins,

without counting in beaver or fox. And he changed his Tatar

girls for Ostiaks.

At each post he explained that his new possessions were gifts

from voevodes down the road. So the voevode at that post

usually hastened to make a gift of his own a keg of wine or

sack of precious tobacco. If he did not, this educated inspector

would shake his head ominously over the account books, and

hint that his friends in Tobolsk would not be pleased with the

accounts.

At the native villages he gave the chieftains a little liquor or

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 15

tobacco, and selected their best furs as gifts in exchange. His

Lithuanian girl, however, he would never sell.

Since Squire Honey traveled so slowly, in this fashion, news

of his manner of inspection caught up with him and passed

him. Again he found himself in jail, stripped of his rank,

wealth, and volunteer army. One voevode had sent all the way

to Tobolsk to discover that the inspector actually had no

powerful friends there. As before, however, he did not remain

long in jail.

It happened that the two voevodes of the town whert he

was incarcerated had been quarreling and Squire Honey had

not been long behind a locked door, before the rival voevodes

began a civil war. Squire Honey's educated tongue could tell

them about feuds such as that. To settle the war he was re-

leased. Whereupon he drew up a "plan for conquest of the

Lena River region" and he was shipped east again to carry it

out. He must have died on this- last journey because he never

reached the Lena.

But a greater than Khmielnevsky reached the Lena, and the

tale of his fortunes was told like the saga of Squire Honey's

inspection. Yarka Khabarov, who came from Ustiug, had a

way of transforming things into money. When he moved east,

to the fur terminal of Mangazeia in the northern forest, the fur

trade was at its flood, and Yarka Khabarov turned skins into

money.

A few years later when Mangazeia burned down the boom

town was not rebuilt because the flood of furs was ebbing.

Khabarov moved east to the Lena. Where the river Kuta

portage joins the Lena he built a saltworks, getting as much

silver for his salt as other men did for smuggled tobacco. To

feed his workers this enterpriser tilled miles of land, and raised

corn to sell.

By the time Khabarov had become not a mere merchant

prince but a merchant emperor, the voevode of Yakutsk took

his holdings from him by a writ of authority and the guns of

soldiers. He moved a little way up the Lena and started new

plantations where the soil waskich. Again the governor of

Yakutsk interfered, sending out a draft of settlers to join

Yarka Khabarov's followers.

1 6 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

By this time the intelligent Khabarov had learned his lesson

that settlements could be confiscated by better-armed rivals.

Settlements could not be moved away to safety.

So, having turned first furs and then salt and corn into

money, this great enterpriser tried a new field of enterprise by

moving about armed. The settlers from Yakutsk he drove

away by gunfire from his stockades, and speedily he went

himself to Yakutsk, where he raised an army of some hundred

and fifty adventurers easily enough by offering more pay than

the governor of Yakutsk. In that frontier metropolis there

were plenty of men like Dezhnev to follow a strong leader.

And Khabarov was not only strong but overbearing.

Under the circumstances the voevode of Yakutsk was not

only agreeable but eager that Khabarov should depart, with

full authority to find what enterprise he could undertake be-

yond the frontier, down the Amur River, where he would be

the neighbor, not of Yakutsk, but of the Chinese Manchus.

For years this energetic conquistador launched his fleets

down the Amur, toward rich grainlands and hamlets of human

beings who could be captured and sold. His small army was

supplied with cannon by the governor of Yakutsk. He cap-

tured a Manchu garrison town and made it his headquarters.

By stealing down the river in boats or making forced marches

farther into the fertile river basin, he managed to surprise vil-

lagers before the inhabitants could escape. Or if they did flee,

burdened with carts and herds, he overtook them. When they

shut themselves up in the hamlets, his cannon pounded the

wooden walls to pieces, and his freebooters surged in to take

captives. After one assault he reported;

"With prayers to God . . . after hard fighting we counted

six hundred and forty-one, big and little, killed. We took cap-

tive two hundred and forty-three women and girls, and one

hundred and eighteen children, with two hundred thirty-

seven horses."

These captives, human and animal, could serve as slaves in

Khabarov's new army of the Amur, or they could be sold for

money. He sold the best of them for forty to a hundred rubles

a head. The conquest grew along the Amur, yet fighting

broke out endemically among Khabarov's own bands. Some of

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY IJ

his cossacks moved away to start enterprises of their own;

more cossacks journeyed out from Yakutsk with powder and

lead.

Still, there was no proper place in the government scheme

of things for a Yarka Khabarov. He was summoned back. to

Moscow, accused of cruelty, extortion, and murder, and his

greatest conquest was taken from him entire by the Siberian

Bureau.

However, Khabarov, the successful, was not punished. He

described in Moscow how a new empire could be extended

along the Amur, and grain and salt, furs and silver be had from

its inhabitants. Ermine could be found, and sold to the Chinese

-jewels could be mined from the mountains of that fortunate

land! Gravely Yarka Khabarov told the secretaries in Moscow

chat the pillars of conquest of no less an explorer than Alexan-

der the Great had been found on his river "where the sun

rises beyond the mountain Karkaur." Khabarov was pardoned,

given noble rank, and sent back to organize his conquest. To-

day out there a city is named for him.

Irmak of Sibir, Ivan Petlin, who found his way into and out

of the Great Wall of China, Khmielnevsky, Poyarkov the

ataman, and Yarka Khabarov they had iron in them, they

went where devils feared to go. They kept and used the land

and human beings they found, in whatever way.

"Old dwellers" on the frontiers not one of them came out

of Moscow three of them Cossacks 2 from the free brother-

hoods of the steppes, they held tenaciously to their conquests,

not flitting on after game like hunters, or wandering the- paths

between settlements like traders. Not one of them- started out

with the blessing of Moscow, or even with authorization

from Moscow. Irmak, the greatest of them, had been a Volga

brigand pursued by Muscovite officials, and Khmielnevsky

had been a jailbird of strange plumage.

No, they had gone their own way like the thousands of

"free wandering men" who crossed the invisible frontier of

the Urals after them, drawn for the most part by the wealth

to be gleaned from furs. The government agencies, following

cautiously behind, had also tapped this wealth by making it a

1 8 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

monopoly, by sending out dyaks to keep the accounts of the

new settlements, and by claiming a tribute of furs from the

natives.

Never had the take of pelts been so enormous as after the

mid-seventeenth century. Yakutsk sent in the value of thirty

thousand rubles in a year. That had been the valuation of the

dyaks in the far east; in Furriers' Row and the Sable Treasury

in Moscow it was much greater. During these years single

hunters along the Lena could kill with clubs as many as a

dozen of the heedless sables that strayed into their camps in a

day. At that rate they were exterminating the valuable beasts. 3

Already the explorers of the land's end, Dezhnev, Motora, and

Staduchin and their comrades, had found the hunting bad be-

yond the Lena. The flood of furs and the resulting tide of

wealth that flowed westward to Moscow was destined to

dwindle by the end of the century.

Already hard reality was dispelling the hope of untold

wealth. Khmielnevsky had profited most from his portable

still; Khabarov had made his fortune from grainland and the

sale of captives, while Dezhnev had had to fight for his few

ivory tusks.

By this time the bureaus of Moscow rather than the artels of

the frontier sought for fabulous fertile rivers, for mountains

of silver, for gold rock and precious stones shining with their

own firefor simple iron, lead and tin, the metals Moscow

lacked utterly. "Sibir has a golden soil" was said in the Red

Place, not on the frontier. Naturally, the tall tales told for

their own ends by the Khmielnevskys and Khabarovs did not

serve to disillusion the secretaries in the Kremlin about the

wealth of "Sibir."

For by now this new land of the east had gained a name,

Sibir. It had been known vaguely as the new land beyond the

Urals, or as Tatary. The Tatar town of Sibir had become the

gateway of the migrants to the east, and the first Muscovite

terminal, Tobolsk, had been built close to it. Sibir had been the

Alamo rather than the Seven Cities of Cibola of this unknown

east, yet it gave the east its name.

Sibir yielded the migrants soil rather than gold. Grassland

edged the headwaters of the great Arctic-flowing rivers. Here

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 19

the illimitable hills were blue with timber, the rushing waters

so full of fish that often shoals of them would be forced out

on the banks. The feather-grass plains were so rife with deer

that herds of them could be driven and caught against a pali-

sade. It was this craving for soil to cultivate that anchored the

migrants to the new land in spite of great hardships.

The churches also took root in the new ground. The clergy

who followed the migrants across the Urals came prepared to

cultivate the earth as well as lead prayer; their small log

churches rose quickly enough in the best fields; the peasants of

their monasteries cleared the forest edge. The monasteries

themselves were built like blockhouses, with storage space for

grain and towers to shelter the congregations against raiders.

True, the first archbishop who ventured out to Tobolsk,

with a chest of holy relics for the new altars, had trouble sepa-

rating the monks from the nuns in this wilderness, and in sep-

arating priests from wine drinking. And when he wished to

canonize Irmak as a saint to give to Tobolsk a saint of its own

he found that the great pathfinder could not be named a

saint. The folk of the countryside remembered him too well.

These archbishops of Tobolsk, like the village priests else-

where, understood very well that the first need in the new

land was to feed the people. They devoted themselves, above

all, to acquiring acreage and "souls" to work the acres, until

very soon commands began .to arrive from Moscow to the

voevode of Tobolsk to "watch carefully that the archbishop

does not seize any more land."

The archbishops, however, developed skill in frustrating

such commands. From their side the Urals they petitioned

Moscow: how were the blind, the crippled, the starving and

homeless to be cared for, by God's will, unless more acres

could be harvested?

One of them, Gerasim, fairly triumphed in this bloodless

battle of agriculture. As soon as he reached Tobolsk he peti-

tioned that his salary be paid in grain, not money. He besought

gifts of land, not money. In due time arrived an order from

Moscow that "the archbishop must not gain more land by do-

nation." But Gerasim had anticipated such an order, and he

20 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

had put settlers with a hastily built chapel on the disputed

ground. As the tsar had his "eyes" in Tobolsk to spy for him,

the archbishop had his "ears" in the halls of the Kremlin to

listen for him. To Moscow he wrote a truly heartbreaking

petition. How could he deprive poor people of their living, or

tear down a house of God? Again the victory was to the arch-

bishop.

When death came to Gerasim, the church of Tobolsk had

more than six hundred souls to sow and harvest, and more than

twelve thousand acres. It was secure against famine and the

anger of the voevode of Tobolsk. For the devout Alexis, son

of Michael, had been tsar during these last years of Gerasim,

and the young Alexis, of all people, had been least able to

refuse one of Gerasim's soul-searching petitions.

Slowly, with all the tenacity of Slavs, out of this craving of

an illiterate peasantry for land, and this "old usage" of a back-

t ward priesthood, a human core was being formed at the en-

trance to Siberia. For both the settler and the village priest,

unlike the conquistadors, had come to stay on the land,

The Tsar's Plan and the Bureazis Performance

Strangely enough, as the seventeenth century drew toward

its end, these same settlers and priests became the most stable

force in the new dominion of Siberia.

There was of course a plan of government for this land.

Alexis, the Great Master, had issued in his Uluzhenie some

regulations for the people in the east. Mildly enough, the tsar

wished both the native folk and the settlers to be taxed only

moderatelyat a tenth or so of their produce, crops and furs.

No natives were to be oppressed, forcibly converted, or en-

slaved by agents of Moscow.

Beyond the Urals, however, the intelligent plan did not

seem to operate. The folk there had a saying, "Mosfiow is far

and heaven is high." Alexis himself had never ventured far out

of sight of the Kremlin towers. The boyars who issued the

orders to be carried out in the three and a half million square

miles of "Siberia" occupied a few chambers in the Razriad or

Bureau of Military Affairs within the Kremlin. The secretaries

THE' TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 2 I

who actually managed the accounts of the Sibirsky Prikaz or

Siberian Bureau had to submit their accounts in turn to the

Treasury, and naturally they desired to show as much revenue

taken in as possible, even after the fur trade dwindled, and

"gold rock" failed to materialize.

Roughly, the bureau regarded the new territory as a source

of taxation, a vast military encampment into which political

exiles might be sent to labor, as the powerful Razriad de-

manded. But the human integers of the plan had a way of

trying to make a profit for themselves. So the plan worked

itself out somewhat in this fashion:

I THE VOEVODES

The voevodes, for instance, the governors of the posts in

the east, should have been war veterans of the upper noble

class; actually they were often friends of the heads of the

Sibirsky Prikaz. Given good salaries, they were allowed to

journey eastward with wives and household serfs, and cart-

loads of wine and honey.

In coaches bearing the emblem of the two-headed eagle,

these voevodes often traveled for a year or more to reach their

posts, following not the roads because there were no roads as

yetbut the traces of routes where post stations stood every

fifty versts stations modeled on those of the Mongol yam or

horse post, manned by yamschiks sent out by order of the

bureau, with horses, a stock of food for themselves, a pair of

watchdogs, and enough land to support their families. . It was

the duty of the yamschik to take on to the next station every

traveler who could show the seal of the bureau. In summer

this often meant working a boat upstream along a river; in

winter the stage could be made more swiftly by sleigh on the

river ice. Often yarnschiks disappeared- with their families to

seek better living elsewhere. So, more often than not, the post

stations did not exist.

Since the voevodes remained on duty only two or three

years, most of them exerted themselves to gather a private

stock of the best furs and the money available in their districts,

to carry back with them. Such accretions were explained as

"gifts" from the native headmen, or settlers. The dyaks, the

22 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

secretaries who kept the post accounts, and the customs agent

who collected the official tax might be expected to overlook

such gifts, if they received similar gifts themselves. The exac-

tions of these governors and secretaries served to set them at

feud with the settlers, hunters, and priests of the post.

Alexis' regulations forbade the departing voevode to leave

his citadel until the new voevode had checked his accounts.

But sables and ermine pelts could be hidden, and who could

prove where silver money came from? Customs inspectors at

the Ural frontier often found the mattresses of homecoming

voevodes stuffed with furs, and the voevodes themselves wear-

ing long coats of the finest dark sable or valuable black fox.

The bureau decreed that no voevode could bring out of Si-

beria more than an accountable increase over the money and

goods he took in. Many voevodes contrived to borrow money

and gear from friends, to register with the customs on their

entrance, and to return to their friends thereafter. Then the

home-coming voevodes could display their private stock of

furs and goods to the bureau's inspectors at Verkhuturie, the

main control point in the Urals, and swear on the holy books

that they were bringing back no greater value than they had

taken out.

II THE PROFITEERS

The bureau that existed to glean taxes from the new land

could not check the rapacity and the ingenuity of its officials

in profiting for themselves. A copper pot at the Ilimsk post

was worth as many sable skins as would fill it; those same sable

skins smuggled back to Moscow would be worth three times

their price at Ilimsk. The voevode at Ilimsk, exiled to a river

in the wilderness of dark fir forest, was distant more than five

hundred miles by trail from higher authority in Irkutsk or

Yeniseisk. What was to prevent him from forcing his private

stock of trade goods "iron implements," woven cloth, cheap

beads on the traders of the post, for good furs? The traders

in their turn could force the native villages to give up new furs

for the cheap goods. Khabarov took more than nine thousand

sable pelts from the northern Giliaks alone.

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 23

The saying "No one comes back empty-handed from Si-

beria" became a proverb.

The Uluzhenie of the mild Alexis forbade officials to exact

more than the lawful yearly tax of some eight skinsfrom a

native household. But the fur-bearing animals and native hunt-

ers alike tended to thin out in a voevode's district. It was un-

questionably much simpler for the voevode to demand more

pelts from the surviving hunters than to explain in writing to

the secretaries of the bureau, four thousand miles distant in

Moscow, why the customary tax could not be collected. An

official who showed a profit usually escaped the vague threat

of "the tsar's anger, and cruel punishment." Alexis increased

the term of service of voevodes; the result was more fighting

between the voevodes' henchmen and the "old dwellers" of

the settlements

III THE VUDKA MONOPOLY

Vudka added to the trouble. Officially the brewing and saie

of spirits was a state monopoly, as it had been under the Tatar

khans. In consequence the Sibirsky Prikaz operated public

pothouses throughout the eastern settlements and along the

post roads. Since the price of vudka, brandy, or plain honey

beer was fixed, the keepers of these kabacs or taverns thrived

by selling a glassful for a sable skin out the back doors.

Voevodes and some of the foreign soldiery had the right to

distill spirits, not to sell them. But where such "wine," as they

called it, could be sold for nearly five rubles (equivalent to

about four English pounds sterling in 1670) a wooden pailful,

voevodes often brewed a stock to hand over to their agents to

"feast the chieftains" of the native villages and to bring back

furs for every drink. The voevodes brewed these spirits from

precious grain abstracted from the public granaries.

IV THE GRAIN DEFICIENCY

In Moscow, where the boyars of the bureau climbed the

palace stairs with their accounts every month to bow to the

floor before Alexis and discuss their problems, the shortage of

grain in the east appeared to be one of the trials imposed on

them by God's will. Every year the bureau sent, or tried to

24 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

send, a boat caravan of grain out, even to Yakutsk, the farthest

terminal. These weighty grain barges had to be worked across

the northern rivers, across the Arctic gulfs, a journey of nearly

two years. Inevitably much of the caravan was lost or appro-

priated on the way. Muscovite agents, accustomed to a bread

staple, sickened on a diet of abundant fish and salt meat.

Attempts to transplant peasant cultivators to the Yakutsk

area failed, because many died on the journey out, and the

peasants could not bring crops of barley and oats out of the

strange soil in the fleeting summers. The peasants themselves

drifted away from the "sovereign's land," where they were

allowed only half their produce, to virgin territory where

they could keep all their crops. Such escaping serfs could be

caught in the Moscow area where the roads were guarded; in

the eastern lands they disappeared into the wilderness, or hired

out in strange settlements. Men were badly needed east of the

Urals where some eighty thousand souls, including perhaps

fifteen thousand servants of the bureau, had pushed their tiny

habitations into the limbo of a continent. *

V THE SOLDIERY

The bureau had drafted some two thousand soldiers for the

Siberian service. Each strelitz matchlock firer who began

the march across the Urals, convinced that he would never

return, had been given a ruble and a half to pay his way. Con-

tingents of Streltsi paid their own way, additionally, by loot-

ing villages along the road. On the appearance of such a

soldier draft, the settlers barred their gates and went out

armed with food and money to offer the marchers, if they

would pass on without tarrying.

If the marching Streltsi looted and then obliterated by fire

an outlying settlement, who was to enforce punishment on

them? Not the "Liths" or foreign soldiery Poles and Lithu-

anians, Danes *and Ukrainians, either mercenaries or prisoners

of war or the adventuring cossacks. Beyond the Urals such

troops as these would obey, in a pinch, only their own

leaders.

Exile for the armed guards was worse beyond the Ob, out

on the great plateau swept by Arctic winds. At Yana, near

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 25

where Dezhnev and Alexiev had built their first boats, the

longer half of the year was spent in twilight, in the grip of

extreme frost. No Russian women penetrated that far. And in

the winter bands of masterless men who had existed through

the summer in the forest came and besieged the stockaded

forts, driven by hunger.

Conditions were still worse for the Muscovites who had to

keep the out-camps, the "year men" who made the far fur-

collecting rounds. When their horses and weapons were

stolen by invisible thieves, they took dog sleds and skis from

the villages, and women as well. They could not adapt them-

selves to the land like the steppe-born Cossacks or the river-

bred Volga burlaki boatmen. Even the Cossacks had a song

about this land:

Hard are the winter days, lad.

When your hide cracks open,,

And ice grips your heart

Ahaithe sun is gone!

Hard are the winter days, lad!

VI ENSLAVEMENT OF ASIATICS

The bureau's agents may have been told of the Uluzhenie

of the tsar in Moscow that forbade enslaving the eastern peo-

ples. Yet inevitably they acquired natives as body servants to

gather berries and wood, to guide them from village to village

and to "hunt with hawks." If, in spite of that, they were near

starvation, ^they loaded their guns and seized hostages from

these same villages, to exchange for food. Some of the native

Siberians declared that Muscovites had been seen to eat human

flesh when hungering

VII THE DESERTERS

The bureau punished desertion heavily. Leaders of deserters

were hanged, while searchers were knouted with the iron-

tipped lash if they returned without the missing men. Also, if

a man disappeared from a squad or company, the unit was

punished as a whole which often led to the disappearance of

squads or companies as a whole.

26 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Then, too, the bureau had formed its military guards by

classes, the superiors being listed and paid as "boyars' sons,"

the better pioneers as "cossacks," while the foreigners were

kept apart in detachments of their own. This led to trouble

when different classes were immured together in a post like

Yakutsk, especially in winter. At Yakutsk the cossacks peti-

tioned the voevode not to be sent out on expeditions with the

boyars' sons (superior in rank to them). This petition com-

plained that the boyars' sons brewed "wine" to sell from the

grain reserve, that they sent out wandering traders to collect

furs, thus sharing profits with the traders (instead of with the

cossacks,. it seems), that the boyars' sons took bribes to allow

hostages held by the cossacks to escape, while they tortured

their own hostages in the hope of getting ransom. Finally, the

cossacks claimed that such conduct on the part of the boyars'

sons caused the natives to waylay and kill cossacks.

. On its part the bureau complained that its servingmen

tended to dress and act more like "Tatars," while the bureau

itself began to hire Tatars to replace deserters, thus creating a

new class of armed servants, not according to plan.

By the i66os deserters from isolated posts like Ilimsk and

Yakutsk were drifting in strong bands over the heights

through the combative Mongols and Buriats, southerly to the

warmer basin of the Amur which lay beyond the authority of

the voevodes, being close to the Chinese frontier posts. Since

the bureau had set a reward of three rubles for the capture of

such deserters, the tribesmen had learned that they could

profit from the fugitives. The Buriat and Mongol horsemen

would examine a captured Muscovite to decide whether his

clothing and kit was worth more than three rubles; if not, they

would take him in to the nearest Russian post. In retaliation

the Russians often tied a captured Buriat to a tree and "put a

red cap on him" a copper pot heated red-hot, and put over

his head.

This mutual retaliation between the war bands of the bu-

reau and the still powerful Mongols and Buriats did not help

to keep the peace along the far eastern frontier.

And always the bureau was vexed by the resentment of its

own servants beyond the Urals. That bitter resentment grew

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 2J

out of the pittance of pay given lower-class guards, inspec-

tors, and clerks in an area where boyars' sons and higher offi-

cials waxed rich from loot and from withholding the pay of

their inferiors; it increased under the almost intolerable hard-

ships of the posts in northeastern Siberia. At all the posts the

military and clerical detachments resented the enforced labor

at building stockades and cultivating the adjacent ground. To

remedy this last, the bureau drafted skilled workmen and

peasants in the western towns and sent them into the Siberian

service. Whereupon many of the workmen and peasants dis-

appeared from the posts to join the growing ranks of the "free

wandering men."

VIII MIGRATION FROM THE POSTS

Another phenomenon troubled the Siberian Bureau. The

posts themselves tended to disappear especially in the north

while settlements never marked on the maps tended to ap-

pearespecially in the south. The great northern terminal of

Mangazeia near the gulf of the Ob was now an ash heap

sprinkled with the huts of wanderers. The fur traffic from

which Khabarov had profited had ceased to pass through the

Mangazeia route forty 'years after the post was built. Along

this same northern route, thousands of miles to the east, the

posts of Turukhansk and Yakutsk were half deserted. Their

stockades, churches, and warehouses still stood; their inhabit-

ants had drifted away to warmer climates, better soil, and

freedom from the authority of voevodes, in the south.

One portion of the population of Turukhansk and Yakutsk

remained fixed: the inmates of the katorgas or state prisons for

political exiles recently built there by order of the Razriad

which dictated the plan of the Siberian Bureau. The katorga

exiles could be called upon to do the labor of the missing in-

habitants of these northern posts. The icebound ostrog of

Yana could be manned only by a skeleton force of drafted

men.

On the other hand, newer settlements in the milder south-

east tended to grow unexpectedly and not according to the

bureau's plan. Nerchinsk, founded on one of the headwaters

of the Amur, near the caravan route to the Great Wall of

THE CITY AND THE TSAR

China, was thronged with human flotsam of the frontier.

Irkutsk, overlooking Baikal, the holy lake of the Mongol peo-

ples, had been almost unknown a generation after the building

of Yakutsk and Yana; now Irkutsk was developing into a large

town. So large that the bureau built a katorga for women

there, near the nunnery.

The northern routes, of course, were being deserted be-

cause the fur intake that had brought them into being was

diminishing. The bureau made an attempt, late in the day, to

set aside areas as game preserves, to protect the better sort of

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 29

gray squirrel, black fox, and sable. The chief consequence

was that independent hunters moved elsewhere.

Throughout its vast terrain, the bureau in Moscow watched

the spontaneous migration of whole communities priests,

hunters, peasants, and women. Such migration of a mir always

tended southerly toward fertile, grain-producing river valleys.

Such a self-sustaining human group could erect its log dwell-

ings and plow its new lands in a single summer.

So, while the old fur routes of the bureau were being de-

serted toward the end of the seventeenth century, the newer

routes of agricultural colonization were making a pattern of

their own that would endure. By 1685, the settlers produced

adequate grain supply at points as far east as Yeniseisk and

Irkutsk. They also discovered that the western breeds of cattle

thrived, along the southern Siberian grasslands. No order of

the bureau could make these settlers remain where oats and

barley would not grow, or cattle survive.

The monasteries, as we have seen, followed their own

course, working their own lands and fortifying their new

buildingsactually taking some pains to report to Moscow

smaller holdings of land and peasantry than they in reality

possessed.

Although the elaborate plan of the Siberian Bureau was

failing in so many ways, it had a decisive effect on the growing

population east of the Urals. It created cleavages between the

military groups, such as the Liths, the true Cossacks, and the

musketeers of Moscow. By refusing to give the east a govern-

ing city since all finances and operations had to stem from

the offices in the Kremlin, and Tobolsk near the Urals (the

ostensible center of eastern administration) actually served as

little more than the supply depot and message center for Mos-

cowit allowed no large towns to grow up.

Insensibly during these decades of the seventeenth century

and not at all according to the bureau's plan, the native peo-

ples came more and more into servitude, while the Muscovites

who did not adhere to military discipline tended to become

outlaws.

3O THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Nikifor Chernigovsky' } s Republic

There was bound to be a Nikifor Cheraigovsky. He was a

Pole, a prisoner of war, confined for a while in a Muscovite

katorga in the east. Being an educated man, he rose to be over-

seer of other prison laborers, and married a handsome Polish

girl Early in the i66os, still an exile, we hear of him as mana-

ger of the salt works (started by Khabarov) on the upper

Lena, not far from the post of Ilimsk.

Chernigovsky and his wife, it seems, occupied a comfort-

able house. So comfortable that the voevode of Ilimsk took to

paying them long visits. Until the night when the voevode

departed with Chemigovsky's wife. The Pole, with some com-

panions, followed the track of the voevode's party, and found

and killed him. Then Chemigovsky's band went on to seize

the voevode's property and arms at the Ilimsk blockhouse.

They could not stay on the Lena. Well armed and equipped,

they pushed east beyond the frontier posts, swinging south

out of the snowbound mountains, down to Khabarov's old

hunting ground on the Amur. There they built boats, started

to sow crops and to raid and trade on their own. And there

they were joined by other fugitives, deserters from the

dreaded Yana post, cossacks from Yakutsk, survivors of earlier

expeditions to the Amur who had holed in along the tributary

streams. More than a thousand fugitive souls were on the

Amur that year.

Chernigovsky took command of these bands, and rebuilt

Khabarov's town, which had been burned by Chinese border

troops. In that center of Albazin he nursed into life what they

called a "Cossack republic." The energetic Chernigovsky had

not found a Pogicha but he had created one. The valley

around Albazin's stockade was cultivated. Since hunting par-

ties had not ravaged this territory, Chemigovsky's hunters

brought in quantities of the finest sable and fox furs. Some of

the citizens of this new republic took Chinese wives and

traded with the Chinese merchants from Tsitsihar. Other citi-

zens raided the Chinese frontier posts.

In the course of time the Siberian Bureau in far-off Moscow

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 31

passed on Chernigovsky's affair and condemned him to death,

ordering "hard" knouting for his companions of the salt

works. But grain grew on the Amur. Groups of settlers fol-

lowed the cossacks to Albazin. Last appeared a monk carrying

a wonder-working ikon. Aided by the ikon, he started a mon-

astery in the best of the fields.

Word spread along the eastern frontier: "There is sanctu-

ary on the Amur."

In spite of his death sentence, Chernigovsky had been care-

ful to send occasional gifts of the choicest sables to the nearest

Muscovite voevodes. In exchange they sent him powder and

cannon. When a great merchants' caravan made the journey

from Irkutsk to Peking, Chernigovsky took advantage of the

opportunity in 1674 to send a gift of specially fine sables to

the heads of the bureau at Moscow. He sent also a glowing

description of his conquest of the Amur.

In Moscow the heads of the bureau looked at their maps,

while the inspectors of the Sable Treasury examined the furs.

Together they reached the conclusion that Chernigovsky de-

served a pardon. The voevode killed by him had obviously

been incompetent, while Chernigovsky had added a new terri-

tory to the fur empire.

In 1676 this, new province with its town of Albazin was

added to the Muscovite dominion. The records yield some in-

teresting particulars of what took place in Albazin after that.

A katorga was set up there. In 1680 a voevode of Albazin was

killed by cossacks, who charged that he abused women.

In 1685 the Chinese sent an expedition up the Amur against

Albazin, captured it, and allowed the garrison and populace to

depart unharmed, with stores and arms.

So ended the very rudimentary republic Chernigovsky had

set up. The loss of Albazin, apparently only a frontier inci-

dent, was to have consequences both in the Manchu court of

Peking and in the Muscovite court.

As for the failure 4 of the early plan of the Sibirsky Prikaz,

it had very great consequences. The milder native peoples fell

into virtual slavery, allowed but not admitted by Moscow.

Those able to resist began to resist. Tobolsk itself was attacked

32 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

by the Kirghiz. Farther east the Ostiaks, the eastern Kalmuks,

and finally the strong Buriats caused trouble in turn.

The resistance movement spread even to the long-subjected

Tungusi and Yakuts of the north (in the i6yos). This revolt

was broken by the Siberian garrisons with cruelty. But it was

not ended.

Paradoxically, while the chains of subjection were riveted

more firmly on these native peoples, the Muscovites who

crossed the Urals often escaped from bondage. Serfdom, now

a law in the west at least where it could be enforced by the

authority of Moscow had no hold as yet in the eastern colo-

nies. You might say that the Muscovites became illegally free

where the eastern peoples were illegally subjected.

The restlessness east of the Urals had been fanned by spo-

radic rebellion in the west. The flame of rebellion broke out,

to die away and reappear elsewhere first in rioting through

the Moscow streets when a debased copper currency was

given out to the populace, then among subjected Finnish and

Tatar tribal groups, the Mordvas, Cheremiss, and Bashkirs,

soon to be joined by Cossacks of the Don and Volga, led by

Stenka Razin, 5 "sailing with his falcons, down Mother Volga

... to the blue Caspian sea."

While the western tribesmen fought for the overthrow of

Muscovite rule (1662-63), the peasants rose against the bar-

rier of serfdom, and the Cossacks and other still independent

groups against the voevodes and Prikazni or bureau agents

from Moscow, This popular reaction was suppressed only

with great difficulty by the Muscovite army, and only after

the frontier town of Astrakhan had held out as another "re-

public" like Chernigovsky's.

Within Moscow itself, within the two-centuries-old battle-

ments of the Kremlin, Alexis had heard the firing when his

guardsmen had driven mobs away, down the streets. No one

knew for certain the total of the dead, and no one told Alexis

that five thousand or twelve thousand human beings might

have been slain.

Reports made clear to him how the war in the Ukraine had

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 33

displaced so many Cossack communities, causing them to mi-

grate east to the Don basin, the place called the "sanctuary of

peoples." Because of the war and migration the grain crop of

the Ukraine had failed for several years. Then came the years

of famine, ending in an outbreak of plague. "The Time of

Ruin" the Ukrainians called it. And after that, the rebellion.

The Young Natalia

Like many another middle-aged man, after the death of his

first wife Alexis the son of Michael married a young girl. In

this case his choice had several consequences, among them

being the birth of his fourteenth child shortly after the festival

of St. Peter, the boy being christened Peter and known subse-

quently as Peter the Great.

The first wife, Maria Miloslavskaya, had grown more reli-

gious as time went on, while Alexis had mellowed perceptibly.

At forty-two years of age the Veliki Gosudar, the Great Mas-

ter of Rus, had been observed to stop his cortege in the streets

to watch a Punch-and-Judy show, or to appear of an evening

incognito at a house where musicians gathered with harpsi-

chord, flutes, and violins to play a thing unheard of, a sym-

phony. In fact Alexis had brought back a small heavy box

which played music of its own accord at his bedside. All this

was contrary to the code against devilish amusements.

Moreover the owner of the musical house did not conform

to ancient Russian custom. By birth he was Matviev, the son

of a dyak. His wife was a foreigner, a Scottish woman who

rode about the streets in an open European carriage and ap-

peared with naked face in the drawing room when the sym-

phonies were played. His library of books was foreign, printed

in Polish and Latin. Nor did Matviev conform in his habits.

For he and his Scottish wife, it seemed, preferred to talk with

Alexis about philosophy and such things rather than to obtain

honors at court. On his part, Alexis liked to listen, as he sipped

hot spiced wine; he called Matviev "Little Sergy" and made

him the unofficial foreign minister of All of Rus. When the

Ukrainian trouble came, Alexis made Little Sergy also minister

of Ukrainian affairs.

34 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

It was all very unorthodox, even to the lovely dark-haired

girl Natalia Kinlovna Naryshkin, who waited upon Matviev's

wife she was a niece, of an obscure family with Tatar blood

in its ancestry. When Matviev remarked once that Natalia

was of an age to marry, Alexis agreed. "I will find a husband,"

he promised, "for the little pigeon."

The next evening he announced that he would be the hus-

band.

Matviev would not believe that. Bending his head to the

floor, he cried, "My master, you would not destroy me!"

Skilled as he was in diplomacy, he realized instantly the

hatred he would arouse among the great boyar families and

particularly among the Miloslavsky clan, if the tsar were to

announce that he meant to marry a girl who had exhibited

herself publicly at Matviev's house.

"No, Little Sergy," Alexis said, "I would not do that."

He had a way of contriving things, of picking out compe-

tent men to handle responsibility and letting them do so with-

out interference. Perhaps it was more than the physical charm

of the girl that he sought. When he returned from Matviev's

house, he climbed to the guarded terem among the towers of

the Kremlin, where slept his two young sons Feodor and Ivan,

the one afflicted with a blood taint that weakened him, the

other a half -blind stammering imbecile. Apart from them lived

his six healthy surviving daughters.

These princesses of an empire, cloistered from public view,

had to conform to the life pattern of nuns. By ancient custom

they were allowed to ride forth only in closed sleighs, or to

hear a church service only within a curtained balcony. Such

tsarevnas could not talk face to face with young men of their

own kind. They could not marry.

Alexis had given his daughters intelligent tutors, books, and

the best of servants. One of them, Sophia, had proved to be a

brilliant pupil, although she was thickset and homely, silent

and much given to writing diaries.

Perhaps Alexis sought in Natalia Naryshkin a vitality that

he did not find in the terem which formed his home. At any

rate, he contrived his marriage in the customary way, by bid-

ding fifty-nine daughters of well-known boyars come before

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 35

him to be candidates for the "sovereign's delight." The sixtieth

was Natalia. When the girls had been viewed for a day, and

during their sleep at night, Alexis announced that Natalia

would be the tsaritsa, his bride.

It is known of Natalia only that she was attractive and gay,

loving entertainment, with a "small mind." Even as tsaritsa she

continued to drive out in one of Matviev's European carriages

with her face unveiled.

After his marriage Alexis indulged in wilder entertainment,

to satisfy himself as well as Natalia. Not in the Kremlin but in

his rambling summerhouse near the Yauza River he had a

room fitted up with a stage, calling it the Room of Comedy,

and upon the stage a spectacle performed by actors improvised

from the foreign colony German and Polish youths. Seated

alone in front of the stage, with the women screened in the

gallery, with elderly servants, attendant priests, and solemn

diplomats ranged discreetly in chairs behind him, he watched

from midmorning until dark such an unheard-of spectacle as

"The Tsaritsa Judith Cuts Off the Head of the Tsar Holo-

femes."

Think for a moment of that picture, of the thickset impas-

sive man with the tired wistful eyes sitting absorbed in a make-

shift throne seat while a score of apprentices from the foreign

colonythere were no other actors available performed the

old, old story of Judith. It is amusing, certainly, when you

recall that the theater in Paris might be performing such an

adult and satirical thing as Moliere's Le Malade Imaginmre,

while the Restoration comedies being played in England were

more sophisticated stuff than William Shakespeare ever

dreamed on.

Yet Alexis, the spectator, shared the craving of his people

for music and movement. Far from Moscow and unhampered

by the religious code, girls were dancing the chorovod under

the cherry blossoms of the Ukraine, Volga rivermen were

singing at their tow ropes. Villagers in the northern forests

crowded to watch mummers and dancing bears.

Successful in its first endeavor, Alexis' Room of Comedy

staged the story of Esther. The spectators had no trouble ^ in

identifying the young Natalia with Esther, and Alexis with

36 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Ahasuerus ("Xerxes")- After that Alexis had conjurers and a

chorus come into the dining hall during a feast. Cautiously,

and enjoying himself in the process, he was bridging the gap

between ancient Byzantine monasticism and the new ways of

Europe.

Among the women who watched the entertainments from

their screened galleries, there was silent strain. Natalia, now

pregnant, had six stepdaughters, some of them older than she.

Somewhere between these seven women and the two sickly

boys would fail the regency of All of Rus on Alexis' death.

Because it was not customary to do so, he had not yet an-

nounced his successor. When Natalia gave birth to a boy, and

a healthy boy, the strain increased perceptibly. Although an

infant, Peter seemed to have all his wits, while at least one of

his half brothers was an idiot. Obviously some adult would

need to serve as regent, but who would that adult be?

Because their Siberian exile had thinned out the male Ro-

manovs, mutilating those who survived, Alexis remained the

only competent man of the family. And the family ties were

very strong in such a boyar family. The father ruled as master

and archpriest, to whom servile obedience must be given. If

this gosudar, this head of the family, should be disgraced or

exiled, the family shared his fate.

In Alexis' time few of the ancient princely families survived

intact. They had been decimated or removed from their es-

tates by the inflexible anger of Ivan the Terrible; for nearly a

century the higher posts of the empire-to-be had been filled

by "men of the time" appointed by the tsar's will, as Alexis

himself had just raised Matviev to boyar rank. Yet the families

newly raised to be near the person of the tsar displayed just as

much jealousy and sometimes more greed for gain than the

children of Rurik, the lords of ancient Kiev, Vladimir, and

Tver had shown in their time. Unlike the great nobility of

Europe, these "men of the time" had no chateaux or castles of

their own, sustained by ancestral lands and revenues. They

dwelt for the most part in rambling houses squeezed into the

White City, as close as possible to the Kremlin; they were sus-

tained by awards from the Treasury. The scale of their suste-

nance was written down on the record of rank and privileges.

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY

Alexis had ordered this record roll destroyed. But there

were other records, and the families had excellent memories.

Of all the families, the two that had most at stake were the

Miloslavskys the kindred of the dead Maria and the six sur-

viving daughtersand the obscure Naryshkins, who had

thronged into Moscow after Natalia's marriage. By ancient

Contemporary medallion

Tsar Alexis and his second wife Natalia Naryshkin-parents

of Peter

custom the kindred of a new tsaritsa received the posts closest

to the person of the tsar. That custom dated back to the time

when a gosudar's life and succession became more secure in

the care of his children's kinsmen than in the hands of his own

brothers and uncles, who might conceivably have a claim to

the throne.

Perhaps because he remembered too well the popular out-

cry twenty-odd years before at the misconduct of some of the

Miloslavskys whom he had made ministers, perhaps because he

sought to change the old usage, Alexis had given the highest

appointments to strangers who seemed to merit them, like

Matviev.

38 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

So neither the Miloslavsky clan nor the Naryshkin family

held posts of power close to Alexis. The heads of the two

clans, both named Ivan, in fact, were kept at a distance from

the Great Master. Obviously Alexis meant to balance the

privilege and prestige of the rival families.

The consequence was only to postpone the reckoning.

Alexis, a wise moderator, still possessed as tsar the full power

of a despot; before his throne men prostrated themselves as

they had done formerly before the Tatar khans;

To that power Sophia had grown accustomed, vicariously.

It surrounded her with subservience, yet would forever be

denied her. She could not even be given in marriage to some-

one of royal blood in a distant land, as was the fashion in

Europe. As Tsarevna of Rus her lineage was held to be supe-

rior to pagan families of the west. She could only exist, robed

and secluded, condemned to death-in-life.

The men who visited Sophia sat respectfully on the other

side of the narrow hall, and hurried on to other duties. Simeon

of Polotsk, the brilliant western scholar who tutored the sis-

ters, wrote the dramas for the new Room of Comedy and in-

trigued Alexis with his poems and exhortations. Sophia had

been his best pupil; she was too old for books now. Those shy

monks of Kiev who discoursed in Latin and Greek had been

set to work as masters of the new Academy.

Stolid and silent, Sophia permitted herself to be robed and

disrobed in the cell-like chambers of the terem, often seeing

but never sharing the life of the young mother, Natalia, who

had to fear at worst only a mild reproof from Alexis.

Among the Miloslavsky clan and among Sophia's servants

there began to be whispers that the newborn Peter brought ill

omen to the family. So unlike a Romanov he was. "Who ever

heard of a tsar's son named Peter? Ivan, Dmitri, Feodor such

are the rightful names of a tsar's son. Big, he is, and boisterous

as a German or Tatar. Not like Ivan, not like Feodor!"

The First Favorites

Ancient custom had made Alexis the head of another family

numbering into the thousands. Always beyond the door,

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 39

whether he slept or prayed in an ikon corner, they waited

patiently. Those who had the right to ascend the main stair-

way, the famous Red Stair of the palace, held themselves su-

perior to others. Early in the morning the boyars so favored

waited outside his sleeping chamber in full-length robes furred

and embroidered, with their beards combed, to know if the

Great Master would speak with them.

In the labyrinthian corridors, however, existed other throngs,

impoverished shadows, pensioners often bearing famous names.

They were "the upstairs poor" and Alexis nourished them for

his soul's sake.

Actually, Alexis fed thousands daily in the many-columned

dining hall of the terem and by the dishes carried forth from

the imperial kitchens to other dining halls. The dishes were

carried by an army of stewards, scullions, sons of boyars

dishes heaped up with the produce of hundreds of orchards,

wheat fields, and cellars belonging throughout the lands to

Alexis himself. In a year the feasters at the tsar's tables alone

would consume six hundred barrels of wine and honey mead.

This nourishing of a multitude was managed by the Bureau

of the Great Court. The Bureau of Stables cared for the horse

herds of the tsar. The Treasury kept count of his stocks of

furs, silk, cloth of gold, silver, and jewels. His expenses were

paid by the revenues of forty towns there was no city the

size of Moscow in all of Rus and the taxes levied upon many

trades in Moscow, such as the blacksmiths or the fishmongers.

Some thirty-seven of these bureaus functioned somehow or

other, squeezed into the Kremlin. There was a Bureau of

Brigands, and a Bureau of Secret Affairs. Generations passed

with hardly a change in the bureaus the newest of them being

the Streletzky Prikaz (Musketeers), the Pushkarsky Prikaz

(Artillery), and the Sibirsky Prikaz, all dating back more

than half a century. For them, new taxes had been imposed.

Alexis' remedy for the age-old inertia of the Moscow bu-

reaus had been to place new personalities over them. Few of

these personalities had been Muscovites or wealthy men. Ni-

kon, the brilliant patriarch of Rus, had been the son of a

northern peasant, a devourer of books. Nikon had been driven

and almost consumed by a fiery determination to bring order

40 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

into the ancient liturgy of the land, and he had ended by an-

tagonizing the spirit of devout believers in the old, who held

that by changing signs and words the impatient Nikon was

attempting to alter ancient truth. Many of these Old Believers

had forsaken the churches, taking congregations with them. 6

No doubt this Nikon, who was guided by visions, had

abused his power by striking his adversaries with terror. Yet

Alexis supported his friend, who as patriarch was his only

peer in the land. This support was not blindly given, for often

Alexis had attempted, however timidly, to guide the man who

should have been his spiritual guide. When Nikon, daringly,

demanded that the body of Philip, a saint slain by the anger of

Ivan the Terrible, should be transported from remote Solovet-

sky in the White Sea to the cathedral in Moscow, where

dwelt Alexis as the successor to Ivan, the tsar did not object.

Instead he wrote, carefully, a letter of propitiation to the mur-

dered Philip: "I beg for thy presence here, that by it may be

atoned the sin of my predecessor the Tsar Ivan. . . ."

And Nikon's intention of staging before the people a dem-

onstration of penance to be imposed by him on the living tsar

fell flat. Incensed, he complained bitterly of the unholy con-

duct of the boyars who formed his escort on this strange pil-

grimage. Again Alexis wrote a letter, this time in gentle re-

proof to the man he venerated. In it he called the ambitious

Nikon his "cherished friend and fellow in the yoke, guardian

of my soul." As for the offending boyars, he pointed out, "If

they were wise, you could reprove them; but to reprove fool-

ish men is like treading on their corns ... no one can be

made to feel religion by force."

The man Alexis had selected to deal with foreign affairs

was the most remarkable of this group of "yoke fellows."

Athanasy Ordin Nastchokin came from the home of a clerk

in Pskov, where he had learned German and Swedish and had

accumulated a library a rare achievement in the days when

few could read the native Slavonic, and when "Polish and

Latin writings" were banned intermittently by the Church.

Athanasy, as Alexis called him, was that rarest of combina-

tions, a natural diplomat of inflexible integrity. Not only did

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 41

he refuse to violate a word of a treaty agreed on, but he re-

fused to let Alexis do so.

Although Athanasy thought as a Russian, and was whole-

heartedly intent on bringing order into disordered Rus, he un-

derstood Europeans very well. While he worked for them, he

criticized the Muscovites unmercifully, earning unpopularity

for himself by so doing. Even more than Alexis, he sought

the aid of western methods and new inventions such as astro-

labes, quadrants, firearms, and above all shipping. Because he

believed that the waterways from the Volga to the Baltic

were the lifeline of Rus, he ventured to build himself some-

thing never seen before on the Volga, a seagoing brig with

sails that could be set to make headway against the wind. By

degrees he put a serviceable fleet into operation on the Volga

and Caspian. (Ironically, his first brig, the Orel [Eagle] was

burned by Stenka Razin at Astrakhan.)

To keep Alexis thinking about the west, Athanasy used to

write out a daily gist of news for him to read, a primitive sort

of newspaper.

Besides the Volga artery, Athanasy's other conviction was

the advantage of enduring peace with Poland, then far supe-

rior to Muscovy in culture. He even insisted on the return of

Kiev to Poland as promised in a treaty he had drawn. But

Alexis, who had as keen a sense of heritage as Ivan the Ter-

rible, would not hear to yielding up an ancient stronghold of

Rus.

"Athanasy," he cried, "it's a sin to throw away even a por-

tion of Orthodox bread."

He did not mean, of course, that his stubborn chancellor

was throwing away hallowed bread. He meant that Orthodox

believers dwelt in that city on the Dnieper, hallowed by mem-

ories. To Alexis' way of thinking, it would be a sin to disown

them. Kiev was kept in spite of the treaty agreement.

Tired of public criticism, and unable to reconcile his con-

viction as a statesman with his master's religious zeal, Ordin

Nastchokin resigned his heavy responsibilityas Nikon had

resigned his strife-torn patriarchateto retire to a monastery.

It was then that Alexis called upon Matviev to be "guardian

42 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

of the sovereign seal" in other words chancellor of the in-

choate empire.

And Little Sergy, along with his other heavy responsibili-

ties, took up the duty of educating Alexis, who was quite will-

ing to read anything written in Slavonic. With the aid of

Nicholas Spathary, a Greek, the following works were fur-

nished Alexis: an account of the prophet Daniel; an outline

of the marvels of arithmetic; a sketch of wisdom The seven

sciences as revealed by the Muses; a word picture of the great

church of St. Sophia at Constantinople; The Book of Basil

an account of hero kings from the times of David and Neb-

uchadnazzar.

A pathetic reading list, you will think, for the Great Mas-

ter of some millions of human beings. Yet it was a long step

forward from the books of earlier tsars, which had been al-

most entirely prayers and liturgy. Little Sergy and Athanasy

had talked with foreigners who had mastered Galileo's con-

cept of an expanded universe and Descartes's theory of the

human mind's assimilation of the new sciences. Together for

Alexis supported them stoutly the "yoke fellows" were en-

deavoring to lift Russian minds out of the murk of Byzantine

superstition. They were the first open sponsors of the new

learning and they accomplished much because Alexis pro-

tected them.

These pioneers were trying to catch up with two centuries

of lost time. Aware of the achievements of the Renaissance in

Europe, and the still more rapid advances made during the

seventeenth century, they understood only too well that the

minds of the mass of Russians still held to a medieval pattern.

In fact, Simeon of Polotsk caught the resemblance between

Alexis and Francis I. And he wrote a spirited memorandum to

his master, pointing out how that first modern king of France

had relied upon wise men to advise him, and how he had led

his people out of ignorance. "For what the sovereign loves,

his people also will learn to love."

Alexis could understand that. If he could set his people an

example! He made such prodigious gifts to all who came near

him that the Treasury officials were at times troubled to find

the gifts their master had promised to bestow; in the darkness

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 43

before Easter dawn Alexis made the round of the upstairs

poor and the prisoners in the labyrinth of the Kremlin. With

both hands he gave away presents.

He wanted to give back a portion of land to each peasant

who labored as a state serf.

He was never able to meet many of the common folk face

to face, and not many of the nobility imitated his piety. His

"yoke fellows" remained a chosen few. By elevating them

above the routine channels of government, he set a precedent

for ill as well as good. They were the first of the great favor-

ites who would play an increasingly important role in Russia.

Light from the West

Troubled by the vicissitudes of his reign, Alexis was quite

ready to believe that his own sins had brought misfortune on

his head. Patiently he listened to the exhortations of Simeon

Polotsk and even to the unknown preacher found in the Arc-

tic and brought to Moscow by one of the Stroganovs. This

stalwart preacher, instead of voicing the familiar sayings of

prophets and saints, stormed at those "bound to gold and car-

riages and serfs . . . full of words when ye are full of wine at

a pothouse, and silent as if speechless before Christ . . . la-

boring to please men, herding together like stinking goats."

Alexis had no wish, or could not bring himself, to break

with the continuity of the past. It seemed to him that the folk

of Rus must hold to old beliefs and faith while learning some-

thing of the new science of the west. Although he wore the

time-honored regalia himself, he allowed men in European

dress even in wigs to come before him. One of his "yoke

fellows" built a monastery on the Kiev road. Here a score of

Kiev monks had the perpetual task of teaching other lan-

guages to all who asked to be taught.

Then there was "the strange Serb," Krijanich, who came to

Moscow to learn, and who remained to teach. Krijanich, a

Catholic priest educated in Rome, had a vision of a united

Slavdom, and had journeyed to Moscow because he felt that

the tsar had the power to join together the scattered Slavs-

"those upon the Danube, and those who are Poles ... op-

44 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

pressed by strangers, with the German yoke upon their

necks."

Yet after dwelling in Moscow, Krijanich exclaims in anger,

". . . never was dominion so oppressive as this of the Mus-

covites! ... let the tsar give command to close the offices

and shops that are not blessed by learning and understand-

ing!"

It is not of Alexis that Krijanich complains but of the over-

bearing manners and ignorance of the Muscovites, with their

barbaric clothing and armies of household serfs. "You can't

even spit on your plate without a servant hurrying to take it

away . . . their clothes make you stow your handkerchief

in your hat, your money in your mouth, your knife and pa-

pers in the tops of your boots . . . truly in no other land is

such drunkenness to be found as here, where women and

priests as well as men are found wallowing in the mud of the

streets, ax d sometimes dead."

Reading this he is believed to have read all books published

in Slavonic up to his day Alexis must have bethought him of

the evening when he felt very joyful with his boon com-

panions, when he ordered German organs and trumpets to be

played, and had to be helped back to his bed after he finished

his wine.

Probably Sophia read Krijanich's book. At least we know

that a copy was owned by the handsome young Vasily Gali-

tzin, who did not drink himself under the table, who spoke

Latin fluently and sometimes talked with Sophia. Vasily Ga-

litzin was not at all like a timid monk of Kiev.

Childlike in his zeal, Krijanich pointed out the barbarism of

the Muscovites because he hoped they might raise themselves

out of barbarism, and because unless they did so he saw no

hope for his united Slavdom. He pointed out the way to that

unity, through mutual education and understanding. Unless

understanding could be gained, he felt that nothing could be

accomplished. In one of his sentences lies the key to mutual

relations among the Slavic peoples and between them and the

western Europeans. "The Slav fears," Krijanich wrote,

"what he does not understand."

Krijanich of course was not one of the fellowship centered

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 45

In Alexis, working patiently toward enlightenment from the

west. But like them he had stepped forth from Byzantine stag-

nation. Neither Alexis nor Sophia, the "brilliant pupil," had

forsaken Byzantine customs, but they had begun to admire

western thought. With Krijanich they were looking toward

the west to remedy the ills of Muscovy.

After the publication of his book and possibly after the

discovery that he had been ordained a Roman priest the vit-

riolic Krijanich was given a comfortable pension and sent to

live in Tobolsk.

Alexis Asks a Blessing

The affair of the Danzig book did not end so happily. It

came out of the childishness of the Ambassadors' Bureau (be-

fore Nastchokin). That bureau had begun to ask f<> things

unaccountable to minds in the west, beyond the" invisible

Riga-Constantinople line. Once the bureau asked for the loan

of a Baltic port like Revel (Tallinn) because Muscovy had

no proper port on a navigable sea. Surprised, the Baltic envoys

replied that it would be better for the Muscovites to use their

own port of Archangel, in the Arctic waters. There the mat-

ter rested for the time being.

The Danzig book came into prominence because the bu-

reau and the Razriad wanted war with the Polish republic,

which was then in one of its sinking spells. The Ukraine

played a part in this plan. But Alexis, who was still young,

wanted to regain Smolensk, the beautiful city on the Dnieper

at the western gate of Moscow. There were Orthodox shrines

in Smolensk. The book, it seems, was to serve as the pretext

for the war.

Published in Latin, the book contained a portrait of a Pol-

ish king with the caption, "He subdued Muscovy." It also de-

scribed the Muscovites in unflattering terms. So the Muscovite

ambassador at Warsaw pointed out that it was an affront to

the honor of the present tsar to assert in print that his pred-

ecessor had been subdued by a king of Poland.

The diplomats at Warsaw explained, more amused than

alarmed, that no one in Warsaw had had a hand in publishing

46 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

the offending volume. "Here in Poland," they added, "all

kinds of books are printed, and they say what they like. For

that matter, you can publish what you like about us, in Mos-

cow. If it is amusing we'll laugh, but we won't call you to ac-

count for it."

Still, the envoys of Muscovy insisted that the tsardom had

been injured, and that only the return of the frontier towns

granted to the Polish king of the portrait would redress the

injury of the words "he subdued Muscovy."

Baffled, the Poles retorted that no one in Moscow seemed

to have sense enough to read Latin with understanding.

"Those words penned by a eulogist don't mean anything! "

This the Muscovites would not believe, at least officially.

They countered with an ultimatum. The offending chapter

must be torn out of the Danzig book and burned in public by

the official hangman. The Poles, no longer amused, answered

that it was nonsense to think they could go through such an

act of public disgrace; but to satisfy the Muscovites the of-

fending chapter could be burned in private. The Muscovites

were not satisfied, and the Poles at last burned the pages in

the market place at Warsaw.

In spite of that, war was declared later by the Razriad. Be-

hind the argument over the book lay the age-old difference

in mentality of two peoples. To the cultured Poles the tsar

often seemed to be a funny man or a cruel monster; to the

Muscovites the tsar, however sickly or deficient, personified

their heritage of divine protection and mundane power.

To Alexis this war was not so much an adventure as a

sacred duty. The Muscovite generals commanding were sum-

moned into his presence for his blessing, and he at least took

seriously the ancient words "greater love hath no man" . , .

with tears he urged the commanders to pray and to show

mercy to those under them, as if caring for their own souls;

at the cathedral with his own hand he gave the sacramental

cup to the generals, one after the other. The "Decree to the

Generals" or written plan of campaign was laid upon the al-

tar, under the ikon, before being handed by Alexis to his offi-

cers.

And apparently Alexis had inserted something very unusual

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 47

in this plan. Instead of making war in the usual way, it

seemed, these voevodes were to cross the frontier and march

into Poland without any attempt at destruction. They were

to march armed but bearing a message of peace, doing no in-

jury to people or to fields, merely summoning walled towns

to open their gates.

Whether this humanitarian aspect of invasion actually had

an effect, or whether the Muscovite armies were too power-

ful in numbers to be resisted at first, the result was that border

towns like Smolensk did open their gates without resistance.

That happy state of affairs did not continue long. The

march-through became a savage conflict which lasted inter-

mittently for thirteen years, ending only with the loss of two

Muscovite armies entire. Blessing and prayer at the cathedral

had not enabled the Muscovite generals to prevail through

the new quality of mercy or to remain victorious, although

Alexis had broken tradition a second time by visiting the en-

campments in person.

Urged by Nastchokin, Alexis agreed to a lasting peace with

the Poles but he kept Kiev.

However, Alexis had set a precedent. The unfortunate gen-

erals who did not achieve success through prayer were all

Russians. So were the "yoke fellows" chosen by Alexis, usu-

ally from the middle class. No foreigner was appointed to be

the head of any activity. Alexis' generals were often advised,

for good or ill, by foreign officers, but the command lay in

their hands. He wanted his Russians to learn by experience,

while they were advised by foreigners. And that was what

they did.

Meanwhile the Muscovite state rested upon the edge of an

abyss. Alexis, aware of that, felt almost powerless to

strengthen the government of which he was the despotic head.

He was only the second Romanov; his dynasty had^ endured

little longer than his own lifetime. Yet already, in his middle

age, he felt that his dynasty was failing.

The abyss, stretching from the outmost earth wall of Mos-

cow to the far west, separated his people from the progressive

48 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

minds of the west. When, two centuries before in the time of

the third Ivan, the first visitors from the west had found the

Muscovites backward and uncouth, the gap between the vis-

itors and the dwellers on the Moskva had been slight, easy to

close. Now it had grown greater because the westerners had

advanced while the Muscovites had stood still.

And now his people were becoming conscious of that abyss,

So many of them had seen and felt with their hands the better

foreign coins, carriages, seagoing ships, and medicines. The

firelocks from Sweden, the woolen cloth from England, the

pewter, the "iron implements." And something momentous

was happening. His people were losing confidence in "ancient

usage." True, they held stubbornly to the past; they would

not change ancient ways, but they were becoming uncertain

and afraid. Too often had Alexis heard "the outcry of the

people."

He knew the reason for that. The Muscovite state could

not meet the needs of the new empire, of All of Rus, stretch-

ing to Yakutsk, and to Astrakhan and Archangel. Muscovy

had grown up as a city, feeding upon the adjacent riverlands;

now the central power of an empire of land, it still fed itself,

drawing taxes, furs, timber, grain, and all the stuff of human

needs out of its expanding lands. Its voevodes fed themselves

from its far provinces. The mechanism of the bureaus only

served to draw sustenance toward Moscow; there existed no

mechanism to aid the far lands.

In its inertia the Muscovite government had found no

means to send supplies to the famine area of the Ukraine, or

to check the ravage of the plague, although it checked the

Volga uprisings with the guns of its Streltsi.

It was the greatness of Alexis Romanov that he could real-

ize this, and start his people toward change. Like them he

would not depart from the ancient way of life. You could

not, it seemed, take a step from the year 1473 into the year

1673. No, you would have to take your first step from the old

standing ground. Had not the inspired Nikon started by

changing the incoherent, misspelled prayer books? But Nikon

had gone too far he had struck at the core of old belief, and

men had fled from the churches. The ancestors of the Stroga-

THE TWO GATES OF MUSCOVY 49

novs had managed an empire in the Urals; now a Stroganov

dwelt in a town house across the Red Place, and spoke Polish,

traveling to Vienna, even. But he had found an Arctic

preacher for the good of his soul. You couldn't destroy the

core of such men to teach them new ways.

Athanasy had not craved his new model ships merely to

imitate the European shipping of this day; he had wanted to

carry commerce out of the old river routes into the blue Cas-

pian, or around to the Mediterranean. Otherwise Russian

goods would have to be loaded forever on Dutch or French

or English merchant craft. Andreas Vinius, the clever Dutch

planner, had helped build that new fleet for the Caspian.

Afterward they had sent Vinius to the magnificent French

court, where the glib Frenchmen had mocked him, asking

what kept the Muscovites so long from Christian courts. Vi-

nius answered, "Distance, and the will of the Almighty."

When Alexis Romanov was divested of his regalia at night

to sleep, he dismissed the upstairs poor who sat around him

to recite their minstrels' tales, and sometimes he played the

musical box, the gift of Little Sergy Matviev. He fed all who

came to his tables, charming them with his manner; he gave

away his enormous individual wealth, while he waited for

the day when the children, the boy and the newborn girl, of

his young wife should be educated in the western way. Then

he died quietly, when the Kremlin was snowbound in Janu-

ary 1676, after naming the sickly Feodor his successor.

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS

Weakness of the Throne

RODOR "was fourteen and half dead. At his coronation

e had to be supported by the arm of Ivan Miloslavsky.

/Ith the great courage of an invalid, who seeks for noth-

ing for himself, he tried to rule as his father had done seeking

the knowledge of the west. Like Alexis, he abolished the ar-

chaic Table of Ranks and welcomed about him men of quest-

ing mind who had shaved off their beards.

Yet he was handicapped by the ambitions of the Miloslav-

sky clan, and the lack of an able minister.

It was the weakness of the Kremlin that it had no power to

act except by the will of those closest to the throne. Matviev

suggested the appointment of the much younger Peter, who

would undoubtedly survive the ailing Feodor; but Little

Sergy was bound to the Naryshkin fortunes; he was exiled

beyond the Urals on a charge of witchcraft, having in his pos-

session such unblessed objects as musical boxes and incanta-

tions in Latin. Natalia and her son Peter were forbidden to

remain in the Kremlin.

Feodor showed the courage in him, and the impress of his

education refusing to be greeted servilely as the "Great Mas-

ter" and having alphabet books made for the use of children*

and the rudiments of a university established in a monastery,

to teach Polish and ciphering. Perhaps at Sophia's urging he

made Vasily Galitzin a boyar who was to be known as the

"Great Galitzin." What Feodor could not undertake himself,

he trusted this brilliant student to do for him. Thus favored*

Galitzin made no bones about breaking precedents.

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 51

Sophia, now past her twentieth year, broke precedent also

in coming among the attendants of the bedchamber to nurse

Feodor, whose life meant to her the opportunity to break the

long immurement of the terem and to grasp the power that

she sensed for the first time after Alexis' death. But Feodor

lived only six years, despite Sophia's nursing.

No children survived him. He had taken one wife, with all

the customary Byzantine ceremonial. She had died after giv-

ing birth to a son christened Dmitri one of the many Dmitris

who seemed to perish by some fatality as children in the

shadow of the Kremlin who also died. Another woman had

married this young tsar, with his flesh rotting away. No issue

survived.

Calling in of the Streltsi

Perhaps the family as a whole mourned the high-spirited

Feodor. The survivors were young for the most part, and in-

telligent enough. Like the favored Great Galitzin, they liked

to live in rooms made comfortable with Polish settees, cabi-

nets, and wall mirrors; they preferred that men should shave

off the old-fashioned beards and wear short European cloth-

ing instead of the cumbersome oriental robes. In short, they

desired innovations rather than the primitive procedure of

Russian life to which Alexis had adhered outwardly.

Perhaps, feeling so, they understood that it did not matter

greatly which child was robed, to sit on the throne, or^what

woman held the greatest prestige because of that. Viewed

from within the Kremlin, the tsardom seemed immutable as

the massive walls themselves. The great bell tolled the death

of Feodor-the Vyestnik, the Summoner-as it had tolled for

other tsars before the Romanovs.

At its summons boyars and passers-by gathered in the space

before the cathedral, and when the patriarch, Joachim, asked

the throng who should be named to succeed Feodor, the

crowd answered readily, "Peter, the son of Alexis." So they

had been instructed to answer by the messengers of the patri-

arch who had discussed that point with the heads of the most

prominent families the night before. Since Peter was only nine

52 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

years old, his mother Natalia was named regent also, to spon-

sor him. Neither Peter nor his mother had been seen much in

the Kremlin the last few years; they were merely acceptable

names to be repeated. The tsardom would be as it had been

before, managed by the family, the patriarch, and the great

boyar heads like Dolgoruky and Sheremet'ev. Besides, the

populace had a liking for the boy and his handsome young

mother, upon whom the blessing of the good Alexis appeared

to rest.

There was consternation during the last service for Feodor

in the cathedral when the Tsarevna Sophia entered escorted

by Simeon of Polotsk and a group of monks. No imperial

princess had appeared at such a service before only the

widow, among the women, might appear before the public at

such a time. Natalia was there, with Peter. And after a while

Natalia rose and left, before the service had ended. Sophia re-

mained.

The tension between the two women only reflected the

tension between the Miloslavsky and Naryshkin clans. During

Feodor's short rule the Miloslavskys, headed by Ivan, had

taken for themselves the most important posts, such as control

of the Treasury. Now that Natalia was regent and the * 'Euro-

pean" Matviev had been recalled to take charge of affairs the

Miloslavskys feared that they would be torn away from the

throne and exiled. They confided their fears to Sophia, and to

officers of the Streltsi, the garrison of Moscow.

To these same officers Sophia and Ivan Miloslavsky confided

that now was an opportune time for them to assert their

grievances against the Naryshkins, and by so doing obtain

greater pay and privileges from the Miloslavskys.

When Matviev drove into Moscow at last in his carriage,

some of the Streltsi warned him that there would be a rising

against the new regime of Natalia "of that she-bear and her

cub," Matviev hardly listened, saying, "I can take care of any

such rising."

The experienced diplomat remembered only the Moscow

he had known under Alexis. When he satisfied himself that

rumors had been circulated by the Miloslavsky group that

the life of the idiot Ivan, brother of Feodor, was in danger

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 53

under Natalia, he summoned the Guard regiment of Streksi

to the palace, and showed them Ivan with Natalia and the boy

Peter at the head of the Red Stair. "You see," he argued, "the

life of no one is threatened by us."

The Streksi of that day had been long at peace, their sole

duty that of guarding Moscow, the Kremlin, and the imperial

inmates of the Kremlin. Formed under Ivan the Terrible,^ and

armed with firelocks, in that early effort to create a trained

standing army, the fourteen thousand "musketeers" occupied

the Suburb of the Streksi, while the two thousand of the

Guard regiment manned the Kremlin gates all of them priv-

ileged beyond other Muscovites in that they paid no taxes,

and could engage in trade for themselves while drawing sus-

tenance pay. In consequence most of them, married and quar-

tered comfortably, spent more time in the market places than

in drill, and had a lively interest in the affairs of the Treasury

as well as in their own Streksi Bureau. They had become a

latter-day Praetorian Guard, nourishing some very real

grievances against voevodes who had tampered with their

pay.

Having lost touch with the situation and the mood of the

guardsmen, Matviev did not realize until too late that they

had come to the palace with the Intention of killing the

stronger leaders of the Naryshkin group, of levying tribute on

the Treasury, and of gaining for themselves a voice in the or-

ders issued from this throne held by women and children.

One of their own colonels, a Dolgoruky, was the first to be

thrown from the head of the stair, upon the pikes of the Strel-

tsi below. Then they gripped Matviev, who held frantically

to the nine-year-old Peter. Tearing him from the boy, the

soldiers cut and slashed him until he died. Catching up Peter,

Natalia ran back into the living quarters of the tsars.

For three days, while the bells tolled high on the tower of

Ivan the Terrible, the Streksi held the Kremlin approaches

and purged the city with blood. For three generations such

bloodshed had not been seen within the gates. The Streksi

had prepared a death list, in which Naryshkins and voevodes

of the Streksi figured largely-the property of the condemned

to be confiscated by the government, and 240,000 rubles of

54 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

back pay, so said the Streltsi, to be turned over to them. Nata-

lia ordered a payment made, but refused, weeping, to surren-

der her brother Ivan Naryshkin, who had been named head of

the Streltsi Bureau. "Do you want all of us to suffer," de-

manded Sophia, "to protect him?"

The head of the Naryshkin clan was delivered up with the

others to be tortured among them a foreigner, a German nat-

uralist who had been found with snakes preserved in alcohol

in his workroom.

One thing is clear. Among those around the throne only

Sophia had a clear plan to pursue, and on that plan she in-

sisted. The cloistered tsarevna now talked openly with com-

mittees from the soldiery, who in turn petitioned the council

of boyars and prelates that assembled under the eyes of the

Streltsi. At the end of a week Sophia had obtained every point

she demanded, as the only competent adult among the de-

scendants of Alexis. And every point served to humiliate the

despairing Natalia.

All Naryshkins were to be exiled, including Peter, who re-

mained tsar in name yet with the imbecile Ivan "sovereign

tsar" that is, Peter's superior. Until the boys came of age,

Sophia was to be Regent of Rus. The Streltsi were paid off,

and pacified by the fine-sounding title of "Guard of the Great

Court," while a column was erected in the adjoining Red

Place to honor their achievement in disposing of the Narysh-

kins.

Outside the walls of Moscow little was known of this, and

less heeded. Certain personalities had shifted about the throne,

and a new monument had appeared in the Red Place. But the

bureaus remained as before, and taxes were levied without

change.

Still, two things had happened, because of the ambition of

the unwise Miloslavskys and the determination of Sophia,

that would have a latent effect on Muscovy. The old-line sol-

diery had seized a strategic position that they would not be al-

lowed to hold, and a nine-year-old boy had been frightened

to the core by the murder of his companions.

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 55

The Ghosts of the Tatar Khans

Some ten years before then, during the last years of Alexis,

the eyes in the Kremlin had shifted perceptibly toward the

far east. In the west a firm peace had been made with Poland

as Nastchdkin so long desired. Alexis himself became inter-

ested in the neglected eastern gateway of Rus for a number of

reasons. The value of the fur intake from Siberia was falling

steadily just at the time when trade could be resumed with

Europe through Bryansk and the Baltic shore. Also Cherni-

govsky's strange republic was making overtures to the Siber-

sky Prikaz, from the Amur which might well be made the

waterway to the Eastern Ocean Sea.

It was then that the great trade caravan was made up, to

embark on the long transcontinental journey to Peking, to

discover that Chinese merchants would pay four times the

value of ermine and Arctic fox and even gray squirrel skins.

It would be only a short haul from the eastern Siberian ostrogs

to Chinese markets. The Chinese merchants had tea and other

desirable things to sell, but above all they had silk, which was

fancied by the Muscovites and craved by Europeans.

The Siberian Bureau wanted more Chinese silk. Acting as

always by imperial decree Alexis being by far the greatest

merchant in the land the bureau forbade private trade in the

finer furs, and proclaimed silk a monopoly of the state, while

it sent a voevode to assume command on the Amur. And it be-

came very curious about the still mysterious China. Was

China so strongly defended by its Great Wall? Of what, ex-

actly, did the strength of China consist? Could the eastern

gateway of Rus be pushed around or through the Great

Wall?

Very vividly in Muscovite minds lingered the memory of

the great Tatar khans who had ruled Asia, and especially of

Batu Khan of the Golden Horde who had ruled Muscovy ^ In

their thrust across the north of the continent, the Muscovites

had been following the old roads of the Tatars; they had come

upon Mongol shrines and even upon surviving Mongols be-

yond the Holy Lake (Baikal). These ghosts were very real

56 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

to them. The more superstitious among them believed in

treasures of gold and jewels hidden away in the east, and in

some secret of power possessed by the men of the east. They

knew the Chinese emperor as the Bogdikhan (Heavenly-

great Khan) and Peking as Khanbaligh (City of the Khan).

For some reason inexplicable to Europeans, the Siberian Bu-

reau, the Razriad, and the Bureau of Ambassadors held all far

eastern affairs to be secret. Maps of the eastern coast and

routes thither could not be shown to foreigners. Such maps

named China "Kitai," Cathay.

And now the ghosts of the ancient Tatars had materialized

in the Manchu Tatars of the unknown north who had passed

over the Amur and through the Great Wall, to conquer

"Cathay,"

Journal of Nicholas Spathary

In 1674, with the revival of their interest in the Amur and

China, the bureaus selected a very shrewd man to send as en-

voy to the court of the new khan. He was a foreigner, Nich-

olas Spathary, chief interpreter for the Razriad a Greek who

had emerged from the Balkans with his nose clipped for

treachery, and with a truly amazing command of languages

(being known in Europe as the "polyglot man").

Matviev must have had great confidence in Spathary, be-

cause he gave him credentials as ambassador and boyar (in-

stead of interpreter of the War Office) , and briefed him about

what was known of the lands around China, including "the

island in the sea rich in gold and silver called Yapon [Japan] ."

Spathary's added instructions make curious reading. He

was to "find out by all means, positively, whether in future

there would be friendship and intercourse between His Maj-

esty the Tsar and the Chinese Bogdikhan; also by what terri-

tories . . . and nomad lands it would be best to go, from Si-

beria to China . . . and how far it is from town to town,

from tribe to tribe, in versts or days?"

More than that, the talented Greek was to investigate pos-

sible water routes, and what manner of transport was used

along the different routes. "And especially what princes rule

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 57

along these routes, of what peoples, and do they ill-treat cos-

sacks and traders, or do they pay tribute to His Majesty?

. . . Also what are their occupations? As to all this, he is to

make personal inquiry by every means of all people, and get

at the whole truth. He must write down everything with the

greatest accuracy, point by point, describing the ^entire Chi-

nese empire.

u And in general he, Nicholas, whether in China or on the

way thither, is to further in all ways His Majesty's interests

. . . also to seek everywhere to put forward His Majesty's

name, and to speak in such manner as may serve to exalt the

honor of His Majesty."

Now these are not general instructions to a full-powered

ambassador; they are orders given to an agent. The orders

even extend to Spathary's return, since they bid him return

by the same route to Moscow, where he is to present himself

at a certain office before Matviev and the chief secretaries of

the bureau, with all his data written down, his routes study

carefully outlined, and his key map drawn. In terms of today,

this astute factotum of the Muscovite Foreign Office was to

journey to the Chinese court under cover as ambassador, to

make a strategical survey of all routes into China, to report as

an espionage agent on the new Manchu administration be-

sides carrying on propaganda for Moscow, and the power of

the tsar.

But no one man could carry out all those orders. While

Nicholas Spathary, the "polyglot man," might have attempted

to do so on a mission to the Turks at Constantinople or to the

Austrians at Vienna, he could not do so in this case because he

knew neither the Mongolian nor the Manchu-Chinese lan-

guages.

No, on their face the briefing from Matviev and the orders

written out by the bureau secretaries do not make sense. Yet

Little Sergy was experienced in foreign affairs. And if we read

between the lines, the directives do make sense.

Remember that neither Alexis nor Matviev had any first-

hand knowledge of All of Rus east of the Volga. In this year

of 1674 they had shifted their interest from the familiar west

to the almost unknown east. Unmistakably in doing so Mat-

rg THE CITY AND THE TSAR

viev, if not Alexis, had found his Siberian Bureau untrust-

worthy, its records misleading (in his own briefing of Spa-

thary he describes Mongol princes as "tribute payers to His

Majesty" whereas the Mongols at that time were quite open

in their defiance of Muscovite authority; yet while Matviev

is mistaken in the information he must have had from the bu-

reau, he is correct enough in his information about the islands

south of China which were known to Dutch traders, and

which might have been described to Matviev by Andreas

Vinius who evidently had Alexis' confidence because he

served as ambassador to the French court).

Also Matviev must have been dissatisfied with the results of

previous embassies to Peking. Evidently he and Alexis wanted

urgently to discover whether the seemingly rich empire of the

Manchus could be invaded with the force at their disposal, or

whether they must fall back upon a trade relationship, and if

so of what kind. So Matviev refused to send another voevode

of the Sibirsky Prikaz to the east, relying instead upon a man

who had no tie-up with the bureau, and instructing him care-

fully to have his reports written before re-entering the Krem-

lin, and to report in person to Matviev as well as the bureau

secretaries.

Apparently Spathary was to report upon the actual condi-

tion of the great dominion in the east, which the inefficient

bureau had kept shrouded in mystery. An examination of his

letters sent back to Moscow show that he did exactly that, for

his journal begins at the Volga crossing and was dispatched

piecemeal to Matviev and Alexis.

Spathary satisfied himself, taking a long time on the way to

do so, that the Amur offered the only water route to China

"for the two great streams [Hoang-ho and Yangtze] that flow

through China south of Peking have their sources in the des-

erts where the Mongols dwell and the Kalmuks,"

On the Amur itself he pointed out where a fort could be

built to control the river so "the Chinese would be unable to

brings ships into the Amur."

The overland routes he listed carefully, actually including

some known only to the Jesuit missionaries whom he met in

Peking. But even inland, knowing the Russian dependence on

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 59

waterways, he pointed out where boats could get through.

His seventh land route started from Baikal into the hazardous

Mongol highlands via water to Lake Dalai (Great Lake) "on

the shore of Dalai a fort might be built . . . which might be

reached by boats. There, too, can be found tin and silver, for

old workings are to be seen and the natives say the ores are

there even now. When we were in Selenginsk Fort [the ostxog

pushed south of Baikal only six years before] we sent people

for purposes of trade and to explore that road . , with pack

animals the journey takes six weeks; riding, it can be done in

three. Even if entry were refused to Peking itself, one could

still trade outside the Wall in the watch-guard town [Kalgan] .

In any case, Selenginsk cossacks have been sent ... to find

out all about this road."

Spathary drew his exhaustive findings from the frontier

guards, from traders returning from the Great Wall, from

Mongol envoys, but seldom if ever from the voevodes of the

bureau.

From the terminal town of Yeniseisk he wrote to Matviev;

"This Yenisei country, my lord, is very fine, reminding me

of Wallachia and the Yenisei River of the Danube, a very

great river and a merry one. And God has given abundance

of corn . . . and population."

To Alexis, from the same town: ". . . I sought out there

Your Majesty's cossacks and the trader Gavril Romanov who

not many days since arrived from China by way of Your

Majesty's Selenginsk fort. The traders told me, Your Majes-

ty's humble servant . . that in Khanbaligh Russian deserters

told them secretly that if there were two thousand of Your

Majesty's regular soldiers beyond Baikal at the present time,

it would be possible to bring into subjection under Your

Majesty's high hand not only all the land beyond Baikal im-

mediately but all the land right up to the Great Wall of

China the Bogdikhan being extremely weak, mightily afraid

of the cossacks, and greatly upset with his war with the

Chinese of the south."

Now that is a piece of good intelligence except for the

suggestion that the Manchu emperor "had any fear of cossacks.

60 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

In that year (1675) the Manchu armies had suffered defeats in

the south, and were In danger of collapse.

Spathary found and questioned Mongol envoys in Yenisei

"two from the Khutukhta Lama, their high priest, the head

of their religion as far as India." And in his epistle to Matviev

he added: "The Mongols are mightily afraid of the cossacks.

And I seem to see, if Providence but wills it, the fear of God

and of the great Tsar fall upon the heathen of these countries,

so that they shall flee when no man pursueth! When I reach

the frontier, I shall see . . . what sort of population and arma-

ment they have."

This is special pleading of course. Aware that his great

sponsors desired to press toward China, Spathary was pointing

out encouraging signs to them. At the frontier he had a fol-

lowing of a hundred and fifty "cossacks and other people, all

being chosen men and well qualified" for the ostensible pur-

pose of building monasteries and churches actually he was

sending out exploring parties over a wide territory along the

mystery-ridden frontier.

At Albazin he noted for Alexis' attention: "The Albazin

cossacks serve Your Majesty with the greatest zeal. . . . Be-

tween them, however, and the Nerchinsk voevode [at the

nearest frontier post] quarrels have arisen because they refused

to accept a certain Tobolsk boyar's son sent by him to rule

over them, as this man wanted to establish a kabak and other

unworthy things in the fort. They begged him [i.e., the voe-

vode] to give them an experienced Trans-Baikal cossack as

chief, but he would not. . . . The voevodes before my arrival

told the cossacks to say nothing of this affair to me."

He had no way of knowing because it took at least two

years to send a dispatch from the frontier to Moscow and

receive an answer that Alexis had died and Matviev been

sent into exile. His last reports were being opened by the secre-

taries of the bureau itself!

To the Chinese officers at the first frontier post, Spathary

stated blandly that he had been sent "by the desire of His

Majesty the T^ar to maintain neighborly relations and friend-

ship with their master the Bogdikhan."

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 6 1

In Peking Spathary was received with very keen suspicion*

He was kept waiting in the "hickory palisade/ 7 which seems

to have been the rude quarters to which Russians were con-

fined. The Manchu officials in that time of stress wanted to

examine closely this curious envoy of the a Urous Khakhan"

or Great Khan of Rus, who might be either a useful friend

or a potential enemy. And Spathary proved to be a match for

Chinese guile.

In Moscow he had been given a duplicate set of papers,

identifying him as a general factotum or agent instead of the

ambassador he had claimed to be. When the Manchus refused

to receive him as ambassador from a monarch equal to K'ang

hsi, the Greek presented his alternate set of papers, and gained

a hearing. And, although confined to his quarters in Peking, he

Ibrought out with him a very fine description of the Chinese

Empire. Not until very recently have scholars identified this

as, nearly word for word, the account already published by

one of the Jesuits at Peking and undoubtedly shown Spathary

by Father Verbiest, who befriended him there!

Nor were the Chinese entirely deceived by this inexplicable

ambassador-agent. Years later K'ang hsi, in a message to Peter,

complained of "the very perverse conduct of Mikolai who

formerly came from his kingdom." "Mikolai" must have been

the brilliant Nicholas.

Spathary got back safely to Moscow after three years, with

his mass of valuable intelligence. Without his patron Matviev

he was rudely treated by the Sibirsky Prikaz closely interro-

gated, and reduced to service as ordinary interpreter, on half

allowance. Nor was he permitted, it seems, to leave Moscow

again.

Look back for a moment at the group to which Spathary

had belonged before his disgrace, at the group of "yoke

fellows" gathered around AlexisNikon, 4thanasy Ordin

Nastchokin, Little Sergy Matviev, Simeon Polotsk the stu-

dent, Andreas Vinius the merchant-adventurer. They had

been pioneers of a new movement, to change the ancient usage

of Rus gradually to western ways. They had macte vital begin-

nings. After them, it was impossible to ignore the west.

6l THE CITY AND THE TSAR

But they had been able to start in a new direction only the

educated minds within Moscow itself.

Shipments of political exiles to Siberia increased after the

suppression of the Volga revolt, because influential families

were being uprooted and sent to the eastern katorgas. These

families had to join in the labor of the settlements, not so much

because they had been condemned to labor as from the neces-

sity of sustaining life.

And like the earlier conquistadors of the Chernigovsky type

some of these Ukrainians assumed leadership in the new land.

What Father Gerbillon Witnessed

Almost as soon as the regency of Sophia Romanov began

in Moscow, a new personality made itself felt beyond the

Urals. The Great Galitzin, her lover and favorite, tried to

improve transportation by extending the yam, or post-road

chain, farther east to Yeniseisk, and by building a log road

thither across the marshy steppe. To do this he impressed the

families of exiles, which could not easily desert a post and

disappear into the wilderness.

After a while, in 1688, another new person with authority

appeared in the far east. Feodor Golovin, unlike Galitzin, knew

something about the east because he was the son of a former

voevode of Tobolsk, and he brought authority, as envoy, to

agree with the Manchu government as to the actual Russian

frontier, and the trade between the two nations.

Moscow's latent interest in its eastern gateway had been

stirred by Spathary's report, by the success of the great trade

caravan of '74, by the finding of silver and zinc around

Selenginsk (where Spathary had noticed outcroppings of

ores) , and by persistent rumors of the growing power of the

Manchus.

With that power Russian detachments infiltrating down the

Amur corridor had come into ever sharper collision. Russians

who had reoccupied and fortified Albazin, the key to the

Amur, were promptly encircled by Chinese troops. Golovin,

a good diplomat, was expected to secure possession of the

Amur by treatyto gain access to the sea and to the Manchu

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS . 63

territories. (Spathary had advised the eastern voevodes to with-

draw from the Amur, but they paid him no attention.)

For the first time the Muscovites were to sit down with

ambassadors from Peking to draw a treaty between the nations

in fact the first treaty between Europeans and the people of

the far east.

Father Jean Frangois Gerbillon, one of the Jesuits then in

the Peking mission, had been asked by K'ang hsi to go along

to enable his ambassadors to speak with the strange Musco-

vites. Gerbillon was well aware that the formidable border

peoples, the Mongols and the Buriats, had claimed the protec-

tion of K'ang hsi. The Manchus, having got their house in

order within China proper, were planning to push the edge

of their dominion westward through mid- Asia past Tibet the

region Spathary had noted as being unexplored.

Golovin, who had only his year-old instructions from the

bureau at Moscow to guide him, hardly understood all that*

But he had sharp evidence of it on his journey out, when a

flood of leather-clad horsemen surrounded him at Selenginsk,

cutting him off from communication with the outer world.

These horsemen were actually a "wing," the east Kalmuk

wing, of the Mongols, acting on advice from Peking. Penned

in the stockaded citadel of the town behind their cannon, the

Russians saw only elusive riders armed with bows so powerful

that their arrows pierced through the bodies of the garrison.

Their long matchlocks, aimed from a rest, could kill a man

at four hundred yards.

When the siege tightened around Selenginsk, the prisoners

were let out of the katorga to aid the garrison. Among them

happened to be Mogogrishny, a Cossack hetman of the

Ukraine, whose family had been exiled with him. Accustomed

to Tatar tactics, the Ukrainian took command, brought the

Muscovite soldiery out of the stockade to entrenchments in

the open, stopped the slaughter of the inhabitants, and eventu-

ally drove off the Kalmuks, thereby setting free the envoy of

the tsar.

When the massive procession of the Muscovite envoys en-

tered the border town of Nerchinsk to face the equally impos-

64 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

ing cortege of the Chinese camped across the river, Father

Gerbillon found the task confronting him to be both difficult

and delicate. The Manchu Ta-jin or ambassadors wearing the

gold-enibroidered dragons represented the Son of Everlasting

Heaven, who admitted no other monarch to be his equal, while

the Muscovites in satin and furs held no less an honor to belong

to the Great Master of Rus. Moreover the Chinese had rein-

forced their diplomacy with a small field army kept discreetly

in their rear, while the Muscovites, no whit more trustful, had

the cannon of Nerchinsk at their backs.

Father Gerbillon had to do a deal of parleying off the record

with the solitary Pole who could speak, in Latin, for Golovin

and his party. He worked out a way for the dignitaries to

meet without loss of face or fighting power. Since neither

party would enter the quarters of the other, two pavilions

were set up facing each other on the Nerchinsk bank of the

river. Into one of these pavilions the Muscovites paraded with

two hundred and sixty guards, with trumpets, drums, and bag-

pipes sounding. Golovin came mounted, wearing over gold

brocade a sable coat "worth a thousand crowns at Peking,"

Gerbillon estimated.

Chagrined by this display, the Ta-jin crossed the river and

entered the facing pavilion with no more pomp than umbrellas

carried before them, but with two hundred and sixty guards.

In fact they nearly ended the negotiations by keeping an armed

reinforcement at the boats behind them. Gerbillon and the

Polish exile adjusted this interference with the balance of

power. The proceedings began by both Muscovites and Ta-jin

waiting, stubbornly seated, for the other side to speak first.

Both sides uttered compliments freely, to draw the other

out. Not until late in the day did Golovin, who had placed a

fine watch Father Gerbillon admired it on the table by him,

get down to business by suggesting that the wide Amur was

and so the Russians would agree to keep to the north side

of this river, even as far as the sea.

To this the Chinese rejoined explaining themselves to Ger-

billon, who interpreted to the Pole, who explained to Golovin

that the great Holy Lake (Baikal) and the mighty Lena

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 65

River were even more fitting boundaries designed by nature,

and so the Russians might well agree to remain inland of them

(about fifteen hundred miles farther inland than the mouth of

the Amur).

On the second day, Gerbillon records, the Muscovites won

the contest as to who should speak first. The Chinese, getting

down to realities, demanded that the Russians confine them-

selves to Baikal and remove from Mongol territory, keeping

Nerchinsk only as an outlying trading post.

At this the Muscovites laughed. "How kind you are! To

allow us to keep what we already hold."

The laughter made the Chinese fear they were losing face.

They ordered their pavilion dismantled, and prepared to leave.

Father Gerbillon and the Pole had to fall back on person-to-

person argument.

After several days maps were produced and the bargaining

narrowed down to the Nerchinsk line slanting northeast

through the main mountain range, the Khingan, toward the

Sea of Okhotsk, leaving the Amur clear to the Chinese. But

when Gerbillon carried the last details over to the Russians,

he was startled to hear Golovin declare he could accept noth-

ing but the Amur as far as Albazin. "Not an inch more will

be given up."

The Ta-jin, it seemed, were less surprised than the Jesuit

at the about-face of the Muscovites. They ordered up the regi-

ments held in reserve until then and surrounded Nerchinsk.

Soon after that Golovin must have remembered his near cap-

ture in Selenginsk the Muscovites sent an informal messen-

ger to Gerbillon, admitting that they would agree to the

Nerchinsk-Okhotsk boundary.

Gerbillon relates that the Muscovites were "most happy" to

see him return. He got their agreement in writing. The Amur

was to be evacuated, and the stronghold of Albazin demolished

and abandoned.

At the signing of the copies of the new treaty, the Musco-

vite trumpets and drums sounded, envoys and Ta-jin drank

tea and wine together, exchanging presents. Golovin gave the

Chinese diplomats "a clock that sounded each hour, three

watches, two silver gilt vases, a telescope about four feet long,

66 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

a looking-glass about a foot high, and some furs . . . worth

in all not more than five or six hundred crowns." Gerbillon

himself was given a "few sables and ermines, of little value."

The puzzle of the relative supremacy of Manchu emperor

and Muscovite tsar was neatly solved in the writing. The copy

of the treaty in Chinese, sealed and given to the Ta-jin, named

K'ang hsi with his title before a the two tsars" (actually Ivan

and Peter) while the copy in Russian, kept by Golovin, named

the tsars with their titles before K'ang hsi. The copy in Latin,

kept by Gerbillon, is believed to be the most accurate.

By this treaty Golovin withdrew his people from the eastern

gate of the Muscovite dominion, out of Mongol territory, to

the highlands around Baikal. But he secured authorization for

trade caravans to pass into China. Three years later such a

caravan carried in goods worth twenty-one thousand rubles,

and brought out silk and other merchandise valued in Moscow

at fifty thousand rubles. The scale of trade increased there-

after. 1

The treaty of Nerchinsk was kept for more than a hundred

and fifty years.

Opening of the Baraba Steppe

For nearly that same hundred and fifty years the balance

of power lay with the horsemen of the steppe, the Buriats,

Mongols, and Kalmuk clans in this far east, because they^had

behind them the unchallengeable strength of the disciplined

Manchu cavalry. By degrees the Buriats came under Russian

control, and some of the Kalniuks migrated away, but not

the Mongols. Chinese junks, not the flotillas of the Muscovite

conquistadors, sailed the Amur.

Moscow had never had sufficient armed strength in the east

to push through this eastern gate. Only the semblance of an

army had ever appeared beyond the Urals. The scattered

katorga guards, cossack colonists, foreign prisoners, and "free

wandering men" had never been welded together. The Chinese

razed and burned the fort of Albazin, the vestige of Cherni-

govsky's republic that had become a military objective of two

growing empires.

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 67

Almost at the same time the Manchus penetrated mid-Asia

beyond the Gobi. In so doing they drove westward as far as

the Volga steppes a portion of the Kalmuks who would be

heard from later.

Thereafter K'ang hsi's and Kien lung's wise colonial pol-

icy kept the restless steppe peoples, "those who dwell in felt

tents,'' under the control of Peking. This policy aimed at in-

fluence through the lamas. Trade also increased along the old

caravan routes between the Great Wall and mid-Asia. For-

at least a century this region lay under Chinese overlordship.

In the Russian north the Sibirsky Prikaz had no such co-

lonial policy. The Russian zone of occupation had been pushed

back into the more barren regions of extreme frost. Its centers

like Yakutsk and Irkutsk stagnated a Ukrainian exile became

voevode of Yakutsk soon after the Nerchinsk treaty. By the

end of the seventeenth century we no longer hear of explorers

like Dezhnev or conquistadors like Khabarov.

Only the bleak peninsula of Kamchatka and the chain of

islands leading to America remained unexplored, in the far

east.

Instead, Siberia began to develop in a new direction, and

not at all according to plan. That direction was southerly, and

far back between the Urals and the headwaters of the great

Ob far distant from the Siberian katorgas and the Manchu

frontier posts alike. It was where the Great Galitzin extended

his post road.

Here in the fertile marsh steppe the new drafts of Ukrain-

ians volunteered to turn aside and make settlements in the

steppe. Behind them followed Old Believers of the peasant

type, equally anxious to find a new land outside the authority

of government.

In the far east a secretary of a blockhouse post wrote a few

words in his ledger and thought no more of them. The words

traced in poor ink related how a cossack of the post had paid

a few kopeks in as "profit tax" on the sale of a native slave girl

who had belonged to the cossack.

This was only a routine entry. The enslavement of the native

peoples had been legalized by 1690. True, the Uluzhenie of

the late Tsar Alexis had demanded "that unto no man shall any

68 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Christian man sell himself.' 5 Obviously, since the girl had been

neither a man nor a Christian, this law did not apply to her.

Besides, the Uluzhenie itself had been pretty well forgotten

by then. . . .

Toward the end of the century Old Believers were crossing

the Urals in their hundreds. Entire villages and communes

trudged afoot with their goods roped on oxen, and dogs draw-

Ing their sledges. They had no papers from the Transport

Bureau; they did not show themselves at the barrier of the

customs guard at Verkhuturie where the post road wound

down to the marshy steppe; they did not sleep around the post

stations built by the Great Galitzin. They moved as animals

move along the charcoal burners' trails in the blue spruce for-

est, and they lost themselves in the open steppe because they

were escaping from the law.

Raskolniki, Heretic Folk, believers in ancient truth, ^ carry-

ing with them the now outlawed prayer books of old time,

carrying seed grain, ikons, children, and precious salt, they

disappeared from sight of the post road, following water to

the south.

A generation before when Nikon and the Moscow clergy

had started changing the ancient books and manner of pray-

ing, there had been only fierce arguments as to the way to

utter the word "Jesus," or whether to give a blessing with

two fingers or three.

From the pulpit of the Usspensky, Simeon Polotsk had

stormed at them, "You are rebels against wisdom!" But they

had been troubled, fearing to lose their souls by betraying

ancient truth for the new ways. Was it not a sin against God

to look for truth in geometry or astronomy? Truth could not

be changed like a woman's festival dress.

When Nikon had ordered the old prayer books to be

burned, the good Tsar Alexis had whispered to him to bury

them Instead. Nikon had called their champion, old Avvakum,

a madman. "We are madmen," Avvakum had retorted, "for

the sake of Christ."

Now Avvakum had burned at the stake, like firewood. The

monks of Solovetsky had been hung for rebelling against the

law. And the Old Believers trekked beyond the Urals.

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 69

They were mocked. Folk in the settlements called them

Milk Drinkers, Spirit Fighters, Self-burners. They drank the

milk of their herds, they fought with axes and teeth to keep

their beards unshaved. Sometimes when they were caught

they shut themselves up in a hut and burned themselves.

In the marsh steppe where evil spirits ran with lights during

the hours of darkness, the Old Believers died of the marsh

sickness. Better that than to bow their head to their enemies,

the servants of Antichrist. But they did not starve. The streams

gave a miraculous draft of fish after the spring thaw; crops

could be gathered in along the moist banks in two months.

Year by year colonies of the Raskolniki penetrated farther

into this southern steppe, beyond the frontier ostxogs. They

came upon the cabin settlements of other fugitives; they built

churches in the stands of timber, to house the smuggled ikons.

Children were born who had never seen a road or heard the

sound of a church bell.

Beyond the last growth of spruce and birch, the colonists

discovered a lake where waterfowl swarmed, and Kirghiz

tribes grazed their sheep. The way was not too hard. Moses

had led his people out of the deserts by summoning water

from rocks; here they had a network of streams to follow up,

out of the dry plains into the lofty valleys watered by snow

that melted all summer long upon the higher ridges. Settle-

ments in such valleys were secure from raids. The colonists

bartered rugs, hides, and sheep from the Kirghiz who wan-

dered from valley to lowland as the grass changed.

After many years the colonists arrived at a smaller lake

higher up which they christened Slavtown Lake. Beyond,

their hunters sighted white peaks against the sky line, the

peaks of the Altai.

Here in space beyond control of the Sibirsky Prikaz the

colonists were cultivating the Baraba Steppe, toward the Altai

Mountains where Europeans had never set foot before.

Sophia's Seat Behind the Two Thrones

After the brief blood purge in the Kremlin in the spring of

1682, Moscow had lain inert as always after an internal dis-

70' THE CITY AND THE TSAR

ruption. With Matviev dead and Natalia hurried somewhere

out of sight, there was no familiar person who could step to

the head of the Red Stair and issue a command.

Without such a command, there could be no impetus to

government. The bureaus of course had their heads, the four

hundred-odd churches had their revered patriarch, the boyars

of the great households in the Kitaigorod had their old-style

council in which to debate, Furriers' Row had its masters of

trade, the Foreign Suburb out by the Yauza River had its

influential burghers and army officers. Yet no one in the teem-

ing city could plan or act coherently until it was known be-

yond a doubt who would hold power upstairs in the palace

of the Kremlin.

Certainly it would not be the fifteen-year-old Ivan, whose

responses had to be given by his maternal uncle Ivan Milo-

slavsky when he appeared to the people, or the even younger

Peter, who cared for nothing but the playthings he had un-

earthed in exploring the Arsenal. Power lay between the odd

combination of the six imperial princesses of whom Sophia

had assumed the leadership and the sixteen thousand Streltsi,

of whom an unknown but ambitious noble, a Prince Kho-

vansky, had taken command.

The Tsarevna Sophia behaved in unwonted fashion, sitting

concealed behind a curtain that hung between the two throne

seats of the boy tsars when they held an audience. When she

visited the Room of Comedy, she had plays performed for her

by French actors. Artists from Warsaw sat with her, to copy

her likeness with paint, as if it were an ikon's face.

In old days the mother of Tsar Ivan the Terrible had exer-

cised power for a space through her men but she had never

called herself Regent of All of Rus, like Sophia.

"She is fat, with a head as large as a bushel, with hairs on

her face and tumors on her legs," the French ambassador, Foy

de la Neuville, wrote. "But just as her body is short and coarse,

her mind is shrewd, unprejudiced, and full of policy. Although

she has never read Machiavelli, she understands all his maxims-

naturally."

The gossip of the boyars' palaces told more than thathow

this ill-favored but determined woman held violently to her

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS

"Little Vassy," the gifted Galkzin, who besides his European

drawing room, with wall mirrors in which folk stared at them-

selves and shelves of proscribed booksKrijanich's among

them had a wife of his own with tall sons. Little Vassy and

Olearms

European ambassador received by tsar. The old, semi-Asiatic

ceremonial, with attendant councilors, guards holding axes up-

lifted, and water jar and towel for cleansing hands of tsar after

contact with heretic European

his Sophia had been heard to talk about mad projects, such as

teaching children to read French, and allowing serfs to leave

their owner's land.

Much of this came to the ears of the Streltsi in their suburb.

These musketeers of Moscow held control of the ^ Kremlin;

their amour propre had been satisfied with the erection of the

victory monument to them in the Red Place; every man of

them had received twelve rubles in back pay, besides the satis-

faction of torturing the colonels who had withheld the pay.

To gain a new privilege all they need do was march to the

72 ' THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Meeting Place, and demand it in the name of the new sover-

eign. Little Vassy of all men would hardly stand in their way

when they marched in their yellow boots, with green and red

kaftans aligned, carrying pikes and lighted matches for their

guns. Otherwise, in the way of duty all they had to do was

to ran and put out fires in the streets,

"Yes," said Cossacks from the frontier, "and kill flies."

Whether, having tasted power, they felt the need of more

power, or whether they felt in a way peculiar to Slavs a sense

of guilt is not clear. Most of them had become Old Believers,

and perhaps they thought of purging the Church as well as

the dwellers upstairs. In any case they drew up a petition that

covered twenty sheets of foolscap and they marched to the

palace with Old Believer priests bearing old-fashioned candles

and ikons. They faced the patriarch himself, and cut short his

arguments by shouting, "Don't prate to us about grammar

we want to know what you believe! "

It was Sophia, seated there in full view of the throng of men,

who accepted the challenge of the marchers, and by so doing

sealed their fate. When the rival priesthoods the clergy of

the palace and the monks of the Streltsi were at the point

of tears and blows, she astonished them by bursting out: "If

this patriarch is a heretic, then my father Tsar Alexis was a

heretic . . . and we, the reigning tsars, are no tsars and we

have no right to rule this land. ... If we are heretics then we

must go to another town and tell there what befell us here!"

In that uproarious hour Sophia gained prestige and the be-

wildered soldiery lost what chance they may have had of hold-

ing Moscow. They could not understand what had happened;

they had harmed no one; they had only marched with a peti-

tion, and the woman whom they had befriended made them

appear guilty.

Khovansky, who saw their dilemma more clearly than most

of them, argued that they must occupy the Kremlin and en-

force their own orders his own, he hoped or be broken.

They could no longer exist as the military arm of Sophia,

who had turned against them.

But the majority of the Streltsi could not conceive of actual

rebellion; they had the loyalty of most Slavs to the tsardom

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS . 73

itself, and the Kremlin with its tombs and hallowed halls of

the past seemed to be the embodiment of the vague something

they served. By turning the issue between herself and them

to the question of her orthodoxy and right to rule, Sophia had

rendered them almost helpless. After thinking it over for a

few days the Streltsi cut off the head of the monk who had

been most outspoken among them.

No open message came now from the chambers of the

regent to the quarters of the musketeers. Only the upstairs

poor came, furtively with their rosaries, to whisper in corners

with groups inclined to preserve themselves by befriending

Sophia again. Khovansky, the opportunist, kept an escort of

fifty men with him.

Sophia and her advisers forced the issue by withdrawing,

in full view of the public, to an outer village. Most of the

boyar families sympathized with her, and sympathized more

when she retired to the sanctuary of the Troitsko, as if for

protection against the enmity of the Streltsi. She could not be

persuaded to return to Moscow or emerge from the great

monastery with the boy tsars unless Khovansky would come

to confer with her.

It was as easily managed as that. Eventually the leader of

the Streltsi did go to Troitsko, and was captured and executed

on the way. Without their commander, the Streltsi soon sent

their submission to the monastery. Moved by their own sense

of guilt as well as by uncertainty, and mindful of their fam-

ilies, the Streltsi acknowledged that they had sinned against

the family of Alexis. No more than thirty of them were put

to death, but their column of victory was torn down, and

they lost their cherished regimental tide of Guards of the

Great Court.

Probably to the end of their lives most of these phlegmatic

guardsmen never understood why they had been rewarded

for killing off some of the Naryshkin men, and had been pun-

ished because one monk during a debate on the truths of reli-

gion lifted a fist against the patriarch of Moscow.

Having lightly punished the ignorant Streltsi, Sophia and

her advisers kept the Guards intact, to balance the antagonism

74 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

of the great boyar families like the Kuragins and Sheremet'evs.

In public she displayed kindness to Natalia and her son, yet

kept them away from the Kremlin as much as possible. Appar-

ently she had nothing to fear from the domestic-minded

Natalia.

In this family balance-of -power arrangement Sophia ap-

peared secure enough. In her joyous possession of the hand-

some and amiable Galitzin she persuaded him eventually to

send his wife to a monastery and feeding her starved emo-

tions, the dour-looking pupil of Simeon Polotsk (and the

ghostly Machiavelli) must have felt that she was achieving

wonders. She listened to the advice of the monk Sylvester,

who was quite a translator; she employed a former clerk,

Shako vity, to do the dirty work that Galitzin would not do;

and, still young, she existed in a dream life of music with her

meals, and conferences with foreign ambassadors, vicariously

through Galitzin, who had taken upon himself the duty of

chief of the Bureau of Ambassadors. Bound up in her obses-

sion for Little Vassy, she did not realize that outside the sub-

urbs and resorts of Moscow little was actually being accom-

plished by them or for them.

In Moscow Little Vassy built the first stone bridge and

started a vogue of stone town houses. He shaped his ideas

upon the thought of Alexis' reign, and even De la Neuville

felt the impact of his ideas of turning the great estates over

to the peasantry, who would in turn contribute taxes to the

Treasury, of sending nobles' sons to the west to study, of

eternal friendship with Poland, the cultural mother of Rus.

"He was the most knowing lord of the Court at Moscow,"

wrote Father Avril, a French Jesuit who was trying to get

permission to travel through Siberia to Tatary. "He loved

strangers, particularly the French. It was rumored around that

his heart was as French as his name [actually a Lithuanian

name, like Miloslavsky ] . He would willingly have granted us

a passage through Siberia, out of his admiration for Louis le

Grand."

Father Avril observes shrewdly that Galitzin had authority

to grant the passports but could not risk the anger of the

bureaus and the council of the boyars, who "upon some point

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 75

of honor" distrusted the foreign missionaries. GaHtzin did what

he could, safely, for Father Avril, allowing him to copy an

excellent map of Siberia most probably the one drawn by

Spathary. That talented Greek was resurrected from obscu-

rity and rewarded at long last for his achievement in the east.

Men like Father AvrU and Foy de la Neuville were apt

judges of statesmanship as well as personality. It was De la

Neuville who coined the phrase "the Great Galitzin." The

Frenchman had deep admiration for Little Vassy's projects

in Moscow of that day for a permanent peace with the two

nations at the east and west gates, China and Poland (Galitzin

had sent Golovin to Nerchinsk), for "forty acre" tracts

turned over to individual peasants, for a Foreign Suburb popu-

lated by technicians who had their own churches, theater, and

resorts, for permission granted to foreign priests to travel

and preach where they willed.

"All men," Little Vassy declared stubbornly, "ought to be

equal before the law."

During the thirteen years of Galitzin's ascendancy six

under Feodor, seven with Sophia the city of Moscow en-

joyed peace, and a revival of trade through the two land

gates of the dominion. The long-contested frontier cities of

Smolensk and Kiev were possessed again. The city had, as

usual in a time of quiet, a physical abundance drawn from the

land itself. But Galitzin's projects lacked the common sense

of Matviev's measures, or the realism of Ordin Nastchokin's

betterment, that sought first of all for what could be done.

Those thirteen years did bring about one decisive change.

The upper circles of Moscow lived in an atmosphere of inno-

vation; plans became the topic of the time. As Alexis' circle

had turned thought toward a new Russian life apart from the

ancient Byzantine, so Galatzin's circles accepted as inevitable

a change to western ways from ancient usage. It was a case

of "Union Now." To them the only question was how and

when? If Galitzin had had a little more time he might have

arrived at some kind of an answer. "He had too many ene-

mies," Father Avril relates, simply.

Galitzin stood on uneasy ground. His decrees had to be

issued in the names of the two boys, one incapable of under-

7 6 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

standing, the other an absentee from the Kremlin except when

he was called in to be robed and seated before the prostration

of boyars and foreigners. However much Sophia doted on him,

Galitzin was not her husband, nor was she actually Tsaritsa

of Rus. If Galitzin had had the brutal purpose of a Khovansky

or of the ex-clerk Shakovity, he might have held to his ascend-

ancy. But he did not have that.

His own mistakes undermined him.

The Road to the Krim

There were reasons, of course, for Galitzin's expedition

beyond the southern frontier to conquer the Krim khan.

That redoubtable Tatar dynasty still held the peninsula, the

"Crimea," that controlled the shore of the Black Sea.

And just at that time the foreign ambassadors were agog

with the overthrow of the Grand Turk, and Sobiesky's gallant

relief of Vienna. What could be more timely than for Galitzin

to use the long-disused field army of Rus to conquer the Krim

khan, the last ally of the Grand Turk, to gain for himself

glory like Sobiesky's and for his state of Rus real recognition

among the concert of European powers? Galitzin himself

hoped to form a Holy Alliance of the European states against

the Turks.

Sophia felt the need of military acclaim for her hero.

Galitzin knew a bit about soldiering, 2 a bit about the Ukraine

. . . but he did not want to go.

There were long delays in preparation, and Galitzin reached

the edge of the wild steppe late in the summer when the grass

had dried up.

To her hero in the field of battle Sophia wrote: "Little

daddy mine, my hope in everything, may God grant you life!

This day is a day of full gladness for me, for our Saviour's

name is being glorified by thee. As God once led Moses . . .

so He leads us across the dry desert, by means of thee. Glory

be to Him! What can I do here as recompense for thy mighty

toil there oh, thou, my joy, delight of my eyes . . ."

The army returned unexpectedly in the fall, with some

thousands missing. In the Red Place where crowds collected,

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 77

the soldiers told of famine in the dry steppe, of the break-

down of transport trains ... of the fire that consumed the

sea of grass ... no fodder for the animals.

The blame for the fire had been laid on Samoilovich, the

Cossack hetman, who had quarreled with the officers of the

Streltsi ... he had been arrested on the march back . . .

sent to Siberia with his sons (where he served later as voevode

of Yakutsk).

The ill-fated army had not been able to get through the

steppe, to reach the Tatars In the Krim. Sophia praised the

valor of the soldiers, and gave each man a gold ruble. For the

commanders she had medals struck. But Galitzin knew he

must redeem the disaster, or be mocked. No one called him

to account openly; anger rose against him in the city.

"Two accidents befell him at almost the same time," Father

Avril relates. "As he was going in his sled to the palace, a

common man flung himself into the sled and caught him by

the beard, to stab him with the knife that Muscovites carry

at the belt. The prince's servants who followed the sled ran

up and stopped him . . . and a covered coffin was found at

the entrance of his own palace with a note in it that read:

Qalitzin, if your next expedition turns out no better than the

first, you wotft escape this"

It turned out only a shade better. A veteran Scottish officer,

Patrick Gordon, was given command of the infantry, while

Mazeppa, an able young Cossack, took the exile's place. An

earlier start was made, but the transport bogged down in the

snow and mud at the frontier.

By midsummer the army got across the steppe within sight

of the sea where luminous streaks of salt shone at night like

the souls of the dead seeking a resting place. Mazeppa's Cos-

sacks kept off the lightly armed Tatars, but at the isthmus

leading to the Krim, the army found a desert ahead as well

as behind it, and food and transport failed again. Harried by

sandstorms and by thirst, it made its way back to Moscow.

There Sophia, who would not admit defeat, had a triumphal

arch built. Galitzin must parade through the Red Place.

Almost hysterical in her relief at his return and her anxiety

at the rumors of another disaster, she insisted on appearing

y 8 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

herself in the procession of the clergy, to greet the commander

in chief.

Peter, the son of Natalia, brought from his village resort

to. be robed for the occasion, showed ' his first public resent-

ment at his half sister's conduct. The boy, now sixteen, refused

to greet Gaiitzin as tsar, to thank him for the victory he had

not won. Vigorously he objected to Sophia's doing the same

thing. What tsarevna of the Romanovs, he argued, had done

anything so foolish?

Once before they had clashed, at Kazan, where Peter argued

that Sophia must not show herself with head unveiled in a

religious procession, and she retorted by snatching up an ikon

and walking out to the throng.

Now, at the palace, she greeted Gaiitzin, in Peter's place,

and offered him a glass of brandy with her own hand.

She had squelched Peter in their first clash, but she had not

helped herself by doing so. Her victory parade without Tatar

prisoners and with many regiments missing stirred the watch-

ing throngs the wrong way. Old Believers prophesied that this

woman who had sold herself to Satan by breaking out of the

cloister would speedily fall from her evil triumph into hell.

The Streltsi, who had endured much in the two disasters,

hoped for the same thing.

Nothing was said openly. Sophia was weighed by mute

Slavic minds and found wanting, not because she had taken it

upon herself to be sovereign, but because she had failed to

display the power of a true sovereign of Rus.

She did what she could. Stubbornly pretending that Little

Vassy had conquered the steppe, she sent Shakovity south to

build forts and make a show of advancing the frontier.

But after Little Vassy's failures, her passion for him cooled.

In her anxiety, even Peter's boyish activities assumed a men-

acing aspect, Peter had been instrumental in mocking her;

Peter, the boisterous, gawky stripling, was now of an age to

marry. Natalia had been approaching the great families, to

select the best match for him. Sophia let it be known through

the IGtaigorod that a Naryshkin like Peter would not be a

proper match for the nobility of Rus. Meanwhile Sophia's

spies reported that Peter was sending to the Arsenal for toys

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS . 79

for his playmates for drums by the score, for trumpets,

matchlocks, and cmnon. No one believed that Peter could be

serious about such things Sophia's information was accurate

on that point yet, senselessly, she felt frightened because she

saw nothing ahead but a lessening of her power as Peter be-

came of age. She felt that Peter and his mother must be got

rid of, if she was to be safe. With the imbecile Ivan as tsar,

alone, she would be safe. Or so she thought.

Galitzin, disgusted by the victory parade, would hear of no

conspiracy against the surviving Naryshkins.

Oppressed by her fears, Sophia tried to conspire herself.

Only petty theatrical gestures resulted. Sophia turns again to

the Streltsi, offering a vast payment if the musketeers would

make public demand for her to be proclaimed tsaritsa.

"Demand to whom?" the Streltsi spokesmen retorted. "The

young tsars? The elder hasn't sense enough to answer, and the

younger doesn't care a kopek.''

Sophia recalls her one ruthless conspirator. Shakovity stages

a fake raid on a Strelitz barrack, kills a sergeant, passes the

word around that the Naryshkins engineered it. The musket-

eers will not rise to the bait.

But the adolescent Peter shows temper again, impulsively

demands Shakovity's arrest, then on second thought releases

him quickly. A stupid blunder. Still, it gives Shakovity the

trace of a grievance. He collects a small armed band, starts for

Peter's village. The interested Streltsi warn the boy. In the

middle of the night Peter, thoroughly frightened, hurries to a

horse without waiting to put on any clothes and rides to the

edge of a forest. There friends find him, and, sensing oppor-

tunity in such spectacular flight, lead him quickly to the time-

honored asylum of the great Troitsko monastery. Thither Pe-

ter's mother and young sister hurry to join him. They find the

boy tsar weeping hysterically, beseeching aid from everyone.

Thither, after some quiet debate, marches the nearest regi-

ment of musketeers. It is clear to them that the most advanta-

geous move is to be the first to protect the young tsar

(Troitskq being both venerable and impregnable). Thither

hurries the patriarch of Moscow.

It is all rather like the second act of a trite drama. The real

8o THE CITY AND THE TSAR

verdict is being cast against Sophia and Galitzin in the streets

of Moscow. And Sophia, understanding her defeat, finds her-

self in the situation she had prepared for the Streltsi seven

years before, helpless in possession of the Kremlin.

Outside the gates crowds begin to shout, "Time for you to

take the road to the convent/' Sophia appealed to a last possi-

ble force, the officers of the foreign regiments.

Siiburb of the Foreigners

For some time the foreign colony had been thriving not in

Moscow but outside, a half hour's ride, along the beautiful

little Yauza. Under Alexis the foreigners were liked, and under

the young westerners they were favored. They dwelt apart in

their Sloboda or village suburb because the Muscovites had a

deep-rooted aversion to Lutheran kirks and Catholic chapels

within the white walls of Holy Mother Moscow.

So the foreign merchants and professional soldiers and tech-

nical experts commuted into the city to do business and re-

tired; to their Sloboda to relax around their fishponds and

taverns. They entertained new arrivals from beyond Constan-

tinople-Riga, exchanged the latest tidings from Amsterdam

or Edinburgh the Dutch and the Scots were in the majority

just then and waited impatiently for new editions of Erasmus

or John Milton. They married among themselves and were

buried in their varied cemeteries with the proper bell and

book because it was almost impossible to get permission from

the Ambassadors' Bureau to leave Muscovy.

When a broom was hoisted to the city hall, the suburbanites

turned out of offices and dwellings to sweep the streets clean,

to cart away the dirt and fertilize their tulip and rose gardens

a phenomenon that amused visiting Muscovites as much as

the strangers were puzzled by the annual Muscovite blessing

of the water, when the high clergy of the Kremlin cut a hole

in the thick ice of the Moskva and asperged the water of the

river.

Visitors emerging from the hardships of the post roads bear

witness to the gentle tempo of life in the Sloboda. "Most of

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 8 1

the strangers have gardens which they carefully cultivate,"

writes Cornelius Le Brayn, a conceited world voyager with a

gift for painting, after coming in from Le Hague. "They send

for the different fruits and flowers from home ... we can-

not please the Russians better than by giving them nosegays."

And in a Russian suburban village Le Bruyn is equally pleased

with his hosts. "The gentleman had an handsome wife, a

mighty good-natured sort of woman . . . who sat in a swing

to make us merry after dinner, with two pretty waiting maids

to swing her. The lady took a child in her lap and began to

sing with her maids very agreeably, begging us to excuse her

for not sending for music. When we thanked her, she carried

us to the pond and got us some fish to take fresh home. These

fish she dressed in the Russian way in her kitchen which was

after the Dutch manner. . . . When they entertain their

friends they sit down to table at ten in the morning and part

at one in the afternoon to go home to sleep."

Master Le Bruyn's host on this occasion was a rich man,

and the foreign folk in the Sloboda were also wealthy. Both

Muscovite property owners and Sloboda merchants held the

vantage point of middlemenbetween the growing markets of

the eastern parts, the great trading fairs at Astrakhan and

Kazan, and the fur exchange at Leipzig and the shipbuilding

at Le Hague. Moscow tapped the transcontinental trade. Mus-

covite hemp, flax, wax, potash, tar, hides, and lumber all paid

toll or tax of some kind to Moscow, while the damask, linen,

lacquer work, gold, drugs, and perfumes flooding in from

China-way, from India and Isfahan and Bokhara, came up the

Volga or across Galitzin's new road to be resold in Moscow.

This trade of course benefited only the family in the Kremlin

and the upper classes. It did not seep down to the Muscovite

peasantry, or the populations of the smaller towns.

Between this privileged upper class of Moscow and the

other six million-odd souls of Muscovy lay the grinding taxa-

tion of the bureaus, and the exaction of service, or serfdom.

And not even the profits of the great merchants of Furriers'

Row, or the estates of the new gentry like the Kuragins or

Tolstoys, were actually secured to them by law. All such

82 " THE CITY AND THE TSAR

property even to the serfs on the land lay at the disposal of the

Kremlin a disposal which was, of course, subject to the will

of the nebulous tsar.

Thus around the theatrical duel between Sophia and the

Naryshldn mother and son gathered the anxiety, the greed, the

pride, and the prudence of all the other privileged families of

Moscow as well as the soldiery in the streets.

For the disposal of the tsardoin lay In the decision of the

best-disciplined soldiery that could assemble outside the forti-

fied gate of the Troitsko to declare for or against Natalia and

her son. And, with the Streltsi regiments hesitating, the deci-

sion really lay with the regiment best disciplined of all, the

foreign regiment, officered by Scots.

In this crisis the foreign adventurers of the Sloboda were

not directly concerned. They had their written contracts call-

ing for specific pay; they had their immunities; they could

brew prohibited liquor, smoke the forbidden tobacco a sin in

the eyes of Old Believers or even dance to the devilish sound

of bagpipes, while their women watched with naked faces,,

clad in the silks and furbelows of Paris fashion.

Franz Timmermann, who smoked a porcelain pipe, could

discuss mathematics while building a house in the Sloboda

without being reported as a heretic; Karschten Brandt could

import masts and sails from Holland because he was supposed

to build ships. Patrick Gordon had to be paid his stipulated

salary as general of the army not because he was a general of

Muscovy but because he was a Scot who expected to be paid

in good florins or rix-dollars.

Even Frangois Lefort was paid, although no one in the

bureaus seemed to know just why. This young Swiss, who had

got around Europe somehow by card money and tips, had

nearly starved after landing at Archangel. A big handsome

Rabelaisian youth with a knack of feasting friends, Frangois

Lefort had attached himself comfortably to a rich widow, and

then had shifted to respectability by marrying a cousin of

Patrick Gordon. When Lutheran or Calvinist or Catholic fes-

tivals came around, Frangois Lefort served as the life of the

festival, and between festivals he staged three-day banquets.

After one such three-day party Patrick Gordon gave up

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 83

drinking spirits. The herculean Lefort had no equal as a

drinker.

After twenty-eight years in Muscovy, Gordon of Auch-

leuchries had not reconciled himself to foreign exile. As a

youngster, a fugitive Jacobite, he had served in most of the

armies of Europe and had been persuaded by an ambassador

from Moscow to become a military expert under the tsars,

with command of a regiment. From the first Gordon had been

aggrieved; he had no sooner started to draw his pay than the

debased copper currency was issued, and from all the tsars-

Alexis, Feodor, and the two boys, with Sophia behind the cur-

tain, he had been able to obtain only one leave to visit his

native highlands and offer his respects to Charles II. "Stran-

gers," he wrote of those in the Sloboda, and particularly of

the Scottish colony, "be looked upon as a company of hire-

lings, and at the best (as they say of women) but as necessaria

mala. No honors ... to be expected here but military . . .

no marrying with natives, strangers being looked upon by the

best sort as scarcely Christians, and by the plebeyans as meer

pagans . - . and the worst of all, the pay small."

By then Patrick Gordon had an estate of his own, an Eng-

lish wife, children, servants. Because he was a man of tested

integrity, the most experienced general in the heterogeneous

Muscovite army, he had influence enough. Still he was con-

scious of the undercurrents around the Kjremlin of "rumors

unsafe to be uttered" when he had been assailed as a heretic,

and when he had seen the Ukrainian Samoilovich arrested and

sent to Siberia without a hearing. (Gordon and the Ukrainian

hetman had once held the line of the Dnieper miraculously

against the much-dreaded Turks.)

It was to Patrick Gordon that Sophia sent her appeal in that

hot August of her overthrow. The Scot had served her regime

as dispassionately as he had served the capable Alexis. Now he

pondered the chances of the refugees at Troitsko. There the

patriarch and queen mother stood for stability, hence for regu-

lar payment of salaries. And the gangling Peter had become

a regular visitor to the Sloboda, which lay so near his exile

village of the Transfiguration (Preobrazhensky) . Peter had

a way of corning down-river in odd crafts, to listen to Tim-

84 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

mermann's exposition of mathematics. Yes, the foreigners

spent a deal of their time finding things to amuse Peter.

Obviously, Patrick Gordon preferred to have the inquisi-

tive Peter married and proclaimed sole Tsar of Rus than to

have to deal with the excitable Sophia and the idiotic Ivan.

Moreover Sophia's latest actions appalled the soldier. She re-

fused to surrender the creature Shakovity; she summoned rep-

resentatives of the Streltsi to the Red Stair, to hear Ivan

stammer out a speech and to offer them common soldiers-

glasses of vudka with her own hand.

Worse, in sheer desperation she tried to go herself to the

Troitsko to plead. She was turned back by guards on the road

at the spot where Khovansky had been murdered. As nearly

as the wary Gordon could tell, the invisible scales had been

tipped against Sophia. Galitzin admitted as much to him.

So he marched his picked regiment with the Scottish offi-

cers to the gate of the great Troitsko, and marched back es-

corting Peter and the patriarch to the Red Place. The Streltsi

guards on duty lifted no weapon against them. With white

and gold colors flying and drums sounding they marched on

into the Kremlin gate. Both Peter and the crowd assembled

around the gate seemed to enjoy the parade in.

Probably Peter never knew how carefully it had all been

arranged beforehand. The Streltsi and the dominant boyars of

Moscow had agreed that Sophia should go to the convent and

Peter to the palace. Even Galitzin had agreed.

The change-over within the family happened without stir,

without the ringing of the Vyestnik bell. Shakovity vanished

into the torture chambers, where he was joined by his few

companions among the Streltsi. The Great Galitzin received

his fate in writing signed by Peter. This De la Neuville re-

ports:

"You are ordered by the tsar to betake yourself . . . far,

beneath the Arctic, and to stay there all your days."

Sophia selected the Monastery of the Virgin, the one near-

est Moscow, to go to. As for Ivan, he was led aside by Peter,

who tried to explain why he was no longer to be robed as tsar.

Instead, Peter put on the ancient shapka, the jeweled, rimmed

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 85

cap that had crowned Ivan the Terrible. Until then Ivan the

imbecile had worn the ancient regalia and Peter had had to do

with makeshifts.

The boyars who crowded in to bow the head to him, and

to exchange gifts and plans with the patriarch, Natalia, and

the rejuvenated Naryshkins, praised God that Peter Alex-

eivich showed none of the mind-sickness of the Romanovs*

Peter looked lusty, and certainly he was taller than any of

them by a hand's length. (Actually, he grew to six feet eight

and a half inches.)

Under the benevolent patriarch, the oblivious Natalia "My

hope and my life," she said of Peter and the agreeable boyars

the routine of the Kremlin assumed the placid, anti-liberal as-

pect of the old days before Alexis. There was no longer a

Great Galitzin to brew plans overnight. The only one uneasy

seemed to be Peter Alexeivich himself. He had wanted Galitzin

killed, and he told the boyars in council to send the bulk of

the Streltsi regiments away from Moscow, where they had

always been, to duty on the Polish and Ukrainian frontiers.

Still, the overgrown boy wandered moodily among the fa-

miliar landmarks of the Kremlin, avoiding the perpetual

throngs shuffling past the bell tower of Ivan Grozniy, avoiding

the herd of choir singers in their cassocks, bound for the

cathedral.

When the bells clanged out in cadence, he often sprang up

violently, looking about him for a doorway. In such a convul-

sion he hurried with his face twitching, past the upstairs poor

clutching their rosaries, and the terem doors where dwelt the

five tsarevtlas, his half sisters.

At such times fear came to him with memories. Not of the

rush of the waterfall that had startled him when a child asleep

against his mother in a small boat so the servants had told him

of his fright that kept him from the edge of water until he

learned to sit in boats without trembling, and to let the boats

take him out on the water. Now he often did that of his own

choice, enjoying the sense of freedom when water rushed

harmlessly against the boat's sides. . . . The fear tightened

inside him when he approached the Red Stair, where blood

had poured out of the bodies of men familiar to him. Some-

86 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

times his throat tightened and he screamed when a cockroach

was crushed near him.

The fear centered within a ring of bearded faces and clutch-

ing hands. They moved at him as if to tear him, and then he

stiffened in convulsion, and ran

He ran out of the doors, from the shadowy halls with hid-

den ceilings, into the open air. He ran down steps, to feel the

rough ground under him, and at times he walked away from

people, half running in his long stride, down to the river.

There, if he found a boat, he sat down in it, until he felt quiet

and relaxed.

After a few weeks Peter Alexeivich left the Kremlin, and

drove back to his village of the Transfiguration.

There he stayed because he liked it. There he had his own

playfellows, and the small wooden cottage near the river

where his sailboat lay moored, and where he could sleep

soundly, without nightmares. He did not sleep so well in the

labyrinth of the Kremlin's vaulted halls.

Moreover near the village lay the one spot peculiarly his

own, the field with the play fort that he had christened Press-

burg and pronounced "Prespur." There he liked best to be.

It was difficult, now that Peter Alexeivich had put on the

shapka of the Tsar of All of Rus and had become of legal age

seventeen to wear it, to keep him from doing what he

wanted to do.

The. Fort and the Boat

Even at the first the influence of the west had been laid

upon him. His mother had been raised in the household of the

Scottish wife of Matviev. She had understood that musical

boxes did not operate by witchcraft.

Like any doting mother she had invoked the patriarch of

the Church to teach godliness to her child. The actual tutor

had been no Simeon Polotsk but a simple-minded old Russian

clerk, Zotov, who had some trouble in chanting liturgy, who

eased his soul with wine, tears, and prayers. Since Peter tired

easily of letters, Zotov showed him pictures of the ancient

heroes, particularly of Ivan and Alexis galloping their mettle-

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 8j

some horses against arrays of pagans. When pictures failed, he

would take Peter to sing with the choir.

This quite normal system of education tended more and

more to play on Peter's part, and to wine sipping on Zotov's.

The notebooks kept by Natalia's hero later showed that he

was never sure of his spelling, that sums beyond simple addi-

tion bothered himthat he preferred to draw imaginary de-

signs of things which never became completed. In fact Peter

was stupid, except that he developed skill in devising games.

But he had absorbed ancient Russian traditions, in a way pe-

culiar to himself. This schooling ended when he was ten, with

the first upheaval on the Red Stair, and his own inclination

thereafter to teach himself.

His very mild exile to the suburbs gave him the small river,

the quiet village of the Transfiguration, and the exciting

Sloboda as his area of activitywith an occasional visit to the

Troitsko to hear the talk of politics when necessary. There-

after Peter led exactly what we mean today when we speak of

a healthy outdoor life. Like any teen-age boy of today he

wandered restlessly from river to playground to the immensely

interesting homes of the foreigners, where he became familiar

not only with musical boxes and striking clocks but with

porcelain pipes and maps drawn to scale. He stayed out late at

night, wore any old clothes, tried to quaff down schnapps

manfully. In Moscow he ran to fires and hung around the

crowd when Vyestnik tolled.

So great was his dread of the Kremlin that he had avoided

entering its gates if possible, although he had seemed to go

through his paces as the "other" tsar cheerfully enough. At

that time he and Natalia had to live as pensioners of the

Sophia-Galitzin coterie, and, back of all the pretense of

royalty-on-sufferance, they had almost no actual money to

spend. Sophia had seen to that. Natalia had to borrow from the

patriarch and the treasurers at Troitsko. Peter seemed to be

indifferent to this near poverty at the time, but he did not

forget it. Actually during the years when he was a pensioner

of the Kremlin, Peter Alexeivich had less hard money than

Patrick Gordon, or Brandt.

He did have the privilege of taking what he liked from that

88 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

warehouse of curiosities in the Kremlin, the Arsenal. There

the teen-age boy who had need of nothing except to amuse

himself found much of interest. At the first "a statue of the

Lord Christ and a German blunderbuss." Later on he sent for

great quantities of "gunpowder, standards and pistols." Not

precisely" the articles a precocious student would select. True,

, there came a demand for "a globe of the world." But it seemed

to do service more as a globe than as a m&ppa, tmmdi because it

was returned to the Arsenal speedily for repairs. Much later

Peter did demand "a treatise on fire weapons" and at the same

time "a funny ape."

Peter commanded that the articles be sent, and he knew

exactly what he wanted at the moment. On a visit to the Ar-

senal he noticed a foreign astrolabe (nothing of the kind

being made in Muscovy at the time) , and a courtier took pains

to bring him a better one from Paris. Immediately Peter

wanted to know how it worked, and Franz Timmermann at

the Sloboda tried to explain to him the mystery of angles by

which heights could be measured. This led to arguments about

rudimentary mathematics. In this way Peter acquired by dem-

onstration about as much mathematical knowledge as he

gained ability to read from the winebibbing Zotov. What in-

terested him was the thing itself, and the use of it. He wanted

to be told all about that very quickly.

After he was told, he could imitate an action readily enough.

But he could never devise a method for himself.

Once when he was examining the junk stored in a Romanov

lumberyard at Transfiguration, he and Timmermann came

across a sloop of a design unfamiliar to Peter. "It is an English

boat," Timmermann assured him, "aye, and better than

others."

"Why is it better?"

"Because it can be sailed close to the wind, and against the

wind." 3

Nothing of course would satisfy Peter but to try out the

English craft for himself. It did have good sailing qualities and

it served nicely to take the boy down the river to the Sloboda.

Very soon after that the Arsenal got a command request

from its tsar for all its ship models/Peter began to collect dif-

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 89

ferent types of river craft, and sailing became one of Ms pas-

sions. His craze for small boats took him over to the lake at

Pereiaslavl, where Brandt was building a larger craft for the

Volga run. At once this lake became one of Peter's favored

resorts.

The shipwrights let the absentee tsar use their tools, and

steer a finished ketch across the lake. They were placid Dutch-

men, and they treated the gangling Peter much Hke any other

fifteen-year-old boy. By then he had acquired a remarkable

smattering of High Dutch, mixed with German and a few

English and Latin words. Tknmermann became u Mein

friendt."

Like any other impetuous man working with foreigners

Peter began to use words as he needed them, few and matter-

of-fact, from whatever language. As long as he talked about

things these men of the Sloboda and shipyards understood

him well enough. Ideas were another matter.

The river and the Pereiaslavl lake meant release to the boy

who had to travel to the Kremlin only to put on musty regalia,,

to stand and sit through exhausting ceremonies. On the lake

he could point his astrolabe at a star over the horizon, and

with a twist of his powerful hands turn the bow of his ship to

a new course.

The wooded lake with the gilded domes of the old town

reflected in it did not resemble Moscow in any way. It made

no demands on Peter, who quartered himself there in a cabin

overlooking the water, near the shipyards. This cabin had a

crude wooden eagle over the door, but no other mark of a

royal occupant. During a summer spent in this fashion on his

"little sea" Peter worked at building a yacht after a Dutch

design.

The passion for his fort equaled his love of ships. Old cus-

tom required that Muscovite princes grow up attended by

their own rude court of other boyars' sons, and armed servi-

tors. It was a relic of the feudal druijina. In Peter's case these

companions were a ragged crew, a few young nobles, many

grooms, dog boys, falconers, and such. As usual their main

90 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

sport was the gang fight, in which two sides took positions

and fought it out with clubs, stones, and fists.

Peter's coterie was called various names, "jolly grooms" and

"men of play." Sophia called them blackguards. Peter had a

way of organizing the fights into first-rate sham battles. His

earliest crude earth fort on the Yauza was transformed by de-

grees into a military work of some pretensions, thanks to Tim-

mermann's mathematics, and coaching by interested foreign

officers of the Sloboda. Hence the requisitions on the Arsenal.

It is very doubtful if Peter felt any desire to master the art

of fortification in the manner of a new Vauban. Pressburg,

under its varied pronunciations, became for him the center of

his activity, the test of his wits, and his achievement in imita-

tion of the foreign generals.

For the boy was quick to imitate. Among the hundred-odd

colonels in the Sloboda, he heard discussions of campaigns,

sieges, mines, blockades. Probably the hundred colonels em-

phasized how often they had been victorious by this or that

expedient in which the various colonels Brandenburgers,

Scots, Poles, and Swisshad played a daring, even a heroic

part.

Much of what they explained to him Peter tried out at his

fort, sometimes with unfortunate results. Inevitably, some of

the foreign experts attended as observers and then as honorary

commanders on either side. Peter displayed remarkable per-

sistence in waging his mimic campaigns. After he mobilized

his "men of play" into two regiments, he needed uniforms for

them. When he needed more recruits, he impressed choirboys,

and servants, and even the dwarfs who had attended him to

church as a child. To attack fortified cannon, he needed new

weapons, such as an ingenious grenade caster. His companions

began to call him Bombardier Peter. He liked that.

It was only a game, and of course he had other anxieties.

He worked out his worries in experimenting with the things

of his fort at "Prespur." As he had divorced himself from the

fear of the Red Stair, he was divorcing himself from higher

education, from the demands of the boyars and the concept of

the Muscovite tsardorn by becoming Bombardier Peter.

Persistently Bombardier Peter avoided officials and official

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 91

conferences. Too often at such meetings when tired or excited

his face would twitch, his head jerk down to the left, and his

body stiffen in convulsion. As time went on he seemed to

convince himself that he was working industriously when he

was merely playing.

At twenty-two Peter stood or rather strode around inces-

santly, six feet eight inches tall, his nervous strained head thrust

forward, his great hands always restless. He had been Tsar of

Rus in name for five years. And he had taken to traveling in

a carriage at a gallop within his orbit of the Kremlin, the

Transfiguration cottage, the river, and the lake.

His regiments named for two villages, the Transfiguration

and the Semenov, had grown to full strength. They had been

drilled by Patrick Gordon, for whom Peter had liking as well

as respect. The Scot contrived ingenious fireworks "rockets

and firewheels" which delighted Peter. There was now a

duly titled King of Pressburg, and a patriarch Peter's tutor,

the religious and bibulous Zotov. It almost seemed as if Peter

had a court of his own there on the river.

One thing was certain. Peter had guards enough of his own

now. In no way did he need to depend on the Streltsi. Up at

Pereiaslavl he had a miniature fleet of his own, armed with

serviceable cannon. His last requisition upon the Arsenal had

been "ammunition for all kinds of cannon."

Perhaps because Peter's incessant journeying about had no-

greater visible results than the mimic state at Pressburg, rumors

ran about the countryside. These rumors declared that Peter

had bowed before the aging Zotov, greeting him as "Your

Drunken Holiness." Also in the combats at the fort, dwarfs

were seen hurrying about, stabbing and shooting earnestly^

while no one dared punish them. Moreover, twenty-four men

had been killed in his last mimic battle, a full-scale siege of

Pressburg. A boy of the Dolgoruky family had been killed.

There was a strangeness about the whole Pressburg affair.

It had grown too great to be merely a game. Could the tsar at

Pressburg be ridiculing Moscow? Could he be joining himself

to the heretic Sloboda?

92 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

In the Sloboda the matter-of-fact Patrick Gordon wrote

that a five-pound rocket made for Peter "took off the head of

a boyar." The Pressburg regiments he dismissed as "ballet

dancers,'*

The truth was that Peter had thrown himself entire into his

pastimes. A new quality was developing in him, stubbornness.

The fort had been an escape for him; now it must be brought

to accomplish something. But what? Evidently Peter did not

know. As a man grown, he was still playing, with unquestion-

able seriousness, the game of a boy of fourteen.

It was Frangois Lefort who broke the impasse of the imita-

tion fort, the toy navy on the lake, and the half-real army. He

suggested that Peter extend his travels to Archangel, where he

could inspect some seagoing vessels and make a trial voyage

on the White Sea.

At this many bearded heads were shaken in the Kremlin,

Such a journey! No Great Master of Moscow had ever ven-

tured to Archangel at the edge of the Frozen Sea. After the

manner of mothers, Natalia made tearful protest. If Peter must

go he must promise not to set his foot upon a foreign ship that

might take him into God knew what peril on that sea of dark-

ness.

a ls the protection of God not there as well as here?" Peter

wrote her. Natalia had no answer to that. Apparently he had

got around his mother's order successfully, yet he may well

have believed what he said. Did he not feel protected on the

deck of a sloop at Pereiaslavl?

"Frangois Lefort

Of the young giant who was now his friend and patron, the

gargantuan Swiss adventurer said, "You can only guide him

where he wants to go himself. You can't hold his interest un-

less you keep his affection."

Affection there was between these two oversize men Peter

Alexeivich being the taller, Francois Lefort the heavier. Both

were fluent in the German-Dutch-Slav patois of the Sloboda;

both sought amusement, Lefort to plan it, Peter to enjoy it. In

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 93

his rambling wooden mansion Lefort could conjure up a pag-

eant, a shooting match, a songf est, or a garden party at little

or no notice. As chef, or master of ceremonies or simple exhi-

bitionist, he could drive dull care away.

His house, like a tavern, stood open to his friends. Women

who came there did not resemble in the least the Muscovite

women of the old fashion, bundled up like nuns. They laughed

at jests and made jests of their own; their bright dresses re-

vealed throats and legs, Lefort selected for Peter a vintner's

daughter who pleased him immensely. She bound him to the

Sloboda with a new tie.

This tie was stronger than the bond of marriage. Nothing

about his marriage had held satisfaction for Peter. Contrived

at the eve of Sophia's overthrow, while he had been a pen-

sioner still, it had kept him for only three months at the side

of a pallidly handsome girl, Eudoxia brought up in the terem,

addicted to prayers and tears. When Eudoxia's kinsmen had

swarmed in to argue for privileges and appointments, even

Natalia disliked this bride. Three months after his marriage,

Peter was back at Pereiaslavl without Eudoxia. Perhaps no

home could have contained the restless Peter at that time, but

certainly Eudoxia and her relatives could not hold him to the

terem he detested.

Perhaps it was due more to the failure of his own marriage

than to Lefort's contriving that Peter should have ordered a

new home for the Swiss man of all parts. It was a brick palace

with all the comforts of the west built into it, even a ballroom

and picture gallery. With such an establishment the gifted

Lefort could entertain on a grander scale, and Peter saw to it

that he did so.

* The new palace served as more than a banquet hall; for the

succession of officials from Moscow and the foreign ambassa-

dors who were always searching for the Great Master of Rus

could be received there without any effort on Peter's part. He

could quarter himself in his escape cabins and appear in

Lefort's drawing room only when he chose to do so.

He did not choose to do so often. About this time Patrick

Gordon Patrick Ivanovich, as Peter called him wrote: "I

94 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

have been promised great rewards. ... I have no doubt that

when the young Tsar himself takes the reins of government, I

shall receive satisfaction."

The reins of government, however, stayed where they were

in the hands of the patriarch, and of the conscientious Golo-

vin, who had finished his work at the east gate of the empire.

What leadership there was came from one of Peter's most

gifted "men of play," Boris, the young cousin of the Great

Galitzin. Boris, careless as any scion of the great Slav families,

yet educated in the western way, had steered Peter through

the tense days at Troitsko.

So it was actually upon the small group of Troitsko that

Peter depended. Boris, seldom serious and rarely sober, shared

in Lefort's mighty revelries with a grace Peter could not

match.

Peter's efforts in that direction turned out strangely. Just

before the Archangel journey he conducted a marriage for

one of his jesters, a half-wit, Jacob by name. Jacob had been

even more amusing than the bevy of dwarfs, still his com-

panions.

Diplomats were summoned from Lefort's house to attend in

court attire the wedding arranged by the Tsar of Rus. Jacob

rode to church in Peter's most impressive carriage, while the

diplomats found oxen supplied them as mounts, with attend-

ants in Falstaffian array leading swine and dogs behind them.

The wedding feast was held at Lefort's, for three days.

During the service in the church, Peter sang mightily in the

choir.

"Remember," the puzzled diplomats warned each other

while they drank Lefort's beer, "remember always that the

tsar is actually no more than a boy of six years."

Not that they looked on this young giant of a tsar as a case

of arrested development. He was simply untaught. Actually

he had mastered no more than the hornbook of letters and the

chanted doxologies that a child in the west might learn by

rote. The diplomats had been uncomfortable on their oxen

plodding over ice-glazed ruts of a street. Yet, like Lefort,

Peter had picked up knowledge of a different kind in the

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 95

alleys and water fronts where men retorted by spitting and

smacking good blows.

As for the mockery of a marriage, there had been Peter's

disgruntlement with Eudoxia, and his animal satisfaction with

the vintner's daughter. More than that. He really cherished

the fool Jacob he had always been gentle with his half-wit

brother. Was it strange, then, that he staged, crudely enough,

a mockery of a marriage or saluted Zotov as "His Drunken

Holiness"?

Still, something more than good-natured fun was manifest-

ing itself in Peter's vagaries. His exhibitions imitated Lefort's

gargantuan banquets only up to a point. Beyond that irony

appears not the irony of a western mind, but the ridicule of

the oriental mind that justifies itself by making its antagonists

appear foolish.

Under Peter's gusty good humor savagery lay. The amusing

battles at Pressburg had ended often in bloodletting. After

Troitsko Peter had no thought of harming the helpless Ivan,

but he had wanted to make an end of the Great Galitzin until

Boris talked him out of it. He had been amused when Ms

dwarfs stabbed the full-grown "men of play." Gordon had

not liked that.

This shadowy orientalism no strange heritage in a Mus-

covite of that day showed itself fleetingly in Peter's relation-

ship with his companions of the Sloboda. They were no

favorites after the European manner but cup companions, de-

voted ones, to be ordered about, beaten, and cherished at the

same time. Turks, if not Mongols, had known such yiddash

and anda relationship, and the Slavs themselves had held to

such brotherhoods.

Make no mistake. These foreigners had been given no offi-

cial positions, Patrick Ivanovich remained a lieutenant general

in the employ of the Razriad. Lef ort himself held no rank at

court; he merely served as Peter's entertainer in chief, and

while Peter must have paid for the new casino-palace, there is

no record of regulaf drafts on the Treasury drawn for Lef ort.

The vintner's daughter stayed in the Sloboda.

No, Peter had not brought his crew of intimates to the re-

sponsibilities of the Kremlin, as Sophia had done. He had tried

96 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

to journey himself between the Kremlin and the Sloboda. At

Ms fort on the Yauza he had tried, instinctively, to build for

himself some milieu of his own, imitating the Sloboda and

apart from the Kremlin. In that he had failed.

One characteristic Peter revealed very clearly: his untiring

persistence. In his shuttling between the Kremlin gates and the

Sloboda he had been traversing two centuries of time. Life

within the citadel of Moscow remained very much as it had

been in western Europe in 1494, while the modern spirit of

1694 activated the Sloboda. Yet Peter was not reconciled to

giving up his meeting ground of the boyish fort on the river,

or his rendezvous with time at Lef ort's casino-palace.

The Swiss adventurer seemed to have an understanding of

Peter, and, after his fashion, to feel a responsibility for him.

Lefort was influencing Peter to do what the troubled giant

really craved to escape for a while from his anxiety, to travel

at a gallop to a real sea and to ships that were more than

models or yachts on a lake.

The Storm on the Frozen Sea

The choice of Archangel for the journey's end is surprising

at first thought, because it was the rudest of seaports, a jump-

ing-off place facing Arctic waters, icebound for most of the

year.

Yet what other seaport could be found? Azov, at the Don's

mouth, was held by the Turks; along the Baltic the ports were

in the hands of the Swedes and others. Only one alternative

remained.

From the Pereiaslavl Lake itself Peter could have sailed

down the Volga to Astrakhan, a great terminal of the eastern

trade. Certainly the ghost of Ordin Nastchokin would have

cried for the eager young tsar to inspect this artery of the

Volga. But the southern steppe was by no means pacified after

the revolt of the generation before.

If Peter could have made his first journey to the Caspian, his

future and the trend of Russian development might have

taken a different course. In any case he went to Archangel on

the dim White Sea where Dutch seamen sheltered in log

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 97

cabins told him of voyages under the midnight sun, of pas-

sages found through drifting ice floes. There he heard from

the skippers themselves of the search for a way by sea to

Cathay. For a space this venture caught at his imagination.

It was not easy to get Peter away from Archangel. He or-

dered a full-rigged ship from Holland, with forty-four can-

non, casks of French wine, and rare apes. Clad in the panta-

loons and smock of a Dutch sailor, he asked for details of the

lives of admirals like Van Tromp.

As he had absorbed the talk of the colonels in the gardens

of the Sloboda, he drank in the words of these rough-spoken

skippers who had seen the towers of Gothland emerge from

the mist, who had fought their way through the ice of the

Neva in flood. With them he lifted timbers in the drying sheds

or worked with his powerful hands along the ropewalks odor-

ous with hemp. Compared to this, the blue lake of Pereiaslavl

seemed no more than a man-made pond.

Taking a bark out to the islands of tlje White Sea in the

teeth of a gale, Peter found himself unable to cope with the

pounding seas. The wheel twisted itself in his grasp with a

force he had never known before. After a while the Dutch

skipper watching beside him took the wheel suddenly, saying,

"I know more about this than you do."

Peter made no protest. Nor did he join the other passengers

who were praying for deliverance from wind and waves. In-

stead he watched the experienced seaman steer close to the

wind, keeping the sails drawing.

Along with his persistence Natalia's spoiled son was show-

ing a remarkable inclination to take only a minor part in what

was going on if all went well. At the fort on the Yauza he

had been content with the lowly rank of bombardier, letting

others be colonels of regiments and captains of batteries. Up at

Archangel the seamen called him "skipper" and this pleased

him. Bombardier Peter Alexeivich was also, by testimony of

hard-handed seamen Skipper Peter.

In letters henceforth he sometimes signed himself: "Schiper

Fon scbip smtus profetities" Interpreted, this means, "Skipper

of the Sainted Prophet." Apparently he had been headed out

to meet his made-to-order frigate from Holland, the Prophet

98 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

itself, when he had found the storm too much for him. This

Dutch-built frigate delighted Skipper Peter, and there was no

weaning him away from it.

When Natalia died in Moscow, Peter grieved and wept,

hurrying south as fast as wheels and runners could take him.

Yet after three days among the throngs at the Kremlin he was

off to feast with Lef ort at the new Sloboda palace, where the

Swiss had held state during his master's absence, as a viceroy

incognito,

Signature of Peter, in European lettering, at end of missive in

Russian script

Then, when there seemed to be most need for him to attend

to affairs of state, Peter was off to his arm of the sea again,

where the Prophet awaited him.

"The streets are covered with broken timbers," Cornelius

Le Brayn relates, "and so dangerous to cross that a man con-

tinually runs the hazard of falling. Besides, they are full of the

rubbish of houses which . . . looks like the ruins of a fire."

This log town of Archangel its only stone building being

the citadel, which was more of a warehouse, active for only

four summer months between the thawing and the freezing of

the ice would not seem to be a place that could intrigue Peter

Alexeivich for so many months. Certainly his boon com-

panions of the Sloboda hardly appeared there.

Yet precisely in Archangel was he able to investigate Euro-

pean wares on the incoming ships, and to order cordage and

compasses for his own vessels. He ordered a great many can-

non from the Swedes, who, it seemed, possessed excellent iron.

Archangel itself could not have held him, any more than the

vast fir forest through which he rode to get there. It was the

outlook, the possibility of the port, that caught his fancy. As

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 99

if he were sitting snowbound in a cabin looking through a

window open to the west.

Before long, and entirely on his own initiative, Peter was to

build such a port, giving on the west.

Foreigners like Brandt, who had to hibernate for one reason

or another in Archangel, made themselves snug enough. They

had rooms with stoves, with the wooden walls smoothed on

the inside. Brandt had paintings and even a harpischord that

he played. "They divert themselves with gaming, dancing,

drinking and eating," Le Bruyn explains, "and even till it is

pretty late in the night." Into such a routine Peter fitted well.

This milieu brought all comers to the same level even more

than the fort on the Yauza. With brandy and constant talk he

could ease his restlessness. The heavy sleep of Arctic nights

kept him free from convulsions. He sang well, too, in the

choir of the Sleeping Virgin Church.

Moreover these merchants and skippers were real men of

affairs who argued hotly about pence but took orders for

thousands of rix-doliars. Since Peter could give such an order

with a casual word they treated him with honest respect. They

were practical. They weren't in the least like the archpriests

who argued about Holy Writ, or the ambassadors who hid

God knew what contemptuous thoughts behind flowery com-

pliments. ...

The months passed almost uncounted.

Kliuchevsky says that Peter would always be a guest in his

own home. He would also be a truant from his own govern-

ment for a long time.

During those months of isolation in Archangel, Peter's eyes

were turned perforce to the west, not to the east. The native

folk of the coast, Lapps and Samoyeds, lived with and by ani-

mals "more like bears than men," Le Bruyn summed up. On

the island the monks of Solovetsky had been hanged nineteen

years before, and their monastery had been turned into a

katorga. Nothing of interest to be seen there. It was more

entertaining to chat with the Finns and Swedish officers who

came over by sled from the Wardhuis and Viborg town to

buy the foreign tobacco.

100 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

The half-forgotten, monks of Solovetsky had avowed them-

selves to be Old Believers. Now the persecution of the Old

Believers throughout Rus reached its height. In their thou-

sands, fugitive Old Believers were spreading beyond the Urals,

seeking the farthest frontier settlements. Behind them govern-

ment posts moved only slowly, as log forts were pushed out

along the rude roads* In the Urals searchers had found iron ore

and silver deposits. These newcomers enlarged the villages

along the Great Galitzin's road.

Little of all this appeared in the maps and files of the Sibir-

sky Prikaz, and less could have reached Peter's ears at Arch-

angel. The bureau itself hardly knew what was going on. It

had sent its third great trade caravan through the dangerous

Mongol country into the safety of the Great Wall of China.

Since it had a monopoly of the fur exports to Peking, its lead-

ers asked the Chinese ministers whether any other, illicit trad-

ers had appeared from Muscovite territory in the past year.

The Chinese smiled. "By, our records," they said, "about fifty

other caravans came." On the records of the bureau its own

official traders took in goods to the value of thirty-one thou-

sand rubles, and returned with sixty-five thousand worth. Ad-

venturers, as mysterious as the independent traders who

crossed into China, discovered a new land. Rather it was a

giant promontory stretching into the Eastern Ocean Sea (the

Pacific). Cossacks who got through antagonistic native tribes

to enter the forbidding peninsula brought back a rich trove of

sables, red fox skins, and "sea otters/' They did not know how

great might be this new land that they called Kamchatka, but

they intended to return at all risks to reap a full harvest of the

valuable sables.

At Archangel Peter looked at the maps in a new book

North and East Tartary, written by a Dutch explorer, Nicho-

las Witzen. He did think vaguely of sending ships to survey

this Arctic coast eastward.

There was nothing, then, to draw his imagination to the

east. He refused to return to Moscow to receive an embassy

from the great Shah of Persia.

Spathary was still translating for the bureau in Moscow, but

Peter had not talked with him, or seen his reports in the files

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS IOI

of the bureau. At Archangel he had not read that book of

Nicholas Witzen's. Unlike Alexis he did not read books.

There is no possibility that at Archangel Peter could have

felt the pull of the continent itself upon his people. He hardly

knew the varied peoples speaking so many different languages

that made up the population of All of Rus.

In those very months another Dutchman, Isbrant Ides, who

had gone with the second trade caravan to China (profit on

the books of the bureau, twenty-one thousand rubles yielding

fifty thousand), was writing the book of his journey to the

east. This book he was dedicating to: "The most Serene and

all-Powerful Tsar and Great Prince, PETER ALEXEIVICH, by the

grace of God, Emperor of the whole, Great, Little and White

Russia; Monarch of Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, and Novgorod;

Great Duke of Smolensk, Tver, etc."

So far these are the older, familiar titles of the great princes

of Moscow who had become tsars of Rus. But Ides adds other

titles of lands and peoples beyond and below the Volga.

". . . Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Sibir;

Lord of ... lugoria, Perm, Bulgar, etc. Lord and mighty

Prince of ... the Ob, the Kond and of the whole North

[Frozen] Sea; Commander and Lord of the . . . Karthlian

princes, the Kabardian dominions, the Cherkassian princes [of

the Caucasus mountains] . . . and many other lands and ter-

ritories, extending East, West and North, the Inheritance of

his Ancestors."

This list the politic Isbrant Ides had obtained from the Bu-

reau of Ceremony at Moscow, It was a grave offense for a

foreigner to omit any part of the imperial title. Upon many of

these regions written down as inherited, Moscow had only the

trace of a claim. In fact a little further on in his dedication Ides

writes ". . . your Imperial Majesty's Dominions beyond Eu-

rope are for the most part unknown."

, Upon such "dominions beyond Europe" the authority of

Moscow had been superimposed but not welded fast upon the

peoples. Ides, aware of that, hesitates in writing it down but

manages cleverly enough to get it into words that would flat-

ter the tsar. "My principal aim . . . is to give the whole

102 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

World to know, that besides your Imperial Majesty's known

Powerful Monarchy [i.e., Muscovy] there are many other un-

known foreign countries . . . and adjacent peoples who in

effect owe their safety and security to your Tsarish Majesty's

good will and in course of time cannot avoid bowing down

and paying due homage to your Imperial Majesty's Sovereign

Authority."

In this phrasing Ides achieves something like a triumph of

diplomacy. Those nearby peoples who are "in effect" in-

debted to the young monarch's benevolence will inevitably

"in course of time" acknowledge their subjection. Of course

the personality of the real Peter means nothing to the Dutch

courtier. If the idiot Ivan had been tsar, Ides would have writ-

ten the same words except for the name. (In fact he started to

address his dedication to the two brothers, but Ivan died.) He

was really eulogizing the Muscovite state, of which Peter was

titular head.

No, Peter could not have been aware of the persistent mi-

gration of his own people of Muscovy under Moscow's au-

thorityaway from Moscow into the east.

When Peter made his next journey it was not to the east

but to the south. And it happened quite naturally.

The Ships Go Down to Azov

At the start of a balmy summer Bombardier Peter marched

with his jolly "men of play" down the pleasant river Don to

capture Azov from the Turks.

The idea had hardly originated with Peter himself. It was

an old idea, to go against the ghost of Batu Khan. Even the

clear-reasoning Krijanich had written: ". . . wars with Poles

and Lithuanians have been unprofitable. In our efforts against

the Tatars the Lord has given us success in Kazan, Astrakhan

and in Siberia ... it is advisable for this land to keep peace

with all the Northern, Eastern and Western Peoples."

In the south lay the Tatar and Turkish folk, holding, among

other things, the fortified town of Azov that closed the wide

mouth of the Don. For centuries the folk of Rus had been

pushing out, along their rivers, to gain access to the sea. (And

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 103

Peter had just come down from the lonely little port of Arch-

angel that gave access only to the frozen White Sea.)

Peter, unlike Alexis, had not read Krijanich, But he had

heard of the effort of the Great Galitzin to conquer the south-

era steppe. Galitzin had wanted to strike a blow at the Tatar-

Turk because that was the endeavor of the European powers

at the time, and because he had not wished the Poles, after the

spectacular victory of John Sobiesky at Vienna, to have the

sole credit for liberating the Balkan peoples from the Tatar-

Turk.

While the Polish monarchial republic was sunning itself in

one of its years of glory, the Muscovites were in darkest

shadow. Galitzin's failure was remembered; from the restless

Ukraine the Cossack hetman, Mazeppa, sent warning that

Muscovy must accomplish something; in Constantinople that

Galitzin had dreamed of enteringthe Turkish sultans did not

mention the name, let alone the many titles, of the Tsar of Ail

of Rus.

All this was talked about in Moscow. Moreover, popular

opinion was growing skeptical about Peter Alexeivich. tfyt

entirely because he had absented himself among tobacco-

smoking strangers; Alexis himself had visited the houses of

such strangers, incognito. But Alexis had shown the light of

his eyes to his people; many times he had listened to them and

tried to make conditions easier for them. When had his son

ever done that?

So long as Natalia and the patriarch Joachim had lived, the

old ways had been followed in the Kremlin. Now Peter, the

son of Alexis, hid himself away in the pleasure house of a

stranger whose women ran about the house naked, like girls in

a hot bath, like lieshi of the marshes!

And apparently his advisers impressed on Peter the need of

showing leadership, in the public eye. It suited Peter perfectly

to journey away from Moscow with his new regiments of

Pressburg to a real campaign, to please the old soldier, his

friend Patrick Ivanovich, and to command the sullen StreltsL

They would not make the mistake of Galitzin, of venturing

into the dry steppe; they would march with plenty of cannon

along the merry river Don. Peter's best minds would com-

104 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

mand- Lefort, Gordon, Golovin the diplomat; and Peter him-

self would go as bombardier . . . actually he went also as

Skipper Peter, embarking on makeshift sailing barges to jour-

ney almost all the way by water, down the Volga, to Tsaritsyn

and thence by portage to the Don.

In the frosts of November the motley field army was back

again in Moscow most of it. There was no victory parade,

and the Turks, it seemed, were still in Azov. The Transfigura-

tion and Semenov and the Streltsi regiments had not been able

to capture a single trench at Azov. Peter laid the blame for

the failure on his German master of artillery, who had deserted

to the Turks.

Stubbornly he made sure that the army would not fail a

second time. Hastily his advisers appealed to the European

courts for experts in capturing fortresses. Vienna responded

with an artillery specialist, and one in mines. Konigsberg sent

a similar staff, Holland furnished artillerists, Venice an ad-

miral, with a model of a sailing galley. From the Dnieper the

Zaporogian Cossacks were summoned with their long saicks.

For Peter had never seen an actual warship.

Down on the Veronezh River, which flows into the Don,

soldiers, peasants, and Dutch carpenters were crowded into

the marshes that winter to build shipways. Out of green wood

shaped by unskilled hands lacking serviceable tools, some odd-

looking vessels were put together. The toy squadron on the

"little sea" of Pereiaslavl had proved useless.

Peter worked without rest, drawing on the experience he

had gained at Archangel, despondent and exultant by turns.

Out of the failure at Azov he had gained one clear conviction,

that the town would have to be cut off from the sea by the

ships he was building.

"Like Adam," he wrote to the Sloboda, "I eat my bread in

the sweat of my brow." Lefort sent him good beer and French

wine.

In the spring, with high water and warm weather, Peter's

spirits rose. Lefort, he announced, would be admiral of the

new fleet; the largest galley should be christened the Princip-

and Skipper Peter Alexeivich would navigate it. With

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 105

two brigs of shallow Dutch design, four large galleys with

raking yards of Venetian type, and four small craft to serve as

fire ships, he set sail again.

The second siege of Azov still revealed immaturity in Skip-

per Peter, still showed the imprint of Pressburg upon those

who served under him.

Since they numbered more than thirty thousand they had

no difficulty in surrounding the low hillock of Azov, The flo-

tilla blockaded the town, keeping off Turkish relief from the

Black Sea. Yet there matters rested. The Streltsi officers ad-

vised building a great ramp of earth against the wall of the

town, pushing it nearer by adding more earth until the wall

could be rushed. Gordon preferred to batter down a part of

the wall with artillery fire, but the cannon smoked and thun-

dered without visible result, until an unexpected counterattack

by the Turks in the town spiked the best of the guns. . . ,

Then the belated German artillery experts arrived, smiling at

the half -finished earth ramp and the spiked batteries. . . .

The Zaporogian Cossacks in their saicks stormed the river-

bank.

Before then the tsar-commander had secluded himself in

Gordon's tent, in the depth of despondency. At the Cossacks'

success, his spirits rebounded.

In boyish glee Peter wrote to his sister Natalia, who scolded

him for risking himself among bullets: "Little sister, I am

obeying you. I do not go to meet the shells and bullets; it is

they who come to meet me."

Outnumbered and cut off from relief, the Turkish garrison

surrendered, with the honors of war.

To Peter's mind the victory was complete. His regiments

had not only won a battle, they had prevailed over the for-

midable Turks on the historic Black Sea, and freed the great

river Don. 4 Eagerly, aided by his new engineering staff, he

blocked out the site of a better port, which was christened

Taganrog. Happily he wrote to his old companion, the King

of Pressburg, "Mein Keneg'Your Majesty will hear how God

has favored your army. The people of Azov have surren-

dered."

IO6 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Having sent the news to the mock king, the real king made

the rounds of his conquest in a whirlwind of activity. At the

great bend of the Don where the Cossacks had long been ac-

customed to drag their saicks through the marsh and up over

the rise to the Volga, Peter planned to excavate a canal. To

do this properly, he would send for more experts from Venice

and Holland.

With such physical activity he was well content. His im-

agination enlarged upon the canal. With the Don and Volga

linked together, ships could pass from the Black Sea to the

Caspian, from these landlocked seas up to Voronezh, and from

that center of the new shipbuilding up to Moscow itself. More

cargo craft would be needed, new designs. ...

Azov, fortified, would be the port of the new colony. Two

or even three thousand peasant families would be moved down

from the north, while the useful Cossacks could have their

suburbs in the islands. To add strength, four hundred of the

nomad Kalmuks those wanderers from the east could be

quartered outside the walls, while two regiments of Muscovite

Streltsi served as permanent garrison. . . .

This time the return to Moscow was celebrated. In the ca-

thedral the great bell tolled. In the Red Place a triumphal arch

rose hurriedly. On one column of the arch a giant Hercules

trampled three Turks; on the other column Mars stood upon

three prostrate Tatars. At the head of the procession that

passed under the arch Admiral Lefort rode in a gilded sled.

Behind him, carrying only the pike that was his proper

weapon, walked Bombardier Peter, now promoted to be cap-

tain.

The crowd liked it. The new patriarch blessed the returning

soldiers for vanquishing the infidels. Old folks nodded, mur-

muring, "Lybukoit pleases us." So it had been, the bylini

singers said, when the great Tsar Ivan rode back from the

conquest of Kazan.

The higher clergy and the boyar families were not so

pleased when they learned in their council that the expense of

new frigates would be levied on them; the richer merchants

would pay for bomb ketches and fire ships. In all a fleet of

sixty-four sail was to be built for the southern seas one ship

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 1 07

to every eight thousand souls around Moscow. And fifty sons

of boyars would be sent to learn navigation and shipbuilding

in Venice and Holland.

Peter Alexeivich, too, was pleased with himself, ingenu-

ously. He visited Eudoxia, the discarded woman who was still

his wife, and still Tsaritsa of Rus. In the Sloboda he went

straight to the vintner's daughter. Both women had borne him

children. Now the vintner's daughter nagged him about her

small cottage; it was a shabby affair, not even comfortable;

she needed a respectable house, no palace like the Swiss ad-

miral's, but a dwelling with a stove in every room, where she

could entertain guests and make Peter and the children com-

fortable. He built it for her.

The vintners daughter, Anna Mons, had belonged to the

irresponsible Peter for eight years. Hers was a more sensitive

mind than his. By now she understood that she would have

neither love nor recognition from the young master of Rus.

With a house of her own she could turn her attention to other

men, unknown to Peter.

For Peter was displaying a stubborn loyalty to his Sloboda

companions. Each one who had shared his life possessed a

claim, as it were, upon him. Although he rarely spent two

days with the patrician Eudoxia, he was gentle with her.

Down at the Don's mouth, however, the young master of

Rus had displayed a peculiarity. Driving about headlong in his

carriage, he had examined into things rather than people. Pass-

ing through the Cossack stanitzas with their whitewashed cot-

tages nestled in ravines, he had looked out at mills or cattle

herds. Somehow he had been afraid to go among the folk of

the cottages. By traveling among them so swiftly he withheld

his own anxiety from them, and prevented them from voicing

their anxieties in the incomprehensible Ukrainian speech.

Perhaps Peter put these Ukrainians out of his mind because

he thought of them as Mazeppa's people.

For Mazeppa the boy Peter had one of his swift infatua-

tions. The hetman of the Ukraine, more than twice Peter's

age, gray-haired, gifted with wit and speech, riding his splen-

did horse like a centaur, could control the wild masses of the

IO8 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Cossack Hosts. Like a wise old eagle he could gaze out over

the steppe and sense danger unseen by other eyes.

He knew the ways of the Poles, because he had served at

their court and learned the new science in their colleges. To

the Zaporogians he had come as a fugitive, to make himself

somehow their treasurer and adviser. Now he gave away

wealth with both hands, building churches and palaces where

he wished.

What matter if once he had been driven from the estate of

a Polish noble, stripped naked? The wife of the Pole had been

bewitching, it was said. Mazeppa's eyes had power to make a

woman follow him. What matter if he were greedy for wealth

and honors, unlike the ancient hetmans of the Hosts? Wealth

and honors flowed to him as if by magic. Peter bestowed a

decoration on him, shyly.

Probably Peter never knew the whole truth of how

Mazeppa became hetman by order of the Great Galitzin, after

he had damned his predecessor Samoilovich, offering him up

to Galitzin as a scapegoat, while making a royal gift of gold

to the Muscovite. If he heard something of that, Peter did not

care, because he was fascinated by Mazeppa. . . .

No, Peter was satisfied that the restless Ukraine was safe in

Mazeppa's hands.

When he heard of the capture of Azov, Isbrant Ides added

a new eulogy to his dedication. "Your Tsarish Majesty's Men-

of-War and imposing Galleys have struck such a terror into

the Mouth of the Don, which has been closed for some Years,

that now it opens of itself; by which means the Black Sea is

made accessible and gives communication Southward and

Westward with the Mediterranean."

The politic Dutchman added another thought, perhaps hop-

ing for a new commission for himself. "And the Caspian Sea,

which to the amazement of all Naturalists has no visible com-

munication with the Ocean, waits only for the honor of being

covered and adorned by your Majesty's Naval Force, in order

to give an In-let and Out-let to immense Treasures in the

course of a regulated Trade to the East"

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 109

The Caspian Sea was to wait many years for this honor and

Ides was not to get another caravan to the east.

Atla$ov*$ Sixty Cossacks

While the courtier Ides was writing his supplication and the

city of Moscow was celebrating the freeing of the Don and

the recapture of Azov, a step was taken outward at the far end

of the continent.

Vladimir Atlasov had the job of fur checker at the Anadir

blockhouse, in the mist of the polar sea, the easternmost out-

post of the empire. Like Khabarov, this fur checker had a

knack of doing business for himself. The desolation of his post

was only equaled by the scarcity of its fur intake. Atlasov had

been sifting the colorful tales brought in by wanderers from

the "new land" that stretched into the open sea south of him.

It was a case of the fabulous river Pogicha all over again.

This "new land" was guarded by warlike people who lived

on and by reindeer, who had firearms, who took rich "sea

otter" furs from the sea, who cherished a manuscript that no

one could read, washed up by the sea in some fashion known

only to God. . . .

Journeying to the nearest Siberian terminal, Yakutsk, Vladi-

mir Atlasov tried to persuade the voevode, who was a German,

to give him men and supplies for an expedition into this new

land of Kamchatka jutting into the sea. Failing to persuade the

voevode, Atlasov borrowed money himself in Yakutsk, bought

some supplies, and thus equipped, picked up the more restless

cossacks between Yakutsk and the coast. He got skty men to

follow him, and added as many friendly natives, Yukaghirs.

Being experienced in such matters, the small expedition ac-

quired reindeer to draw the sleds, and to provide milk and

meat for the men. By giving presents and using arguments,

Vladimir Atlasov felt his way through the Koriaks, the tribal

group guarding the mountainous entrance to the new land.

These Koriaks, like many of the ancient Siberian peoples, had

a way of going berserk and attacking the Russians, of killing

themselves and their wives and children rather than submit to

rhe foreigners.

110 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Splitting his small force into two parties, to advance along

the coasts below the mountain spine of the Kamchatka penin-

sula, Atlasov penetrated where no Europeans had set foot be-

fore. He and his men were soon fighting for their lives, against

the Yukaghirs, who turned on them, moved by a silent im-

pulse to resist, and against the Koriaks, who raided the Russian

reindeer herds.

By getting his scattered parties together and by overawing

the people of Kamchatka itself, the Kamchadals, Atlasov was

able to explore almost to the southern end of the new land.

This being unravished hunting ground, he gained a rich toll of

fox furs and "sea otters."

More than that, he got a mysterious manuscript guarded by

the superstitious Kamchadals, and also by happy accident a

shipwrecked stranger who could read it. Both the writing and

the man turned out to be Japanese. Not that Atlasov's party

identified him as Japanese. The natives had called him a Rus-

sian, and obviously he was not that, although just as obviously

superior in intelligence to the Kamchadals. Moreover he had

come in a boat. So Atlasov kept him as a curiosity.

Another curiosity was the persistent talk of the Kamchadals

about islands, a chain, of islands stretching toward the sun. On

clear days the explorers sighted the blur of land lying where

the natives pointed, to the south. These were to be identified

later as the Kurils, leading in turn to the larger islands of

Japan.

The Kamchadals chattered about other islands, also forming

a chain, stretching into the northern mists. But these the

Aleutians the explorers did not see.

They had no knowledge of the newly explored continent

lying beyond the Aleutians. Although that continent of the

Americas had been written large upon the maps of such clever

Dutchmen as Abraham Ortelius and Willem Blaeu, the maps

printed in Amsterdam had not penetrated to Siberia, much less

to desolate Yakutsk.

One find dwarfed all others in the minds of Atlasov's men.

The sables of Kamchatka had luxuriant, valuable fur. Quanti-

ties of these pelts were taken and packed. Atlasov decided that

he must hold his peninsula. Carefully he drew rough maps,

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS III

and set up a cross, carving on it his identification, "The free

adventurer Vladimir Atlasov and his comrades."

Since he was running out of men and more important out

of ammunition, Atlasov had to return to the mainland for sup-

port. Building an ostrog near the river and leaving there half

his survivors, he started back with fifteen cossacks and four

Yukaghirs, to retrace his journey of eighteen hundred miles,

crossing an arm of the sea in skin boats, crossing the barren

mountain ranges with the aid of reindeer.

At Yakutsk, trusting neither the voevode nor the Sibirsky

Prikaz, Atlasov decided to keep on journeying, to report his

exploration of the new land to the tsar in Moscow. To give

Importance to his labors he took along as gifts more than six

thousand sables and ten "sea otters." By then, in June 1700, he

heard that the new tsar had a liking for curiosities. So he took

along as well the shipwrecked man who seemed to have the

name of Denbe.

Behind the thirty thousand souls of the tsar's army on the

river Don and the sixty comrades of the adventurer Atlasov

there had been the same compelling force, straining to free the

course of a river by pushing to the end of land itself, even to

the islands beyond the land. The army and the reindeer-keep-

ing buccaneers had been part of the migration that was thrust-

ing through barriers toward the outer seas of Eurasia.

In Moscow Peter lost the ebullition of the campaign in the

open steppe. Old tensions gripped him. Observers say that

when he put on the heavy regalia of the tsars to receive am-

bassadors he became flushed and wet with sweat; after a while

he forgot his prescribed speeches and said anything that came

into his head.

Informers from the streets told his companions of a persist-

ent antagonism among groups of the Streltsi, who had relished

neither their hard labor at shipbuilding in the swamps nor the

long marches into the steppe, and among Old Believers, who

asked what was in the heart of the tsar, to avoid his wife and

drink wine with heretics. And among boy ars who asked why

112 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

foreigners were set over them, and why they had to find the

money for sixty ~f our new ships.

A conspiracy there was, in that year 1697, and it found

Peter unprepared, yet its details remain very obscure. The

commonest story is that a certain Truikler, an old henchman

of Sophia's, had met with two boyars, Old Believers both, to

try to capture Peter with the aid of some Streltsi, Word of

their meeting was brought hurriedly to the tsar, as he dined

at Lefort's. Thereupon, so the tale runs, Peter quickly ex-

cused himself and walked alone to the house of Truikler and

his associates, sat down with them, filling them with conster-

nation until a guard detachment arrived to arrest them.

Whereupon Peter went back to his interrupted dinner.

This version of the capture of the conspirators did not men-

tion the circumstance that Peter had been dead drunk that

evening.

Whatever actually happened, Truikler and two boyars

were hung up and hacked to pieces in the Red Place. There

was no public mention of Sophia. But orders were given to

dig out the body of Ivan Miloslavsky, her nearest of kin, from

its grave to have it dragged by swine to the place of execu-

tion and left beneath the bleeding bodies of the men newly

condemned.

Peter had insisted on that. Before their deaths Truikler and

his companions had been tortured. They had confessed fully,

first that they had shared in the earlier Shakovity conspiracy,

second that they had intended to kill the tsar and blame the

foreigners publicly for the crime. Some of Peter's advisers had

shaken their heads over such confessions, but Peter had re-

membered the thrusting hands of the Streltsi and the menac-

ing faces of the Old Believers. After that he agreed to go on

the tour of Europe.

This journey Frangois Lefort had been urging since Azov.

By it he hoped to accomplish several things, to provide his

master with an escape from the tension in Moscow, to allow

Peter to see himself the manners and inventions of the west,

so often discussed in the Sloboda, and probably to enhance

the importance of Frangois Lefort. Before then, of course, no

THE YOUNG WESTERNERS 1 1 3

tsar of Moscow had ventured beyond his frontier. But Peter

was the man to break such precedents.

Surely the time favored the move. In the square at Warsaw

crowds had shouted "Vhat!" at the tidings from Azov. The

Muscovites and Galitzin had taken the first hesitating step to-

ward the concert of European courts. Lefort understood as

few others did how Peter reacted quickly and sensitively to

what was near him, while remaining dull to events elsewhere.

The deaths of Natalia, Joachim, and the Imbecile Ivan had

left a vacuum. They had been at least the figureheads of the

rule of the old tsars. With Eudoxia put aside, Peter no longer

-had a visible tie with Alexis' dynasty. Already the populace

argued that he was no true son of Alexis but a bastard fathered

by some German foreigner, perhaps by Lefort himself. This,

Lefort believed, could be traced to Sophia. Instinctively he

felt that the uncertain Peter could not continue as he was that

he must either step back Into old usage, or step out into new.

Peter himself hung back at the prospect of venturing Into

the physical life of the west. Yet he trusted the Swiss adven-

turer and after the Truikler disturbance he agreed to go. The

journey, however, must take him to northern ports like Arch-

angel, to the ports where ships were built, to the home of

Franz Timmermann. Moreover he would not cross the fron-

tier as tsar; Lefort as admiral and Golovin as chancellor must

be the official figures of the party some kind of ambassadors

at large while Captain Peter, hidden under another name,

would go as one of their attendants.

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE

INVASION

The Great Embassy

IN THE early spring of 1697 the Baltic coast had recovered

from the ravages of the Thirty Years' War of fifty years

before. Its neat harbors and renovated castles reflected the

rococo tranquillity of its gentry, the herzogs, electors, state-

holders, burgomasters, duchesses, and all their conveniently

married kindred. Universities at Upsala and Liibeck reflected,

not too brilliantly, the pseudo-scientific spirit of a generation

that had barely digested, with its ample dinners, the irritable

expositions of a Tycho Brahe, the courtly letters of a Gott-

fried .Leibnitznot yet Reichsfreiherr Leibnitz who had

managed to reconcile the concepts of Plato with the new con-

cept of particles of force that moved the universe.

These noble families of the Baltic were accustomed to

princes who might visit them incognito. Rarely did such a

prince travel as a person actually unknown; usually he came

after due notice that his visit was to be off the record, at-

tended by an aid and perhaps a valet. Under such transparent

disguise, this monsieur could discuss politics without hin-

drance, or perhaps visit a lady of his acquaintance.

That same spring the Great Embassy from Moscow ap-

peared at the gate of Riga, its first objective upon the Baltic,

with only a cryptic warning that its visit would be of great

importance. In the gate appeared first Cossack outriders and

troops of guardsmen on matched horses, followed by a clarion

blast from trumpets and drums, and halberdiers in close array

with other imperial guardsmen bearing the silvered axes of an-

cient Rus. The trio of ambassadors shone with embroidered

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 115

cloth of gold edged with the costliest furs. Behind them rode

dark Kalmuk horsemen, trailed by a detachment of dwarfs, b^y

body servants, cupbearers, and grooms more than two hun-

dred souls in all.

The impact of this visitation upon orderly Riga was very

great. Quarters provided for the Great Embassy proved insuf-

ficient, the food unacceptable. The greeting was worst of all,

because the Swedish military governor, a certain Graf Dahl-

berg, decided to avoid the Great Embassy by playing sick.

The situation worsened when a roughly dressed seaman,

Peter Mikhailov by name, went his rounds of the neat city,

staring at the steeples of the Komrn and the St. Peter, sampling

the beer in the Weingartens, and insisting upon going over

the bastions and fortifications of the castle itself. Impassive

Swedish officers turned him away, whereupon hurried mes-

sages came from the ambassadors hinting that the giant sea-

man might be perhaps an Exalted Personage.

"The tsar?" retorted Dahlberg. "You informed me that the

tsar was at Voronezh with his ships."

Other more agitated messages from Lefort and Golovin

had no greater effect on the Graf. The Swedes chose to be-

lieve that the Muscovite circus was a bit of trickery. In con-

sequence Skipper Peter Mikhailov did not get inside the fort.

Before that, no door had been barred to Peter. "He did not

forget the Swedes at Riga.

By the time the Great Embassy had paraded on to Konigs-

berg in the sandy woods of Prussia, his identity was pretty

well known. Letters got ahead of him, describing the tsar

"Tall, with his head shaking, his right arm never still and a

wart on his cheek." The Prussian colonel at Konigsberg ac-

cepted Peter with a straight face, and taught him a deal about

the way to fire cannon. When the giant seaman chose to

spend the night in a wine garden or to remain out of sight in

his quarters while beer flowed and voices roared, the Prus-

sians (Brandenburgers) made no bones about it. Once when a

servant dropped a plate at a banquet, Peter sprang up, his face

convulsed.

Often he entertained his Prussian hosts by displaying his

skill at beating a drum.

Il6 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

At the end of his stay the colonel presented him with a cer-

tificate that: "Peter Mikhailov may now be accepted as a

skilled master of fire weapons."

Yet the celebrated Leibnitz failed to get past Peter's attend-

ants to talk with him. Peter Mikhailov, it seemed, would talk

with strangers only about shipbuilding and gunnery and such

matters. In fact Peter turned his back when anyone spoke the

forbidden word "Sire."

Nothing could have made him more conspicuous than his

incognito. A Muscovite tsar with the mind of a boy and the

manners of a bear at table, subject besides to extraordinary

convulsions, to claustrophobia when put into a small chamber

and to rage when he was quartered in a place with high ceil-

ingsthis phenomenon stirred the curiosity of the nobility

throughout the German states. The Electresses of Branden-

burg and Hanover were "dying of curiosity to see him."

At the castle of Koppenbriigge Peter agreed to meet and

sup with these ladies. Probably he was curious, as well, to

examine European ladies other than the easygoing women of

the Sloboda. But when he found the building crowded with

people he retreated hastily into the village. When he was per-

suaded to enter the reception room he covered his face with

his hands, muttering in German, "I can't speak! I can't

speak!"

This is his old dread of strange people. When he is joined

by some of his companions, he manages better. In the court-

yard he drinks some wine quietly, and goes in to the table. He

does not know what to do with his napkin and forks. To the

time-honored question of all bothered hostesses what does he

like best to do? he answers bluntly, "I have no liking for

games, for hunting, or music. I like shipbuilding and fire-

works." By way of proof he shows his calloused hands.

He does not come off badly, speaking a strange language,

under the sharp eyes of the electresses. One describes him as

having a nice brown skin and dark luminous eyes, looking

tired and a bit debauched, wildly timid and twitching uncon-

trollably. "If he were educated, his would be a fine mind, for

he has a quick understanding, and natural wit."

Once at his ease, Peter really entertains the ladies, keeping

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 117

them four hours at table, drinking toasts. Afterward, despite

his dislike of European music, he listens quietly to an Italian

singer, and calls in one of his own jesters to amuse the ladies.

Seeing quickly that they are not amused, he catches up a

broom, and beats the jester from the room.

He wishes to see the German ladies dance. The officers of

his suite who dance with them are mystified by the corsets

and whalebone stays that they feel upon the backs of their

partners. "The bones of these Germans are devilish hard/'

they tell Peter.

At such times his reactions are Instinctive. Entering the lab-

oratory of Ruisch, the anatomist, he looks first at the body of

a young girl, laid out so carefully she seems to be smiling In

her sleep. He walks over and kisses her.

Later, he is fascinated by the anatomical theater of Boer-

haave, sitting there while bodies are dissected for students.

Some of his Muscovites find this hard to watch, and when

Peter, notices their qualms he forces them to go up to the

human bodies and operate on them with their teeth.

A critical Englishman, Bishop Burnet, writes of him: "He

is a man of hot temper, soon inflamed and very brutal In his

passion . . . he is subject to convulsive motions all over his

body ... he has a larger measure of knowledge than might

be expected from his education.

"A want of judgment with an Instability of temper appear

in him too often and too evidently . . . ship carpentry was his

chief study and exercise while he stayed here; he wrought

much with his own hands, and made all about him work at

the models of ships. He told me he designed a great fleet at

Azuph [Azov] and with it to attack the Turkish Empire.

. . . He seemed apprehensive still of his sister's intrigues.

. . . He is resolute but understands little of war and seemed

not at all inquisitive that way."

The good bishop, like the Electress of Brandenburg, per-

ceives that Peter has a well-stored mind r even if badly edu-

cated. And he senses what few others realize in Peter. He is

resolute, but understands little of war.

Peter himself signs a letter "From one who wishes to learn,

and to share."

Il8 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

During the fourteen months 7 tour of the Great Embassy,

Peter's obsession was shipbuilding. When he left the Embassy

and sailed down the Rhine to the canals of Holland he found

himself in a seaman's paradise. For a week under the alias of

Carpenter Peter he tried staying at Saardam, the village that

had been the home of his old friends in Pereiaslavl and Voro-

nezh. Although he bought a small boat and lodged himself

inconspicuously in a small cottage, he found the curiosity of

the village too much for him and left to resume his transparent

incognito with the Embassy at Amsterdam.

When he left Saardam he tossed fifty ducats to a servant

girl who had amused him. Often he tried to pay his way with

a few pennies, as if each one counted; then at times he left

enormdus sums behind him.

At Amsterdam he stayed interminably, feeling at ease with

the kindly Dutch. Witzen, the explorer who had written

North and East Tartarywho knew more about Siberia than

the tsar gave him access to the East Indiamen yards, and

there Peter questioned experts, notebook in hand, bought

treatises on navigation and naval law, and labored with the

shipwrights. He mastered the use of simple instruments like

compass and plane. But some of the jottings in his notebook

would be hard to follow. One described laying down the keel

of a ship: "After calculating roughly the area, start by making

a right angle at both ends." He seemed to write as he spoke,

bluntly, hurriedly the words making more sense to him than

to others.

There at Amsterdam Peter and his Russians may have built

a full-rigged ship with their own labor. But it is certain that

William III, aware of his ruling passion by then, ordered a

twenty-four gun yacht to be made for the tsar and fully

equipped. Upon this vessel, later on, Peter packed all his pur-

chases for shipment to Archangel.

There Peter investigated the sights and the newer sciences

with all his enthusiasm and unlimited energy, measuring

bridges, attending lectures on mechanics, as well as anatomy,

taking drawing lessons, watching portrait painters at work. At

a sawmill he nearly crippled himself by trying to stop the

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 119

works,, and he fared no better when he investigated the driv-

ing wheel of a silk factory.

a He is a good carpenter," the workmen said of him when

he left, "and he knows something about building a ship."

By instinct he seemed to feel that he needed to learn first

how things were made, and how they worked. Their use he

could worry out later. Perhaps remembering Azov like most

self-taught men, Peter had an almost indelible memoryhe in-

vestigated all the fortresses while filling his notebook with the

advice of experts on siege warfare.

He left little trace of his visit in the dry records of the

Dutch States-General. The principal entry concerning Peter

listed only the heavy expense, one hundred thousand florins,

of entertaining the Great Embassy for so long. After a few

years the Dutch were to express a much harsher opinion of

Peter than they had done during his visit. And that opinion

was to be shared by William III, the Hollander-born, who

was then King of England.

England was prepared for the tsar when he crossed the

Channel for a three months' stay in London. It was really a

personal visit, almost incognito. The Great Embassy remained

on the Continent and the tsar-tourist contented himself with

a small suite of fifteen men. According to the English, he had

discovered that, while the Dutch shipwrights were handy

enough, only the English could teach him the art of shipbuild-

ing from plans.

Certainly they ferried him across the Channel in style, on a

royal yacht escorted by men-of-war.

And certainly Peter was taken to see all the curiosities of

the city, the Tower, the Mint, and the Observatory. With

William he was at ease, talking freely in Dutch. The two

monarchs, prematurely sagacious, and forced to undertake

great responsibilities, had certain traits in common. Peter was

becoming aware of the stubborn fact faced by William that

power upon the sea could alter a nation's destiny. It seems

that Peter was attracted by the young Princess Anne, whom

he described as a religious child. His fancy was caught more

by a miniature weather vane than by the royal collection of

120 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

paintings. His curiosity was stirred by a microscope and by a

giantess under whose outstretched arm even he could walk.

To the Londoners this giant from the steppes of Asia, as

they conceived Peter to be, appeared even more of a curios-

ity. Apparently the hostesses of city society did not accept

him as readily as the electresses of the Baltic. Anecdotes grew

up around his passing. The Muscovites, so it was said, lived in

unbreathable air, with all the windows of their quarters shut

tight. They raved like animals when drunk.

(Peter wrote to his King of Pressburg that they a rnade

merry" only at times; he mourned for the three-day feasts of

the Sloboda.)

Having heard by then of the servant girl of Saardam, his

hosts supplied him with an actress for companion. Gossip re-

lated with zest how the Muscovite tsar paid her off with a

mean sum and, when reproached for his stinginess, retorted

that he had hired people enough to know what they were

worth. And the actress, he added, with full anatomical de-

tails, was worth no more than she had been paid. Whereupon

he wagered the same amount on the prowess of one of his Cos-

sack servants matched against an English prizefighter, and

won the money back.

The house of John Evelyn, lent to Peter while he visited

the shipping at Deptford, became another scandal. After

Peter's departure it looked as if "Tartars had camped there"

with doors torn out, hangings torn down, fine paintings

riddled by bullets, and lawns trampled as if by passing regi-

ments. The damage was estimated at three hundred and fifty

pounds.

Tradition relates that Peter left a huge uncut diamond

wrapped in a piece of soiled paper to pay for the damages.

Yet Peter enjoyed here one of the most magnificent spec-

tacles of his life. Off Spithead a sham sea battle was held in

his honor. He watched real lbe-of-battle ships maneuvering

and firing broadsides. This spectacle he never forgot.

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 121

The Hired

Nor did his European hosts ever forget their extraordinary

guest. Peter's Wander jahre left a lasting impress of conf usior

on the courts that were obliged to welcome him. At times

they could not find him, and at times he appeared where he

was least expected, because his chronic shyness drove hirr

away from assembled groups.

Once at Amsterdam he refused to leave the audience cham-

ber until the throng of people in the anteroom had turned

their faces to the wall. He eluded reception committees, tc

turn up in the alleys of a town; he refused quarters in a palatial

building, to pass on through the town and settle himself In a

small cottage outside. Again, he deserted a stately bedroom,

to climb the stairs and throw himself down in a cubby under

the roof. "Our tsar," his companions explained, "cannot

stomach a lofty dwelling." Some days he preferred to sleep

or to "make merry." Some nights he chose to Inspect the

museums and curios of a city.

On the road, he would stop all progress to examine ferries,

windmills, or canals operated by locks. But always and every-

where he saturated himself with the sights of the west. His

interest lay markedly In mechanical operations, and he

watched, fascinated, the difficult operation of pressing pulp

Into paper, weaving silk by machine, or metal engraving. Not

that he mastered such processes.

Except for the masters of workrooms and laboratories, he

rather shunned men of learning. Leibnitz tried in vain to talk

to him, and had to write him from a distance. Peter was no

Frederick of Prussia in search of a Voltaire; 1 he remained as

he had been, the pupil of Zotov, and the boon companion of

that other mighty reveler, Frangois Lefort. Galleries of art

and men of intellect tired him. Nicholas Witzen, who had

hoped for much from his visit, was invoked only to help

Peter in the shipyards. Masters of academic learning in the

universities of Leyden, Upsala, Oxford, and Cambridge seem

to have remained strangers to the visitor from the east.

And in Peter's case a little knowledge often proved to be a

122 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

dangerous thing. He did take away dental forceps after

watching a dentist extract teeth, and with the forceps he prac-

ticed dentistry himself after returning to Moscow. There he

amused himself pulling teeth, whether good or bad teeth

that he kept carefully in a bag. The surgical instruments he

carried back did more damage. At least once he tried oper-

ating himself in Moscow, upon a woman with the dropsy,

who resisted the operation and died from its effects.

Much information picked up in his first year's European

tour did stick in Peter's mind. Unexpectedly later on he re-

vealed an interest in Quakers, in court prostitutes, in hospitals,

in mathematics, and in alcohol as a preservative for parts of

the human body. His engrossing interest lay in everything

connected with ships, gunpowder, and forts as at Pressburg

and Pereiaslavl.

What Peter actually did in this remarkable journey was to

get the sense of the west. He tried to understand its thought

and to master its skills sufficiently to demonstrate what he

had learned to the folk of Muscovy. Probably at the start of

the journey he had not been prepared to do as Lefort advised,

to take his next step toward the west. At the end of the jour-

ney he seemed determined to do so.

Apart from Peter's own culture gathering, the Great Em-

bassy had a very tangible purpose. In its secret instructions it

was required to ransack every country visited for "naval offi-

cers who have won rank through ability alone."

While Peter satiated himself with public sight-seeing, the

others of the embassy bargained for the services of a whole

naval personnel. They hired and shipped to Archangel or

back through Riga boatswains, admirals, commanders, pilots,

surgeons, cooks, and ordinary seamen more than four hun-

dred in all.

A Scottish major general, George Ogilvy by name, was re-

cruited from Vienna. A noted Italian physician joined the re-

cruits. In England Peter himself may have hired the "mining

masters" destined for the new mines in the Urals, and engi-

neers to construct his Don Volga canal.

He certainly hired a Portuguese cabin boy, Devier, whose

antics pleased him.

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 123

This draft of minds totaled more than nine hundred before

the journey ended. Many of them voyaged east on the new

galiot-yacht, the gift of the Dutch. Such skilled workmen of

course required tools. Peter supervised the purchase of nauti-

cal instruments, cabinetmakers' tools, sailcloth, and every

variety of firearms. These were packed in crates marked PM

Peter Mikhailov* In one of the crates appeared a stuffed croco-

dile.

Worthy Bishop Burnet wrote, "He was indeed resolved to

draw strangers to come and live among them [his people]/*

At the end of his resume of the character of this strange

tsar the bishop indulged in a bit of thoughtful soul searching.

How was it possible to comprehend the omniscience of God,

he wondered, if such a barbarian held power over such a great

portion of mankind?

It never entered his mind that the tense, towering youth

who battered the faces of his Muscovites when enraged did

not possess such power.

Failure of the Mission

The concealed purpose of this unusual mission had been

to gain support in western Europe for the war begun by Mos-

cow against the Turks. Hence the imposing dressing up, the

silvered axes, the detachment of guards in German uniforms,

the Kalmuk horsemen, the fanfare of trumpets and drums.

The Embassy was intended to appear as one holding "the

gorgeous east in fee." Actually, it had with it the three minds

that held control over the Kremlin and hence over Moscow

Golovin's, Lefort's, and Peter's.

The adventure of the Turkish war had not been of Peter's

devising. Circumstances had led him to Azov, and he was only

following his advisers into western Europe to solicit aid be-

cause they felt the necessity of it.

In so doing he was taking a great risk. Behind him he had

left only the erratic Boris Galitzin and the military com-

manders. This group had taken some precautions. Sophia had

been closely guarded in her convent by dependable troops.

The discontented Streltsi regiments had been transferred to

124 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

frontier posts, leaving Moscow under control of the regiments

officered by foreigners and obedient to the elderly Gordon.

On his own account, Peter had staged a demonstration of the

grim deaths of conspirators in the Red Place on the eve of his

departure.

Still, the three heads of the mission seemed to feel that they

were journeying on borrowed time. Even at the start, at the

Riga fortress and the pleasant castle of Koppenbriigge, the

least suspect of the three, Peter himself, had been in close

touch by letter with happenings in neighboring Poland, then

going through the throes of uncertainty after the death of the

revered Sobiesky.

All through the journey couriers, almost unnoticed in the

scurrying about of the mission's outriders and lackeys,

brought secret information on the situation in Moscow. This

information came from a man as dependable as Gordon, from

the King of Pressburg himself. Of his identity we will know

more later. But he was also head of the little-mentioned Bu-

reau of Secret Affairs, responsible for the torture of suspects

and criminals.

Whether his messages were in code or hidden in accounts

of banquets of the "All-Drunken Council" is not clear. He did

send information, brief and to the point as Peter's own mis-

sives.

Even while at Deptford, "laboring without sleep at the

craft of shipbuilding," Peter wrote to Moscow ordering

Eudoxia to immolate herself in a convent.

Eudoxia, it seemed, had been murmuring against his long

desertion. In Eudoxia was personified the passive force over

which Peter had no control as yet, the will of the Russian

people. The common people had no certainty about this tsar

who never appeared at the head of the Red Stair, who raced

about with foreigners like a madman.

"Who of us before now," the peasants and shopkeepers of

Moscow asked each other, "has seen a tsar who forsook Holy

Mother Moscow?"

"What Tsar of Rus before this one ever ventured among

Germans or Turks?"

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 125

"Who of us dared to set foot on ships In the darkness of the

outer seas?"

"Not only to outer seas but to the edge of the earth hath

he gone. Aye, so, he hath clad himself In the semblance of a

German merchant."

There was a deal of argument about that clothing, some of

the folk holding that the son of Alexis had disguised himself

as a boatman, others that he had taken on the semblance of a

soldier. By then a few bits of news had trickled back from the

Baltic. Since no means of communicating the facts of the

Great Embassy to the people In the streets existed, the news,

passing from man to man, became garbled Into fantastic ti-

dings.

Certain it was that the tsar had tried to escape. Obviously

he had been caught. Being caught, he had been Imprisoned.

He had escaped from prison in the guise of a soldier no, the

real tsar had been put to death and a foreign soldier had ap-

peared out of the prison cell In his stead no, it was the queen

of the Swedes who had bewitched him, changing his shape-

no, the real soldier had died Instead of the real tsar, who had

tried to escape but had been caught by the Swedes and put

Into a barrel lined with nails and cast into the sea ... the

speakers were very sure about the nails. . . .

Much of this talk was overheard by informers. Some of it

at least was reported, In the missives of the King of Pressburg,

to Peter .himself. It could not have added to his peace of mind.

But by then, in England, a greater anxiety gnawed at the

shipwright of Deptford. While the plan of the Azov cam-

paign had been the work of older heads, the building of the

navy of the southern rivers had been Peter's concept, under-

taken too hastily. True, the Duma had passed the measure,

passively. Yet it was one thing to order seagoing fleets built

on rivers, as Peter had reason to know, and quite another

thing to get them built.

Hence his almost frantic search for a foreign personnel

able to finish and navigate his cherished vessels. For Peter had

his heart in this. By then the cost of the Great Embassy had

risen to some two and a half million rubles, which had to be

126 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

paid eventually in gold or silver or trade. On the matter of

payment, however, Petera true Slavwasted no thought.

But he had no sea upon which to sail his fleet. At Pereia-

slavl he had learned how hastily constructed lake vessels could

not serve on the great rivers. Even Azov gave ships access

only to the Sea of Azov, an area of marshes and salted shal-

lows.

Beyond, the Black Sea was in the hands of the Turks and

their corsairs. So was the Krim Peninsula with its port of

Sevastopol. So was the mouth of the great river Dnieper. A

campaign that would open up all the Black Sea coast to the

new fleets would be beyond the means of Moscow.

The purpose of the Great Embassy was to gain allies for

such a blow against the infidel Turks in the east. Had not Ivan

the Terrible argued for such a crusade; had not the western

nations formed a Holy League to repel the Turks? The am-

bassadors of Moscow had hurried west to resuscitate the war

against the Padishah, the master of Constantinople.

When Peter had viewed the Spithead spectacle and had re-

joined his Embassy at Antwerp, he discovered that it had

failed to do anything of the kind.

Europe, it seemed, had ceased laying plans against the

Turks years before. The Dalmatian coast and the upper Bal-

kans had been liberated, Vienna made secure. The European

concert had its eyes now upon the succession in Spain the

vital question as to which powers would control Spain. Be-

sides, the Muscovite envoys had not had too good a hearing.

They had been treated rather as unwelcome intruders.

By then, if not before then, Peter himself must have re-

flected upon the peculiarity of seagoing vessels that such ves-

sels had to go to sea where they were launched. They could

not be moved, as the ancient river craft of Rus had been

moved, from river to river inland, to bring them from the

southern to the northern seas. That being the case, the new

ships were destined to rot unless somehow the war against the

Turk could be activated.

Caught in this dilemma, Peter turned excitedly as usual to

physical action. Avoiding the area of French jurisdiction

which did not recognize his title as emperor as yet he hur-

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 127

ried with the caravan of the Great Embassy through the

middle German states, to pause only briefly for talks in Leip-

zig, the center of Saxony, and for picture gazing at Dresden.

Then he swung south, to risk a visit to the great court of Vi-

enna.

He w r anted very much to stop at Venice, where serviceable

war galleys were built at the Arsenal a type suited to both

rivers and sea and where the oldest and almost the only foes

of the Turkish Empire could be found. At the Signoria of

Venice he fancied that the strange Muscovite envoys would

be heard with understanding. For the merchants of Venice

would be just as desirous to clear the Adriatic of Turkish cor-

sairs as the Muscovites would be to clear the Black Sea. . . *

But first a visit had to be paid to Vienna, the neighbor both of

Venice and of Constantinople.

Even before it entered the outer gate of Vienna, the Great

Embassy had its first intimidation. Its' circuslike train of ve-

hicles filled with servants, dwarfs, cooks, grooms, trumpeters,

and other appendages was not greeted or allowed to make a

formal entry into the metropolis of the Hapsburgs. Exasper-

ated, Peter climbed into a cart and had himself driven into

the gates.

The Hof burg with its nest of palaces repelled him as coldly

as the outer city itself. Men sat in conference within the Hof-

burg who had defended those walls against the Turkish army.

They were otherwise occupied at the moment. With Lefort,

Peter wrote letters to them, and wandered around the streets

of the great city, sight-seeing.

The inhabitants of the lofty Hofburg, it seemed, knew of

no individual named Peter Mikhailov. One came at last to talk

with Peter, and to discover discreetly what he desired.

"To speak with the emperor!" Peter burst out, Lefort in-

terpreting.

"About what do you wish to speak?"

"About " Peter caught himself. "About an important

matter."

Evasion got him nowhere. The personage from the palace

pointed out as if to a child that Peter's court had its ambassa-

Il8 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

dors at Vienna, to discuss any important matters of state. If

so, then the ambassador should apply in due form to the Min-

istry of Foreign Affairs, stating the nature of the important

matter

For once the tsar-tourist assented meekly. Confused, he ex-

plained that he really had no important affair on his mind, he

merely wished to greet the emperor privately.

In due course, as a casual visitor, he was admitted. Before

the monarch of such distinguished lineage, Peter Mikhailov

shows his anxiety, fumbling with his hat, not knowing what

to say, although the adroit Lef ort interprets for him. Once re-

leased from the interview, he sights a small boat on a minia-

ture lake and hurries into it, to row around alone. ...

A banquet follows, but his hosts still respect his incognito

impassively. He is merely a distinguished visitor, without a

mission to Vienna. Peter has a hard time with the forks and

knives.

On his best behavior, he returns the courtesy by a banquet

at his embassy, where fireworks are set off, and young women

appear afterward in the garden who had not been seen at the

table. Invited again, in turn, to a masked ball at the palace, he

goes in the guise of a peasant ... it is all very jolly and noth-

ing important is said about the Turks. Vienna does not wish

any more trouble with the armies of Islam.

As he is starting for Venice, defeated, Peter receives a mes-

sage from Moscow. "The seed of the Miloslavskys has sprung

up again."

At once he started back to Moscow by coach. He gave up

his visit to Venice, the one place where he might have gained

a hearing. The Great Embassy had failed in its mission.

Patrick Gordon at the Istra

The four regiments of Streltsi that marched on Moscow in

June 1698 had revolted. There was no doubt about that.

These particular regiments had been taken away from their

families and their petty trade in Moscow to the salt marshes

of Azov; from Azov they had been sent to the damp forests

of the Lithuanian frontier. Then some few men who had

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 129

walked away to their home city returned with ominous re-

portsthat the tsar had died in foreign lands, and foreigners

were guarding the Kremlin.

So the four regiments left their posts and started home to

set matters right.

Individuals among them had trouble later on in explaining

the impulse that drove them. At the time it seemed clear

enough. They may have numbered no more than twenty-two

hundred. But restless groups of Old Believers 1 joined them. At

one time the marchers numbered six thousand or more.

Somebody read them a letter urging them to destroy the

Sloboda and exterminate the heretics, the foreigners. The let-

ter, they were told, came from the Tsarevna Sophia. They ad-

mitted that much in their testimony later, not under oath but

under torment.

They reached the familiar Moskva River and hurried their

pace because the golden domes of Moscow glinted ahead on

the sky line. Then when they forded the Istra stream they

found foreigners standing on the other bank, waiting to talk

with them. Particularly the general known to them as Patrick

Ivanovich talked with their leaders at the stream, urging them

to surrender their weapons.

Patrick Ivanovich promised them a mass pardon if they sur-

rendered themselves. The leaders of the Streltsi explained that

they were going to kill the Germans and find the Great Gali-

tzin, who had always been kind to them.

While Patrick Itanovich talked with them, foreign regi-

ments appeared on the knoll behind him. Then twenty-five

cannon appeared, wheeled into place against the marchers.

After that another Muscovite commander walked down to

argue with them more sternly. To him they presented their

list of grievances, written out in due form. The list related

how

Many Streltsi had been killed at Azov because of Lefort, a

German and a heretic.

The four regiments had been issued bad meat.

They had been set to digging canals, trenches, roads, like

peasants.

130 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

They Intended to recapture Moscow from Lefort and the

Germans.

Word had reached them that Tsar Romodanovsky (the

King of Pressburg) meant to kill them if they laid down their

arms.

After reading aloud the list of their grievances, some of

them began to shout. The officers retired to the regiments

from Moscow, which had taken position around the cannon

by then. The marchers surged toward the knoll and the can-

non blasted at them. After some fifty Streltsi had been killed

or wounded, the others put down their arms, not knowing

what to do.

Strangely enough, having surrendered themselves, they be-

gan to understand that they had sinned. They had gone

against the command of the tsar to whom they had bowed

their heads. Now they understood that, having done so, it was

necessary for some of them to atone for the sin of the regi-

ments.

Some of them, in fact, were tortured to discover who or

what had driven them to rebel. Nothing more came out un-

der the questioning than had been explained beforehand. A

half dozen of the leaders were hanged by the road when the

mass of them were marched off to a camp under guard.

Romodanovsky wrote to Peter: "While you amuse your-

self by a big Drunk, we bathe ourselves in blood."

An answer came from Peter to treat the Streltsi severely.

Romodanovsky, Gordon, and the other commanders decided

to remove them from the camp, scattering them among the

dungeons of the Kremlin and the monasteries around Mos-

cow.

Until Peter's return authority rested in the hands of Prince

Feodor Romodanovsky, otherwise the King of Pressburg.

This remarkable individual held no other title, except that his

family had been the executioners-by-torment of three gener-

ations of Romanovs. His family was one of the oldest in Rus,

and he himself looked like a Tatar with his embroidered boots

and long mustache. His integrity also was that of an oriental,

never articulate but final. Romodanovsky scolded the tsar bit-

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 131

terly to his face, yet he served Peter with inflexible fidelity.

Peter called this boyhood companion the King of Pressburg

as a jest. And, like most Slavs, Romodanovsky took his title

seriously. Others held him in respect if ndt in awe, because as

Romodanovsky served no interest but the tsar's, so he could

speak with the tsar's voice. He had an army of servants, an ar-

ray of glittering coaches, and a tame bear, kept at his door to

greet visitors he disliked.

Did he serve as Peter's conscience? Or did Peter keep close

to him this feudal potentate as a hold upon the mass of the

people who resented a Lefort but could comprehend as did

the troubled Streltsi a Romodanovsky? Probably Peter

trusted him where he could trust no one else. Perhaps he saw

reflected in Romodanovsky the inarticulate spirit of the elder

time that was so much a part of Peter himself.

When Romodanovsky wrote: "The seed of the Miloslav-

skys has sprung up again," Peter understood the message per-

fectly, and hurried at the utmost speed of chaise and coach

across the mountains to Kracow. There he intercepted an-

other message. The Streltsi were imprisoned, Moscow laid

under control.

Thereupon, that June, Peter lingered in Poland to try to

repair the disaster to his mission.

At first Moscow, awaiting tensely the judgment of the tsar

upon the revolt, heard only that he had been seen in the city

that he had gone to the new house of the vintner's daughter,

and then to revel with Lefort.

Testimony of Johmn Korb

Peter had taken his step toward the west. When the people

of Moscow saw their tsar by daylight they hardly recognized

him, in a tousled court attire from Kracow, with a smoking

pipe in his hand a pipe that he put into his mouth.

Moreover, as if he were warmed by wine, Peter strode out

of Lefort's house wielding a pair of shears. With the shears

he began to clip the beards of the great boyars who bowed to

him. At the same time he shouted that all who attended him

must come with smooth faces like his own. Some who heard

132 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

him remembered that Peter had never grown hair on his own

chin, and they thought the shearing to be a drunken jest. But

he called his jesters and a tailor with other shears to cut the

flowing sleeves from their kaftans, and by that they knew

him to be in earnest, for he would not make two jests at the

same time.

The older boyars wept at the shearing because they had

known that only with their hair long, as God had fashioned

them, could they hope for salvation at death only demons

went about with smooth faces.

And then Peter made clear to them how hard death could

be. The folk of Moscow had thought the punishment of the

Streltsi to be ended. Yet Peter would not be content with

Romodanovsky's doing. He seemed to suspect that the men

of the regiments had not confessed everything known to them

about the Tsarevna Sophia. When he had them questioned

again, those who had survived Romodanovsky's judgment

were taken to all the fourteen torture rooms in the Kremlin

cellars and Transfiguration.

Beggars who had taken alms at the Monastery of the Virgin,

where Sophia dwelt, were found and fetched, with the serving-

women of the place, to the fourteen rooms. Under the lash

they screamed and whimpered, babbling incoherently. No

least evidence came out of their agony that Sophia had con-

spired against her half brother, or that she had written to the

Streltsi.

It seemed that one of the other princesses, Martha, had

spoken bitterly against Peter, praying that he would cease to

live.

Peter himself questioned Eudoxia, who had remained in

Moscow after his order for her to retire to a convent. Why

had she not done so? Narrow and superstitious though she

was, like other women of her class, Eudoxia had spirit. There

was neither evidence nor suspicion to connect her with the

mutiny of the soldiers. Yet Peter had made up his mind by

now to put her out of his life, and this could only be done if

she became a nun, secluded by the vows of the Church.

He had her driven away from Moscow to a nunnery at

Suzdal, although the patriarch himself interceded for her.

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 133

There the bishop refused to order Eudoxia to be sheared until

Romodanovsky sent for him at night and talked with him.

The questioning over, Peter ordered the Streksi to be given

severe deaths, and he supervised the manner of it.

One disinterested observer wrote down in his journal the

happenings of each day during the torment of the Streksi.

Johann Georg Korb, 2 an aide of the Austrian embassy, had not

been long in Moscow and the sights stirred his curiosity. Not

that he felt any qualms about the condemned men he was

curious about the tsar who seemed to his people to be "a kind

of divinity seldom appearing to their eyes." By the code of

the young Austrian, imbued with the splendor of his own

majesty's embassy, such a mighty sovereign as the young Rus-

sian could do no wrong in punishing rebels, however severely.

As for Peter's wife, Korb understood that "he felt for her an

old loathing," which would be sufficient reason for setting her

aside.

Nor did the zealous courtier neglect to note down the

vintage of wines served at the tsar's table during the banquets

which were held while the torturing went on. One night, the

wines were Tokay, red Buda, "Rhenish," and dry Spanish

rather in the Hungarian manner, but quite acceptable to a

diplomat from Vienna. Another night twenty-five salvos of

guns were fired. Korb noted as a curiosity that a serving-

woman gave birth to a child during her questioning. He re-

marked that during one banquet they heard the outcry of a

man whose flesh, torn loose by the knout, was being roasted by

fire.

The salutes came as the toasts were drunk.

The varied manner in which the prisoners were finally killed

after the torment aroused the Austrian's interest. Some days

there would be only a few score, on other days as many as two

hundred and thirty would be brought out, either into the Red

Place, at the dais of assembly where Ivan the Terrible had con-

fessed his own crimes to the crowds, or up the river at the

quiet Transfiguration village, if the tsar happened to be there.

On the first day the scoundrelly condemned appeared "with

logs tied to their legs hindering the use of their feet. They

134 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

tried of their own accord to ascend the ladders, making the

sign of the cross. They themselves covered their faces with

a square of linen. Many, tying the noose beneath their heads,

jumped from the gallows, to hasten their death."

Since the bodies were left hanging, there remained no vacant

gallows by the fourth day, when beams were run out from

the walls near the Kremlin gates, and men were hanged two

to a beam. On another day there were priests broken on the

wheel, the ropes being handled by court jesters and dwarfs.

"The Tsar's Majesty looked on from his carriage."

Critically, Korb gave it as his opinion that the utmost agony

was reached on the Kremlin torture ground, when men whose

limbs had been broken already were lashed tight to the torture

wheels to have their bodies wrenched to death.

But the most amazing deaths happened at Transfiguration,

the time that the tsar compelled his highest-born attendants

to act as executioners of the Streltsi. Some three hundred vic-

* tims were divided among the boyars, and the great courtiers

and secretaries, who had to try their unskillful hands on the

big bodies. "Some struck the blow unsteadily and with trem-

bling hands ... to every boyar a Strelitz was led up, whom

he was to behead . . . the Tsar in his saddle looked on."

Lefort refused to take part in the killing, and the higher

foreign officers excused themselves. Boris Galitzin, to Peter's

amusement, could not manage to use his sword. (Peter was

giving the townspeople and nobility both a taste of the slow

eradication of the lives of the remnant of the Streltsi. It went

on for five months, and many of the bodies were left hanging

or lying on the ground for all the five months.)

At one time fifty men died at once, holding lighted candles

in each hand, their heads bent down to a long log. It started

the fifth of September, and ended in January. Wives and fam-

ilies of the condemned clustered about the Red Place and the

gates, not knowing who or how many would appear, to be

killed that day. On a day in January, Korb wrote, "The un-

fortunates kept a kind of order; they followed one another

in turn without sadness in their faces. A wife and child fol-

lowed one up to the very beam, wailing. As he wls about to

lie down, he gave his gloves and linen to them all he had left."

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 135

Those who did not die had their nostrils torn out and their

ears sliced, and were sent away into Siberia.

As to Sophia, Korb explains that two hundred and thirty

of them hung on thirty gibbets outside her monastery, while

three of their leaders were hung within reach of her window.

(She had been moved to a narrow cell and shorn of her hair.

After that she lived for four years.)

This execution was more than a typical tormenting of that

age, and more than the brutal retaliation of Slav upon Slav.

It revealed cunning, and an activating hatred. Did the man

who ordered it seek to instil the utmost of fear into the spec-

tators in Moscow; did he mean to eradicate all of the old army

that had opposed him, to prepare the way for a new move he

intended to make?

There were signs of hysteria in Peter during those five

months. At one wine banquet he flashed into one of his sudden

spells of rage, at some argument over army funds. Drawing

his sword, he slashed at General Shein and the others near

him. Lefort could not quiet him. It took Menshikov, the latest

favorite, to do that. After a while Peter returned to watch

the dancing, apparently in the best of humors if Korb is to

be believed.

The other incident occurred when the patriarch Adrian

tried to interfere, coming out with his attendant priests in

procession to Transfiguration. They carried with them one

of the miracle-working images of the Moscow cathedral,

and requested Peter to cease the torments.

At that he screamed at them, "Take that away! Why have

you brought it here? Take it out of my sight!"

Following these outbreaks, Menshikov and Lefort were

careful to post an armed guard at the door of the room where

Peter slept, to prevent injury to anyone who might intrude

on him.

The liquidation of the Streltsi extended to the suburb where

they had lived. Their wives and children were ordered to

leave; in Moscow neither "work nor food" could be given to

the families of the condemned.

At Kazan and Astrakhan garrisons of the old army were dis-

136 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

missed from service, or split up into details to be sent east into

the Siberian service.

Word of the cadavers hanging around the Kremlin walls

spread outward into the land. At isolated posts Streltsi officers

took off their red or green kaftans, hid their uniforms, and

disappeared. Detachments left their barracks and scattered to

work in the fields and shops.

Apparently Peter succeeded in eradicating them as an organ-

ization. He had gone too far. He had driven the survivors into

silence and into the far places. Not long after the torture in

Moscow, Johann Korb wrote in his journal, "Now you would

think rebellions must be chained, one to another."

Some thousands of the Streltsi got beyond the Urals. Their

trek followed that of the Ukrainians. They were the first of

the citizenry of Moscow to appear along the new frontiers,

in the Baraba settlements or the Altai farms. For a long time

their descendants still spoke the lisping Russian of the great

city.

When Atlasov, the explorer of the distant Kamchatka penin-

sula, reached Moscow, he brought with him such a wealth of

fursboth sables and "sea otters" that he easily interested the

Sibirsky Prikaz in his plans. The bureau had been moved out

of the Kremlin into an obscure street, because the Razriad was

fully occupied with other matters by then.

Atlasov, the discoverer, followed the technique of Khabarov

and the others. After making gifts all around, including some

select sables for the tsar, he showed his maps and argued how

the resources of Kamchatka could be developed by Moscow,

with himself as governor of the new province.

Granted an audience with Peter, he exhibited the captiv

Japanese, and Peter was interested enough to question this

specimen from unknown islands to order that Denbe should

be taught Russian and should in turn teach Japanese. To the

cossack Atlasov he awarded the rank of "commander" with

the scanty pay of ten rubles a year, and instructed him to

recruit some select cossacks on his return journey, to help him

occupy Kamchatka. The voevode of Yakutsk would be or-

dered to supply him with firearms and powder.

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 137

This was not much to go on. Adasov, not having received

one man or gun from Moscow, did recruit some fellow spirits

on his long journey back. On the Tunguska River stretch they

met a trader's convoy, westbound,, with silk and tea from

China, The cossacks took this rich convoy east without the

trader, spending some of their winnings on the way. Adasov

ended up in prison at Yakutsk,

The detachment he had left in Kamchatka survived for three

years. Then It tried to fight its way back to the mainland

through the guardian Koriaks, and was massacred. For the

next few years other adventurers sought to follow Adasov's

route into the new territory without success.

The Rise of Alexashka

As the century ended, it seemed as If Peter's clique were

trying to put a period to all old customs persisting in Holy

Mother Moscow. In fact a new calendar was ordained, mark-

ing the years in European fashion from i A.D. instead of from

the very beginning of the world. In the Kremlin palace the

ancient shapka and regalia of the tsars were locked up. Peter

celebrated the advent of pipe smoking by one of his strangest

publicity parades with old Zotov, the mock patriarch, naked

and crowned as Bacchus, leading neophants bearing wreaths

of fragrant burning tobacco.

Then, too, he mourned the death of Patrick Gordon, and

of his own chosen companion, Francois Lef art. Over Lefort's

coffin Peter wept heavily, and turned upon the bpyars and

diplomats who followed him to the funeral, shouting, "Ho!

It is a great victory for you that he is dead!" The gigantic

Swiss had failed at long last to survive one of his own banquets.

Their ten years of intimacy had left an impress on the mind

of the young Romanov; henceforth Peter would give feasts

after Lefort's manner; when tired, he would strain after the

effortless buffoonery of the Swiss. In addition, Lefort had

bequeathed him a successor.

Already Alexander Menshikov had become Peter's familiar

-Alexashka, addressed in letters as "Min bester Frant." Young

as his master, this adroit Lithuanian had been turned over to

138 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Peter by Lefort, to follow him through the Azov affair, and

the tour of Europe, to serve as his eyes and ears, and more

and more as his counselor. For Peter, swift as he was in im-

pulse, seldom made decisions before testing them on the minds

of his intimates.

Alexashka, as Peter called him, may have started life as a

pastry cook's boy. He had a hard, smooth core in him, an

obsession for neatness, and no scruples whatever. He had in-

genuity in getting things done whether the task were persuad-

ing a diplomat or getting a frigate built although he swore

that he had never learned to read or write. Physically he ap-

peared charming, dressed always with elegance, the very oppo-

site to the gaunt shambling Peter, who wore dressing gowns,

or odds and ends of uniforms.

When Peter could not sleep at night, he would call for a

servant to lie down by him, and rest his head on the man's

body. More often than not, Alexashka Menshikov served as

the tsar's pillow.

Menshikov alone had been able to quiet Peter in the mad

hysteria of the Transfiguration drinking bout. Of all women,

he had fastened upon two sisters, young maids in waiting to

the secluded Tsarevna Natalia; it pleased him to watch the

two when they were together, both afraid of him, and of the

anger of their mistress. Before long, moved by one of his

vagrant impulses, Peter ordered Alexashka to marry the elder

of the sisters.

With his own wife shorn of her hair and confined in a far-

off convent, Peter was thrown more than ever with the mixed

women of the Sloboda. Although he had sat in drawing rooms

with the titled women of the west who knew no seclusion

he made only a careless attempt to alter the terem confinement

in Moscow.

After his return he lost no opportunity of showing that he

favored the foreign immigrants. James Bruce, bora in Mus-

covy of a Scottish father, translated textbooks for him, and

answered the letters of Leibnitz, whom Peter did not know

how to answer. This Russianized Scot "Yakub," they called

him had something of Lefort's gifted heedlessness; he posed

as an astronomer, while he coached Peter on the manufacture

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 139

of artillery* Because the folk in the streets held him to be a

sorcerer, he kept a light burning through the night in his

tower chamber. He knew how to meet guile with guile, but

he could not cope with Menshikov.

Another Scot, General George Ogilvy, took Patrick Gor-

don's place as the organizer of the army, now bereft of the

StreltsL He agreed with Peter that the German model would

be best for a new army, but he said frankly German discipline

could never be enforced. "These Russians are young," he said;

"you can only bring them slowly to an understanding of disci-

pline."

But Peter wanted a new army drilled in haste, in too great

haste.

At the very end of the century he had closed, as it were, the

gates of the Kremlin; he had decimated the Streitsi. On the

death of the aged patriarch, Adrian, he appointed no new

patriarch, thus leaving the church of Moscow without a head.

Withdrawing to the Transfiguration village and the Sloboda,

he felt dissatisfied with them after the orderly bustling cities

of the west. Now he could not even resume the building of

his ships on the Volga and the Don.

An unknown Englishman, one of the new contingent from

the west, has this to say in his journal of the ships designed so

hurriedly for the Black Sea and now jettisoned:

"Some they tried to bring up the Volga, by connecting

tributaries, to Lake Ladoga . . . but the many shallows pre-

venting, these ships lie rotting. . . . The remainder, about

fifty in number, built at the same time but never launched,

on account of their great bulk and drawing too much water

... are to be seen at Usleno, three leagues from Kazan. . . .

The attempt to cut a canal betwixt the Don and the Volga,

and the haven [port] of Taganrog, all of fine stone, went on

at vast profusion of treasure and expense of the lives of men."

For Peter had made the most momentous decision of his life.

He had planned to start the great northern war.

THE CITY AND THE TSAR

The Compelling Forces

It seemed so simple. Barred from the Black Sea, to turn to

the Baltic. To abandon the colonization, shipbuilding, and canal

links of the Don basin in order to launch the new fleet upon

the Baltic.

The southern steppe had been troublesome, with its dry

grassland, its malarial swamps, its wandering communities of

Kalmuks and Tatars and its settled communities of independ-

ent Cossacks. On the other hand many ties bound the Musco-

vites to the northern Baltic Sea, where the forests offered

limitless timber for ships, where the folk of ancient Rus had

traded and fought. Did not their northern lakes, Ilmen and

Peipus, drain toward the Baltic littoral? Did not the western

Dvina offer a thoroughfare to the prosperous port of Riga

itself? Had not Ivan the Terrible, understanding this, waged

war for access to the Baltic?

Ordin Nastchokin, that single-minded statesman of the city

of Pskov, had looked to this notthern sea. Enduring peace with

the Slavs of Poland, and access to the Baltic that had been

the one thought of Ordin Nastchokin, His master, Peter's

father, had made that enduring peace with Warsaw thirty-two

years before. And Moscow itself had thrived with a plenitude

of food for that generation and a half. Now Moscow held

sovereignty on the books of the Razriad over multitudes, six

or seven million souls, and uncounted strangers. Yet the power

inherent in such multitudes had never been shaped into an

active force.

Then the merchants also had their opinion. A merchant

accompanied every embassy to the western lands. They com-

plained with justice that the exports of raw flax and hemp

paid duty to foreigners, who fashioned such things as the flax

and hemp into sails, linen cloth, and rope to be sold back to the

Muscovites. All exports from Novgorod and Pskov had to be

shipped in foreign vessels.

All precious metals, iron, brass, copper vessels, and silver-

ware, had to be imported from foreign markets. Long had the

great merchants of the Kitaigorod argued with the Razriad

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 141

for some means of securing an Ice-free port on the Baltic,

where their goods could be shipped without interference

from Swedish or Dutch trade corporations.

In his journey Peter himself had inspected most of the sea-

ports from Riga to London. He had actually sailed on fishing

fleets and , on the huge ocean-going merchantmen that had

brought wealth to the small industrious folk of the Nether-

lands and England, who at the same time protected themselves

by powerful men-of-war. His glimpse of war at sea off Spit-

head had been etched into his memory. He would never for-

get it.

All these compelling forces had found spokesmen among

Peter's advisers, so that he started upon his journey determined '

to press the languishing war against the Turks, and returned

to Moscow excited by the thought of a war against the Swedes.

It was only an accident of geography that made the Swedes

his enemy. The Baltic itself was at that moment a Swedish

lake. From the Karelian Finns around Lake Ladoga, from the

drowsy port of Viborg, and the stronghold of Narva at the

Narova's mouth, to the coast at the base of jutting Denmark,

the Swedish kings had held overlordship since the dynamic

days of Gustavus Adolphus.

With those prosaic monarchs of Stockholm the Muscovites

had had no quarrel for two generations, while trouble had

flared up with the Turkish frontier forces along the Dnieper

(where Gordon and Samoilovich had served) . No one in Mos-

cow wanted a conflict with Turks and Swedes, overlords of

the Black Sea to the southwest and the Baltic to the northwest,

at the same time.

Counselors in the Razriad remembered the advice of the

strange Slav Krijanich, who had argued against any move to

the east: "Enemies of the Russian people would have our coun-

try go against China while the Germans and Tatars gain pos-

session of the Russian state. . . . No, we should avoid war

with two enemies at the same time, or with many enemies in

many lands."

To the mass of Russians, the Swedes were kin to the Ger-

mans because they spoke much the same language. So the

Turks seemed somehow related to the Tatars. All were old

142 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

rivals, settled down on the edges of the surrounding seas, hem-

ming in the Muscovites/But the mass of the people felt no

antagonism against either "Germans" or "Turks."

The most compelling necessity for the group around Peter

was to establish some center for its control. This group had

virtually" abandoned the Kremlin. It could not count on the

loyalty of Moscow. (The Streltsi had been rooted out not so

much because four regiments endangered Moscow as because

the rebellion might spread to other parts of the dominion.)

And certainly no segment of the Russian people accepted the

Sloboda as its governing head. On the other hand Peter's clique

as leaders of a national army would have unquestioned author-

ity, while with the enlarged army it could enforce that author-

ity. Probably no one except Peter himself and some of the

great merchants believed in the possibility of a fleet that could

find its way to a sea.

Peter did not have able statesmen to influence him. Golovin,

tired by mounting responsibility, was far from brilliant; the

brilliant Menshikov was an opportunist. Peter had a way of

throwing himself into action without foreseeing the conse-

quences.

With Lef ort's aid, he had already gained allies for the new

venture the Danes, with their shipping, the army of Saxony

(after his talk with Augustus, when he lingered at Kracow) ,

It had seemed simple, in the planning, for the Danes to take

over the Swedish ports at their end of the Baltic while the

Poles of Saxony captured Riga and the Russian army cleared

the Swedish garrisons from the other end of the Baltic.

The Swedes were not prepared for such a threefold attack.

Moreover a seventeen-year-old boy, Charles, had just become

king of the old-fashioned Swedish state.

No one knew very much about this youthful Charles except

that he hung about the army camps, said nothing, and had

a wild way with him.

The Road to Narva

* The plan itself for the northern war actually had not been

made by Peter but had been shaped by the shrewd brain of a

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 143

Livonian, Johan PatkuL Activated by a grievance against the

Swedish monarchy, Patloil had shuttled back and forth along

the Baltic, knitting together the threads of the secret alliance

against the unsuspecting Swedes. The Muscovites were to

confine their gains to the Karelian region and the Gulf of

Finland; Patkul himself would become sole governor of his

Livonian coast. Peter, excited and impressed by the fine man-

ners of the westerners and by the gift of a splendid uniform

from Augustus of Saxony, agreed to everything.

Stimulated by these momentous preparations, carefully con-

cealed, he appointed the worried Golovin to be admiral-gen-

eral, and bestowed on him one of the new decorations, the

Cross of St. Andrew (copied from the cross of the Knights

of Malta which Peter had admired on his tour) .

"We must not let our left hand know what our right hand

is doing," Patkul warned him, and then warned the Danes,

"We must watch^that the Russians do not snatch the roast

from the spit under our noses."

(The Russians had in fact decided to take more than the

Karelian coast, and to move instead straight to the port of

Narva.)

Shipments of Swedish cannon were still arriving from the

Baltic coast; Peter was discussing a new treaty of peace with

Swedish envoys in Moscow. There, at a garden party, the

daughter of the Swedish minister Knipercron spoke up before

the tsar, demanding as a child will if it were true that he

meant to hurt the Swedes.

"You must not think that," Peter assured her gravely.

"Why, if your people were harmed, I would defend them."

He was waiting then for word from Constantinople of a

definite truce with the Turks, before starting the march to the

Baltic, ("If I hear today of the peace signed with the Turks,"

he assured Patkul and the envoy of Saxony, "I will move

against the Swedes tomorrow.")

One thing Peter had got done by a supreme effort. One

frigate had been launched from the ill-fated Taganrog yard,

at the Don's mouth. Navigated by foreign officers and escorted

by a sailing galley flying the flag of Skipper Peter Alexeivich,

this frigate had worked its way out of the Sea of Azov and

THE CITY AND THE TSAR

safely to the Golden Horn of Constantinople, where

it under the height of the Serai, under the eyes of

the and his ministers. Rich gifts of Russian sables and

ivory from the Arctic had been bestowed upon the

After the appearance of this undreamed-of Russian

man-of-war, the treaty of peace was signed In Constantinople.

By treaty, In the year 1700, the Turks agreed to retire

the long-contested frontier of the Dnieper for thirty

years.

When a hard-riding courier 'brought confirmation of the

peace to Moscow, Peter kept his word to Patkul and gave the

order for his new army to march, not, however, to Karelia

but to Narva.

By then rumored reports had reached Moscow that the

Swedish fleet was taking action against the Danes. This action

at the far end of the Baltic would certainly draw Swedish

strength away from Narva.

In the declaration of war handed to the surprised Swedish

minister Knipercron, the cause of the war was written down

In clear words. Two years before when the Great Embassy

had visited Riga, Swedish officials had offended and slighted

the majesty of the Tsar of Rus, who, it now appeared, had

actually been with the Embassy!

When Captain Peter Alexeivlch marched in the heavy

autumn frosts toward Narva, he felt certain of success. This

was to be the first year of a new century in his new calendar.

The first frigate of his fleet-to-be lay anchored In Constanti-

nople Itself. His new model army thrust its giant columns

through the forest along the little river Narova which flowed

Into the Baltic Itself.

That army, to Peter's mind, appeared gigantic his Guard

regiments, the massed Muscovite cavalry, the newly drilled

conscripted infantry in German type uniforms, the huge artil-

lery train forty thousand men in all Somewhere behind fol-

lowed a division of Cossacks ten thousand more. All com-

manded, of course, by Admiral-General Golovin, and the

staff of foreign officers, but with Captain Peter ready to direct

Its operations if anything went wrong.

TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 145

Nothing much went wrong. Rather to their surprise the

small town of Narva behind its earth ramparts and stone

refused to surrender at the appearance of such a massive army.

Autumn storms delayed the cannon; powder proved untrust-

worthy; the bombardment when at last it began did not seem

to have much effect on Narva. Time passed, unnoticed. Re-

membering the toil at Azov, Peter waited patiently for rein-

forcements and more and better powder.

Then, on a gray November day, came an Incredible report.

Swedish ships \vere off the coast, the Swedish army was land-

ing in vast strength and would be at Narva the next day the

army that Peter's advisers believed to be fighting in Denmark,

Hurriedly, Peter's commanders gathered for consultation.

All of them looked to Peter to tell them what to do. And

Peter shook with uncontrollable excitement, unable to think

clearly.

The pavilion, the gaping, staring servants, the couriers

riding up and shouting, the generals stumbling in, whispering

In strange languages, adjusting their cloaks, the glimpses of his

parked artillery, silent among throngs of men who no longer

stood In orderly ranksall this he saw as In a nightmare. The

comfortable reality of the day before had disappeared In a

rush of sound, in the ring of strange faces staring at him. . * .

Peter remembered that somebody must take command . . .

he could never do it ...

Quietly Golovin drew him aside and spoke words he could

understand. The tsar must leave at once.

Peter gave some hasty orders. He picked out the general,

Croy by name, who had just arrived from the Polish court.

General Croy would command. Yet General Croy did not

know the situation of the army, or understand the Russian

language.

"It is necessary," Peter said incoherently, remembering the

powder that they had been waiting for, "to wait to receive

the ammunition . . . but do not fail to make the assault on

Narva before . . . the Swedish king can arrive at the town."

Although it was dark by then, he hurried in blind panic

from Narva with his companions. At dawn he was far up the

river, escaping from his army.

146 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

That city the Russian army ceased to exist. The gray sky

darkened, and snow swirled down. Through the snow ap-

peared Swedish regiments, marching in step. No one knew

how they were or where they had come from. No one

knew anything for certain except that the terrible, orderly

came on and on, out of the storm, and in front of

men died.

from the trenches the ill-trained Russian infantry ran,

crowded together. They ran to a river, flowing dark under

the snow gusts. There was a bridge over the river. Under the

weight of crowded men and horses it broke down.

In one place the Guards regiments, not knowing what else

to do, made their wagons into a kind of square and fought

behind it, firing volleys at shapes in the swirling snow.

Apart from the trenches, the Muscovite cavalry had seen

no regiments of Swedes, but it had watched fugitives running

past, shouting that the Swedes were destroying everything

in their way. For a while the cavalry waited, peering into the

storm. Then it ceased to be cavalry waiting in ranks and be-

came a mob of horsemen racing toward the river behind them,

plunging into the water, where many of them drowned.

Most of the foreign officers surrendered to the Swedes, to

protect themselves from the rage and the panic of their men.

The next day the Swedes, tired of taking prisoners, built a

new bridge across the river to let the fugitives still penned

on the bank by the town get across and out of their way.

Afterward it was learned that the Swedes numbered only

eight thousand. They had waded ashore from their ships with-

out supplies and without heavy cannon; their horses had not

been fed for two days. The eighteen-year-old Charles had led

them straight to the Russian trenches, against five times their

force. But they had been troops of long training, commanded

by veterans and inspired by the boy who was to flash across

Europe like a meteor.

An English observer described Charles XII of Sweden as

"Tall, slovenly, rough in manner. ... A horse is always kept

saddled for him, because he may jump upon it and ride off

at full gallop before anyone can follow him. . . . He comes

in muddy as any postillion. . . . He sits down, without the

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE. INVASION 147

smallest ceremony, on any chair he finds in the dining room.

He eats very quickly, never spends more than a quarter of an

hour at the table, and never says one word during the meal

... he never drinks anything but small beer . . . the mat-

tress he sleeps on serves him for cover also, as he rolls it over

him . . * beside his bed there is a very handsome gilt illu-

mined Bible, the only thing about him that is the least showy."

Charles, even at eighteen years, was a soldier by instinct.

More than that, he had no realization of physical fatigue or

fear, A battle was to him a thing to be manipulated as a sur-

geon manipulated an operation, with no thought other than

to finish the operation to good effect.

Before now he had had no experience with warfare. As the

monarch of a small state, leader of men who thought for them-

selves and read their Bibles, he did not conceive of a war

except as an expedient to gain a certain advantage, or protec-

tion. With his force of forty to fifty thousand soldiers he could

gain advantages for or protect Sweden. That was all.

Actually, Charles was more intrigued by the great game of

war than by the stakes that must inevitably be won or lost.

As far as the Russians were concerned, after Narva's tu-

mult, he expressed dissatisfaction with them. They did not

stay on their ground, he complained, long enough to be killed.

"There is no honor to be had in going against them."

After Narva he left the Russians to the fastness of their

forests and returned with his army to Poland. 3 In Poland there

was the royal election to be decided whether of a monarch

friendly or unfriendly to Sweden ports to be secured, armies

to be intimidated, or soundly beaten or won over to him. (At

the outbreak of the war Charles had descended unexpectedly

upon Denmark, helped by the presence of an Anglo-Dutch

fleet. After forcing the Danes to agree to a peace, he had

freed Riga from Augustus' Poles in a single swift campaign,

and had hurried on to Narva, against the advice of all the dip-

lomats accompanying him.)

The Swedes held their small towns garrisoned at the Rus-

sian end of the Baltic. They believed their garrisons would

be able to hold off any Russian force. On the Baltic itself they

THE CITY AND THE TSAR

had to fear no enemy fleet. Apparently Charles and his gen-

erals believed they kid washed their hands of the Russians.

In however, they were mistaken. The conflict that

at Narva was to last far twenty-one years;

Peter had run away from the battle at Narva. If he had

stayed with his troops, he would have accomplished nothing

as his advisers had understood, probably, better than he.

Moreover, how could the Tsar of Rus risk captivity at the

COURLAND

Monigsberg

Smolensk.

ROUTE OF PETER'S PORTAGE OVERt AND, WHITE SEA TO BALTIC

PROJECTED WATERWAV, MOSCOW TO LAKE LADOGA

M1L&S O SO IOO ISO 2OO

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 149

hands of a pagan soldiery? The ethics that governed the

and battles of Europe had never been known in Moscow,

where the person of the tsar was held to be sacrosanct. Excuses

were made, hastily.

"The tsar was called to Moscow/' Polish observers reported

gravely when they returned to Warsaw, "to meet an envoy

of the Turkish padishah."

"He is no soldier,' 7 the Austrian observer, Hallart, related

bluntly, "And his Muscovite commanders have as much cour-

age as frogs have hair on their bellies."

It was bad enough to have this said Qpenly in Vienna, which

had treated the Great Embassy so coolly; it was worse to hear

the youthful Swedish palladia praised in Europe's capitals as

a greater than Vauban or Gustavus Adolphus ... as the

striker of a "Three-in-One" blow. . . ' . And the Muscovite

ambassadors reported grimly what they had heard. Now west-

ern Europe feared the Swedes and laughed at the tsar and his

army of Moscow. William III said of his former guest, "He

is a barbarian, fittingly punished for trying to be more than,

a barbarian."

But it was worst of all to do what the Bureau of Ambassadors

then did, to circulate a Muscovite version of the battle. In this

version, the small force of Swedes attacking in the snowstorm

had been surrounded by the Russian army, had surrendered,

and had then been released, whereupon the tsar had returned

to" Moscow. No diplomats who knew Charles or the Swedish

army could believe that. Years afterward, when Moscow's

ambassadors had occasion to ask for aid or a new alliance

against the king of the Swedes, they were asked gravely, "You

mean the same monarch who surrendered at Narva?"

The Church Bells and the Army Cannon

Humiliated during his impetuous tour of Europe, and shaken

by the revolt of the Streltsi, Peter Alexeivich had been numbed

by the failure of his first move into a European war. And as

at Azov, he reacted swiftly. Stubbornly he set about prepar-

ing a new army.

His western type army led by the foreigners had failed

150 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

utterly. Perhaps more than that failure, he regretted the loss

of his" cherished field artillery. Not a gun had been got across

the Narova River.

Having no stockpile of iron or brass, he ordered the bells

of churches and monasteries to be confiscated for their metal,

in of the complaint of "sacrilege." Since the old-style

Muscovite cavalry had demonstrated that it was useless, he

ordered ten new regiments of "dragoons" to be formed of

cavalry armed with carbines like the Swedes, trained to fight

on foot Having no way, now, to launch large vessels into

the Baltic, lie ordered the building of galleys, barges, and small

craft on the northern rivers flowing toward Swedish Finland.

One great skill Peter possessed. He thought in terms of

things, finished and ready for use, rather than of vague strat-

egy. He thought as a quartermaster general rather than as a

field marshal, and he seemed to realize that, once and for all,

he must learn warfare from his enemies.

The man who was willing to learn in that disastrous winter

of 1700 was neither Bombardier Peter nor Skipper Peter Alex-

eivich.

He asked the only experienced soldier within reach of him

what he should do. That soldier was George Ogilvy, the son

of Patrick Ogilvy of Muirtoun who had agreed at Vienna to

take the tsar's pay. How could they defeat, the tsar asked

Ogilvy, the Swedish army marching from the frontier on

Moscow?

And George Ogilvy told him, in whatever words, "You

cannot defeat the Swedish army. If next spring three divisions

of Swedes appear by way of Pskov, commanded by Lowen-

hanpt, Rehnskjold, and Charles himself, there is no force here

that you can put into the field against them."

Perhaps Peter thought of his father. Alexis would call for

prayer in the churches, would appoint a new venerable patri-

arch" and bow to him for his blessing; then Alexis would take

the boyars and priests and people and rush away to safety

somewhere, as the Slavs had done so often in the past, obeying

an instinct stronger than reason as Peter himself had done.

He appointed George Ogilvy to be field marshal of the em-

pire, and asked him how an army could be got together.

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION ijl

The Scottish soldier who hated Moscow, with its shambling

crowds, told him the truth. You couldn't give muskets, pikes,

and drums to a multitude like this and drill the mass for a

little and expect it to stand its ground against bullets. You

had to get together men who would stay in a group for some

reason, and give them weapons they could use then journey

and eat and endure sickness with them, teaching them to do

little things like picking off Swedish sentries or breaking down

a fort or capturing a supply train.

When, after a year or more, they had become accustomed

to each other and to accomplishing little things, they could

undertake more. They could attack isolated Swedish garrisons.

No Swedish army moved against Moscow that spring.

All summer the new levies were trained, as Field Marshal

Ogilvy advised. For Peter had to do more than defend a fron-

tier. As he had been obliged to redeem his defeat at Azov, he

had to compensate for Narva with his new model army, the

one he had begun at Pressburg. His ambassadors were -writing

him from Europe with bluntness born of desperation, "We

must have some victory to tell of, even a little one."

Under the direction of old Andreas Vinius the metal melted

from the bells had been recast into three hundred cannon, but

Peter understood now that only trained men could make use

of these new cannon. He had taken upon himself the sole

responsibility for the war. Yet he lacked the ability to com-

mand an army, like the invincible Charles. Nor would Rus-

sian regiments serve to any purpose under direct command

of a foreigner like Ogilvy. Instead, Peter entrusted the first of

his new field force to an unschooled boyar of old family,

Sheremet'ev, who had been one of the worst offenders at

Narva because he commanded the cavalry that ran away. But

Sheremet'ev, who could not make out reports properly, was

at home with Slavs; he had sagacity the cautious stubborn

sagacity that actuated Peter himself. Ogilvy could tell Shere-

met'ev the plan of an operation, and the boyar might get some-

thing done in his own fashion.

Moreover the new commander was given dragoons and Cos-

sacks and Kalmuk horsemen not the almost feudal horsemen

mustered in the past by Moscow and strength enough to out-

I j2 THE CITY AND TSAR

any one Swedish command. Peter saw to that. He had

not forgotten that lie captured Azov by surrounding It with

an overwhelming force of ships, soldiers, and guns.

During the deep snow of the next winter Sheremet'ev sent

word of a small victory at the Baltic's end. A Swedish division

had cut off and broken, with three thousand dead. There

were few surviving wounded or prisoners,,

"We have avenged Narva," Peter cried for all to hear. Ex-

citedly he gave every possible reward to Sheremet'ev, who

had succeeded in a little way against the invincible Swedes.

A gilded marshal's baton, the decoration of St. Andrew, and

the portrait of the tsar himself set in diamonds, were bestowed

on the victorious officer. Bells still hanging in the tower of

Ivan the Terrible sounded a tocsin.

And Peter staged a public celebration in the Red Place and

the adjoining market place. Cornelius Le Bruyn reached Mos-

cow in time to see and report it:

"There was a great firework on one side of the castle [the

Kremlin]. They ran up a huge boarded building full of win-

dows toward the castle, in which His Majesty entertained the

great Lords of his court, the foreign Ministers . . . and many

merchants from beyond-sea.

"In the evening they began to play the firework, which

turned until nine. The design of this firework was different

from all of the kind I had seen before ... a figure of Time

twice as big as life, with an hour glass in his right hand . . .

with the inscription 'Praise be to God.' . . . the trunk of a

tree upon which a beaver was gnawing, with these words,

Perseverance will uproot it.' ... a very calm sea, over which

rose a half -sun lighted up, with this device, c Now hope dawns

again.'

"It is not possible to describe the multitude of people gath-

ered together upon this occasion . . . when the fireworks

were over I withdrew to the Sloboda where at ten at night

I again heard the report of 90 great guns and many after-

wards."

With his own hand Peter set off the first of this different

kind of firework. And the indescribable multitude of people

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 153

saw clearly that he rejoiced In a first victory that in time,

with patience, he expected final victory.

Like the symbolic beaver of the fireworks display, the new

forces of Ogilvy-Sheremet'ev-Peter gnawed at the eastern end

of the Swedish dominion. They used their teeth cautiously,

working their way in from fort to fort. They did not rest in

winter quarters because frozen rivers and snow offered them

better passage than the muddy trails of summer. And Peter

would not give them time to rest.

After one success he explained realistically: "We have

beaten the Swedes at odds of three to one. Soon we will beat

them at odds of two to one/'

The Swedish garrisons around the Gulf of Finland were

secondary troops. Sheremet'ev's Cossacks and Kalmuks and

partisans cut them off and killed them savagely. Almost no

prisoners were sent down the river routes to Moscow, al-

though numbers of captured banners arrived. The slow Mus-

covite advance destroyed towns and crops as well as men.

In another way, more indirectly, Moscow made use of its

resources of men and material. It sent yearly payments to the

Saxons who withstood Charles in Poland, It sent grain and

horses and, after a while, divisions of men. In this the adroit

hand of Alexashka Menshikov can be seenif not the advice

of the ingenious PatkuL

Slowly as the passage of time itself, Moscow was bringing

the weight of its resources in raw materials to bear upon the

war, without risking its embryonic field army against Charles.

Meanwhile Moscow began to use its waterways. The net-

work of small rivers and large lakes around the Gulf of Fin-

land served to transport forces during the summer months.

Long at home on such river routes, Russian workmen got flo-

tillas of small craft over the dividing portages. Eurlaki boat-

men from the Volga and Dnieper manned the luggers and

galleys built on Lake Ladoga.

Salmon fishers from the Arctic, seal hunters from the

Frozen Sea, Laplanders with reindeer to haul sleds, trappers

of the forest, and fugitive folk who haunted the forest edge,

all labored along the streams with the Muscovite carpenters

154 THE CITY AXD THE TSAR

and They In guarded huts, hacked at the fir

shallows to float new luggers, and

the unwieldy vessels careened against rocks _

in the Peter drove them to labor at this make-

inland" navy-not the genial Skipper Peter of drowsy

but a restless giant shambling around at a run,

down with his hard fists, making hasty notes

on the of paper stock in the pocket of his sodden coat,

with brandy, and falling asleep when he had

himself with food.

He had no proper ships of war on these rivers that rose

ten feet in a week's flood or tore out a new channel when the

ice broke up in them. Taking stores from Archangel, pushing

log through the forest, he brought flat-bottomed vessels

overland to Lake Onega and through the narrow Svir to the

wide water of Ladoga Lake.

Across the lake a stone fort guarded the entrance to the

river Neva. Sheremet'ev's army was called in to break this

obstacle apart with cannon. In the brief good weather of the -

early fall the army and flotilla felt their way cautiously along

the Neva, building more transports as they went. On the

floods of the following spring they gained the mouth of the

Neva that emptied, past an island, through encroaching shoals

into the gray Gulf of Finland.

Here the inevitable fort confronted them again, a stockaded

post called Nyenskants.

"The Russians, after some resistance, took and razed to the

ground Nyenskans, a small town and garrison/' the unknown

Englishman relates. "They disposed the inhabitants into dis-

tant parts of Russia. A squadron of Swedish ships of war,

arriving at the Island ignorant of the fate of Nyenskans dis-

patched a bark of 1 2 and a longboat with 4 swivel guns to

enquire into the state of the garrison. About 2 miles up the

river they saw the Russ army on all sides, and perceived the

place was taken.

"However, fearing no danger by water, as knowing the

Russ to have no vessels of force there, they stayed a while

making observations in the face of the enemy's army. The

tsar then present in person . . . consulting his sea officers,

TOUR OF EUROPE AND INVASION 155

ordered a detachment of chosen men and all knew any-

thing of the sea, well armed,, to fall down the river in as many

small craft as they could possibly assemble in so short a space

of time, to intercept the Swedes on their return, at the bar.

"[This was] a place full of shoals without beacons, bet with

sandbanks on either side, more navigable by the Russ craft

than by the enemy vessels. The Swedes observing this ma-

neuver along another branch of the river, retreated toward

their fleet. Night coming on with a westerly wind obliged

them to drift with the current. The Russians attacked them,

pouring in shot from all sides.,

"The Swedes made a brave defense. They did execu-

tion with their guns, until the bark struck on a sandbank and

was taken, after the death of most of its men. The longboat

of course shared the same fate. Immediately upon the surren-

der the tsar came aboard and finding the mate alive that com-

manded the boats ordered care to be taken of his wounds, . .

This was the first vessel of force the tsar ever took on the

Baltic, and though a trifle in itself, he received it as a good

omen."

On a sandy height above the marshes, near the island, Peter

ordered a stockade to be built, and a warehouse within the

stockade. Shipways were to line the river's edge.

For here his ships could feel their way out through the

Neva, to the Finnish gulf, and the Baltic. A wooden church

rose within the stockade. It was to be called the Church of

Sts. Peter and Paul. A ditch served further to protect the

stockade.

The new fort lying behind walls of turf on the island he

christened, after Menshikov, Alexander's Fort. The stockaded

village he called after himself, Petersburg. When he wrote it

down he spelled it "Piterburgh."

How the Foundations of Petersburg Were Laid

It was to be Peter's town. No doubt of that. A cottage was

built for him, low and comfortable, like the cabin of a ship

except for the unavoidable fireplace. Not far from the church

rose a log tavern. Later this tavern would become famous as

156 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

the For the time being it served as council

the tsar with pipe and brandy at hand could

"Vonsulr his sea officers. 1 "

As the matter-of-fact Englishman relates, Peter seldom acted

having sonic experienced person point the way. ETCH

the Swedish officer of the bark was nursed and en-

"Charles van \Verdc, an ingenious man, he persuaded

to into his service/ 1 Other Swedish prisoners were made

to at the foundations of the new town. Still others were

as the English officer observed, to distant settle-

ments. Soon Swedish prisoners of war were to appear on the

roads the Streltsi had followed, to Siberia.

Peter's first exploration of the site of Petersburg would have

most men. Soundings taken down the channel of

the Neva showed only eight feet of water not enough to

full-size frigates. Digging along the marshy shores struck

water at two feet. Still Peter insisted that large vessels could

be manhandled down the channel and armed at the Island of

Ivronslot (Kronstadt). Stones gathered Into massive crates

\vere sunk into the marshes, and piles driven, to serve as

foundations for buildings. Building stone was transported

laboriously by water from the Volga, and good timber from

Kazan.

For in this undertaking Peter followed the advice of no one.

Here was a permanent rressburg, a greater Archangel, a port

free from Ice six -months in the year, opening into the Baltic

the sea upon which, at whatever hazard, his fleet-to-be could

sail.

Hither Peter recalled Mr. Cruys of Amsterdam, the ship-

yard master, then at work with Dutch shipwrights at Voro-

nezh on the Don which led to the far southern seas. Cruys,

now vice-admiral, was put in charge of the fleet to be born

in the swamps of Petersburg.

Winds from the west and from the west blew gales almost

without cessation drove the gulf waters into the Neva's

mouth, flooding and destroying the works around Petersburg.

There was no stopping such floods. Peter ordered the shore

works rebuilt and the town dwellings reinforced.

THE TOUR OF AND INVASION 157

To his hope of a haven on this gray river he clung with all

his tenacity. No one else had ventured to build a city

Cattle could not graze on the barren soil Food had to' be

ferried up from the markets of Pskov or Novgorod. But it

was a haven of rest, a long, long journey from the

walls of the Kremlin. Peter called it "my paradise."

Work upon his paradise was carried on, the

tells as, "by a vast number of hands." Actually it done

by human hands. Tools lacked. Dirt was carried in coats or

kaftans.

Finns of the countryside, peasant soldiers and prisoners,

slaved to fill up a morass. Their bodies strained ice

and wind and water. They died from typhus and from starva-

tion, and their bodies were shoved into the swamps. No one

kept count of the bodies.

When a flood came the survivors grieved more for the cattle

that had been lost than for the humans, because the cattle had

. meant food. When men die by the thousands, death becomes

meaningless.

"For all of us," the Old Believers among them said, "life

is drawing to a close."

Peasants said that the new calendar foreshadowed the end

of the world. When Time itself was changed, the end could

not be far off.

There were portents in the sky. On frosty nights white

flames raced up the northern sky. In the summer no darkness

came at night only a gray twilight.

Old men said that blind vampires walked in the rain-soaked

forest, whining for the blood of the dead. The bylmi singers

hung their heads; they could not make a merry song of the

mist that touched them with the cold fingers of the dead. Only

in the gallery of the tavern German musicians played their

horns. In the church the tsar himself sang the Kyrie eleison

with a full throat.

"Before the Judgment Day," wandering priests said, "will

come Antichrist to preach to the listeners with a melodious

voice."

It was said by the campfires and in the forest that Antichrist

had come among them in the shape of the tsar.

THE CITY AND

The Variags, the first rulers of Rus, had held this

end of the Did Peter of such an ancient time?

Did he he stared into the wind-driven mist, of the

red sails that had put into rivers such as

this?

Did he wonder if the Swedes who faced him now were not

the reincarnation of those same Variags?

talked only of roads to be opened, iron to be found,

to be cut for the new council house to be called the

Admiralty. Down along the Livonian shore Sheremet'ev's

and Kalmuks gutted the villages. "By Your Majesty's

good fortune;' Sheremet'ev wrote, "we have destroyed the

land utterly, except for the port of Revel."^

Narva itself was besieged again. This time the task was

given to George Ogilvy. When the fortress was stormed, his

officers lost control of the troops, who tore into the houses

killing and looting. Peter arrived there two hours after the

capture and tried to stop the bloodshed,, without success.

With Narva in his hands a town built of stone with a serv-

iceable harbor fronting the sea Peter allowed no cessation of

the labor upon Petersburg. Narva communicated easily by the

Narova River with Lake Peipus and the frontier terminal of

Pskov, Petersburg communicated only roundabout with Nov-

gorod and the south. Yet the tsar would not give up his project

of the new city.

He bestowed on Alexashka the title of governor of Peters-

burg. The first foreign merchant vessel to find its way in, past

Swedish guard ships and through the shoals, was greeted by

the favorite himself, who gave the captain a purse of gold

coins and a handful of silver to each man of the crew.

And the next year, to the surprise of the Europeans, a peace

feeler came from Moscow. The war could be ended and peace

made with Gharles, it seemed, at the small price of Petersburg

and the region around it.

Charles refused.

In this offer Peter's mind can be read clearly. All in all his

new army had justified itself, or at least redeemed itself. At

that moment he was willing to stop hostilities to be able to

TOUR OF EUROPE AND INVASION 159

proceed with the building of Petersburg. At timeIn 1705

he took no account of the schemes of Patkul but followed

an Instinct of caution, hearing that Charles was preparing to

move against Moscow. Perhaps then he showed wisest.

For Petersburg must have meant to him not merely access to

the sea but the building of a city for the future in Rus. This

was to be Ms milieu, the ground on which he would stand, for-

ever apart from the archaic Kremlin. It was to be In fact the

ground of a greater conflict than the military duel with

Charles the conflict between Peter and the majority of his

own people.

For no nation until then had tried to thrust its city

out Into foreign territory.

When Peter did visit Moscowand by then he In al-

most constant motion between Petersburg, Livonia, Poland,

and Moscow he staged one of the strangest of all his specta-

cles. For three days and nights sessions were held In the

Sloboda, concerning which ordinary folk In Moscow heard

only the gossip of the Imperial footmen.

Yet the gossip gave details that made Christian folk cross

themselves hurriedly and spit three times. It seemed that Peter

Alexelvlch was no longer content with his renegade patriarch,

the aged Zotov.

Peter had made Zotov head of an All-Drunken Council.

Now he had promoted Zotov to be prince-pope of a Solemn

Conclave. To a hidden sanctum Zotov was escorted by King

Romodanovsky, and the Whispering Favorite that was Men-

shikov with Zotov himself astride a wine butt hauled by four

oxen.

Within the sanctum all the solemn counselors seated them-

selves on wine kegs, while four stutterers gave orations. Each

time the venerable prince-pope said, "Reverends, open mouths

and swallow, and you shall hear and utter fine things," the

listeners drank a goblet of brandy.

And what solemn discussion came before this conclave, as

the tsar called it? Why, they were gathered to elect a new

prince-pope. But instead of doing so they argued about which

brand of wine was best!

160 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

the tsar notes on the

he he-who had eyes and

to him the of Rus was noting

talk by his favorites, after he made them

lie it was only possible to whisper

the 1 loly Church, for which he had named

no as

While the mock conclave circulated in

Moscow, was more certainty about the mockery of a

For back from the Livonian campaign had came with

the a girl named sometimes Marta, and more vaguely

the Skavronskaya. This girl had been the servant of a Lutheran

who, finding that soldiers visited her of nights, had

her off to a Swedish life-guardsman . . . this girl en-

livened the nights of a lowly Muscovite officer before she

caught the eye of the general From Sheremet'ev's quarters she

quickly enough to the Whispering Favorite himself,

and he shared her with the tsar, after the old habit they had of

sharing such things.

Some spokesmen held that Marta or Skavronskaya was no

more than a dumpy, quiet peasant lass with an eye for pennies.

Others swore that the eighteen-year-old girl delighted men a

true daughter of the regiments. Certainly she had fine quarters

in Menshikov's palace, and she had borne Peter a son.

Marta herself made no appearance in public. She nursed her

son quietly enough In the Sloboda palace, cherished by the

great favorite and his imperial master.

Some people doubted whether Peter meant to mock the an-

cient tsarksas by the presence of this peasant girl. He seemed

to dote on his new infant son.

Poltava

Time, that had favored Moscow at the start of the struggle

with the Swedes, now worked against the eastern power.

Ships, roads, depots, stock piles of munitions were building,

and armies growing thrusting down from the Livonian coast

toward Riga, penetrating Poland. This enormous accumula-

TOUR OF AND INVASION" l6l

of men and material appeared to break down, than

to achieve victory and end the war.

In Poland the force of Charles's personality and the quality

of the smaller Swedish armies prevailed. On the

itself Charles is the man with a single purpose, Peter the

and vacillating leader. For a moment it as if part of the

Swedes under Rehnskjold must be annihilated by

and Saxons closing in on them. Then the Russians are lying

dead, all but a few fugitives, and the Saxons are broken.

Peter, unable to understand what is happening, orders

Ogilvy to withdraw all forces from Poland. The Scot

to retreat, and Alenshikov is given supreme command. Then

Alenshikov is almost cut off at a river, with Swedish

closing in on him.

"Abandon the guns," Peter commands. Leaving their artil-

lery, the Russians get across the river and escape through the

Pripet Marshes, back to their own frontier.

Poland, devastated and divided, elects a monarch sponsored

by the Swedes. The ingenious Patkul, whose land of Livonia

is now a waste, is caught and imprisoned. Even Moscow's

allies in fragmented Poland agree to terms of peace, secretly,

with Charles.

Betweenwhiles, Peter hurries up to his paradise on the

Neva.

Again Moscow's emissaries try to influence the great courts

of Europe to intervene. Versailles is cold, and Constantinople

mocking.

Andrei Matviev, the son of Little Sergy, is sent to Amster-

dam, where he finds the Dutch, like the English, hostile to

Moscow's new military power. Matviev is instructed to offer

at need a bribe even to Marlborough to espouse Moscow's

cause. "As much as one thousand English pounds." Peter adds

his word: "If he wishes a principality, let him have Kiev or

Vladimiror Siberia."

But the peace must secure Petersburg to Moscow. Peter is

willing to give up either of the two ancient capitals of Rus, or

the little-known territory beyond the Urals. Petersburg he

will not give up.

Neither Marlborough nor Charles will listen to rewards or

H$$ THE CITY AXD THE TSAR

Peter of staying away from the

OH his river, and adds, U I will agree on a peace with the

tsar in Moscow/*

Now Charles toward Moscow. He has Poland quiet

liven the Prussian barons have made their peace

him. On New Year's Day of 1708 his field army crosses

the Vistula on the ice, moving eastward.

Across the Polish and Lithuanian rivers his Swedes advance.

him the Russian commands retreat. One of their armies

is and badly lacerated.

Peter, hurrying down from his new city, shaking with ma-

fever, is with his troops. They hold a council of "faithful

of our own people, not of foreign fools."

They have lost the war in Poland. Diplomacy has failed

them. Wealth and supplies poured into the west no longer

serve to give Charles pause. Although he has got rid of Ogilvy,

Peter has not forgotten the Scot's warning, "You can not de-

feat the Swedish army."

A new danger confronts him rebellion spreading in the

south, as will presently appear.

But in six years Peter and his Russians have learned much

from the enemy about war. They now command veteran

troops in massive divisions that can be relied upon to stand

their ground. And above all Peter has learned that he has

nothing at his command to match the inexorable skill of

Charles, Lowenhaupt, and Rehnskjold in a decisive battle. He

does not make the mistake now of trusting his own skill or the

greater numbers of his Russians. He has three times as many

men. But he will not rely upon that.

At the council in midsummer 1708 the Russians decide to

retreat further, burning villages and destroying crops behind

them, to leave the Swedes a barren country to enter. In Mos-

cow the people start to fortify the suburbs.

Yet Charles will not follow them. His commands push for-

ward a little, reach the devastated area, and pause. It is now

Charles's turn to make the decision, whether to drive at Mos-

cow straight through Smolensk, or to hold what lies behind

him, around the Baltic. His generals insist that the Swedes

TOUR OF AND 1NVASIOX 163

advance no farther. Lowenhaupt is up from

the Baltic strong reserves of and the heavy supply

They want to wait for the reinforcement*

The one thing Charles cannot bring himself to do is to re-

treat. He does not take Moscow into account. His purpose is

to find and break the Russian army to win the man-to-man

duel with Peter and then to make peace on his terms.

He does not follow into the devastated area* he

south down the Dnieper, if he has a plan, more the in-

stinct of a lighter, he will not explain it to his officers. Perhaps

he believes that the main Russian army follow him, per-

haps he intends to shift from the desolate north to the fertile

Ukraine, where his troops can be supplied; he hopes

for support in the area of the rebellion .MOSCOW, of

which he has been informed by now.

So without waiting for Lowenhaupt he starts sooth from

Moghilev, through the rain-soaked forests toward the open

steppe. The distances dwarf the narrow spaces of the Baltic.

The only inhabited places are villages, not comfortable towns.

The cold of that winter is terrifying, killing off the trans-

port and artillery horses. Cannon have to be abandoned along

the line of march. Surgeons work constantly, amputating

frozen feet. At times it seems as if wood will not burn under

the blight of the subzero frost. Charles will not put his men

into winter quarters, and they follow him because they have

always followed him and because he has always proved to be

invincible. . . . "Sometimes we have to do extraordinary

things to win," he tells his men. They think he may be insane

because he has read to him old Norse sagas, wherein eastern

sorcerers were vanquished by Norse heroes.

Lowenhaupt is cut off by the Russians and fights his way

through to Charles with little more than a brigade surviving,

after burning the vital supply train.

The Russians are following somewhere to the east, but

Charles feels for their main strength in vain. He leads small

columns out, accomplishing miracles in small engagements.

He turns sharply east into the Ukraine after the spring thaw,

moving between Kiev and Voronezh, where are Russian ware-

houses and shipyards.

164 THK <:ITV AND THE TSAR

At the of Poltava, almost on the border of Russia

proper, lie to capture the walled town. Again his offi-

cers his judgment. They want to retreat during

the months* Charles will not retreat.

This he does draw the main Russian strength. The

appear along the .river on the other side of the town. It

Is the scene "of Narva again, hot with the Swedes in the

and the Russians approaching to relieve the town.

They move with extreme caution.

When they cross the river, they entrench themselves in a

resting" upon the river. This square cannot be taken in

WheiTthey move, they advance the trenches also. They

than" twice the numbers of the wearied Swedes,

four times the force in artillery. The powder of the Swedes

has suffered from the weatherthe explosion of the guns

sounds like handclapping. The Russian guns fire more rapidly

they were designed by a French engineer.

On the last day Charles is wounded in the foot and has to

be carried around in a litter. He gives the command to Rehn-

skjold. Learning of this, the Russians advance their lines closer

to Poltava.

The Swedish army cannot retreat now. It attacks with a

desperation that carries it into the Russian lines.

On this day Peter moves about calmly under fire. He has

left the command to his generals. They have little to do. The

new artillery blasts the heart out ,of the Swedish attack by

decimating the Guards division. The Russian reserves close 'in

from the sides, almost surrounding the surviving regiments.

In a few hours the Swedish infantry ceases to exist except

as prisoners or dead. Two days later the survivors of the Swed-

ish cavalry are caught pinned against the Dnieper which they

could not cross. About fifteen hundred horsemen get across,

taking Charles with them to safety in Turkish territory.

The remainder of the cavalry surrenders. There is nothing

left of the Swedish army except the fugitives in Turkey.

At Poltava Sweden lost more than a battle. It lost its hegem-

ony over the Baltic, held since the generation of Gustavus

Adolphus. Swedish resources had been strained to put that last

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AXD THE INVASION 165

army into the field, and there was nothing left of it,

ships remained in the Baltic and Swedish the

ports like Riga. Yet in its exhaustion the Swedish had

become like Poland, holding to a dominion without

to sustain it.

At the same time Muscovite military power

to the point where it might control the eastern Baltic and

Europe itself. How far that power would penetrate and what

form it would take remained to be seen.

After Poltava Peter showed himself magnanimous to the

Swedish commanders. He entertained them at dinner Rehn-

skjold, the Prince of \\Tirtemburg, Hamilton, and the others

with simple courtesy. When a Swedish officer slight-

ingly of Charles, Peter reproved him. i4 Is he not your king? I

might well have been defeated as lie is now."

He offered the weary Swedes a toast: u To my in

the art of war."

These same distinguished Swedish officers were dum-

founded when they were taken as guests into a hastily built

wooden palace at Moscow. It was hung with banners and

manned by a strange guard of honor consisting of jesters bear-

ing silvered halberds, resembling much the ornate axes uplifted

during an audience by the magnificent Varangian Guards of

earlier tsars of Muscovy. Yet upon the dais in the hall of audi-

ence here sat an unknown old man,, white-bearded and fierce,

who was called king and also Romodanovsky.

Before this same Romodanovsky the three great Russian

commanders bowed in turnfirst Sheremet'ev, who said as if

making a report, "By God's grace and the good fortune of

Your Tsarian Majesty, I have been able to vanquish the Swed-

ish army."

Then the elegant Menshikov, bowing: "By God's grace,

and the good fortune of Your Tsarian Majesty, I have been

able to take General Lowenhaupt and his army captive at

Perevolotka." 4

Third came the true tsar, reporting as Colonel Peter Alex-

eivich, commander of a regiment. "By God's grace and the

good fortune of Your Tsarian Majesty, my regiment and I

fought and prevailed at Poltava."

1 66 THE CITY AND THE

After that the bewildered Swedes were requested to march

past the old man, who stared at like a Tatar with mall-

exultation, At the banquet that followed, the mock tsar

and summoned the mock colonel to Ms table as, a

of distinction.

But did not a colonel for long after Poltava.

Menshikov he raised to the rank of field marshal On his

account he accepted promotion to the grade of lieuten-

ant general and vice admiral To the Russian admiral at Peters-

he sent an exultant message, "Now with God's help are

the "foundations of Petersburg laid for all time."

Those foundations had been weak as water. Peter had

up by every expedient. The Englishman's log-

of famous shipwrights imported from the Thames:

"About this time Richard Browne arrived from England, who

served Mr. Harding that built the Royal Sovereign and has

since . . . built the Tsar several ships from 1 6 to 90 guns that

vie with the best In Europe for the part that concerns the

builder. . . . When the fortifications at Kronslot [Kron-

stadt] were brought to a finished state, the Rus frigates and

barks used yearly to descend the river and lie in a half moon

under cover of the artillery. The Swedish fleet would come

and bombard them, but never made a bold attack. . . . Had

they once pushed in, the batteries could have done little dam-

age, and the few ships might easily have been destroyed the

Russians expecting no less."

And again: "The Tsar proceeded to augment the navy with

sundry galleys. About 1708 he set up two ships of 52 guns

each on the Ladoga Lake under the care of Mr. Brent."

To make the Neva navigable for larger vessels, Peter re-

moved bodily all the multitude then at work digging through

the hills between the Volga and Don, and started them. on a

new canal out of Lake Ladoga.

In far-off Astrakhan a governor named Apraksin had en-

deared himself to Peter by building some vessels on the Cas-

pian that could actually weather storms. Forthwith Peter ap-

pointed Apraksin, a jovial soul with a knack of getting things

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 167

doneand so congenial to Peteran admiral and transferred

to the new city.

Before Poltava, this same Admiral Apraksin wrote Peter

that the Swedes had tried to capture Ms city and had failed.

They had attempted an amphibious landing near Kronstadt

and had been driven off by the Russians.

Nothing could have delighted Peter more. In all sincerity,

after Poltava, he answered that he felt his city to be secure.

As always with Peter, his conviction whipped up immedi-

ate activity. 4i Hc was to struggle ... in carrying on such

stupendous work in a new-settled country, 5 * the English sea-

man's log relates, "all marshes and wilderness, producing noth-

ing for the subsistence of the multitude of men in continual

employment. All supplies for that purpose [were] brought

from old Russia."

Forty thousand men were laboring there by then. Since

horses died off, Peter directed that, as in Venice, residents were

to make their way around in small boats. Since building stone

still lacked, every vessel entering the new river port was to

carry ballast of stone. Every boyar, master of more than five

hundred serfs, was required to build one stone house in Peters-

burg.

More than that. It was told in the Red Place at Moscow that

the boyars and merchants themselves would be ordered to the

new city. The tsar himself had carved an ivory screen for the

church in his city, and had hung the captured Swedish banners

from its walls. Families as well as food were being uprooted

from "old Russia."

Very clearly the folk of Moscow understood that the tsar

meant his new city to reign over Rus, and to abandon Holy

Mother Moscow entirely.

Revolt of the Southern Frontier

It broke out first among the Bashkirs of the southeast, and

then spread like a conflagration in the dry steppe to distant

Astrakhan on the Caspian. Along the old Volga frontier the

embers of Stenka Razin's revolt of thirty-five years before-

quickened in the conflagration.

TIHC CITY AND THE TSAR

in 1 707, the I lost of the Don rose against the authority

of Mosetw* There a Cossack, Bulavin, rook the leadership of

the as had done.

For two years ic as if the outbreak In the south

Moscow, at the crisis of the war with the

Tlie of Moscow had never been firmly established

liver the central Urals, the lower Volga, or the Don. As in

Siberia, fortified government posts studded the territories.

These tried to carry on trade and collect customs tolls.

The folk of the land, Bashkirs, Mordvas, Tatars of the Volga,

of the Don, acknowledged the overlordship of the

Great Master in Moscow, and for the most part followed their

way of life otherwise. Peter's brief journeys to Azov,

down the Don, had hardly brought him into contact with

them; his project of the Don- Volga canal had been abandoned,

his development of the ports on the Don had languished.

But after the start of the Swedish war, Moscow had sought

desperately to get metals by developing the iron and copper

mines in the Urals even exploring pits in the steppe where the

Genoese had once operated smelting furnaces. Gangs of "mine

serfs*' had been transported to the new workings.

The penetration of their grazing lands by Muscovite wagon.

trains and labor gangs reacted on the Bashkirs. That patri-

archal, seminomad folk, Finnish-Mongol by race, existed by

netting the streams and grazing cattle in their open rolling

hills.

Unlike the dark secretive Mordvas, the horse-riding Bash-

kirs did not cultivate the rich earth. Colonists from Moscow

had been their latent enemy. They were still bound to the

mullahs of Islam, if not to the mosques. But old instinct moved

them at times to sacrifice white horses to forgotten gods; with

the coming of grass in the spring they got drunk, not on wine

but on the foaming mare's milk, fermented in leather sacks.

Stirred by their mullahs to resist the new exploitation of their

land, their small armies of horsemen struck against the Mus-

covite posts. They kept the field for nearly five years, inter-

fering with all transport to and from the Urals.

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 169

Nearer than the Bashkirs, around Kazan the Mordva and

Tatar villages were roused by governmental timber cutting and

grain confiscation. When a young and callous agent from Mos-

cow without other visible authority tried to commandeer

Tatar horse herds, the tribal leaders protested bitterly. "If the

Great Master desires aid from us in his war," they stated, "let

him call for the legal quota of riders armed for war, and they

shall be sent in obedience to his command. We will not sur-

render our horses."

The herds were essential to their tribal economy. Yet an

attempt was made to take them, and Tatar horsemen were soon

embroiled with Muscovite troops.

Down the mighty Volga the folk took to arms for a quite

different reason. This great waterway of trade and brigandage

had developed a pulsing life of its own, shared by fisherfolk

and Kalmuks who trundled their Buddhist shrines in carts

along the banks. Like the Mississippi in America a century

later, the Volga had its floating population, dwelling on rafts

and barges, as restless as the river itself. It had its own songs-.

This population fought back at the press gangs 'that sought out

"masterless men" to cart them off to the training camps or

canal digging. "Out with you," the Volga folk cried at tax-

gatherers and recruiters. "This is our land, and we don't want

you on it."

Once the rising started, outlaws flocked in to the river bends,

raiding the shipping. Peasants burned the houses of their land-

lords. Townsfolk rioted against the soldiery now clad in Ger-

man uniforms.

They all lacked discipline and adequate firearms. Moreover,

lacking leadership, the Volga population was not able to unite

with the Bashkirs and Tatars. Each revolt clung to its own

area.

Down at the Volga's mouths, the population of Astrakhan

rose against the Muscovite tax collectors and its own governor

Apraksin being by then in Petersburg. Remnants of the

Streltsi joined the rising. The people refused to accept the new

"German customs" such as shearing off their beards and dress-

ing their bodies in vests and breeches. (The governor had

protested to Moscow that he could not force the men of As-

THE CITY AND THE TSAR

to a fine of ten kopeks when they appeared in the

unshavcd; and as for putting on Euro-

they Siad none. But Moscow could not revoke

the law* The governor one of the first to be killed by the

mob.)

To the men of Astrakhan these new ways smacked of her-

They had never seen the tsar. In their confused minds the

tsar Eke the Church, the visible administrator of the

power of God* "Evil comes not from the tsar," they com*

44 but from his favorites."

The Volga uprising crippled transport along the river to

Moscow. And Moscow was caught in a dilemma. At that time

Its were evacuating Poland. The Razriad, fearing inva-

sion by the Swedes, dared not detach a strong military force

to pat down the Internal rebellion. On the other hand, the

frontier garrisons could no longer check the revolt.

Moscow found an ingenious solution for the Volga trouble.

Its field marshal, Sheremet'ev, the hero of the northern war,

was sent out to the area of rebellion with only two regiments

but with plenty of banners and drums. As the spokesman of

the tsar, he quieted the Volga by his personal Influence rather

than by force. At Astrakhan Sheremet'ev executed only the

ringleaders, taking about two hundred hostages back with him

to Moscow in time to prepare for the final campaign against

Charles.

In December 1707 Cornelius Le Bruyn, returning to Mos-

cow after a long absence in Persia, saw something of the end

of the Volga uprising. "On the first of December thirty per-

sons were beheaded for being concerned in the massacre at

Astrakhan. This execution, which was performed about noon,

lasted but little more than half an hour, and was accomplished

without any disorder, the malefactors laying their heads very

quietly on the block without being bound by cords.

"Three days later Prince Menshikov gave a splendid enter-

tainment. ... On the sixth the tsar arrived at Moscow about

noon, under a discharge of all the cannon on the ramparts, and

was received with universal joy, after an absence of two years

[at Petersburg and the last campaign in northern Poland]

TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 171

... he assured me he was greatly pleased to see me again in

his dominions . . . the princess, his sister, presented me with

a little vermilion glass of brandy. The tsar made a sign to me

to approach him, and commanded me to give a brief relation

of my travels, particularly of the court of Persia and of the

ladies of the seraglio. . . .

"The first day of the year 1708 was celebrated with rejoic-

ings and a fine firework in the great square ... Ms Tsarian

Majesty gave an entertainment in the house of Monsieur

Lefort which at present belongs to Prince Menshikov who

has greatly embellished it ... seventy more of the principal

rebels of Astrakhan were beheaded; five were broken on the

wheel, and forty-five were afterward hanged."

The Don Cossacks rose for a different reason.

So. far Peter had not been greatly concerned with the Treas-

ury. "It is not my task to raise money," he assured the officers

of finances, "it is yours," Peter did levy some taxes on his own

account, more as penalties than anything else. For example 'he

did not want the Old Believers persecuted around Moscow; he

imposed double taxation on them. So likewise his subjects of

note who kept their beards had to pay a beard tax. (Once

Peter amused himself by going around with some companions

and measuring the beards of all they met, collecting kopeks

accordingly.)

To meet the growing cost of the war, the harassed Treasury

invented new taxes, on "double eagle" or stamped paper, on

stoves even on dice and chess sets. "We can't amuse our-

selves without paying for it," the people complained. Other

measures were not amusing. Monopolies of the state increased,,

to include such things as potash and rhubarb. Silver coins run-

ning short, token coins were issued, made from brass imported

through Archangel; even the gold was imported from China,

and found to be inferior. In the markets people took to

leather tokens, to pass among themselves. The value of the

new state money, measured against grain, was less than half

that of the prewar coins.

With this depreciated money, the grain, beef, and fruit of

the south was bought at fixed prices. Masterless men were

172 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

for the new canals and roads as well as the

army.

A of population began, out of the central region

the steppe. To the usual steady stream of

from state lands, and segments of Old Be-

of deserters and kabalniki debt-ridden

There was no serfdom on the fertile soil of the Don. With

this migration the Serf Bureau straggled helplessly.

was made on the Don Cossacks to bar out all fugitives

without The Cossack council would not yield up its

right of sanctuary. The fighting that began at the

frontier spread rapidly,

"We hold to the ancient Faith," Kondraty Bulavin, the

Cossack leader, declared. "We go against the owners of men

and soil, and against profiteers and Germms?

Underlying even this outbreak was the thrust and pull of

the still varied peoples of Rus. Peter, and In consequence Mos-

cow, was forcing the population and its suppliesnorth and

west, into the new armies or toward Petersburg. While the

popular migration had set in toward the "wild lands" in the

south and east.

In Bulavin the revolt had a leader who was also a soldier,,

and in the Host of the Don it had a rudimentary army. Mos-

cow tried to suppress the Don rising by the expedient that had

worked on the Volga. Prince Yury Dolgoruky was sent to the

area with two regiments hurriedly in the summer of 1707.

Bulavin annihilated this command with its leader that fall.

By the next summer, in May 1708, the Don Cossacks had

taken Cherkask, within two days' ride of Kiev, and were men-

acing Azov and Taganrog. By crossing to the Volga they

might unite with the Bashkirsso the Razriad in Moscow real-

izedand throw the whole southern steppe into rebellion. At

Cherkask the Don Host was in touch with the always restless

Zaporogians of the Dnieper.

And it was precisely toward the lower Dnieper that Charles

was turning then with the still undefeated army of Sweden.

TOUR OF EUROPE AND INVASION 173

On July 4 the Swedes defeated the Russians holding the ap-

proach to the Dnieper. (At this time Peter and his council

decided to withdraw, scorching the earth behind the armies,

and to fortify Moscow.)

A division of the regular army had been hurried down into

the Ukrainian steppe to hold Bulavin in check. Then, in July,

good news came in from the Urals. A .Russian general, who

had been sent to the tent city of the powerful Kalmuk khan,

down by the Caspian, had been able to enlist the horsemen of

Asia. With ten thousand Kalmuks he had swept up the Volga

and broken the back of the Bashkir revolt.

And in that same critical month of July the expedition of

Russian regulars broke up Bulavin's two armies of irregulars,

one in the upper Ukraine and one near Azov.

The danger was still great, however, in the months before

Poltava.

Mezeppa and Charles

Old and sagacious, Ivan Mazeppa, hetman of the Ukraine,

had waited long to decide where his advantage lay. As the suc-

cessor of Samoilovich (exiled to Siberia), he had been en-

trusted by Peter with the defense of the Ukraine against the

Swedes, if they should turn that way.

But Mazeppa, while sending regular reports to the tsar, was

in secret communication with Charles. Peter had trusted him

stubbornly, even when advised against him. When two Cos-

sack officers had testified before Peter that Mazeppa commu-

nicated with the Swedes, Peter had refused to believe them

and had turned them over to the veteran hetman whom he had

admired. Mazeppa had been entertained royally on his visits

north, and had been favored by Peter sometimes eating at

the tsar's table above any others except Menshikov and

Sheremet'ev.

Ukrainian affairs being then in Menshikov's hands, the

adroit Whispering Favorite and the aged hetman had gained

a cordial dislike for each other one being devoted to Mos-

cow's authority, the other representing the weakening Cos-

sack autonomy. Probably Mazeppa, who had conspired with

174 TIIK OTY A THE TSAR

the of and the chieftains of the Zaporogian Host,

still Peter as an impetuous boy, but he feared

Mcnshikov.

And Mazeppa seems to have been divided within himself

one side of him the builder of churches and universities in the

Ukraine, attached to the memories of Kiev, the ancient city of

and splendor the other side scheming for his own

Fame he had, and a craving for wealth. His class was

the new and dominant class within the Ukraine, of the richer

who had amassed lands and were buying up the

sen-ices of the peasantry. These were the starsblna^ military

officers and great landowners as well

Against the starshina the small Cossack farmers and fighters

felt growing antagonism. They had a song:

Evil is ours. Not the of old

But the toil troubles us.

We walk when sleep 'white sitting,

Carrying our to our labor-

When our labor is done, we haw naught but otir tears.

On the Don this class of landowners had not joined In

Bulavin 's revolt. Mazeppa, In his effort to deceive the Russians,

made some pretense of acting against the rebels on the Don.

For Bulavin In attacking the landlords was attacking

Mazeppa's class.

Nor did the Zaporogians join themselves to Bulavin. Monks

from Kiev visited them In their war encampment on the Dnie-

per and besought them to remain quiet. The restless Zaporo-

gians gathered In their war encampment hidden among the

islands of the Dnieper. They had hatred for Mazeppa, who, In

their minds, had sold himself to the tsar, to Moscow and serf-

dom. But' the monks from the cave monastery of Kiev held

them passive, under fear of God.

So in midsummer the steppe waited, separated by its cleav-

ages, uncertain where to look for support. When his main

forces were defeated, Kondraty Bulavin killed himself in

Cherkask. His following divided, part escaping through the

Kalmuk grazing lands to the Kuban River under the heights

of the Caucasus, part migrating into Tatar territory.

TOUR OF AND INVASION 175

Caught in this human vortex, Ivan Mazeppa sifted ail re-

from the north, conjecturing whether Charles could pre-

vail over the retreating amiics of Moscow. When the tsar

an urgent demand for Mazeppa to join him, the old

reported himself gravely ill. By way of evidence he prepared

to be carried to Kiev, to receive the last or priests.

(For Mazeppa remained at heart an Orthodox believer,

detested the Innovations of the Muscovite court.)

News reached him that the Swedes were entering the

steppe. That decided Mm, He sent an offer of alliance to

Charles, agreeing to supply the Swedish army in the Ukraine.

In some way the agents of Moscow heard of this* And this

time Peter did not doubt the report. "After all years," he

observed, "that old Judas would betray me on his deathbed!"

Menshikov was dispatched to fine! the hetman. But the

"dying hetman" had warning of the favorite's approach. This

was in October. He rode day and night with a following of

barely four thousand men, to pin Charles with little more

than his battle standard.

For a few days Mazeppa was able to supply the Swedes

from his base at Baturin. Then Menshikov's army destroyed

the town of Baturin, to the last shed and woman and child.

Ten days later the Swedish advance reached Baturin. Not a

sack of powder or loaf of bread remained there. Charles

passed on, to the south along the road to Poltava.

When word of Mazeppa's desertion went through the

Ukraine, his name was cursed and his body dragged in effigy

through the streets of Kiev, In the ancient capital, that had

infused the Moscow of Alexis with its culture, the religion of

older days still kept its strength, and there the folk felt that

Mazeppa had turned against his Church by allying himself

with pagan invaders.

The Swedes gained little aid from him. 5 A little more they

had from the Zaporogians who joined them after Mazeppa.

Before the Swedish army could reach the base of the Zapo-

rogians, at the siech below the rapids of the Dnieper, it was

captured by a Russian column.

After the battle of Poltava, Mazeppa escaped down the

Dnieper with Charles in a small boat. The old hetman and the

176 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

of Europe reached Turkish territory safely, with

no than a of gold and a small following. In little

a month Mazcppa died, first bestowing his gold on

who was now cut off from all contact with Sweden.

Down the Dnieper after them drifted the saicks of the sur-

viving Xaporogians, exiles, only able to rebuild their siech

the protection of the Krim Tatars.

With the Swedes and Cossacks out of the way it was a

for a Muscovite army corps to end the resistance

of the Bashkirs at the other end of the arc of the frontier.

For two summers Moscow had been in actual danger when

forts had been built hastily on the Hill of the Swallows and

the remnants of the Streltsi had been called to arms again.

The from the revolt along the frontier had been as

as from the army of Sweden.

Victory over Charles's command did not ease the memory

of the danger.

Penetration of the Ukraine cmd the Baltic

Retaliation for the revolt came slowly but very surely. It

really appeared to be no more than a slight and justifiable

shift of authority Into Moscow's agencies. The old rank of

hetman of the Ukraine was not restored after Mazeppa's

treachery except as a title, and later Peter abolished that. The

Siech, having fought against the tsar, was not tolerated again.

Garrisons left in the Ukraine were paid for by the inhabit-

ants. The Cossacks still kept their military institutions; but '

their commanders were first given estates by order of the tsar

thus joining the starshina class and more and more fre-

quently began to be named from officers resident in Moscow,

close to the tsar.

Very often Cossacks drafted for war duty found themselves

in labor battalions, around Petersburg, on the Ladoga canal, or

the Volga waterway, which was to connect the headwaters of

the Volga with Ladoga and so with Petersburg and the Baltic.

In later years one of their colonels made protest to the Rus-

sian authorities: "In the construction camps on the Ladoga

Canal many Cossacks are sick and dyingthe most common

TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION I""

fever and swelling of the feet. . . . The

in charge of the work give them no rest or holiday. . . Last

year only a third of them returned home. . . . Wherefore I

beseech you not to allow the Cossacks under my command to

perish on the canal works, and not to transfer them to other

places to undertake new tasks. . . Permit them to go to their

in early September, and do not keep them until the fall

rains."

There is a new note in this petition. The colonel does not

ask the authorities in Moscow to recognize any right of his

Cossacks to be released from service. He that they be per-

mitted to return to their homes before the autumn rains bring

new sickness.

In these few words can be sensed the passing of an epoch. It

is passing very gradually. The old saying, <4 The tsar reigns in

Moscow, the Cossack on the Don," is no longer heard. Of

course you can see the end of the epoch in the dramatic flight

down the Dnieper of Charles, the soldier of fortune who has

outlived his age, and Mazeppa, last of the hetmans or autono-

mous chieftains, and of the Siech, the free brotherhood of

warriors. All, if you will, have outlived their day. But they are

being replaced by the starshina class, compelling the Cossacks

more and more to work for owners, not for themselves. And

the new class of military nobility is being bound more and

more closely to the authority of Moscow.

Migrations, however, still continue from the forest to the

steppe, away from Moscow into the fertile breast of the

Ukraine, where the culture is that of the Polish nobility, the re-

ligion that of "the monks of Kiev." The roads thither are more

closely guarded now, and the silent migration detours toward

new "wild lands" beyond the Dnieper, beyond the Volga.

Presently one of the armies of Moscow will be engaged in

transporting Cossack families from the far west bank of the

Dnieper to the near east bank.

This active deportation attracts the notice of an English

envoy, Charles, Lord Whitworth, who is observing the situa-

tion after Poltava. Speaking of the Baltic as well as the Ukraine,

he writes: "It has been the old maxim of the Muscovite

178 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

in all wars to carry off as many of the

as and them on their own estates.' 1

will be the owner of 83,000 souls (in the

serfdom area). Menshikov will have more than

that.

As to Moscow Whitworth estimates that it is taxing

directly, and taking food and material from

424,000 Added up, then, a population of some 6,540,000

of the Urals and north of the steppe is contributing

or to Moscow during the war.

The revolt of the frontier regions has been broken

just as cruelly by the new military strength of Moscow. There

will be no open reaction against that military strength for a

long time. Resistance has, as it were, gone undergroundinto

endemic flight from the central area, and the mystical mutter-

of Old Believers and sect leaders who see "portents in the

sky."

Such hidden resistance will not affect Peter, but will trouble

his eldest son Alexis, bom of the Tsaritsa Eudoxia, now a nun.

The year after Poltava Moscow makes use of its great mili-

tary force. Its experienced armies move to the Baltic and take

one after the other the important seaports of Viborg in Fin-,

nish territory, Revel, and Riga itself. Tradition relates that

General Peter Alexeivich threw the first grenade into a re-

doubt at Riga, the "accursed city."

Exhausted Sweden can make no move to protect these ports

of the eastern Baltic.

The tsar will not abandon his city for the new and superior

ports. Viborg instead will be one guardian gateway to Peters-

burg, Revel the other. Riga will be the strongpoint of the new

western frontier, instead of the base for attack against Musco-

vite territory as in the past. (Actually Riga is the first Euro-

pean city to be absorbed by Moscow the first break, as it

were, into the ancient Riga-Constantinople axis, the line of

demarcation between the hinterland of Eurasia and the west-

ern peninsula called Europe.)

After Poltava, the western frontier of Moscow follows the

THE TOUR Of EUROPE AND THE INVASION 179

river Dvina in from Riga and jumps to the headwaters of the

Dnieper, following the Dnieper down yet not all the way to

its mouth as we have seen. This new frontier in its mid-section

is pushed only slightly west of the older frontier citadels of

Smolensk and Kiev, secured at such labor by the regime of

Alexis, Peter's father.

As yet Moscow has little force to exert on the Baltic where

Swedish shipping still dominates. In the south it has actually

lost forcedespite Peter's frigate that cruised to Constantino-

ple because the twin energetic Cossack Hosts are quiescent.

And because Peter himself has transferred Ms shipbuilding to

waters connecting with the Gulf of Finland.

In building Petersburg, to make it the capital of his empire,

he is taking a most dangerous step. He is placing his city of the

future not only on the new western frontier but at the edge

of the sea, and "so subject to attack by sea.

And precisely at that moment an incredible danger mani-

fests itself. Charles, defeated and wounded, separated from his

kingdom, does not think of surrendering anything. Charles,

who is nothing but the ghost of a Bayard, is preparing to carry

on the war alone. The legend of victory, it seems, still clings

to him.

Measured by realities, it seems futile for Charles to struggle

onone man against a growing empire. Yet reports from Con-

stantinople assure Peter that Charles rides along the Turkish

frontier with an honor escort of five hundred janizaries, with

.five hundred thalers to spend in a day. He is making a plan for

the padishah of the Turks to assail the Muscovites, for the

Krim khan to raid the steppe, and for Charles himself to rouse

the forces of reaction in Poland as he returns to muster his

strength again upon the Baltic.

The plan appears visionary, impossible to carry out. But is

it? Confronted by the utterly impractical, Peter, practical to

his very soul, cannot make up his mind.

With victory all but in his grasp-he needs only to go on

building ships, the very thing he desires most to do Peter can-

not put the ghost of Charles out of his mind.

The year after Poltava he makes his greatest mistake. Hav-

l8o THE CITY AND THE TSAR

ing the massive new armies ready and waiting at his command,

he takes the strongest of them and goes as General Peter Alex-

eivich to the "wild lands'" of the southwest to lay a ghost.

Invasion of the Wilderness

On a hot midsummer night Peter sat in his campaign tent

and wrote a letter. It was the second summer after Poltava

"the most glorious victory," as Peter liked to call it and he

addressed his letter to the council of the boyars in Moscow. It

read:

"I tell you thisby nobody's fault, except that we believed

false reports, I have been surrounded with my entire army by

a Turkish force seven times as strong. All routes by which we

might supply ourselves are cut. If God does not send extraor-

dinary help, I can see only defeat ahead. I may be captured by

the Turks. If that happens, do not think of me as your tsar

and gosudar; do not carry out commands written by my hand,

if I am not with you again in my person. If I die, and you are

certain of my death, then choose one of yourselves to succeed

me."

The letter was given to a Cossack, Ivan by name, who had

offered to take it through the enemy lines. When he had writ-

ten it Peter Alexeivich sat at his traveling desk, saying a few

words now and then to the German generals who wore deco-

rations on their white uniforms. A colonel in the red and

green, gleaming with silver facings, of the Transfiguration

Guards stood at the entrance, on duty. . . . His eyes hung on

the perspiring face of Hallart, who had been at Narva . . .

eleven years before, in the gray autumn storm. . . . Peter

hardly thought when he answered, knowing that he had noth-

ing, really, to say. He thought that he alone had been at

fault. . . .

His head pained as if from the atmospheric pressure of a

storm. A little while before a convulsion had lasted for a day

and a night, until Catherine had eased it by rubbing him until

he could sleep. A paroxysm, the surgeon in Amsterdam had

called it.

More and more he depended on the ministrations of Cath-

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION l8l

erine his new name for Marta, the girl of Marienburg, the

gift of Alenshikov.

His big body sagging in the chair, thirsting for brandy,

Peter tried to think back along the way he had come, to dis-

cover something that might be done to avert either fighting in

desperation, or surrender/The clear, practical part of his brain

told him that it would be useless to fight, when his army could

no longer move, or expect any aid. ...

How they had thronged around to praise him when he

came back from the Baltic coast. Some Poles had lined the

road beyond Minsk, to greet him. At the cathedral, where he

knelt for a blessing, he had let the report be spread that he

was going now against the enemies of Christendom.

Only in the damp marshes the attack had come, bringing

fever, weakening him, until he wrote to good Apraksin that he

did not know where this road would lead him. ... In the

past he had taken advice from Golovin, who was dead, and he

had told Alexashka what he wished done and Alexashka had

found a way, somehow, to do it. Now Alexashka was thou-

sands of versts distant in Petersburg. Even Mazeppa could

wriggle like a snake, crooked to a hole. . . .

This plan he made himself, to be carried out by himself

recalling Sheremet'ev from the north. He based it on reports

from Constantinople. The reports drew a clear picture of

janizaries becoming insubordinate, and the padishah himself a

worried, sick man: a new minister a wazir of the Turkish

Empire more favorable to the Russians than the old Kuprili

who had been persuaded so easily by Charles. Peter Tolstoy,

his own ambassador, wrote that the Christians of Bessarabia-

some of them Slavs awaited only the opportunity to rebel

against the Turkish yoke.

Peter's plan seemed simple as the move to Poltava. To send

the ten dragoon regiments ahead, to feel out. the way; to fol-

low rapidly with the twenty-eight regiments and supply train

as far as the Dniester, where the Christian rebels could supply

him from the new harvestonly the country proved to be

barren, with hungry villages were Peter looked for fat towns.

Devastated by war and a plague of locusts ...

At the Dniester River the foreign generals all voted against

1 82 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

going on. Almost they conld see the blue line of the Car-

pathians in the west, at sunset. There also lay the Danube, the

mighty water barrier- of Constantinople. How could Peter

turn back, with his army intact, after letting it be known that

he would strike a blow against the infidel Turks and dislodge

the evasive King of Sweden from his sanctuary behind these

rivers? . . . After two years it seemed clear that he could

never win peace in the north until Charles was captured or

brought to surrender. ... It did not seem as if Charles knew

the meaning of surrender.

Across the Dniester, the grass failed. Kantemir, the Mol-

davian hospodar, joined him with a few men, but without ade-

quate supplies as Mazeppa had joined Charles ... it was

impossible, yet events took shape around Peter as if he himself

were following the road Charles had followed to Poltava ...

supplies failing . . . Sheremet'ev, alone with him, saying that

only a thousand cattle remained to feed thirty-eight thousand

men, and the small army of camp followers Sheremet'ev was

sour about the personal servants and secretaries brought along

. . . the cattle were dying as grazing failed.

At the Pruth River the land twisted into a labyrinth of hills,

with marshes instead of fertile valleys beneath. . . . Peter

marched on foot some hours with the men of the column, and

worked himself with the teamsters. There were only cart trails

to follow, winding among huts . . . only Cossacks could fol-

low a route through such country, and no Cossack commands

accompanied him this time.

At the Pruth his generals heard of a depot of supplies across

the river. Peter selected Ronne with a cavalry division to

bring them in, and Ronne went on across the Pruth.

Ronne did not appear again. Instead pickets brought word

of horsemeja moving both to the north and south. They were

the Turks.

All his staff agreed silently when he gave the order to re-

treat. What else should he have donewith the river barrier

confronting him? The column wound back on its own track,

between the hills and the marshes. In all the countryside not a

single church spire or street of houses.

The very first day of the retreat, the dark masses of horse-

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION

men began to follow the flanks of the column, like wolves

waiting to rush in. The column, wearied and hungering,

turned toward a height to dig in and rest. On the height ap-

peared a horde of Tatars. The riders of the Krim khan had

joined the Turks. 6

For a while the column pushed on, beating off sweeps of

the horsemen with volleys. Then Peter agreed that they

should entrench themselves, around the wagons. Behind a

breastwork, they could defend themselves. What else could

be done, with that mass of men on foot, with dwindling sup-

plies, and the followers, and women?

On the hillocks across from the Russian camp the Turks

spread methodically, digging emplacements for cannon. . . .

When an assault was driven back they brought up more

cannon %

Then Peter wrote his letter for the Cossack, Ivan, to carry

to Moscow, if he could.

No matter how much Peter tortured his brain, he could

think of no escape for himself and his army. Perhaps they

could hold off the Turks for four or five days; after that, the

last food would be gone.

When the tension in his tired body grew unbearable, he left;

his officers and went to Catherine's tent. There he sipped a

little brandy and threw himself down, waiting for her to

loosen the collar of his uniform and stroke his head. She had

a way of quieting him this twenty-four-year-old peasant girl

who had been Marta Skavronskaya in the Livonian camps. She

had given him two daughters as well as the son who died. Even

pregnant, she could travel about at headlong pace with him,

drinking glass for glass with him, calm even during his worst

moods.

His Katya, broad and sunburned, did not wear her clothes

like the baroness, or De Lyon's wife, who had caught his eye

in Poland. Her clothes hung about her as if she were dressed

up for a costume ball. She did not complain when he found

another woman more amusing.

Now the baroness looked like a frightened scarecrow, and

184 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

De Lyon's wife wept, because of the heat and the bad meat.

Their voices turned shrill. Not so, with Katya.

Her fingers riffled through his short hair soothingly, and she

said nothing.

"It is bad," he ventured, conscious both of the throbbing

pain in his head and of the situation from which he could see

no way out.

"Now it is bad, Petrushka," she agreed. "But after a time it

will be better."

She did not say by God's will, or by the good fortune of the

tsar. She did not urge him, like the baroness, to do this or that.

Perhaps she had no thought how the terror of death or surren-

der could be averted. No, in Katya's mind it was clear only

that good came with evilthat she, a servant born, traveled

about like a tsaritsa, and that the army protecting them could

disintegrate into simple men who were afraid ... to* protect

her he had given her a fine European name, Catherine, and the

semblance of a marriage, and he had left some money with

Alexashka for her and the children ... she loved jewels, and

he had had a whole eagle fashioned for her, with dia-

monds. . . . ,

As she rubbed his forehead, he was conscious only of her

hard cool fingers and of her breathing. There was nothing in

Katya of the mockery of the great camp falling apart under

his eyes into bewildered men and useless things. . . .

In the heat of the afternoon they gathered around the car-

riage where the wounded Hallart sat. General Baron von

Osten's wife insisted on keeping her lacquered carriage, with

horses harnessed, near the commanders, and they talked low-

voiced. The foreign generals wanted to send out a flag of

truce, to learn what terms the Turks would grant. Peter made

no objection. Sheremet'ev grumbled. "Are they such fools to

take a little, when they could have everything on their own

terms in a week? What would we gain by asking for a truce?"

Still, he agreed to write the note to the Turkish wazir, to

be sent out under General Janus' flag.

As the foreign commanders were returning to their posts,

General Janus remarked, "Whoever planned this business of

the flag of truce ought to be the biggest fool on earth. But if

THE TOUR OF 'EUROPE AND THE INVASION 185

the Grand Wazir accepts our offer, situated as we are, Fd call

him the world's biggest fool"

The trumpeter and the flag-bearer came back with no an-

swer.

A councilor who had said little until then asked a question

of the tsar and the marshal. "How much can we pay them?"

Peter Shafirov seldom raised his voice at the start of an argu-

ment. For one thing he had, as yet, few friends; for another

he sifted out the minds of the talkers until he had some answer

for them. As a cloth merchant from the Street of the Clothiers,

he understood bartering; as a Polish Jew he was at home with

many languages from interpreter in the Ambassadors' Bureau

Shafirov had risen, somehow, to the rank of vice-chancellor.

Not that rank of itself meant much among Peter's entourage,

where Galitzins and Dolgorukys served as brigadiers under a.

Menshikov or a James Bruce. While the staff had been argu-

ing, Shafirov had been interrogating Turkish prisoners.

"Pay them?" Peter exclaimed, "Why, pay them enough."

Shafirov went out, in his long dark kaftan, with the trum-

peter to the Turkish lines. He took with him another shrewd

mind, Artemy Voluinsky, who was hardly known to the court

as yet.

When they came back they had some odd information that

seemed important to them. The commander in chief of the

Turks and Tatars, Baltaji Muhammad Pasha, was new to his

command and had little experience in war. A Swede and a

Pole advised this newly appointed wazir, who had no real de-

sire to serve the interest of the Swedish king. Likewise the

kayid of the army and the agha at the head of the all-powerful

janizaries were jealous of the foreigners.

In this information Shafirov saw more possibilities than did

the Russians. He went back again to cultivate the weakness of

Baltaji Muhammad Pasha with authorization from Peter to

pay over a quarter million gold ducats, and to yield up all

Russian conquests in the war except Petersburg and the terri-

tory around it.

1 86 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

The Capitulation on the Pruth

By the next evening Peter and Sheremet'ev were drinking

gleefully. Because Shafirov had contrived an unbelievable bar-

gain, to extricate them from an impossible situation.

The terms finally arrived at in this fashion were these:

In money, 230,000 ducats, or their equivalent in gold, to be

paid to the Turkish command.

In territory, Azov to be surrendered to the Turks, and the

new port of Taganrog to be abandoned by the Russians, and

all fortification at the Don's mouth to be razed.

In the political field, Russian troops to be withdrawn from

Poland, and the tsar to refrain from interfering in Polish

affairs, or with the Cossacks west of the Dnieper.

In other respects, the Russians were not to molest the Krim

Tatars, and Charles was to be allowed free passage back to

Sweden.

The Russians were to give up their embassy at Constanti-

nople, and to leave the present ambassador, Peter Tolstoy,

with Shafirov himself and Sheremet'ev's son, hostage in Turk-

ish hands for carrying out the agreement.

The Russian army on the Pruth was to be allowed to return

unmolested to its own territory, and peace thereafter was to

be maintained between the two countries.

This capitulation at the Pruth was signed by both sides as

soon as drawn, in writing.

Catherine herself may have contributed some of her jewels

to make up the first payment to the Turkish officers. At least

one of her rings turned up later in Constantinople. But she

hardly negotiated the truce with the wazir, as some legends

have it; nor did she purchase the release of the tsar and his

army with her jewelry. So fantastic was the affair at the Pruth

that almost any story about it gained credence.

Charles, as might be expected, was angered to the core by

the paid-f or truce at the Pruth. But being Charles, he lost no

time in contriving the dismissal of Baltaji Muhammad, at Con-

stantinople, and once more trying to create an active front

along the Ukraine. (He might have held command in the

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 187

Turkish army at the Pruth; he refused either because he would

not serve with Moslems or because he would not share a com-

mand with another man.)

Once safe across the Dnieper with the survivors of his army

of invasion, Peter's spirits rose again. "We have lost a little,"

he said in his exultant mood, "yet we have kept what will be

of incalculable advantage in the north."

And to the north he proceeded to go in his inimitable fash-

ion, combining play and work. Whether sight-seeing in real-

ity, or pretending to see the sights, he traveled at the top speed

of hard-driven coaches. Apparently he had closed the chapter

of the Pruth. At least there is no further mention of that affair

in his wartime notes, published later under the title of The

Journal of Peter the Great. That journal gives his itinerary for

the next two months and a half.

"August 3, Their Majesties [Catherine being given the title

of later years] left the banks of the Dniester with the bulk of

the army. After a march of a half league they reached a post-

station where they spent the night. On the 4th they journeyed

on and slept at the town of Rucha. Thence H.M. [His Maj-

esty] , having parted from the troops, took the road to Karls-

bad to restore his health, and here are the places through

which he passed.

"The 6th H.M. arrived at Kamenetz, a fortress that he had

not yet seen ... he left on the 8th, and on the pth reached

Zlochevo, which had a battalion of the Preobrazhensky

[Transfiguration] regiment that he took along as escort. On

the i ith he took to the road and arrived at Yaroslavl the i5th.

There he stayed two days to repair the barks needed to de-

scend the San River.

"They embarked the i8th, entering the Vistula near Sando-

mir on the zoth. The 24th H.M. arrived at Warsaw where he

spent two days and left for Thorn, which he reached the zpth

. . . [and conferred with Polish officers who reported the dis-

positions and strength of Swedish garrisons along the Baltic.]

". . . The znd of September H.M. departed from Thorn

and posted toward Karlsbad to take the waters. Her Majesty

remained at Thorn with the battalion of the Guards [Peter

1 88 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

being unwilling to take her among the nobility at the German

watering place]. . . . The Emperor went by Posnan along

the frontier of Brandenburg, and arrived at Dresden on the

9th [where he bought a w r atch for Catherine] and left on the

i ith for Freiberg, a town noted for its mines. ELM. examined

them and went down to the pits. Then he went to the castle,

where the miners came with their own musicians, to honor

him.

"The i ith in the morning H.M. took to the road, and ar-

rived that evening at Karlsbad.

"The 1 5th H.M. started taking the waters.

"On October 3d H.M. left Karlsbad and spent eight days

at Dresden. Early in the morning of the i ith H.M. embarked

on the Elbe and arrived at Torgau the next day. Here at the

residence of the Queen of Poland (who was also Electress of

Saxony) was to be held the marriage of his son, the Tsarevich

Alexis with the Princess Charlotte of Wolfenbiittel [and Peter

himself was to talk with the celebrated Leibnitz] . . . After

the wedding the Emperor left on the ipth, and arrived the

zoth at Krossen, the town in Brandenburg where was then

His Royal Highness the Prince of Prussia. . . . The 24th

H.M. departed and came to Thorn on the zjth where he re-

joined his wife. The 2 8th Their Majesties took ship on the

Vistula, passing by Gnev [and by Marienburg, where Shere-

met'ev had first noticed Catherine] . . . and arriving the 3ist

at Elbing where they stopped until November yth. The com-

mander and the garrison of this town were Russians.

"November jth Their Majesties embarked on yachts, with

a south wind . . . reaching Konigsberg the evening of the

9th.

"On the nth Their Majesties went by land to Schaken

where yachts had been fitted out for them . . . the 1 3th they

were at Memel where they debarked . . . through Courland.

"The 1 8th they arrived at Riga, where they were greeted

by all ranks firing three salvos.

"The 3oth, the day of St. Andrew, fireworks were shown

at Riga, on three stages, one of which represented an eagle

with the inscription Long live the defender of Livonia.

"Their Majesties then departed for Petersburg."

THE TOUR OF EUROPE AND THE INVASION 189

In this autumn journey of more than twenty-two hundred

miles by road and sea the gangling leader of Rus had not only

rested and bathed and feasted; he had signed the Turkish

peace treaty without the clause safeguarding the western

Cossacks he had started to form a new alignment of small

Baltic powers, Denmark and tiny Prussia among them, and he

had tried his hand at diplomacy by marrying his religious son

Alexis to the girl whose sister was wife of the emperor-elect.

At that time, more markedly than before, he passed rapidly

from optimism, in which the most difficult undertakings

seemed possible, to melancholia. Now he hesitated to evacuate

either Azov or Poland. He made no effort to conceal his own

mistakes in the disastrous campaign, and when a courtier ven-

tured to congratulate him on his good fortune, he replied with

a flash of his bitter realism, "My good fortune consists of this,

that instead of being beaten with a hundred blows, I had only

fifty."

For a year the invisible frontier around the Ukraine, be-

tween Azov and Warsaw, became unsettled by the uncer-

tainty of what was to come. Once the three Russian hostages,

including Shafirov, were thrown into the Seven Towers at

Constantinople and threatened with torture. Again, Charles

the indomitable resisted arrest by a Turkish army division by

defending a small castle. Eastern Poland rose against Russian

military rule at the approach of a few Zaporogian Cossacks

and Tatars and the rumor that Charles himself was passing

through.

Then at last Peter and his advisers wrote finis to the move

toward the Pruth. The western Ukraine was abandoned by

Russian troops that took the Cossack inhabitants with them

across the Dnieper. The Ukraine ceased to exist as an entity,

and its die-hard leaders journeyed away with Charles whea he

returned to his homeland quiet having been restored in ex-

hausted Poland.

Azov was returned to the Turks, the lower Don evacuated.

"The tsar being obliged to deliver up Azov and Taganrog,"

the unknown Englishman relates, "rendered all his naval ar-

mament on the river Don entirely useless. Some of the ships

were sent to Constantinople, either sold or given to the Turks.

190 .THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Many were burned by the tsar's order, and others remain . . .

tinder sheds to preserve them from the weather. Their equip-

ment, especially sails and cordage, has since been carried,

sledgewise, to Archangel."

Only after the year of vacillation did Peter accept this deep

personal humiliation. Throughout Europe, his disgrace at the

Pruth had balanced the prestige of Poltava. Now he had to

surrender his first conquest, Azov, and to scrap his beginning

of a navy upon the Black Sea, at incalculable cost. 7

Charles survived, unharmed and determined as ever, while

at forty years of age Peter felt himself to be a sick man.

Thereafter he did not venture south again. Years later,

when the wrecks of Ms ill-found shipping lined the southern

rivers, he visited the lake at Pereiaslavl. Finding his cottage

there moved from its site but still preserved, he ordered it

filled with brush and burned as a fireworks display.

By then the only home to which he returned from his con-

stant journeying was the two-room-and-garret cottage by the

Neva, with the door brightly painted in the Dutch style.

There he could sit with his pipe and glass of brandy by the

young fir trees planted from seedlings he had brought from

the Harz Mountains.

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN

Alexis in Moscow

|ESIDE the river Neva, near the Admiralty building, a

bronze horseman rears. It is Peter Alexeivich wearing a

European uniform, his arm pointing to the west. Of this

statue Pushkin wrote:

Ah, lord of doom

And potentate y 'twas thus, appearing

Above the void, and in thy hold

A curb of iron, thou safst of old

O'er Russia, on her haunches rearing! 1 -

Of all the bronze horsemen that rear impassively in the

parks of the western world, this one least resembles the man

who was its model. For Peter, that practical, brutal mystic,,

hated ceremonial and almost never clad his ungainly person in

a complete uniform. Certainly at this time, during his transit

to -the Baltic and the change in his own nature, he did not rule

Russia with an iron curb.

Charles, Lord Whitworth, who knew him then, said that he

was shy of being seen because of the convulsions that seized

him. Suspicion of others plagued him. Violent in the first heat

of his temper, he became irresolute afterward when he tried

to deliberate. His portrait, too, has been drawn in words by

Kliuchevsky. "In his own home Peter was never anything but

a guest . . . forever on a journey, always in a hurry. Besides,

he could not remain seated for long, even when taking part in

a Court festivity.

"If not sleeping, travelling, feasting or inspecting, he was

THE CITY AND THE TSAR

working with his hands . . . instinctively, his fingers itched

for a tool . . . every place where he lived was heaped with

things he had made himself, such as boots and chairs^ crockery

or snuff-boxes. His mechanical prowess filled him with an im-

mense belief in his own skill

"Usually he rose at five, and after lunching from eleven to

twelve, retired for a nap (never, even when guests were pres-

ent, did he omit this) before rejoining his table-mates for din-

ner. . . . Even his morning receptions of State he would hold

in his rough dressing gown, exchanging it for the kaftan

which he hated to discard. . . . He would go for a drive with

his body thrust into a two-horse gig or cabriolet shabby

enough to have been scorned by a huckster. ... To the end,

he never forsook the domestic habits of the old-time Russian.

Yet he desired his Consort to be surrounded by a measure of

magnificence.

"Most of all he loved to mark the end of the day's work by

Sthering merry-hearted guests around him over a glass of

ungarian wine walking up and down, without forgetting

his glass, to listen to their conversation . . . inasmuch as he

always drank his vudka neat, he would take it into his head

that his guests must do the same. Upon that, pailf uls of brandy

would appear, and the sentries would be given orders to let no

one depart without further instructions. . . . Peter let him-

self go at the launching of a new ship. A ship delighted him as

a toy delights a child.

"Though Peter was kindly as a man, he was cruel as a Tsar,

and took too little account of human nature, in himself and in

others ... his nervous attacks usually ended in convulsive

spasms. As soon as Peter's attendants perceived an attack to be

coming on they sent for Catherine, who made the Tsar lie

down, took his head upon her lap, and smoothed his temples

until he slept."

Unsure of himself, Peter held fast to old habits. From his

anxiety he escaped in two ways, by convivial heavy drinking,

and by walking, driving, or plunging into a new journey. Not

a year passed now that he did not leave his country, to cross

the western frontier.

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 193

He could be kind by instinct. When he took one of his am-

bassadors, Nepluyev, who had returned from Italy, into a car-

penter's cottage to have something to eat, the envoy could not

stomach the cottager's vudka and carrot pie. Peter protested.

"Come, man! Our host will be offended." Breaking off a fist-

ful of pie and holding it out, he added more sharply, "Now, I

bid thee eat something. Good food of our country it is not

the food of Italy."

Yet Peter could order a guest who would not drink with

him to be stripped and bound and laid for two hours on the

ice of the Neva. One elderly boyar died of such exposure, He

could lacerate Menshikov's face with his heavy fists or .make

the great favorite drink until he collapsed on the floor and his

wif e r#n in screaming from the women's quarters, to bathe

his face and rub him. Some of the feasters died, at Peter's

drinking bouts.

Nor could he endure a long speech by a foreign diplomat.

He had a way of interrupting the man by kissing him or

patting his head. Then the tsar would burst out in rapid Rus-

sian which the other did not understand, and before Peter's

words could be translated, he would be striding off.

He staged his marriage to Catherine in no ordinary way.

Whitworth reported that at the end of the winter, 1712, invi-

tations were sent out to the tsar's "old wedding." It took place

at seven o'clock in the morning at a small chapel belonging

to Menshikov. There "the tsar was married in his quality of

rear-admiral, and for that reason his sea officers had the chief

employments, the Vice- Admiral Cruys and the rear-admiral

of the galleys being the bridegroom's fathers [sponsor

fathers]. The bridesmaids were two of the Empress Cather-

ine's own daughters, one above five and the other three years

old."

Already Catherine, that "likely lass of Marienburg," ap-

peared publicly at Peter's side, and her great influence over

him made her in actuality the tsaritsa. Yet with Eudoxia still

alive in Suzdal, Catherine's marriage could be questioned.

Peter, apparently, tried to blot out the memory of Eudoxia

never speaking of her, or providing her with money. At

194 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

that time the nun who had been tsaritsa wrote her brother for

some money. "I do not need much, only sufficient to have

food, to eat and to offer. I drink no wine or brandy; still, I

would like to be able to offer it to visitors. There is nothing

here. I know I am a trouble, but what can I do? As a beggar

I ask alms!" ,

The memory of Eudoxia was bound up with the domes of

Moscow, the chanting of prayers with everything that Peter

would like to forget but could not root out of his mind.

To those memories and to that part of him belonged Eu-

doxia's son, Alexis, now more than twenty years old. Alexis

was not allowed to see his mother, and he seldom saw his

father. Peter, after attempting to make the boy a useful offi-

cer in his new army, had turned him over to German tutors,

in Menshikov's care, to learn German and Latin and to go his

own way. Alexis, shrinking from physical activity, fell ill in

the camps, and could see no reason for the war with Sweden.

In consequence Alexis kept to his own house in Moscow.

He felt a companionship in the old city, almost deserted by

his father. And the city returned his affection. The remnant

of the "upstairs poor" haunted his doorstep; priests of the Old

Believers came secretly at night to tell him their troubles, over

his books. He had a morbid fondness for visiting the tombs in

the cathedral the tombs of his dynasty in the future, Peter

announced, were to be laid in Petersburg. Wandering down

the Moskva, he could study the tracery of the Kremlin towers

against the night sky. Where he went, bearded men followed,

and boyars accosted him as beggars.

For Alexis was the tsar's first son, the heir to the throne by

ancient custom. Now, the boyars said, the Whispering Favor-

ite had taken Alexis' place at Peter's side; there, too, rode the

Livonian wench, like a tsaritsa, in his mother's place.

Their innuendoes and complaints did not penetrate the

shell of Alexis' absorption. Alexis sheltered himself in the dim-

ness of the cathedral, satiating his eyes with the rigid figures

of the Byzantine saints; in the pages of his books he found

quiet for his mind. Boyars said to him, "See how the tsar

taketh our house servants and our peasants to serve as recruits.

Verily he will have no man escape his service. And if we take

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 195

old money to the Treasury to exchange for new, we are given

back only six for ten. Who but the tsar keeps the others?"

Such talk troubled his mind only vaguely. Better he relished

the talk of the priests who knew exactly how St. Andrew had

voyaged to Kiev and planted a cross there, over the river, and

how a shaft of light had struck down from the heavens upon

the cross.

Yet in the welcome hour when he talked low-voiced with

his confessor, he was startled by a question that he could not

answer. Why was no patriarch named in Holy Mother Mos-

cow? Why did the tsar refrain from naming one to be the

head of the Church and to carry out fittingly the service of

God?

Perhaps It was safe for the confessor to ask that question

in the silence of the cathedral where no informer could be

hidden near them. But more often than not the conversations

of Alexis' visitors were repeated in the corridors of the Bu-

reau of Secret Affairs, where such a report earned six rubles.

Servants knew how a coin could be had by whispering a few

words to a "tongue." Wenches in the taverns knew the

"tongues" of their streets. Sometimes a tavern or a street

would be emptied of human beings at the terrible whisper,

"The tonguethe tongue!"

Not that Peter had developed the secret information sys-

tem; it had been endemic in the land. Besides, Menshikov or

Shafirov who was making plans to marry his daughters to

boyars of old families would pay well to be informed about

their rivals. Perhaps Peter gave closest attention to the find-

ings of the spy network in the army. The foreign officers, of

course, had shadows that trailed them. Peter knew very well

how many thousand rubles the eccentric James Bruce had

made in purchasing gun carriages of fir rather than oak. But

good oak lacked, and the fir had been cleverly painted, and

the cannon of James Bruce had won Poltava for him. Even

Sheremet'ev had his shadow, a sergeant who reported direct

to Secret Affairs.

Also, Peter had a way of dropping in on his officers and

picking up the book they might be reading, or the letter they

might be writing. Usually, he made a joke of that.

THE CITY AND THE TSAR

It was never certain what punishment he would inflict.

Finding a bridge broken over a canal at Petersburg, the Giant

Tsar got out of his carriage to aid in repairing it with his own

hands. Afterward he beat up the most responsible person near

him who happened to be head of the police. One of his fol-

lowers, Yaghuzinsky, stole continually from Peter as well as

from others, Yaghuzinsky had been a boot cleaner in the Lu-

theran colony and seems to have added to his earnings by

finding girls and boys for visitors. Yet Yaghuzinsky gave

Peter more information about Menshikov than anyone else,

perhaps because he had no fear of the Whispering Favorite,

and Peter valued him on that account. The former boy-of-all-

errands off ended in a small way, but he served faithfully in

great matters. Other "fledglings" served Peter in the same

peculiar way, capable of any act except of betraying their

master.

Others might whisper the proverb "Near the tsar, near to

death." None of the favorites or fledglings at that time were

put to death, although some were sentenced to it, and often

led as far as the block, or the scaffold or the wheel, before be-

ing told they had been pardoned.

Written evidence was given Peter that a certain preacher

had been heard to harangue against him as an agent of Satan

sent among Christians. On the margin of the paper he

scrawled "First before witnesses then face to face." The

preacher went on with his harangues. No, there was no cer-

tainty how Peter would act when a thing was brought before

him.

In those years reports from all districts testified to the rebel-

lious murmuring of his people. In the northern forest a strange

tale went around that the tsar had appeared from the wilder-

ness beyond Nega "whence a man can come in winter only

on snowshoes and in summer he cannot come at all." In the

southern government of Bielgorod priests were heard to com-

plain, "How can there be a tsar? The land of the Ukraine

lieth without rule, save that bath houses, huts, and beehives

all alike pay taxes in a manner unknown to our grandfathers."

Peter brushed aside complaints against his son.

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 197

Testimony of the Tongues

One report from a northern village must have pleased Peter.

There a peasant was overheard to say, "Ah, he is verily a tsar.

All the time he was with us, he ate his bread like us, yet he did

more work than any of us muzhiki"

All down the land, however, the folk began to doubt

whether Peter was the tsar. He had himself largely to thank

for that. Having descended from the mlse en scene of earlier

tsars, he showed himself among carpenters and soldiers as an

ordinary human. That metamorphosis they might in time have

understood; but Peter did not seem to know his own mind.

To the earlier concepts in Moscow of the unnatural tsar

who had put away his wife and surrounded himself with Ger-

mans^ of the changeling who had come back from Stekol

(Stockholm) a new uncertainty was added. This tsar ob-

viously was taken by strange seizures that might be a demo-

niac possession.

Moreover, Peter's fondness for (or reliance on) stage set-

tings worked against him in the popular fancy. Satan himself

could not conjure up more displays of fire and tumult than

this tsar. Undeniably evil had entered upon the Russian land.

In this growing anxiety, Peter gave his people no aid by

favoring or attacking any one class. The boyars feared his

caprice, yet no leader among the boyars stood up against him.

Merchants saw their earnings drawn into the hands of the

new "inventors of revenue" without knowing how to resist.

Instinctively all classes realized that this almost mad change-

ling was like themselves, lusty and human and sinful. There

was at that time no desire to harm Peter himself.

The Streltsi had revolted against a tsar who disowned them;

the Bashkirs had risen against the Agents of a city; the Volga

folk and Astrakhan had fought against oppressive dominion;

Bulavin and his peasants had attacked enemies of Orthodox

Christianity. And so it had been with others.

Now there remained no segment of people strong enough

to prevail against the military power of Moscow. The secret

intelligence of the city singled out any nucleus of resistance.

198 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Hitherto Peter, in spite of his departure from the norms of

the past, had based his rule on the age-old support of the dy-

nasty in Rus the boyar and merchant classes. His adminis-

tration was still channeled through the bureaus, little

changed. 2 In some twenty years he had passed only two ukazi

of an over-all nature, one intended to strengthen local admin-

istration, the other to divide the dominion into more specific

provinces.

Now popular opinion, completely bewildered about Peter,

had passed on to the question, what was to be done about him?

If this tsar was no true tsar, should he not be eliminated in

order to obtain a true tsar?

From that point the reasoning of the people proceeded

slowly but inevitably to decide who would replace him. From

their viewpoint only one legitimate tsar existed. Alexis con-

formed to the pattern they knew. He would be a true tsar.

There seemed to be nobody else. 3 Years before almost un-

noticed the Tsarevna Sophia had died quietly as Sister Su-

sannah. She had passed out of popular memory after the skele-

tons of the Streltsi had been taken down from the tree outside

her window. In any case, she had been no Tsaritsa of Rus.

True, the Livonian wench had her children. But no class in

Rus, unless the animallike muzhiki, would bow the head to

them. Equally certain it was that Tsar Peter Alexeivich would

not impregnate again his lawful wife, now Sister Elena.

On the other hand Alexis had married a noble-born girl. He

could be seen taking her into the cathedral to sit with him be-

fore the holy pictures, although she was a heretic, a Lutheran,

and a German.

For a moment, after his marriage, a rift of happiness came

into the gray life of the weak heir.

Peter was responsible for the catastrophe that followed, al-

though Menshikov's feline mind helped shape it.

Alexis was narrow, stubborn. When his father became ex-

asperated with him, he withdrew into himself, and disobeyed

slyly. Moreover by then Peter and Menshikov on his own

account had glanced over too many reports on the treason-

able talk of the boy's visitors. Probaby neither man took the

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 199

reports very seriously. Such murmurings were endemic in the

land, Menshikov, as cicerone, forced Alexis to live at Trans-

figuration, with only slovenly servants about him. The Whis-

pering Favorite also held up the boy's stupid, shy bride to

ridicule, because she was pregnant. In public and even before

Peter, the magnificent-appearing favorite was able to make

the nervous boy seem ridiculous. Menshikov understood that

the father would expect the son to stand up sturdily for him-

self, 4 while the nervous son could be tortured more by wit

than by actual ill-treatment. When they were alone, he told

Alexis, "Do you not see that I stand nearer the throne than

you?"

Peter as usual was moved to hasty action. If his son had

failed even in the simple tasks simple, at least to Peter's mind

of forwarding supplies to the armies or fortifying Moscow

when the Swedes menaced them, why then Alexis must learn

to serve the state in other ways.

So Peter removed Alexis to the Baltic area, to serve as a mes-

senger boy of sorts. In consequence Alexis gravitated at com-

mand between resorts like Karlsbad and half -built Petersburg.

That city the boy hated. And precisely there, the all-compe-

tent Menshikov served as governor of both city and province.

Menshikov was also by then loaded with titles and decorations

being named a sovereign Prince of Rus, a Prince of the Holy

Roman Empire, hereditary Prince of Baturin (Mazeppa's

base, where Menshikov had managed to burn, and cut and

torture to death six thousand human beings) . In the army he

was generalissimo, and colonel of the Transfiguration Guards

(Peter's mainstay in the new army), and still captain of

Peter's old Bombardiers; in the navy-to-be, he held admiral's

rank. Of his five decorations, the Order of St. Andrew was

the most prized. He was also, at that time, trying to buy the

title of Duke of Courland.

Alexis was nothing. His new duties separated him from bis

wife and his coterie at Moscow. Being both weak and resent-

ful, Alexis took to taverns and prostitutes. He made the seri-

ous mistake of keeping one prostitute with him, and relying

on her. Being assertive as well as weak, he talked when drunk.

Probably he understood well enough that the lackeys and

2 00 ? THE CITY AND THE TSAR

military guards who attended him were spies, but he could

not keep from talking and writing cryptic notes to his old

friends In Moscow.

Reports laid before Peter, and Menshikov, began to quote

curious and incredible sayings of the boy: "What is to be will

come to pass . . . they will feel the stake in their vitals . . .

those people of my father's and the stepmother ... as for

the fleet they talk about, it Is nothing but bad wood It will

sink . . . that city will sink into its marshes."

Probably this maundering about his fleet and his city stung

Peter. They were part of his confused vision of the future. In

that future lay the state to which he had bound himself in

service, but which he had not visualized as yet. For all the fa-

vorite's sins, Menshikov had aided him in that service, while

Alexis had been an obstacle at every turn. Abruptly Peter

wrote his son a perfectly honest letter.

"You need to be nourished like a stray bird. You will not

learn, in anything. . . . You argue that a matter like war-

fare can be left to generals. That is not so. The people follow

the example of their leader. Besides, if you know nothing of

warfare, how can you command those who do? ... I do not

ask work from you but good-will, which your sickness need

not affect. Ask someone who remembers my brother [Feo-

dor, the tsar]. He was certainly much sicker than you. For

that reason he could not ride powerful horses. Yet he con-

stantly cared for horses and kept them before his eyes, so that

his stable was, and is to this day, the best in Russia. With you,

I feel that the inheritance of what I am doing wiU be in the

hands of one slothful as the servant in the Scriptures. Here I

have been cursing and striking you all these years, to no ef-

fect. ... I have thought long before writing this last appeal

to you. I will wait now to see if you will mend your ways. I

have never spared myself, or anyone else. Be sure that if you

do not make yourself useful after a little while, I shall disown

you. Be sure that I will do it, even if you are my only son*

Better to have ability from outside than rubbish on the in-

side."

No one ventured to intercede between Peter and his son.

Alexis appealed to his friends, who advised him to answer

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 2OI

boldly. That was almost impossible for the boy whose dread

of Peter and Menshikov had become an obsession. Then his

wife died in Moscow after giving birth to a boy, who was

christened Peter.

When Alexis answered his father, he followed the advice of

the tutors, priests, and boyars who had begun to form a party

around him. If he was unfit, he replied, then let him remove

from public duties and live his own life in the country.

Beneath the apparent frankness of this, Peter sensed an ef-

fort to gain time. By then, informed of the opposition in Mos-

cow, he thought of his son as a weapon that might be used

against his own work. No evidence appeared of a plot against

Peter's life; but unquestionably the silent alliance of boyar

families, of Old Believers, conspiring priests, and reaction-

aries would seek to keep Alexis alive in retirement until

Peter's death.

In Petersburg the tsar had had one of his worst attacks at-

tended for days by his surgeon, with priests waiting in the

other room to give him the last sacrament. Always inclined to

take action quickly, he felt the need of deciding the issue of

his son without delay or half measures.

He wrote Alexis that there were only two alternatives, to

join in actual service to the state, or to enter a monastery as

a monk.

Alexis' advisers had no doubt which course to take. "The

hood," they told him, laughing. "It won't be nailed on your

head."

To this Alexis agreed. Again he made the mistake of writing

to his prostitute companion, "I am about to become a monk,

compelled to do so by force."

Before he could act, he had another letter from his father,

who was journeying west. It was casual in tone, urging Alexis

if he wished to remain tsarevich to join him at army head-

quarters.

Again Alexis consulted his companions and again they ad-

vised him to protect himself probably sensing a threat in

Peter's more casual suggestion. If Alexis were in actual dan-

ger, no monastic cell would put him out of Peter's reach. No

refuge of any kind would serve, within the lands of Rus. So

202 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

they reasoned. And they advised Alexis not to go to his father

but to take refuge at a foreign court.

Vienna was the logical place to take shelter, for Alexis was

related now by marriage to the emperor; Vienna had never

inclined toward the Great Tsar of Rus, and the Hofburg

could surely shelter a fugitive. Only an aged tsarevna, a great-

aunt who remembered the conspiracies of Sophia's day, ad-

vised him against flight. "Wherever you go, Peter will find

you."

Telling Menshikov that he was starting to join his father

at Copenhagen, Alexis set out along the northern road, with

only his mistress, and detoured down to Vienna.

Probably Menshikov's informers had followed the boy's

route, because twenty-five days after he left Petersburg, the

favorite sent a message by courier to Peter that Alexis had not

been heard from. And at once Peter got in touch with the

court at Vienna. (Alexis had been tracked to Vienna.) Aus-

trian accounts describe the boy as coming in exhausted and

hysterical, trying to explain that Menshikov had taught him

to drink heavily, while his father had broken him down with

hard labor. Then he begged for some beer.

The Viennese court informed the Russian embassy that it

had no knowledge of the tsar's son.

The Case of Alexis in Vienna

An officer of the Russian embassy picked up Alexis' trail,

and identified him as an obscure refugee, Kokhausky by

name, apparently confined under arrest in a Tyrol fortress.

One of the most astute of Peter's diplomats, Count Tolstoy

who, with Shafirov, had been released by the Turks was sent

to Vienna to work with the embassy and the talented officer

at the difficult task of getting Alexis out of the emperor's pro-

tection, back on Russian soil. (By then the frightened tsar-

evich had been removed to the castle of St. Elmo at Naples,

with only his girl companion to attend him. And thither he

had been trailed by Russian agents.)

His mission was accomplished adroitly by Tolstoy and his

officers, who made good use of the scarcely veiled threat of

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 203

Peter's anger. Having gained permission to interview Alexis,

they managed to make two things clear to the stubborn boy;

first, that if he returned he would have his father's forgive-

ness; second, that if he refused he would be excommunicated

by the Church. They showed him letters from Peter. They

kept telling him that it was useless to try to escape he would

always be found.

Alexis resisted stubbornly. His fear was too overmastering

to be broken down by Peter Tolstoy's clever brutalities, ad-

ministered under the pretense of friendly pleading.

Tolstoy himself realized that he had to deal with something

frozen and animallike. "We'll have to melt down that brute,"

he announced.

It was done quickly enough. Alexis held to his one safe-

guard, the protection of the Emperor Charles. He also clung

to the girl Afrosina, who was handsome and vain and stupid.

Her casual and interested affection he took to be love. Around

her his neurotic imagining had shaped a hope as confused as it

was impossiblethe two of them married and living in some

country house, secure from terror. Such a concept Afrosina

did not share. So much is clear from their letters.

Apparently Tolstoy needed no more than a small amount

of gold to turn this reliance and this hope against Alexis. One

of the secretaries at St. Elmo confided to Alexis that the em-

peror was vexed at his presence and would be glad to be rid

of him. 5 Then Tolstoy and the governor of the castle ex-

plained to the boy that Afrosina would not be allowed to re-

main with him, because her presence made a bad situation

worse. That broke down Alexis' resistance. He asked weakly

for assurance that the two of them could be married and al-

lowed to retire to the country to live. Those assurances Tol-

stoy gave readily.

A Slav to the core, when Alexis submitted to the domi-

nance of his father, he made no further attempt to resist. He

asked, and was allowed, to visit the shrine of St. Nicholas at

Bari. At Venice, although the Emperor Charles was known to

be present in the city, Alexis made no effort, apparently, to

see him. While they were in Venice Afrosina occupied her-

self buying silk garments and jeweled ornaments.

204 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

It was Charles who had misgivings when he learned that

Alexis was being taken north. He sent instructions to the gov-

ernor of Briinn, a certain Count Morawsky, to arrange to talk

with Alexis apart from the others, and find out what the boy

was doing and why. At Briinn the last fortress on the road to

Poland Morawsky did try to interview Alexis.

Evidence as to what happened there is conflicting. Unques-

tionably Morawsky did not succeed in talking with Alexis

alone, and the boy gave no indication that he was returning to

Moscow unwillingly. Tolstoy insisted on leaving Briinn at

once; Morawsky had no instructions to stop him. In this di-

lemma the governor of Briinn fell back on the time-honored

recourse of subordinates, and sent to Vienna for further or-

ders.

Alexis was taken back to the Kremlin as if returning from

an ordinary journey abroad. Publicly, Peter announced that

his son was reconciled to him, and would retire to the country

to live, as he wished; privately, he promised Alexis that the

marriage with Afrosina might be carried out, quietly.

Actually, Alexis seemed to find relief in submission, while

Peter found himself facing an almost insoluble problem.

Around his son had centered the mute opposition to himself.

That opposition had no leader and no coherent plan. Its

strength was the tenacity of the old customs, voiced by monks

and Old Believers. It embraced Eudoxia in her cell, many bo-

yars in their council, the Old Believers in their settlements.

What tangible thing had Peter to set against this opposi-

tion? As yet he had no substitute for the patriarch of the

Church, or for the vitiated council. His strength lay in the

circumstance that he was waging a war, with the resources of

Rus. But he had been doing that now for nearly eighteen

years. As yet he had no final victory to offer. He had no suc-

cessor, to occupy the throne after him, except Alexis.

His weakness lay in the fact that he could not sever from

his own being the longing for that old way of life in which he

could feast and drive a shambling gig from his cabin by the

river, where Catherine could minister to the pain that plagued

him increasingly.

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 2 05

Peter's Other Self

His nostalgia for the old was strengthened by another trait,

not so noticeable. Peter was, in a very real sense, an oriental.

It showed in his love of display, of pantomime, in his innate

suspicion of western minds, and his clumsiness when dealing

with them. His tight-fitting European court dress he detested

changing as quickly as possible to the beloved kaftan, with

fur cap and deerskin boots.

One feast he ordered to be that of the "Khan of the Sa-

moyeds," with the^ guests appearing as natives of eldest Si-

beria. Peter's wfeofe- milieu, of favorites, fools, dependable

Russians, and hired foreigners, was as thoroughly eastern as

his delight in fireworks. It was the court of Jahangk the Mo-

ghul rather than that of Louis XIV. Peter, who never will-

ingly sat on a throne, expected all who attended him to bow

to his will. His smallest inclination assumed great importance,

to gratify him Dolgorukys and Galitzins rowed their skiffs

solemnly along the Petersburg canals and some of them

brought their wives to have teeth extracted by the tsar, who

kept a bag filled with the teeth of his aspirant-patients. The

sons of great nobles, sent abroad by command of the tsar to

study navigation, fortification, and other sciences, were often

examined by Peter himself when they returned many did not

return, and groups of emigres were growing in Venice,

Toulon, as well as in Peking and if they failed to give the

right answers to his questions, they might be ordered into the

ranks of the fools and jesters who spied for him as well as

amused him. (He was very gentle with his dwarfs, paying

them gravely for their services, and often supervising their

funerals, ordering everything from hearse to prayer book to

be made small, to the dwarfs' size,)

He had a way of answering in parables. When his new al-

liance with Denmark somehow went wrong, he dismissed it

with the remark, "Two bears never get along in the same

pen." Distrusting law men and disliking the western sport of

card playing, he said, "Lawyers are like gamesters; they ar-

range the cards so they will win."

2O6 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Only an eastern mind could have endured Menshikov, and

profited by him. Alexashka Menshikov had greater skill than

Peter in everything except physical strength, and determina-

tion. Whitworth observes shrewdly that Peter did not wish

the Whispering Favorite to learn to read; ostensibly Menshi-

kov could not do so, actually he could. His stables and car-

riages had all the show of the German emperor's, while Peter

took the first vehicle that came along, borrowing one of Men-

shikov's coaches for necessary state display.

Like Lefort, Menshikov accumulated wealth as if by nat-

ural process. He dared set up gallows under his own name to

execute offenders; he planted stakes with his shield of arms in

villages through the Ukraine and Karelia, provinces 'which

had never been awarded to him. The treasures of captured

cities disappeared from the rolls of the Moscow Treasury;

when Peter ordered cloth and metalwork factories built, Men-

shikov and Shafirov built them readily, established state mo-

nopolies, and manned them with serf labor. When an army

division under his orders ran out of supplies and the troops

were on the edge of starvation, Menshikov broke into the

sealed warehouses of the province and fed the division.

When Peter had one of his spells of black depression, he

lashed out at Menshikov as the cause of the evil he sensed

around him. After the campaign on the Pruth, he showed the

great favorite accounts which had some twenty thousand

rubles missing.

"I took them for my own use," Menshikov admitted

frankly, "after Poltava. You gave me authority to act, and I

have done so in my fashion. If it is wrong, you should have

told me before now."

In the way of money, Peter drew out for himself only his

pay as admiral outside his hereditary income. It pleased him

to draw, also, the kopeks he earned for a bit of carpentry or

shoemaking.

^An Alexashka Menshikov could not have existed at Ver-

sailles or at Vienna. In his fashion, he was as oriental as Peter

in his. We have no western word for the tie between these

strange and dominant ^personalities. Homosexuality has been

mentioned often, but without evidence. The evidence points

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN

207

the other way, to the women they shared and found for each

other. Catherine, who had belonged to both of them, gave

Menshikov her support, perhaps because she was still under

Alexander Menshikov, Peter's alter ego, who plotted to succeed

him

the spell of his personality, perhaps because she understood

that only by holding together could Peter's two favorites

survive. With a peasant's shrewdness Catherine was grasping

at shreds of security; she had her wedding, even if it was not a

real one; even Menshikov made much over her daughters,

208 ' THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Anna and Elizabeth, sending them gifts, reminding Peter of

their name days.

As yet Catherine claimed little for herself. Peter's obsession

of the moment was the talented daughter of Kantemir, the

refugee hospodar from the Pruth. Catherine did not interfere

with Maria, but when Peter showed an interest in a handsome

maid at court, Catherine took the girl into her personal serv-

ice. When Peter encountered her in Catherine's room, he

stared at her blankly, and Catherine said, "She is pretty, isn't

she? Can I have her?" After that Peter left the girl alone.

He needed Menshikov. In his rages he could torment his

favorite but he would never condemn Menshikov to death;

he fed upon the Lithuanian's mind, as Menshikov fed upon

Peter's power* Menshikov was loyal only to himself; Peter de-

voted himself to service to the state that he meant to make a

European state. He wrote truthfully, "I have not spared, and

I do not spare my life for my fatherland."

While Menshikov put on western dress and took to western

ways easily, Peter did so with difficulty. In doing so he was

fighting the oriental and the Slav in himself.

As he had conquered his dread of water in childhood, and

his paralyzing shyness in European society, he was trying now

with ^11 his savage determination to make himself a European

monarch of that day.

But as the old survived in his fatherland and people, no mat-

ter what new forms were laid upon them, so the old survived

in Peter himself.

The Lutheran Church and the Fleet

Perhaps Peter's inward struggle is most clearly seen in

these years of endeavor upon the Baltic, before the break-

down of Sweden. These happen to be the years between the

marriage of his son Alexis (October 1711) and the death of

Alexis (June 1718), five months after his return with Tolstoy

to Moscow.

Once, in England, the Tsar of Rus had been quartered in

the home of a Quaker. At the time he had been curious about

Quakers and their ways. He never forgot them. Now, ma-

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 209

neuvering armies and planning marriages of state along the

Baltic, he kept asking where Quakers could be found, and

upon occasion he could be seen sitting gravely in their meet-

inghouses.

For this gangling giant in his sober moments was in search

of an identification for God. In parodying the ritual pf the

Muscovite clergy, Peter had not attacked religion itself. For

a long time he had found relief in singing with the choirs of

the smaller churches; before the Pruth campaign he had ac-

cepted a solemn blessing at the Usspensky cathedral. Over the

wine in the Petersburg tavern he had questioned mariners

from the west about the Evangelist faiths. These men from

the outer seas had felt Protestant religion to be a personal mat-

ter, not dependent upon a priestly hierarchy, whether of

Rome or of Constantinople. This individualism impressed Pe-

ter.

Then in his first journey west, as Peter Mikhailov, he had

come sharply into contact with religion in the small German

states. There, it seemed, each ruler determined what the faith

of his people should be. "Cujus regio, ejus religio" It suited

Peter perfectly, that a sovereign should decide the matter of

worship for his people. Had not Vladimir the Splendid once

decided, in that very fashion, upon Orthodox Christianity?

But Peter knew it to be impossible to impose such a faith

as Lutheranism upon those same Orthodox Christians of Rus.

While he refused to appoint a new patriarch, he had no alter-

native to offer. In practical matters of religion, however, he

could do something. The second church to be built in his new

city was Lutheran; in Petersburg the Protestant sects were not

quarantined, as in the Sloboda, where he had first come into

contact with them. He married Alexis to a Lutheran girl.

For himself, he could not think clearly about religion. It

remained forever beyond his mental grasp. He might have

understood the cry of an eloquent mystic of the east: "Lo,

for I to myself am unknown, now in God's name what must I

do?" 6 There was no one to tell him that.

Peter depended as much upon advice now as when he had

been an amateur monarch in the Sloboda. The Russian popu-

lace, quick to invent nicknames, called his favorites "the

2IO THE CITY AND THE TSAR

makers of the reign." In the day of Ivan the Terrible they had

been only "the men of the time."

Peter had changed only in that he felt his responsibilities

more acutely. And in the same measure his anxiety and uncer-

tainty increased. While he had tried to divest himself of the

trappings of the ancestral throne, he had not shed a whit of

the responsibility of the Veliki Gosudar. He was still a despot

in the oriental sense. He could delegate authority to Menshi-

kov and Shafirov, but not responsibility.

In spite of the stream of ambassadors sent out into Europe,

the great courts at Versailles and Vienna failed to grant him

the title of emperor. Foreigners were invited to Moscow and

Petersburg in a flood. Perhaps by advice of Leibnitz, Peter

had ordered that no barriers be placed upon their entrance or

exit (before then it had been almost impossible for foreigners

like Gordon or Spathary to leave Muscovy) . A Scot served as

his personal physician. Another Scot, James Bruce "Bruss" in

the Russian records had been added to his new team of diplo-

mats headed by the versatile Shafirov and the ruthless Peter

Tolstoy (the Von Papen of the Petersburg regime), Peter

himself had picked up a young German, Ostermann, who

had an uncanny knack of reading the minds of European dip-

lomats across the council table.

The first list of commanders of the fleet assembling at Pe-

tersburg reads: "De Cour, Besemacher, Wessel, Waldron,

Ivan Sinavin, and Squerscoff." Only one name is Russian.

And, with Wessel, only Ivan Sinavin appears among the com-

manders of the great fleet ten years later. The other foreigners

have dropped out. Peter's favorite, Apraksin, held supreme

command, although it does not appear that he had gone to sea

as yet. The foreigners took the ships to sea; Apraksin had the

shore command where the Dutch outfitter .Cruys supervised

the shipbuilding. Even the Swedish officer Wede wounded

in the first brush on the Neva where Peter watched the cap-

ture of his bark rose to high responsibility in the Petersburg

shipyards wherein Peter had placed his hopes.

Those hopes were not being realized. No matter how many

foreign experts he gathered about the drawing boards in the

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 211

Admiralty often drawing sketches for experimental keels

himself there seemed to be endemic breakdowns between

plans and finished, seaworthy craft. Our English officer speaks

cautiously of "ships laid up ... as it was impossible they

should answer the design. So everybody with much caution

forbore to speak of them, to avoid giving offense." As late

as 1718, he enumerates guardedly A List of the Ships in Mo-

tion This Year. Later, this becomes A List of the Russian

Fleet Lying at Anchor under Lemland in Line of Battle. After

that we find A List of the Ships in a Condition to Go to Sea

This Year. Then, in 1721, this becomes A List of the Tsar's

Fleet Capable of Going to Sea, Though Many of Them Not

Equipped This Year.

He remarks on the fine sailing qualities of one frigate, the

Katharina, which the tsar often used for his rapid voyages.

His journal adds that the tsar's flag was hauled down on the

Katharina and the tsar himself departed the eve of an unsatis-

factory engagement with the Swedes.

Earlier than this Lord Whitworth had reported to his gov-

ernment that many Dutch-designed vessels of the embryo

Petersburg fleet had faulty after structures and would break

their backs in a heavy sea, while some were of such shallow

draught that they would be driven on a lee shore in a moderate

gale (i.e., they were not deep enough in the water to work

their way against a wind) .

For failure to accomplish results against Swedish shipping

Vice-Admiral Cruys was tried by court-martial in 1713-14.

Our Englishman's journal gives the chief members of the

court-martial as:

"Lord High Admiral Count Apraxin

Rear-Admiral Peter Alexeivitz

Captain-Commodore Alexander Menshikoff"

Among the lesser members appears the name of Bering. He

was Vitus Bering the Dane, who was to explore the east for

Peter.

"Notwithstanding this court usually met by 4 o'clock in

the morning [Peter's hour of rising, at that time] and never

missed a day . . . yet they were nearly three months before

212 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

they came to a resolution. . . . Vice- Admiral Grays was ad-

jodged to lose his life, but His Majesty had mitigated the sen-

tence ... to banishment to Kazan."

Another foreigner had been the first to fall before the influx

of Peter's new favorites. He was old Andreas Vinius, the

Russian-born Dutchman. His brain served Peter in all the

earliest activities. Vinius had Menshikov's ability to accom-

plish whatever task was turned over to him. From the Press-

burg days he had slaved quietly at getting new revenues for

the always needy Treasury. Working alone to the east of

Moscow, he had opened up some silver mines in the Urals and

discovered copper. Recalled to Moscow in crises, he had cast

cannon out of the post-Narva harvest of church bells, and

improved upon the gunpowder made at Tula. He had started

the transcontinental trade caravans toward China, and set up

factories where he lectured on rudimentary mathematics.

At the same time Vinius had lined his own pockets, and the

new coterie had no difficulty in proving it. Many others had

gleaned private fortunes in the same way, and Vinius merely

bribed Menshikov to exonerate his accounts. This Menshikov

did in a letter to Vinius, at the same time informing Peter

privately that the old Dutchman was past justification.

Usually Peter's European experts lasted no longer than

Cruys or Ogilvy. As a rule they could not accomplish results

with the tools and workmen at their disposal. Often they de-

parted homeward, or accomplished negligible results while

drawing large salaries (which were not always paidone Eng-

lish captain, John Perry, states that he received one year's pay

in fourteen years although he had been in charge of the work

on the Don- Volga canal and had been recalled to plan the

drainage canal system of Petersburg itself).

Naturally in such conditions there was both misunderstand-

ing and jealousy between them and their ill-paid Russian co-

workers. Rarely could the best of the foreigners get a crew

of any sort together with an armament on a seaworthy vessel.

An English captain, Andrew Simpson Peter was replacing

his Dutch technicians with Danes and English who had suc-

ceeded in taking four ships from Azov to Constantinople after

"the capitulation of Pruth," was ordered to sail three vessels

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 213

from Archangel into the Baltic. Simpson got his ships started

after impressing crews "out of the foreign merchants' service"

but was delayed and caught by ice In the Arctic, where he

had to winter* Ivan Sinavin was sent to take over and bring

the ships in the next year.

Peter made ingenious contributions to the outfitting of the

longed-for fleet. From German schools he brought an entire

company "learned in the art of gunnery" and classed as bom-

bardiers. A special powder appeared "for the quicker firing

of guns." Two ships had spouts for liquid fire. The tsar him-

self Invented a new kind of boarding bridges, to be hinged to

the gunwales of each ship. After one cruise at sea these board-

Ing bridges were laid quietly away.

Not that Peter lacked mechanical sense. But no ukaz could

transform an agricultural people like the Slavs into seamen In

a few years. Nor could foreigners weld together Russian crews

through the medium of the High Dutch dialect.

The endemic disputation at Kronstadt and Petersburg was

not helped by Peter's habit of holding discussions during wine

banquets. Sometimes Apraksin, when drunk, wept under a

tempest of abuse, and on occasion he stormed at Peter. The

journal relates how a dispute between two foreign rear ad-

mirals, Sievers and Gordon, was taken up late at the table by

Peter and Apraksin: ". . . Sievers, thoroughly acquainted

with the Russian freedom in liquor, took no notice, but left

the company. Gordon, totally ignorant of the Russian lan-

guage, . . . was silent. Nevertheless the dispute was carried

very high between the Tsar and the General-Admiral. Count

Apraxin declared that he looked upon Gordon and his associ-

ates as men of malevolent principles . . . caballing to foment

divisions in Russia. However In the end the Tsar obliged the

General Admiral to submit, and the assembly broke up.

"In the morning the Tsar/ reflecting on what had passed,

waited upon the General-Admiral and . . . said, 1 was drunk

last night.' "

It was an old Russian custom of course to thresh things out

over the cups. But Peter seemed to find it hard to endure the

strain of a staff conference unless relaxed by rousing drinking.

We have seen him wandering, irresolute, among the carriages

214 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

of the foreigners at the Prath where the fate of his army was

being decided; the navy-to-be, however, was peculiarly his

own creation, and he would have his say upon it. (Often

after prolonged drinking that broke down either Apraksin or

Menshikov, Peter would clear his mind and give perfectly

sound directions.)

Inevitably, in Moscow, popular complaint rose against the

new naval ukazi a We already have a German army, now we

must have a Dutch navy. Among our fathers, when was ever

such talk of a navy heard? " Boyars complained that the tsar

who sent their sons out of the land to foreign schools now

drafted their peasants "to be set afloat."

Judgment of a Dolgoruky

Inevitably, also, there came up at a banquet the argument

as to what Peter was accomplishing, compared to his father

Alexis. When someone remarked that Alexis had accomplished

little, and that only by aid of his ministers, Peter was irritated.

"I do not like either your blame of my father's work or

your praise of mine," he retorted.

Stalking over to the chair of one of the elder statesmen,

a Dolgoruky, "You of all men," he said, "have spoken to me

what is true . . . what is your judgment of my father's ac-

tions, and what is your judgment of mine?"

Peter had appealed, not to one of his own coterie but to

an oracle of elder Rus. Dolgoruky told him to go and sit down

while he thought about the question. This Peter did obedi-

ently, waiting for the old man to finish pondering and pulling

at his mustache. Then he was answered.

There were, the oracle proclaimed, three chief works of a

tsar. First, the inward governance of Rus; second, the work

of war; third, the dispensation of justice.

In the first, Dolgoruky decided, Peter had accomplished less

than his father, but he still had time before him to remedy

that.

In the second, Dolgoruky felt grave doubt. Peter had been

forced to start from new beginnings; he had accomplished so

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 215

much that he might surpass the work of his father. Yet only

the end of the Swedish war could decide that.

In the third, Dolgoniky decided that Peter would be judged

by the work of the ministers he chose, and a sagacious tsar

would choose those who spoke the truth rather than those

who lied to him.

But as to building a fleet "you have advantaged the state

more than your father."

Listening patiently to the old man, Peter went over and

kissed him, calling him a faithful servant thereby angering

Menshikov.

Purge of Moscow and Execution of Alexis

Tolstoy delivered the fugitive Alexis at the Kremlin on the

last day of January 1718. For two weeks there were open

indications of quiet and reconciliation, while Peter appeared

in public with Alexis, and a rumor of the boy's coming mar-

riage got around. Friends of Alexis, and all who had been

connected with him in any way, waited for this appearance

of forgiveness to end, to discover what blow would be struck

and at whom. No one in Moscow, apparently, took Peter's

public promise of forgiveness seriously. That, they under-

stood, had been part of the process of getting the tsarevich

back to the Kremlin.

February 18 an assemblage of boyars and clergy was called.

Before the gathering at the Usspensky cathedral, Alexis, weak

and frightened, stood forward and swore that he renounced

all claim to the tsardom. On his part Peter swore that although

his son had deserved the death punishment for forsaking him ?

Alexis had his forgiveness and would be "immune from all

punishment."

This demonstration increased rather than lessened the ten-

sion in Moscow. The next day Alexis, alone with his father,

half hysterical and warned that only by a full statement of his

actions in the past could punishment be avoided, answered

questions put to him, giving names, dates, and conversations

as he remembered them. This he was asked to put in writing.

2 1 6 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

When he had finished his writing, the general questioning

began. Evidence yielded by that questioning appears to have

been as follows.

Alexander Kikin, Alexis' closest friend, known for his hatred

of Menshikov, testified that he had advised the boy, among

other matters, to escape to Vienna.

Vasily Dolgoruky, a boyar of the old families, antagonistic

to Menshikov, testified to subversive conversations. (He had

been brought in chains from Petersburg to give evidence.)

The Bishop of Rostov testified that in talk with Eudoxia,

the tsaritsa, he had prophesied that she might return to the

palace, as the acknowledged tsaritsa, Peter being dead.

One of Alexis' confessors testified that the boy had admit-

ted that he longed for his father's death.

Eudoxia, fetched from her convent, testified that Alexis had

sent her messages and had come to the convent before leaving

for Vienna to give her five hundred rubles.

The tsaritsa-nun was not tortured. Her questioning contin-

ued long. Nothing came out to indicate a conspiracy between

her and Alexis, but evidence of another kind turned up'.

Eudoxia had been given fur garments by a certain Major

Glebov in command of the guard set about the convent. More

than that, Glebov had talked with her intimately in the garden

and in her rooms. They had exchanged rings. When he had

ceased his visits she had written some notes to him.

These notes were found and read. In their wording ap-

peared an endearing term batko (father mine). "I suffer and

only God knows how dear thou art ... wearest thou the

ring I gave thee? . . . has any evil happened? ... do they

speak ill of me? ... I send thee a neckcloth."

Bits of a woman's spirit appeared in these notes. The woman

was middle-aged, cloistered; she had been tsaritsa. Yet she had

written like an enamored girl, to a handsome officer.

Smaller people were questioned also, but they contributed

no evidence of an actual plot. Action came very quickly after

the first questioning.

Kikin suffered "severe knouting" that is, the knouting with

metal-tipped lashes that took off fragments of flesh continually

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 217

and was killed on the wheel. The bishop died also under

torture.

Dolgoruky was stripped of possessions and exiled beyond

the Urals. Glebov alone seems to have been given a "severe'*

death, being set on a stake. Various kinsmen and friends' of

Eudoxia went into exile. She herself was moved to a cell in the

north, at Ladoga, more distant from Moscow.

There were, then, a very few executions after the February

questioning. The testimony, however, had added to Peter's

anxiety, not on Alexis' account but on his own. No particle

of evidence had shown a conspiracy to be planned. The evi-

dence had passed through his son, as if through a viscous body,

to strike against Peter himself. His first wife had turned from

his memory to gaze upon a common handsome soldier; priests

had spoken of his death as a deliverance; boyars of integrity

had condemned him in talk. Alexis, who had fled from him,

cringed in visible fear of him. Because of Alexis, the court

in Vienna must be ridiculing him.

This silent antagonism baffled Peter. He could not come

to grips with it. ... When he had stood on the Red Stair t

a boy younger than Alexis, he had seen the "long beards"

crowding up with their flashing halberds ... he had made

them feel the bitter taste of death after a time . , . they had

not struck at him ...

One of those bearded bodies he had watched for a moment

lashed down upon a wooden wheel after its back had been

broken and the turns of the wheel had broken its arms. One

broken arm had moved up to wipe blood dripping from the

lips, instinctively. Then the tortured eyes had sighted drops

of blood on the wooden wheel, and the arm had moved again,

instinctively, to wipe the stain from the wood . . . such

bodies were strong, unreasoning. Only by strength could fear

be instilled in them ... he had crushed the revolt of the

frontiers easily by sending Sheremet'ev and two regiments.

Now, old and fat and wealthy, the Marshal Sheremet'ev

was turning against the tsar because he hated Menshikov, who

was necessary. The Dolgorukys, the Galitzins were against

him, joining hands with the ghosts of other days. Even the

2l8 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

brilliant young statesman Boris Kuragin, his cousin, sympa-

thized with Eudoxia.

In sending Eudoxia farther away, he brought closer upon

him the forces of antagonism that had gathered around her.

For two months he could not decide how to act. Afrosina

was brought to Moscow to be questioned. She told Peter

readily enough what Alexis had confided in her. Alexis had

talked about the rebellion on the frontiers, and had wondered

if there would be mutiny in Moscow, during the war. Mos-

cow, he had argued, was his city. Petersburg would remain

what it was, a small port on an icebound gulf. After his father's

death there would be civil war, between the favorites with

the women, and Alexis' friends.

Again, in the testimony of the gM Afrosina who agreed to

everything, there were only thoughts spoken aloud.

Week after week Peter hesitated, seeing Alexis come before

him wet with the sweat of fear, or inanely hopeful, now that

Afrosina had come back and had not been harmed.

Peter asked for a verdict from the higher clergy. The ver-

dict, written down, took the form of quotations from the

Scriptures, and at the end: "The heart of the tsar is in the

hand of God."

A foreign diplomat wrote: "This city is as if stricken by

the plague, the people being divided into accusers and ac-

cused."

A High Court of Justice obediently attached its one hun-

dred and twenty-seven signatures to a verdict condemning

Alexis, and handed the verdict to Peter.

After that, there was no other evidence that could be gath-

ered, and no other authority that could be called to pass on

the question of Alexis' guilt or innocence.

June 14, the tsar's son was confined in the new Peter and

Paul Fortress at Petersburg. June 19, he was lashed with the

knout, and again on the twenty-fourth. On the twenty-sixth

he died.

The next day the anniversary of Poltava was celebrated.

Peter had killed Alexis as certainly as Ivan the Terrible had

struck down his son with his steel-tipped staff. Ivan had acted

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 219

in a fit of anger, Peter after more than four months of hesi-

tation. In that long irresolution did . he visualize Alexis as the

embodiment of resistance against Mm? Did he come to believe

that his son was the passive obstacle to his own course of

action? Or did he simply end by the simplest action his own

long torment of indecision?

There is no certainty. Unlike Ivan, Peter appeared impassive

after Alexis died. The day after the body was exposed in the

Church of the Trinity, he attended the festivity of the launch-

ing of a ship built after his own plans, named the Marsh

Sprite.

In that year Peter Alexeivich was forty-six, weakened by

hysterical convulsions and by alcoholism. His state was in

transition, without an effective government; his new city was

no more than half built; his war unfinished. By destroying

Alexis he had rid himself of the heir of his dynasty, that had

ruled Rus for a century. In Peter's scheme of things no other

heir existed only Menshikov and the daughters of the LIvo-

nian servant girl, Catherine.

Incapable of realizing the full consequences of his actions,

and stubbornly attached to his companions of the year, Peter

could gain understanding of his greater dilemma only by de-

grees, and then only when faced by concrete difficulties. When

he did understand, he fought his troubles with unbreakable

determination. For he had the strength of the body he had

watched on the wheel with back broken, moving a broken

arm instinctively to wipe at its lips.

The first of his great difficulties to become clear to his under-

standing was the war itself.

In that year 1718 Charles XII of Sweden also died. Very

much like that other knight-errant, Richard I of England, the

Swedish leader was killed besieging a small fortress of no im-

portancein Norway as it happened.

Charles had performed miracles in minor combats, since

his return from Turkey. At Stralsund his efforts had withstood

the siege by the Russians aijd their allies. But the nation be-

hind Charles had been crippled. One out of every two men

had been drafted to fill up the ranks of the small armies with

220 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

which he tried to maneuver. His one advantage lay in the dis-

unity of the allies attacking Mm.

The Baltic had become an area of shifting diplomatic

groupings, wherein the two great states of the previous cen-

tury, Poland and Sweden, were becoming powerless to resist,

and in consequence were being fought over and dismembered.

Prussia was growing, and Russia dominating the seaboard.

In this middle phase of the Great Northern War, Peter

tried his hand at diplomacy. When his nieces were married

to princes of the smaller Germanic states, opposition to the

Russian intrusion stiffened along the North German seaboard.

The diplomatic tangle was full of knots that Peter could not

untie, even with the aid of Boris Kuragin and Ostermann and

Shafirov. Before long he realized that his brilliant young states-

men were actually handicapped by the energetic interference

of the tsar, and the presence of the massive Russian armies.

In the siege of a vital port, his supposed allies declared they

had no need of Russian aid, and his troops were barred out

after the capture of the port. The Anglo-Dutch fleets began

to behave very coldly. The constant campaigning destroyed

the rye and flax and hemp that had been the produce of the

Baltic coast.

Although the larger ships of the Petersburg fleet could

accomplish little outside the Gulf of Finland, a swarm of gal-

leysof the shipping used in rivers and lakes captured the

Aland Islands, lying off the Swedish coast, for Peter. But a

carefully planned invasion of the Swedish coast was never

carried out because the Danes and others held back intermi-

nably until finally the Russians withdrew to their end of the

Baltic.

Then after Charles's death, Sweden agreed on a peace with

all the varied powers except Russia. 7 Peter's emissaries chiefly

the all-competent Ostermann had asked only for Viborg, the

Karelian district where Petersburg lay, and the Livonian and

Esthonian coast. The Swedes refused, as Charles had done

before them.

The war went on.

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 221

The Venture to Paris

The year before, baffled by Baltic diplomacy, Peter had

dashed off on the most remarkable of his journeys. Unable to

break down the cold hostility of his former well-wishers in

Holland and England, he had gone himself to the hub of

European aif airs, to Paris. Not only to Paris, but to a city still

mourning the death of its Grand Monarque& city whose reli-

gion had become culture, intolerant of other cultures.

Even when he landed at Dunkirk, with the invaluable

Kuragin and without Catherineattended by a suite fifty-

seven strong, Peter felt the rigidity of the French spirit. In

contrast, from that first evening on French soil, he appears

impulsive, incoherent, again a Muscovite giant with the mind

of a boy. Unable to understand the French, he seeks relief

in a flurry of sight-seeing and note-taking. The French believe

that he must be clowning, but he is not.

In Paris, Peter is on his best behavior. Great Duchesses of

Berry and Orleans comment upon such a remarkable brute.

He is only a Slav, and his Byzantine mind will not allow him

to reveal what he came for until he can sense French thought,

which appears equally remarkable to him.

He travels about headlong, in transparent incognito a re-

membrance of Lef ort's first European tour refusing to accept

quarters in the Louvre, or at the Arsenal either. Gargantuan

meals are needed to satisfy him and the fifty-seven. When he

dislikes a banquet he disappears, and is tracked to a tavern

where he fares heartily among seamen, using the knife and

spoon he takes from his belt.

When the seven-year-old boy who is King of France comes

down the steps to greet him, Peter jumps from his carriage

and catches up the child in his great arms. Yet in conference

with the stately regent he is shy, illogical despite Kuragin's

efforts.

(Later on it develops that Peter's idea is to sound out the

French mind as to a marriage between the boy king and the

younger daughter of Catherine. Impossible, of course. This is

not put forward too seriously. Much later Peter's real object

222 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

comes out an alliance of friendship between France and the

new Russia that will end the Baltic imbroglio. That is hardly

less impossible.)

Notebook in hand, the extraordinary tsar feasts himself on

the sights of Paris especially the Observatory, the botanical

gardens and menagerie. He reviews gendarmes contentedly

enough, yet has an awkward hour when he arrives at the

Sorbonne at the wrong time. At the Opera he asks for beer.

In the Trianon gardens, probably by accident, he starts the

fountains spraying over the brilliant assemblage of guests. But

he studies scientific instruments and talks long with Delisle,

the great geographer.

He talks also with John Law, the great financier of the day.

Hearing that Madame de Maintenon still lives, although ill,

he is curious to meet this mistress-spouse of the renowned

Louis XIV. He announces that he will visit her, and arrives

unexpectedly to sit by her bed, at a loss how to converse with

her. ("He asked me if I were ill. I replied that I was. He

then caused me to be asked what was the matter with me.

1 answered, great age ... he did not know what to say to

me and his interpreter did not appear to hear what I said to

him. His visit was very short. He is still in the house, but

where I know not. He caused the curtains at the foot of my

bed to be opened so that he might look at me." So runs a letter

of Madame de Maintenon.)

"This monarch," St. Simon adds, "astonished Paris by his

extreme curiosity on all points of government, and police.

. . . He had the sort of familiarity that comes from un-

bounded freedom, but he was not without a trace of the bar-

barism of his country, which made him abrupt, with nothing

certain about his wishes but the fact that not one of them

was to be contradicted ... his love of sight-seeing equaled

his dislike of being made a spectacle himself. He preferred

hired carriages; he would jump into the first carriage he met

with, without caring to whom it belonged . . . however

shabby might be his carriage, his natural manner of greatness

could not be mistaken."

His visit causes gossip because he has with him the woman

of Paris who is his mistress of the month. Gossip censors Peter

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 22J

as stingy because he bestows only two gold pieces on her;

he is niggardly in giving other tips also.

Yet upon leaving Paris he refuses costly gifts, and gives

jeweled souvenirs instead to his French hosts with more than

a hundred thousand livres to be distributed by them among

those who had served him. Whereupon he departs by coach

to take the waters at Spa where Catherine awaits him.

In diplomacy Peter's descent upon Paris accomplished noth-

ing decisive. The treaty drawn up later established better rela-

tions, formally between France and the Russian Empire, but

the mutual-assistance pact did not appear in it. Peter, how-

ever, took away with him an abiding respect for the archi-

tecture of Paris. From that year, 1717, new construction in

Petersburg was to assume classical French design, in pillared

majesty. The son of the geographer Delisle was to journey to

its Academy.

Meanwhile the Baltic conflict defied Peter's efforts to end

it either by war or by a peace.

It was hard for Peter to understand. He had not asked for

too much coast line on the Balticmuch less in fact than his

armies held. 8 It had seemed to be a clever blow of the fist, to

announce the day after the betrothal of his niece to Leopold,

Duke of Mecklenburg, that the ports of Wismar and Warne-

mund would be added to Mecklenburg in the peace; but

Kuragin had warned him against doing it. "Our allies," Kura-

gin had warned, "ask only one question now when will the

Russian armies withdraw?"

Certainly Peter's new armies had been victorious and never

so powerful as now. The Gmeral-Kriegs-Kommissar had re-

ported that he was supplying clothing and food and pay for

196,000 men. Then there were the 50,000 Ukrainian Cossacks

subject to call, and more than 25,000 seamen in the new navy.

Apraksin's report showed 27 vessels and 400 galleys in the

Petersburg fleet, ranging from the St. Alexander of 70 guns

to the Natalia of 14 in all 1333 cannon.

How could the Swedes hope to resist such a power of can-

non, without their Charles? Reports from his spies in Stock-

224 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

holm showed that the fields were not being tilled, for lack

of peasants. Kuragin thought that the Swedes were merely

stubborn; they would not give up the eastern end of the sea

they had called their sea; Ostermann believed that they hoped

the Danes, English, and Dutch would turn antagonistic to

Russia and so give aid to Sweden. Peter did not know which

man was right.

No longer was he Bombardier Peter Alexeivich; no need

had he now for a Gordon or an Ogilvy the foreigners in his

new armies were merely brigadiers, or they were the Russian-

ized sons of the older generation. No Streltsi poisoned his

regiments.

And yet Sheremet'ev asked to be allowed to retire; the

Dolgorukys avoided him. Informers reported dissension in the

regiments that had been kept from home for more than three

years; also that men were listening to Lutheran evangelists, and

wandering off after Lutheran girls.

It was as if, after the death of Alexis, he had opposed to

him the unbroken ranks of elder Rus, the long beards and

the lazy minds content to scratch the ground and feed them-

selves in settlements. These mirs of the old days had not

changed.

At the end of that year Peter the tsar made one of his sud-

den decisions and put away forever Bombardier Peter. He

understood that the war must cease. To achieve that, he was

willing to give back Finland, and withdraw entirely from all

but the eastern end of the Baltic.

Still the war went on.

There was one change that he noticed. Documents from

the west bore less and less frequently the word "Muscovy."

They began to adhere to the word "Russia," and to address

Peter himself as the Great Sovereign, and Tsar of Russia.

Moscow, it seemed, no longer represented in western

thought the land and the people. The city was losing its

importance, leaving the tsar paramount.

Peter applied himself again to the task of building fleets,

and forty thousand men labored at the buildings and canals

of Petersburg.

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 225

Pastor Gluck's Academy

The new buildings were planned to be like those in the

west. Their outer shells went up rapidly enough. Ten years

before, Cornelius Le Bruyn*had been surprised to find hospi-

tals in Moscow almost completed during his absence in Persia.

The largest he discovered to be a dispensary for the armed

forceson the site where he had last seen a poultry market.

It was being painted, the walls decorated "with Chinese syrup

pots, on top of which the arms of His Tsarian, Majesty are

enamelled. . . .

"Very beautiful halls serve as a laboratory and a library,

wherein extraordinary plants and animals are preserved. . . .

The doctor has even power to punish with death those who

are under his direction. The director is Doctor Areskine

[Erskine], a Scotchman and first physician to His Tsarian

Majesty who allows him a yearly pension of 1500 ducats.

Eight apothecaries are employed in this dispensary; and from

hence His Majesty's troops and navies are supplied with all

the drugs and medecines they want.

"His Majesty made Doctor Areskine a present of 2000

crowns when he engaged in this great and arduous work. He

seemed to be persuaded, when I left Moscow, that everything

would be completed in the space of a year. . . ."

In another new hospital Le Bruyn counted thirty-f our beds,

ready for sixty-eight patients. Beside this last he noticed a

completed cloth factory run by a Dutchman, and a shop

where mirrors were made.

After his departure, in the great conflagration of 1712,

thirty-five hospitals are said to have burned down in Moscow.

For nearly twenty years Gottfried Leibnitz had been in

correspondence with Peter. Only at rare intervals, and then

with the aid of James Bruce, had Peter answered. On his part,

the persistent Leibnitz had obtained much accurate informa-

tion about Russia from the Hollander Witzen. Once Witzen,

who kept in touch with friends in Peking as well as Moscow

he had a great respect for Spathary's work wrote, "It is

226 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

certain that unrest at home has been great during his [Peter's]

absence . * . but he has nothing to fear from the friends of

those condemned to death, because the custom is to send to

Siberia, and to the furthest places, the wives, children and even

the relatives of those who have been executed. . . ."

Gottfried Leibnitz had only the vaguest concept of Russia,

let alone Siberia; and what little factual knowledge he had,

Witzen supplied. China and Russia the German scientist visual-

ized as emerging from the darkness of ignorance. Between

the Manchu empire and Europe, the Muscovite tsar was des-

tined to serve as intermediary ... it was all pontifical and

effusive and most of it Peter had realized already. More clearly

Leibnitz visualized himself employed by this tsar to "debar-

barize" his people. He coveted that appointment and wrote

voluminously to gain it. Continually he emphasized to Peter

the importance of schooling the young "we have to reflect

that there will be more difficulty with the older people, in-

clined to drunkenness; our only hope will be in teaching the

young folk."

That teaching, he pointed out, should be "centralized" in

an Academy (of which Leibnitz might, conceivably, be the

head) to instruct the nation as a whole.

The concept of sending the pick of the nation to school

in a great academy of the arts and sciences caught Peter's

interest. Very early he experimented with it. It was christened

the Gymnasium at first, put into a building in Moscow, and

given as a head a Lutheran pastor brought in from Marien-

burg Catherine's former master. Pastor Gluck himself was to

teach such things as geography, rhetorical Latin, and German

and French dancing steps. Unfortunately Gluck, an enthusiast

in his own way, turned the Lutheran prayer book into crude

Russian verse and had his pupils learn it by singing. The

pupils sons of boyars and foreign soldiers and well-known

merchants took their schooling as a new kind of punishment,

and when the Moscow parents found out what the songs

actually meant, the school was closed.

A school of medicine rose on the banks of the Yauza; pro-

fessors arrived from Ley den, and then from Scotland. To one

of these last, Peter guaranteed that he would have a certain

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 227

number of pupils; still, truants fled from the new learning. A

House of Comedy appeared in the Red Place. There "singing

pieces" were heard, performed by foreign maestros, with in-

terpreters borrowed from the Ambassadors' Bureau to explain

the opera to the audience.

Naturally enough, Petersburg soon had its Academy, and

equally as a matter of course, it was a Marine Academy teach-

ing navigation and naval science to other sons of the gentry,

compelled by imperial ukaz to endure this confinement. And

very soon indeed the Marine Academy had a scientist from

Paris. After his long struggle with shipping, Peter turned

against Dutch technicianswho were, after all, like the Eng-

lishhis political ill-wishers of the moment. He started a cycle

of French schooling after his descent upon Paris. The Scots

remained on, chiefly as physicians and soldiers. By now the

foreigners had ceased to play the part of ministers and com-

mandersactual or ghostly and had become simple instruc-

tors. Gottfried Leibnitz never obtained the appointment to his

"centralized" Academy; he was given a small salary and his

letters were read carefully.

It seemed clear to Peter and his advisers that by giving

western schooling to Slavic minds he could raise his subjects

to the level of westerners. In some mysterious fashion, how-

ever, this process of uplift seemed to fail. Or even if a Russian

student came back from Leipzig with a practical knowledge

of physics, he found no means at home to apply that skill.

Here in dealing with the enduring problem of the oriental

with a mechanistic schooling Peter achieved his happiest suc-

cess. If things must be supplied as tools for the new wisdom,

he would supply them. Hence the rush of dispensaries, first

in Moscow, then in Petersburg, Revel, Kazan, and Narva.

Libraries went up also, to be crammed with books. To get

more books, printing was fostered, and paid for. Since the old

Slavonic did not fit well into type design, Peter experimented

with a simpler Russian alphabet.

In this new type the first newspaper was published. With

his year of decision, 1718 when he turned back to cope with

"inward" development of his people we find an Oberpolizei-

meister (the Portuguese, Devier, who had risen from cabin

228 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

boy to be chief of police and to be beaten by Peter's fists be-

cause of a broken bridge) issuing printed 8 mles for conduct. A

Mirror for Youth appeared in print, along with a volume on

the victories gained in the Northern War. Peter himself re-

vised the manuscript of a volume "on the measuring of the

earth" in the new Russian letters. A very different book was

published, entitled, The Tale of the Warlike Exploits of the

Tsar.

The Ancient Stones and the Strange Bones

Before then Leibnitz had listed certain aids to learning . . .

"the theatre, both of art and nature, souvenir cabinets, gal-

leries of antiquities, statues and paintings, zoos (vivaria) of

living animals, botanical gardens, factories, studios, arsenals,

wood-working shops . . ." These exhibits and practical work-

shops, it seemed, were to aid the great undertaking of the

national educational center to "debarbarize" the Russians.

"His Tsarian Majesty may found a college which, in his name,

should have the direction of the studies, arts and sciences, in

his empire. ... This college will have under its supervision

all schools, and all head instructors, printing, everything deal-

ing with books and the supply of paper, medicine and drugs,

also salt works, and mines, and in addition inventions and

manufacturing, the experimentation with new varieties of

vegetables and materials and trades in a word, it will become

a college of [national] health, of minerals, watchful of means

of subsistence, and every subject of the Tsar ought, under

penalty of severe punishment, to assist this college in every

possible way to accomplish its purpose."

Probably His Tsarian Majesty fumed at the prolixity of the

illustrious German. But the blueprint of the central "college,"

administered by himself, and in turn reaching out toward the

minds and the resources of his dominion, remained fixed in

his memory. And that memory was capable of recalling very

clearly details of a decide before. By degrees the term "col-

lege" became connected up with other concepts for inward

improvement, with consequences never anticipated by Leib-

nitz.

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 229

For Gottfried Leibnitz had made the mistake of thinking

of Muscovite minds as tabula rasa. So he described them in

his letters thinking of simple barbarians uncontaminated by

previous schooling, and in consequence eager to be filled like

"new, untainted vessels" with modern philosophy. But the

Slavic minds were by no means clean tablets or vessels either.

They were filled with the imagery of their mysticism, with

age-old fears and longings that drove them to gather together

by running water to sing, or to shed their new clothes and

run away to the forest.

Peter understood this. He shared those fears and longings.

He played the showman to his people, with his troupes of

dwarfs and military parades. Like children, they would take

the hand of a madman and would close their minds to the

preaching of a logician. So much he realized. For one of his

new line-of-battle ships he designed a figurehead St. Peter

piloting a small boat rowed by children. Near his city he urged

the building of a great monastery christened after Alexander

Nevsky, the hero-tsar of old days.

With such things he managed well. But he never gained

touch with his people as human beings. To the Slavs, who

had an inbred love of folk dancing and singing, he gave the

"singing piece" of Htmsivurst, the German epic clown who

amused him; he bewildered them with his trumpets and drums.

Not because they hated him but because they hated the sea,

his beloved ships became, to them, the "Dutch navy."

They were accustomed to community dancing and pag-

eants on, feast days. Peter offered them operettas of a new

kind showing fanatical Old Believers walking in procession

and wailing like blind men who cannot see where they are

going a bearded archpriest clamoring and weeping because

his son was taken away to school a chorus of smocked peas-

ants and kaftaned merchants moaning for "the happy days of

old" when they could sleep on stoves and scratch themselves

on benches.

Peter had his own reasons for changing the central govern-

ment to a Swedish model.

For one thing, Sweden had actual administrative colleges,

collegia, stemming from Stockholm. As an experienced ship-

230 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

wright, Peter had learned that Russian-designed vessels did

not function as well at sea as the Dutch and English designs*

Was that not also true of a central state institutional system

to replace the archaic Prikazi? What 'worked in an intelli-

gent neighboring country should work also in Russia.

For some time experts from Holstein and Saxony had been

hired to report on the Swedish governmental system. In due

course they had arrived in Petersburg with massive reports.

In this year of inward development following the notes

taken at Paris and the snub by the western maritime powers

Peter appointed presidents of new Swedish-model colleges

and bade them have a working system prepared by the end

of the year. In the Admiralty college-to-be he showed great

interest. In the Revision College (Financial Control) were

lumped together a half dozen of the old bureaus.

In this streamlining of governmental agencies, the Church

was to take its place. No patriarch was appointed. Instead a

Holy Synod presided over the affairs of the churches a col-

legiate board, appointed by the tsar, administering the churches

as a governmental activity similar to the Collegium Berg und

Mamcfactm, the Office of Mines and Manufactures.

Throughout the land the saying was heard, "We have a

German army, we have a Dutch navy, and now we have a

Swedish government."

When snow still lay on the ground in 1718, an imperial

ukaz aided the cause of the new science somewhat as Leibnitz

had suggested but chiefly as Slavic minds understood how

material was to be gathered for the museums-to-be.

"If anyone find in the earth, or in the water, any ancient

objects, such as unusual stones, or the bones of man or beast,

or of fishes or of birds, unlike those which are now with us r

or such as are larger or smaller than usual, or any old inscrip-

tions on stones, iron or copper, or any ancient weapon not

now in use, or any vessel [vase or container] or such-like

thing, ancient or unusual, let him bring all such things to us,

and an ample reward shall be given him."

In due time a procession of monstrosities began to arrive at

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 23!

Petersburg, including two-headed calves, twelve-fingered

babies, and albino women.

Peter had galleries, now, in his new city, at least in Menshi-

kov's palace on the island. Naturally, he took to the suggestion

to adorn these galleries with "antiquities, statues and paintings 5 ' 5

in which he had small interest himself. The agent sent to Paris

to buy them was Lefort's nephew. From Venice came a

marble Venus, "finer than the Venus in Florence because it

had its limbs whole. 55

Portrait painters also arrived at Petersburg, to make pictures

of the Russians and their city. For by now the tsar showed

clearly his determination to make the city the milieu of the

new order. From Petersburg should stem the education, not

of the archaic days or of the Byzantine Church, but of Europe

in the year 1718.

Just as clearly, Moscow, which reminded the people by

every stone and tower of the dark past, was being abandoned.

James Bruce, who had liked Moscow where the people "laid

aside old costumes 55 and the ladies gave dances after instruc-

tion by Swedish officers, prisoners of war, relates that after

the removal of one thousand of the great families to Peters-

burg the city became "quite deserted. 55 He himself was as-

signed to work at the finishing of the Fortress of Peter and

Paul, where he heard whisperings of the death of the Tsare-

vich Alexis. "Few believed he died a natural death, but it was

dangerous to speak as they thought. 55

Across the river, Swedish prisoners of war labored at laying

the stones of the great boulevard that skirted the river, the

Nevsky Prospekt.

For a street to be paved not with logs or even hewn planks

but with stone was a marvelous thing. Its like had never been

seen in Russia although travelers returning from the outer

world said that Paris had such streets.

The Case of Mary Hamilton

Through the palaces of Petersburg where courtiers gossiped

over their wine ran the tale of the execution of a girl who

had been maid in waiting to Catherine.

232 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

The victim herself was of a great family, being Scottish in

part, the granddaughter of Little Sergy Matviev, who had

been killed by the Streltsi. Mary Danilovna Hamilton, she was.

One of the new maids in waiting, one of the girls no longer

confined to the terem, who appeared in European dress with

bare face and shoulders among the motley men who crowded

the great court, she was fair-looking and young, rather timid

and shrinking. Such girls, unless protected by Catherine her-

selfor unless they had the good fortune to win marriage with

a grandeebecame the bedfellows of men who desired them.

Mary, perhaps, had better luck than most of her compan-

ions. Peter noticed her, and jested with her; she may have

belonged to him momentarily. But Peter was at that time en-

grossed with a young woman of some position, Maria, the

daughter of the hospodar of Moldavia, who had the wit to

keep him in play, much to Catherine's dislike. No important

person heeded Mary Hamilton, and the court in general as-

sumed that she was being passed around among Peter's young

attendants. Then it developed that she had come to love one

of them, a handsome numskull of the rising Orlov family.

The shy and moody girl seemed to think of nothing but this

Orlov, who did not feel bound to her. She even stole some

jewels from one of Catherine's caskets to give Orlov, who

turned the jewels into money, perhaps because he needed to

aid Mary Hamilton in one matter, perhaps because he wanted

the money himself. It was a trifling theft, one of scores that

passed unnoticed as a rule.

Accident uncovered it. A paper of some importance to

Peter vanished from his cabinet, and all the underlings of his

circle were questioned about it. The intimacy of Mary Hamil-

ton with Orlov came out in the questioning, although the girl

herself admitted nothing. However, Orlov took fright under

the questioning. Apparently he thought they had summoned

him because of what he had done for Mary. Dropping to his

knees, he begged for the imperial pardon, telling all that had

taken place between him and the girl. He had helped Mary to

smuggle out and kill one or it might have been three of the

children she had borne him. And he had taken the jewels she

stole.

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 233

Summoned for new questioning, Mary admitted ail this.

Still there was no great stir in Peter's circle over the case.

In old Russia unwanted infants had disappeared of ten 'enough.

Evidently neither Mary nor Orlov had taken the paper.

Yet Peter would not overlook the infanticide. By the law,

a wife who killed her husband could be buried alive, up to

her neck, and allowed to perish slowly while watched by

guards. Peter had paused at times to study such victims, be-

cause passers-by often dropped coins by the head, and the

guards would buy food or wine for the head with some of

the coins, keeping others for themselves, and the whole pro-

ceeding troubled Peter vaguely. If a murderess had to die

in this manner, a woman who put her child to death should

lose her own life. And in Mary's case, Peter announced that

she would be beheaded on the executioner's block.

Nor would he change his mind. Women banded together

to persuade him. Catherine even asked the elder princesses to

intercede for Mary Hamilton. Peter merely answered some-

thing about Saul and Ahab and the law. "I won't violate the

law because of a kindly feeling."

There was no appeal from that decision. Nor did Peter

allow it to be forgotten. Early in March 1719 he went him-

self to the block when Mary was led out, dressed in white

trimmed with mourning black. When she staggered at the

steps, he supported her with his arm. Some witnesses said that

tears showed in his eyes. Then he turned away.

The same witnesses said that he lingered to keep the block

in sight until Mary's head had been severed. After that he

gave an order to preserve the head, and dismissed the case

from his mind.

The girl's execution did not cease to be the talk of Peters-

burg. By degrees people wondered if there had not been more

to the affair than had appeared at the time. 9

Almost the only witness who wrote down his observation

truthfully was a certain John Cook, a physician who visited

Petersburg much later and examined Mary's head preserved

in a jar of alcohol at the exhibits of the new Academy. Dr.

Cook also heard the tale of the execution as it was given after

sixteen years.

234 THE C3CTY AND THE TSAR

"Here I saw the head of the unfortunate Miss Hamilton,

who lost it for having murdered her child, unlawfully begot-

ten; and this is the only murder of that kind I ever heard of

in Russia. This lady was rnaid of honor to the Empress Cath-

erine. It is said Peter went and saw her executed. He wept

much, but could not prevail with himself to pardon her, for

fear, as is said, that God would charge him with the innocent

blood she had shed. He caused her head to be cupped, and

injected. The forehead is almost complete; the face is the

beautifullest my eyes ever beheld; the dura mater and brain

are all preserved in their natural situation. This is kept in

spirits, in a large chrystal vessel."

Another link with the past had broken when Romodanov-

sky died before Alexis. In these years Peter himself seemed

to be in a fever of anxiety to get things done, as if he realized

that he had not many more years of life. Still he refused to

occupy a palace like Menshikov's -keeping to his cabin where

he could watch the ships anchored in the river. Although he

wore fine linen and a silk vest, he still liked to slip into his

peasant's kaftan.

No other Russians replaced Romodanovsky and She-

remet'ev. A Negro page brought by Tolstoy from Constanti-

nople often amused Peter. His name was Abraham Hannibal,

and he had learned Dutch readily. But he did not remain to

serve in the tsar's cabin, being sent to France to learn military

ways and the language of that country. The great-grandson

of Abraham Hannibal, the poet Pushkin, was to be, long after-

ward, one of the most eloquent voices of the new Russia.

Yet apparently Peter paid no attention to one of the most

eloquent voices of his own day, to Ivan Pososhkov, who had

been born a peasant and had taught himself. Like Krijanich,

this peasant- writer stormed at the inertia of Muscovite minds,

calling upon fire to burn out the weeds of ignorance, and

calling upon the people to understand the words of their tsar,

"for they make untrue his sayings." Like the strange Serb,

Pososhkov believed that enlightenment could come by ukaz

from the tsar. But he had no faith in the foreigners who

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 235

flooded the land. Nor did Pososhkov place hope in the Peters-

burg centralization.

"The tsar draws wealth," he wrote, "into his treasury, but

bestows it not upon the people of the land." And again, "What

the tsar pulls into one place with the strength of ten men, will

be pulled back again by a million.''*

Peter hardened himself to opposition in those years. Before

then in Moscow he had allowed Old Believers to carry on

their trades without penalty except the payment of a double

tax. Now in Petersburg, where Old Believers looked on the

building of the new city as the work of Antichrist, he struck

at their sect, giving them the alternative of rejoining the Or-

thodox Church or suffering their beards and noses to be shorn,

and to serve as rowers in the fleet of galleys.

The Peace md the Great Flood

At last the great fleet of Petersburg was putting to sea.

Every summer it emerged from the Gulf of Finland, to cruise

the Baltic and blockade the Swedish coast. More than that, it

raided the coast near Stockholm, the galleys ferrying over part

of the army, amphibian fashion, to devastate the countryside. 10

As to that devastation, the Englishman's journal relates, "The

Tsar's commands were positive, and performed with reluc-

tance by the Commander-in-Chief."

The pressure of the offshore blockade bore heavily on the

wearied Swedes. The great force of fighting ships, escorting

the ubiquitous flotilla of galleys, threatened Stockholm itself.

At one time Apraksin had eight hundred galleys and twenty-

seven thousand soldiers under his command. It was a strange

new navy, wherein soldiers manned the frigates the English-

man says that the crews of the larger vessels had no more than

thirty to forty experienced seamen eachand foreign naviga-

tors conned the vessels through the treacherous shallow waters,

often blanketed in mist or filled with drifting ice. It was driven

to its task by Peter's will.

The journal gives evidence of constant mishaps to the ves-

sels, and of Peter's inflexible determination. "The London and

Portsmouth both running on a sandbank ... the captains

236 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

consulted and did all in their power to get the ships off; but

the weather proving bad and all their boats being lost, they

resolved to cut away their masts; in performance thereof the

captain of the Portsmouth was killed, and the ships soon after

bilged. . . .

u The Tsar, resolving to keep [up] the number of his ships

of the line, ordered the Poltava to be rebuilt. . . .

"The Tsar himself in his cups frequented toasted 'A health

to all brave officers who will never design to leave me, espe-

cially during the war. ...

"The Katharine, Moscow and Ingermanland, though built

of oak timbers were observed to be much destroyed, partly by

lying in fresh water, partly ... by the hard frost in the

winter. . . . The Tsar ordered holes to be cut two foot above

the water, afote and abaft, to give the air a free passage. . . ."

(While the fleet scoured the eastern Baltic, taking prizes*

and watcMag constantly for the appearance of the English

fleet to join with the Swedes, the galleys kept on with their

raids of demolition.)

"Several more ships this year were condemned as unfit for

service; and the latter end of this summer the fortifications of

Kronslot [Kronstadt] were finished. . . .

"The ship Lesnoy, Rear-Admiral Gordon and Captain Bat-

ting commanders, built by the Tsar himself and drawing 22

feet water, as she was towing out of the haven where is at

most but 24 feet, came upon the fluke of an anchor that ran

through her bottom and she bilged and sank. This misfortune

much chagrined the Tsar; however, at last leaving directions

with Prince Menshikov to use all possible efforts to weigh her

up, he sailed with the fleet."

Peter had been prepared for peace. In his old dressing gown*

he had harangued his two envoys in the small hours of the

night before their departure for the find conference at Ny-

stad at the end of the summer of 1721. These two were the

best of his diplomats, Ostermann and James Bruce.

But when the courier from Viborg brought him the news,

he behaved like Bombardier Peter. One word leaped out of the

writing at him. Riga.

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 237

They had got him Riga, the ancient stronghold of the Bal-

tic! Tree, most of Finland was handed back to the Swedes,

with an indemnity of two million thalers. Yet he had Viborg,

Narva, Revel, Pemau, and Riga. 11 Petersburg lay secure within

the new coastlands of Esthonia and Livonia. His window to

the w r est had opened wide. Because of his fleet, he ruled the

Baltic.

The English ships that had lurked beyond the horizon

threatened him no longer, because England had approved the

peace, on the Swedish side, as Poland had for Russia.

That day Peter jumped into the handiest craft, an open gal-

ley, and had himself rowed up the Neva in Ms worn admiral's

uniform with only the star of St. Andrew on it. Springing

ashore at the Troitsko landing, he began to shout, "Peace-

peace! "

While he hurried to pray in the cathedral, he had a platform

built hastily outside the doors. Climbing over kegs of beer and

wine, he stood on the platform and danced, saying whatever

came into his head. "Apprentices have only seven years to

serve I have served twenty-one. With how much study, and

how many blows of the rod!"

It was his personal victory over the sea and over the western

powers who had stood in his way. Yet the victory had been

gained in reality by the heroic endurance of his people.

In a thankful mood his new Senate, a kind of nine-man

board of control, convened, and bestowed honors upon him

with all formality (first consulting him as to the wording).

For years he had signed documents, "We, Peter the First, Tsar

and Autocrat of All the Russias." Foreign courts had fallen

into the way of speaking of His Tsarian Majesty. Now the

Senate hailed him as Peter the Great and Father of the Father-

land.

Thtere was in all minds a searching back to the past, a mem-

ory of times when western monarchs had mocked at or

slighted the title of tsar. These diplomats of Europe had

spoken of the "Muscovite tsar" almost in contempt. Yet Mos-

cow had, in its way, replaced Constantinople in the Christian

world as the imperial city of the east. Constantinople had be-

238 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

come the city of the Turks, the splendor of its Byzantine days

only a memory. Why was not the tsar, the successor to those

Byzantine emperors, the actual Emperor of the East?

Peter shook his head. "It smells musty."

So the new title was pronounced as Emperor (Imperator}

of All the Russias.

In the last years when he had had spells of sickness, Cather-

ine's attitude had changed. He had felt that, without under-

standing it.

There was no outward change. At dances she would take

his hand as before and pirouette gracefully with him, and with

no one else. In her letters she had grown more affectionate,

calling him Little Father, and even jesting. Yes, she had ad-

dressed him once as the Knight of the Compass and Anchor.

When he talked about a fine residence for her, like the

Chateau of Marly, with a garden like the Trianon, she had

made no objection. The garden should have statues set around,

like Menshikov's. It should be called Ekaterinhof.

She nodded, at that. "Little Alexashka is called Highness,"

she reminded him, "and Serene Count."

There was no harm in that for the indispensable viceroy to

be honored. Moreover Menshikov had the shining personality,

like a drawn sword, to which honor is given readily. He num-

bered the horses in his stables by the thousands.

Peter himself had turned over to state use the vast stables

of Moscow days, along with the kitchens and cooks main-

tained by his father Alexis for the entire court and the upstairs

poor.

The terem had been abolished, too, with its servitude of

women. Peter had tried to change the ancient marriage cus-

tom, by which the fathers decided betrothals for the children.

Yet it was not easy to make women obey an ukaz. More than

the men, they held to their retirement. Moreover if they

ciressed in the new fashion and came out into the streets they

flocked together, chattering like hens. They had no place to

show themselves, like the halls of the old homes where they

offered glasses of spirits to guests.

In the summer of 1718, in the month of Alexis' death, he

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 239

had issued an ukaz that social meetings should be held in Pe-

tersburg regularly between the hours of four and seven as-

semblies, he called them, after the Paris word. At first Devier,

the chief of police, had issued the invitations, and the guests

had not come too willingly. Beer and tobacco had been set out

on the tables. Catherine had started the dancing. . . .

Since then she had ceased using the words "Your Majesty."

That is, she had taken to saying "Little Father.'' 5 Even when

she would come quietly to where he was drinking with his

fledglings, she would say, "Time to come home, Little Fa-

ther." The Scottish doctor had insisted that he drink only two

glasses at a sitting, and abstain from brandy and vudka. Peter

drank fewer glasses but they were still the brandy that he

relished.

Then there was the matter of money put away. Catherine

had never before taken gifts from visitors who had business to

talk over with her; now she accepted the presents and money,

putting them away. Part of her funds she sent to bankers in

Amsterdam. Peter had been informed of that, and thought no

ill of it. A prudent housewife would put kopeks into the jar

by the clock.

When they talked about the succession to the throne, he

found that little Katyushka had new questions to ask. Did not

Peter need to name his successor? Yet who could succeed him?

The surviving son of Alexis, who had been christened Peter,

was only an infant. The two daughters of Catherine were tall

girls. No woman had been enthroned in Muscovite days; even

Sophia had not held the title. But who remained to carry on

Peter's work except those nearest him, Little Alexashka,

Catherine, and Elizabeth and Anne?

Peter felt a weariness and a craving for what was near him.

Even at night or on a journey he could not endure to be alone.

When he felt drowsy, he called for a servant and stretched

himself out with his head on the man's body. Sometimes he

walked out to sleep in a small boat. The motion of the water

quieted him. If he found himself in a lofty bedroom, he felt

uneasy until they brought a sail or tapestry, and rigged it over

the bed to bring the roof close to him.

His cabin of hewn logs and shingles dripped with dampness,

240 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

yet he would not give it up. Instead, he had heavier walls built

around it, like a stone shell.

At times when he lay on his cot bed, his eyes half closed, his

flesh, puffed up, aching with the pain of frayed nerves, he

fancied that this cabin was his one home. It protected him.

Outside it stood the formless edifice of an empire. By his com-

mandsand nothing in the empire could be effected now

without such a command from the tsar a door or window ap-

peared in the structure, or a wall was opened; but what it

might become as a whole he could not know. . . . Men-

shikov's palace had stately gate towers. You entered it, passed

through the formal green garden, and climbed the steps to the

anteroom. You found everything finished, waiting, ready to

hand. . . .

Driven by his restlessness, because movement stifled pain,

Peter would stalk along the canals to stride through the foun-

dations of the German wire factory, no longer carrying his

notebook. Secretaries and servitors followed him, running to

keep up, lugging their plans and account books, waiting for

him to speak. When diplomats besieged him, he would often

walk away from them or set them to working with their hands

. . . he would allow no card playing or European games at his

assemblies . . . when the women came to the assembly which

had been proclaimed to be mourning for the Regent of France,

they wore no mourning; they wore their colored gowns,

imitated from the European . . . when he ordered them to

go home and change, they said they had no other dresses . . .

it had been easier after Catherine started the beer drinking and

dancing . . . that Polish woman who smiled secretively, he

found it easier to talk to her when he worked with a plane and

saw . . . she would not lie down with him . . .

Weber, the envoy from Hanover, no friend to Peter, wrote

of a gathering of diplomats at Peterhof. "The Tsarina gave

each of us a glass of brandy. Some of us went to sleep after

dinner in the garden. About four o'clock we were wakened,

and the Tsar ordered hatchets given us. Then he led us out to

the wood and paced off a space about a hundred steps in width

where, by the river, we were told to cut down the trees. The

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN* 24!

Tsar himself set to work first and although we were not accus-

tomed to woodcutting there were seven of us, in allwe

managed to finish our stint in about three, hours. Only one

minister was harmed by the fall of a tree. By that time the

fumes of drink had gone out of our heads.

"Thanking us for our trouble, the Tsar entertained us w r eli

that evening. At night, before we had slept more than an hour

and a half, we were wakened by a favorite of the Tsar and

conducted, willy-nilly, into the chamber of a prince of Gir-

cassia who was in bed with his wife. There we had to remain,

drinking brandy, until four o'clock in the morning. At eight

they called us to breakfast which was brandy again instead of

the tea or coffee we expected. After which we were led out

to take the air on horseback the horses being eight sad look-

ing nags led up by a peasant. Each of us mounted one, and we

were made to pass in a sorry kind of procession before the

window where Their Majesties looked out at us."

The flood came with a west wind. Before then it had rained

steadily for days. Above the Neva the new canalway had

turned into a muddy lake.

The west wind rose to a gale, thrusting at the surging Bal-

tic, and forcing the water of the narrowing gulf on, into the

mouth of the river Neva. There the rising water of the sea

met the flood of the rain-soaked land.

Beneath the waters the tracery of sandbanks vanished in

boiling sand. The flood became a cataract tormented by the

blast of the wind. It thrust into the streets of Petersburg. It

loosened the pilings under the buildings, and the houses

creaked like ships in a storm. It lapped up the soil of the new

gardens and filled the cells of the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Sailing craft torn from their moorings and tree trunks glid-

ing down the river battered against the upper stories of houses.

Skeletons of new vessels staggered out of the shipways and

were sucked down by the current.

By the next day the flood had risen over the ground floors

of the dwellings. When night came pinpoints of light showed

like glowflies over the surface of the water as the people got

into boats to leave Peter's city.

242 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Pulling at the oars of galleys, Old Believers without their

noses nodded their heads as they watched the lights diminish.

They rowed their galleys where the Prospekt had been, turn-

ing through the treetops toward the higher ground. There,

above flood level, rose the stone walls of the monastery of

Alexander Nevsky.

It seemed clear to the Old Believers that the sea had come

into the land to destroy the city of Antichrist. In proof of

that, had not the waters spared the consecrated soil of the

monastery?

After the great flood, Peter Alexeivich made his way on

foot through the mud and the broken walls, gazing curiously

at the destruction, and directing how the work of repair was

to begin.

The Silent Migration

The drift of the populace had been going on for some time

but without evidencing itself. After Poltava a census of

"hearths' 7 or dwellings had shown a strange and unexpected

shrinkage since the beginning of the war. Instead of increasing

in a decade, the number of householders had shrunk.

Evidently the peasantry and small owners as well as serfs

were departing from the state-controlled area, to the frontier

provinces beyond the reach of census takers. At the same time

desertions from the armed forces had increased. After the

Pruth campaign, the War Office records showed forty thou-

sand conscripts vanished, and some thirty thousand deserters

from the ranks. Because of these desertions the yearly draft

had to be stepped up, sometimes to one man in five in a village.

Pososhkov, in his own way, describes the shirkers who "act

idiotic before the inspectors, to be certified as mad, and then

sneak home to their villages to roar like Uons."

By the end of the war, more than three hundred and fifty

thousand families had vanished from the tax records.

That in itself caused a new hardship. If the hearths to be

taxed had grown less, those that remained must be taxed more,

increasingly, as the cost of the war mounted, especially the

cost of building, equipping, and manning the new navy. There

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 243

was also the new General Staff to be paid for. By the time of

the peace of Nystad the expense of maintaining the army,

navy, and staff with all that pertained to them had grown un-

accountably to nearly six million gold rubles.

This was more than one half the yearly revenue of the new

empire.

In proportion as the taxation increased, the flight of house-

holders mounted also. At the peace, the father of a family had

four rubles to pay in each year. That of course was due in

great measure to the debasing of the currency. Even up at

Kronstadt, the anonymous Englishman noticed that while the

ruble had been worth some ten English shillings before the

war, it was now worth no more than five.

By escaping from the war area a Russian moujik could avoid

payment of this unbelievable tax. Down past the Kharkov

guard line lay the fertile Ukrainian earth and freedom from

the tax collectors. Beyond the Urals custom post lay the new

territory of the Baraba steppe.

Increasingly during the ten years since the Pruth campaign,

the drift of population had tended south and east. It was more

,a flight by families than by mirs. After the roads dried out, or

on the winter "snow road," a family could pack its utensils

into the cart or sledge, hitch up the horse, tie the cow behind,

and make its way slowly south, helping to gather in crops or

begging from Christian folk. God had given plenty of fruit

and grain in the south. And out in the wild lands a new cabin

could be put together in a month, while the soil was turned

over for seeding.

Since the armies had been sent, mostly, up to the far Baltic

among the Finns and Livonians and even into the unknown

"western lands," not to mention the sea itself few troops

manned the posts in the south and east.

In this migration, however, the families made their way past

the old Volga region. The assessors and guards had become

too numerous there. By Peter's year of decision, 1718, the rec-

ords show that in Archangel seven persons had vanished out

of every hundred, in Kazan (where timber cutting and hide

gathering as well as collection of cattle for the military went

on) ten out of every hundred.

244 THE CITY AN]D THE TSAR

Peter himself had changed the old taxation on land to a

"soul tax" (poll tax), to apply it more closely to individuals;

but that had not lessened the tax itself. The immediate effect

of changing the tax from the land to the individual was that

more individuals began to desert their land. For a while he had

thought of enlisting the services of a miraculous Scottish

financier, John Law by name, who had set up a bank in France

to meet the debts of Louis XIV. But later reports from Paris

revealed that John Law's bank no longer wrought miracles.

After the peace, some of the troops were disbanded, but the

structure of the army remained as large as before. As to the

fleet, the Englishman observed that the tsar was not willing to

diminish it. One vessel building in Holland was sold, and some

of the poorer craft turned into merchantmen, while the others

were careened for repairs or sent out on sea maneuvers. Work

on the canals and Petersburg continued unabated, in spite of

obstacles and resentment of the labor armies "the main im-

pediments [were the] absence of money," the Englishman re-

lates, "and aversion of the Russian people to works of this

nature, proceeding from an universal distaste and dissatisfac-

tion in the body of the Russian nation. The Russ give them

[voice their dissatisfaction] in a proverb: "God is far above us

and the Tsar far from us."

It was an old proverb, spoken long before in the troubled

eastern provinces.

The popular unrest was aggravated by the losses during the

unending war. Casualties in battle did not run excessively high

there had been no major battle since Poltava and the Pruth

but deaths from disease in the makeshift training camps and

army cantonments rose beyond any control (although Peter

had tried to supply the troops with medicine and surgeons).

One Swedish officer, a prisoner since Poltava, Philip Johan,

Baron of Stralenberg, estimates the losses in Peter's wars as

more than three hundred thousand men, and the losses in the

Petersburg labor as one hundred thousand. (These are no

more than conjectures by an intelligent observer, critical of

Russian methods.)

The Englishman speaks of the populace at this time as "in-

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 245"

credibly dispirited." Yet he finds the ignorant masses "tena-

cious" on such points as keeping up the old religions fasts*

"amounting in the whole to fifteen weeks besides every

Wednesday and Friday throughout the year." (During the

fasts the Orthodox Russian would eat little except fruit and

mushrooms, and could not perform heavy manual labor; Peter

tried to have construction work carried on during the fasts.)

"When great numbers of sick have been landed from aboard

the Russian fleet, especially in these fasting seasons, the Tsar

has ordered provisions of fresh meat issued and set a guard to

prevent bringing in other sustenance. Many have actually per-

ished rather than violate their ill-informed consciences in eat-

ing forbidden foods. Although the Tsar, in his private opinion,

highly condemns this custom, yet perceiving the strong at-

tachment of the populace [to it] he forbears to abolish it by

public edict; but underhand endeavors to overthrow [it] by

turning it into ridicule. Herein is he seconded by many of the

modern Russ both in the army and the navy, that have been

abroad in the world. Yet so little progress is made that scarce

one in a hundred amongst the under-officers and seamen will,

unless by pure compulsion, break this established notion."

This is the time when the Cossack colonel complained bit-

terly to the new Senate at Petersburg that his men, ordered to

labor on the northern canals, were dying off. Serfs ordered

into the new munitions and cloth and leatherfactories, run

at that time by Peter's favorites, mutinied and were fired on by

the military guards. There were riots in the fisheries because

the monopoly of salt prevented the fishermen from getting

enough salt to preserve the fish.

An order went out to mark all military conscripts by tat-

tooing. Frightened by this branding, recruits fled the camps

in droves.

Like heat lightning, the silent revolt flickered along the

horizon, never breaking into a storm but gathering intensity.

It appears along old frontiers, distant from Petersburg.

In Moscow a government printer fixes rebellious posters to

the street corners. He flees into Siberia, is tracked down,

brought back and burned. In Kazan a monk preaches revolt.

He is beheaded. Beyond the Volga the Cheremiss tribes rise

246 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

and are crushed by an army column.. During the year of the

execution of Alexis brigandage increases along the post roads,

until traffic is often held up, or forced to proceed under armed

guard.

By his determination to make Petersburg on the Baltic the

head of the continental empire the tsar is intensifying the

struggle with his own people. More than that, he is opening

up a new cleavage. By turning to the education of the west-

erners, he is divorcing his minority, in Petersburg, from the

folk of continental Eurasia.

The voiceless trek of the Slavs sets in more strongly the

other way. In the popular fancy the area of Moscow-Peters-

burg has become one of war and compulsion; in the east, be-

yond the Urals, peace is to be had. And Pososhkov writes that

while ten move one way, a million pull the other. Pososhkov

himself is imprisoned.

The Purge of the Favorites

The nobility and the upper-class merchants remained loyal

on the whole perhaps not so much to Peter as to the tsardom.

They complained bitterly of the hardships at Petersburg,

where meat and grain had to be carted in at heavy cost, arid a

two-room dwelling with cracked walls cost four times as

much as a comfortable mansion in Moscow. Those who did

not make the move had to send their petitions up to the new

Senate and wait interminably for a response. The one road to

Petersburg was so jammed with humans going both ways that

the post service broke down and could not supply enough

horses. Sometimes families sat for a week in the station sheds,

among piles of red sandstone, oak timber, sacks of grain en

route to the new city. Often when they left the gates of Mos-

cow the families wept as if going into exile.

But the Dolgorukys, the Galitzins and Kuragins served the

tsar as their ancestors had done, and without them Peter could

not have ruled. The old boyars' council had become the new

Senate, but it tried to carry out much the same duties as

before. 12

The consummate Shafirov advised about foreign affairs, yet

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN

247

a Russian of the old type, Gabriel, headed the bureau, now

the College of Foreign Affairs. (And by now Shafirov, whose

wealth vied with that of Menshikov himself, had married his

Drawn by N. Witzen about 1690 Le Bruyn

Boyar on the road: ferry across the river Oka near Moscow

five daughters into the Dolgoruky, Garagan, Golovin, Kho-

vansky, and Saltikov families.)

The foreign naval officers at Kronstadt functioned under

the persuasive personality of Apraksin, who prided himself on

his splendid uniforms, and who had joined the Tolstoy-

Shafirov factory cabal that was reaping fortunes out of the

war supplies.

Even the eight new governors general of the eight prov-

inces, who had been appointed to set up local administration

to replace the old remote control of the Moscow bureaus, had

come to conduct themselves like the voevodes of the previous

generation. "They were given to farm the regions," Stralen-

248 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

berg relates, "in return for paying an appointed revenue to the

treasury."

Stralenberg points out shrewdly that at this point the pro-

vincial governors took their cue from the ring of favorites

around Peter. They were obliged in any case to meet the exac-

tions of that ring. If they sent in the full amount of a year's

tax much of it might disappear before reaching the Treasury.

In consequence, revenues from the more distant regions like

Kazan and Astrakhan failed to arrive in full.

Informers, of course, brought Peter some particulars of all

this. But he disliked to bother his head about finances. And at

first the secret agents brought in tidings because they could

claim part of the money extracted from their victims. Then

the system was changed, so that a man informing against an-

other had to prove his case "by word and deed" or suffer

the penalty that would have been inflicted on the other. That

checked the flood of rumors, without checking the bribes by

which the informers could be set by one official upon another.

Yaghuzinsky, the headstrong ex-bootblack, now chief exe-

cutioner, gave particulars of gigantic thefts to his master. The

pseudo fools told Peter tales about favorites they hated. It was

no action of Peter's part, however, but the mutual accusations

of the cabals that brought about the purge. Peter stormed at

Menshikov, about the systematic looting in Poland, where en-

tire districts had been stripped by the favorites' wagon trains.

That was past and done with. "A trifle." Menshikov

shrugged.

"It is not a trifle," Peter retorted, "that those people will

bear us everlasting ill-will Besides, you have gone against my

ukazi."

He had heard of the draining of money at Petersburg, and

of the dealings in grain by which Menshikov and others sold

for their own account corn bought with government funds.

For a while the onlookers expected Menshikov to be sent to

execution. His assistant was knouted. Other favorites died.

Some paid Catherine to protect them.

Menshikov himself took to his bed in real or pretended sick-

ness. And Peter's anger subsided, to outward appearance. Per-

haps he had discovered the great sums hidden away by Cath-

RISE OF THE MAKERS OF THE REIGN 249

enne. Probably he was unable, by that time, to punish those

close to him. Apraksin, chastened, resumed his duties; Tolstoy

served as before, inscrutably.

Rumor has it that during the fury of the tsar, Yaghuzinsky

told him, "If Your Majesty executes every thieving soul, you

will have no subjects left." And gossip relates that Peter, tak-

ing Tolstoy's head between his hands, said, "O head, if I had

known how clever you were, you would not be here on your

shoulders now." If not true, the rumors are typical of the men

and the time.

During those years of stress before the peace, something-

had changed in Peter's mind. He did not speak of it. After the

peace of Nystad in September 1721, there was every apparent

need for him to stay in Petersburg, to bring some order into

his administration.

Instead he turned to the east, as Ivan the Terrible had done

in his last years.

Without a pause, he set his face away from Petersburg and

the Baltic, journeying that winter to Moscow, ordering galleys

to be portaged across the rivers to the south, gun carriages to

be prepared at Kazan, and new shipping built on the Volga.

Although grain lacked in the north, he had depots filled with

grain down the Volga.

He was bound for the Caspian, to lead in person, with Cath-

erine, Apraksin, and Tolstoy, an invasion of Asia.

THE TURNING TO THE EAST

Little Demidov and the Far Mountains

IN ALL his days, from the Sloboda to the building of Cath-

erine's palace, Peter Alexeivich had shown an active inter-

est only in the west and the things of the west. Now, as if

at a signal, he turned to the hinterland behind him. Why he

did so remains a riddle, to be solved if we are able to do so.

Certainly of all his undertakings, this was most peculiarly

his own. No one advised him to do it, and he had the most

valid reasons not to do it. Some influence other than reasoning

drew him to explore Asia, when he must have felt his ^health

to be failing.

Look back, then, for a moment for the traces of that in-

fluence.

He craved to reach the outer seas. Long since, at Archangel,

he had thought of exploring the Frozen Sea. Whitworth no-

ticed how; he reacted to talk of China and the Ice Sea, and the

greater one known vaguely as the Eastern Ocean Sea reaching

to a new world. He took pains to build and maintain a church

in Peking, the chief city of China even writing a memoran-

dum about it to Andreas Vinius during his disappointment at

Vienna.

Leibnitz wrote often enough about surveying Siberia, and

establishing the longitude of far places by scientific observa-

tion. Peter had seen a Japanese from the farthest islands, and

greeted scholars and embassies from Khiva and Bokhara, who

sought to have him come to the eastern lands. To all this he

gave no answer.

When he held a costume ball, Falstaff fashion, with music of

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 251

Asia, watched by Finns in native dress, Poles played their

violins and Kalmuks their balalaikas. The boyar dressed as a

Catholic bishop was fitted with a pair of Samoyed staghorns.

Raskolnik settlers, whale fishers, Armenian traders, and Lapp

and Tungusi hunters rounded out the costumes of the empire.

Peter came as a sailor with a drum.

He watched good Dr. Erskine lovingly sort out herbs on

pieces of clean paper that had been fetched from Siberia to the

new hospital". From the far places, too, came silver from Ner-

chinskvitally needed in the war, when the China caravans

brought in silk and gold, and fabrics finer than Peter had seen

before.

Then there was Little Dernidov, who wrenched priceless

iron out of the Ural mines. Demidov had made guns once; he

could not be bribed, and like Peter, he still took his ease in a

peasant's kaftan. Little Demidov had a fortune, like the gran-

dees of Petersburg, but he had earned every kopek. Over his

pipe he told Peter of the cattle on the Baraba Steppe, and of

rivers that could be linked together to form a waterway across

the continent.

Demidov knew the Kalmuk khans who had aided Peter at

need as much as the shipments of silver and iron. Never had

Peter set out for Demidov's land, but he had not forgotten it.

After that, in his spells of quiet, he sent out explorers, first

to Isfahan where Moscow's merchants had a trade base Peter

still loaded ships with his own goods, to trade in the west. An

ambassador was sent as the first explorer Voluinsky, who,

with Shafirov, had bought the release of the army at the Pruth

and Peter told him to ascertain "what are the great rivers

discharging into the Caspian; to what point can they be navi-

gated, up. Find out if some one river does not flow from India

into this sea. In what ports are the ships of war on the Caspian?

What mountains and what difficult passes divide the provinces

of the Caspian shore from the rest of Persia?"

Once he said, "It is my hope to go from Persia to India."

The ambassador-explorer-special-agent departed, to be gone

a long time. Voluinsky had a mission like Spathary's. Peter

sent another special envoy to Peking, Lev Ismailov, warning

him to bow politely to the great Manchu emperor, and not to

252 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

put forward Peter's titles, which always offended the Chinese.

Lev Ismailov came back with his report, that the Manchu

cared little for trade, and said the Russian tsar seemed occu-

pied always with war and building ships.

Then there was the troublesome matter of Prince Gagarin,

whom Peter had liked and had appointed governor of Siberia,

in Tobolsk to inject some sort of order into the huge eastern

hinterland. When an informer brought word from Tobolsk

that Gagarin was setting himself up as an autocrat, and levying

tribute on the other towns, Peter paid no heed. And the chest

of documents the informer brought back, carefully, was

burned mysteriously in the Senate.

Gagarin's case, however, could not be forgotten. It came up

again in the troublesome year of the brigands and the Chere-

miss.

Testimony of Stralenberg

The Swedish prisoner, Johan, Baron of Stralenberg, had

come to know of Gagarin more intimately than Peter. He

gives this explanation of what happened: "Prince Gagarin had

planned since 1715 to establish his own kingdom upon any

revolution breaking out in Moscow. Being viceroy of this im-

mense province, he had gathered in large amounts of money.

By means of that he was able to buy the friendship of certain

Senators, and thereby to have freedom to act more and more

independently in his province. He took care to appoint his

own kinsmen and friends to civilian and military offices, to

make certain that no one opposed the increased taxes which he

levied at will.

"When people complained of the new exactions, he assumed

a compassionate air, protesting that the orders of the Tsar

were most severe and could not be altered. . , . On the other

hand he had the finesse to hand out money to the population,

to indemnify them for these heavy exactions of the Tsar.

"Not content with the imposts by which he drained his

province, he took contributions from the neighboring Perm,

Viatka and Pechora not forgetting to offer his own contribu-

tions to the neighboring towns.

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 253

"He hinted often at changes about to be made in religion

by the government, while he himself put on partial Russian

clothing [European dress being required by law for officials]

and assisted daily at the church services, keeping all the fasts.

At church he spoke familiarly even with peasants, and gave

them hope of better times to come. He also turned over con-

fiscated goods to Swedish prisoners and helped to support

them in their captivity.

"Gagarin had taken all precautions to intercept any reports

of his conduct, either spoken or written. To do this he posted

guards on the roads going to Russia, except the pass of Verk-

huturie where he had stationed one of his closest relatives, who

refused to allow anyone to go through without a passport

signed by Gagarin himself, and intercepted all letters written

to persons connected with the Court. Those who deplored his

conduct Gagarin sent to distant posts where no further news

was had of them.

"Having made all his dispositions an,d arranging perfectly

to recruit his friends and silence his enemies, the Governor

began to organise the armed forces of the Siberian country-

side. To aid in this he granted to a number of young gentry

the rank of boyars' sons a kind of noble-born who drew no

pay but served at their own expense.

"The one Dragoon regiment in the province he divided into

two and recruited to new strength, pretending that specific

orders from the Tsar required it. As for infantry, he made no

haste in assembling it, being confident of getting recruits

enough and hoping to find capable officers among the Swedish

prisoners of war. The Siberian metal works supplied him with

cannon enough, and shot. His great difficulty was to get mus-

kets and powder which he could not secure [from the Mos-

cow munitions plants] without the authorisation of the Sen-

ate. He had no plausible reason for petitioning for it, the State

being then at peace with all its neighbors on the Siberian side*

"Finally Gagarin thought out a way to get his munitions,

without arousing the suspicions of the Court. To do this, he

sent agents into Bokhara (a province of Great Tartary) where

several rivers yielded a small quantity of gold sand. They had

orders to buy as much of this loose gold as possible. After sc-

254 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

curing about a dozen livres worth of it, Gagarin journeyed tc

Petersburg, and confided his discovery to the Tsar at Peters-

burg mysteriously. Gagarin led him to believe that the gold

deposits were not very far from his own Government [from

Tobolsk] and that it would be an easy matter to reach them,

but the Kalmuks would allow no one to carry off this sand. To

do so it would be necessary to occupy the area and control it.

If His Majesty [Gagarin argued] would allow him arms for

about ten thousand men and permit him to take back with him

apparatus and technicians for manufacturing powder for

which raw materials could be found in Siberia he would an-

swer for the success of the undertaking.

"The Tsar relished these proposals very much, and after

giving him every indication of goodwill, promised to supply

him with what he requested. However, not daring to trust this

old fox altogether [Peter had had one damaging report about

Gagarin] the Tsar appointed a Colonel Bucholtz to furnish

the supplies from the government to Gagarin, for the hypo-

thetical expedition against the Kalmuks, and to search for the

gold sand. This upset Gagarin badly, although he did not dare

disclose it, because he could not prevent Bucholtz from setting

out from Tobolsk at the head of three thousand men to jour-

ney along the river Irtish."

Gagarin's conspiracy was dangerous. 1 In Tobolsk he held

with him the Metropolitan of Siberia, who might have roused

the Old Believers to rebellion; he was intercepting the cara-

vans from China. (A rumor ran, later on, that he had managed

to get from the Chinese the "finest ruby in the world" which

he had sent as a gift to Catherine. There is no evidence of that,

but he seems to have sent gifts to Menshikov.) The popular

rising had been skillfully planned. Evidently he had been at

work in Perm, the area between the Urals (with the all-impor-

tant mines) and Kazan, a breeding center of revolt. This

happened to be also the country of the Cheremiss. Moreover

portions of the populations uprooted from the Baltic had been

transported thither in the last few years. Whitworth remarks,

speaking of the Russian authorities, "Several towns on the

Volga are the fruits of their former expeditions in Poland and

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 255

Lithuania; and they have at present (1710-11) drained above

one third of the inhabitants from Ingria and Livonia and set-

tled whole villages of them towards Veroneth."

These Volga River lands had revolted ten years before, on

the eve of Poltava (the Bashkir prairies to Astrakhan). Small

armed forces could hold the passes of the Urals. And the

Volga seemed to be ready for one of its periodic reactions

against the central government.

Siberia itself knew Peter only as a name to be prayed for in

church. The only government in Siberia was the individual

will of the military commanders and secretaries scattered

among the wooden forts. The only action Peter himself had

taken up to now to improve conditions in Siberia had been to

appoint Gagarin, the former governor of Nerchinsk, its gov-

ernor-general.

Evidently Gagarin intended to move slowly toward seces-

sion, hoping for "some mutiny in Moscow" or for the death

of Peter. At least he made no attempt to interfere with

Bucholtz, who could not be bought or won over.

Certainly he sent Bucholtz's column on a wild-goose chase

after the gold. Gagarin's samples had been taken from the

Samarkand mountains far to the southwest; Bucholtz jour-

neyed up the Irtysh, far to the southeast, past the outlying

settlements and the Baraba lake almost within sight of the

Altai, where deposits of copper had just been found. He also

came into Kalmuk territory, and plundered some hilltop towns

deserted at his approach by the tribesmen. 2

At the headwaters of the Irtysh Bucholtz was attacked by

these eastern Kalmuks. His column, badly mangled, retreated

to Tobolsk

The failure of the expedition angered Peter; he sent a sena-

tor, Yakov Dolgoruky, to investigate the Gagarin situation,

then got from informers and traders fresh evidence about the

plot, the interference with the China caravans, and Gagarin's

link-up with Menshikov, Apraksin, and Yakov Dolgoruky

himself. A detachment of officers of the Preobrazhensky

Guards under a Major Likarov was hurried to Tobolsk, where

they found that Gagarin had burned his records.

He was brought back to Petersburg 1717 subjected to

256 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

knouting and "severe" torture, perhaps seven times, and his

body hung up in the square of the Senate.

Peter was now roused to pay closer attention to the great

hinterland from which he had been drawing resources. Ga-

garin's conspiracy had died stillborn, but revolt simmered

along the Volga. The Cheremiss tribes were suppressed but

the much more dangerous western Kalmuks took to arms

along the southern steppe, and the half-dug line of the canal

connecting the Don and the Volga had to be manned against

them. Peter called this the Tsaritsyn Line. 3 This same year

(that of the death of Alexis, who, however, had no participa-

tion in the eastern unrest) Peter struck savagely at the Old

Believer sects which he had not disturbed until then. Across

the ukaz commanding them to join the Orthodox Church he

wrote one of his curt notes: "If possible, try to find them in

some clear offense, other than mere dissent."

The Kalmuk rising wiped out another of Peter's exploratory

columns entire. He had sent it with one of his favorites, Prince

Bekhovich Cherkasky, a Georgian, in command to examine

the shores of the inland seas, the Aral and Caspian, and to build

forts at strategic river mouths. Recalling the old friendship

with the dour khans of Khiva, Peter instructed Cherkasky to

treat with them and to search for the missing gold.

Evidently, to round out the report of the Persian mission, he

wanted a rough survey of the river routes leading from the

inland seas toward India, or at least farther into Asia.

At the same time he sent to Khiva, to request that Russian

traders be guided along the best route to India.

The Georgian took Cossacks with him, and built forts

where he found ruins and old river beds on the north shore of

the Caspian. But the 1717 reaction of the Kalmuk, Tatars, and

Turkomans swept over his half -finished posts and cut him off.

For months Russian fugitives were hunted down in the deserts,

and some of their skins nailed to the gates of Khiva. Search for

survivors was made at the southern end of the Urals, without

success, and it became a proverb along the dry steppe, "as lost

as Bekhovich."

On this line of the steppe the tribes of Asia struck another

blow that year* The Kirghiz who had kept a troubled peace

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 257

with the Baraba settlements had been negotiating with Ga-

garin. Peter had instructed Gagarin to bind them to Russia by

a treaty. In any case after Gagarin's arrest and execution the

Kirghiz joined the resistance of the Kalmuks and Khiva khans,

raiding up through the Russian posts along the Urals and

taking and burning the town of NovocWkminsk.

Peter did not find it easy to appoint another governor gen-

eral of Siberia. The post was offered to Grigorl Stroganov, a

descendant of the great pioneer family that had held domain

In the Urals, and declined. Stroganov chose rather to stay In

his Petersburg mansion and enjoy his wealth.

The news from Asia in these last years stirred Peter to

action.

In the year 1722 he had under his sole command a huge

fleet and one of the strongest of armies. These he did not dare

disband. They had become the basis of his rule, since the early

days of Azov. Other than the fleet and army, he, Emperor of

All the Russias, had only the allegiance of his nobles to support

him. That, and the new city still infested by the mire of the

floods .' . . Peter had almost drowned when the boats strug-

gled to save people on the Nevsky Prospekt . . . when the

water had come over his stone pavement, laid by the dour

Swedes.

Among the books piled on the table beneath the ikon that

had accompanied him in his travels, he recognized too many

that had been written for him. There was the slim leather

volume of Feofan Prokopovicji, The Law of the Monarch* s

Willy stating all the case against his son. The journal of the

Great Northern War stood up, resplendent in the gilt French

binding. Beneath it somewhere lay The Tale of the Warlike

Exploits of Our Tsar.

What was the one written by that monk, against the Lu-

therans? The Tsar, the Cornerstone of the Faith. Peter had not

wanted that to be printed, so it was not among these books of

his new library.

He liked better to think of the day when he had stood on

the quarterdeck of the yacht with the Neptune figurehead,

with the foreign admirals around him, all their cocked hats in

258 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

their hands against their hips. At Copenhagen, when he had

reviewed his new fleet . . . like the time, a quarter century

before, when the English line-of-battle ships drove past in

rigid line, off Spithead.

Now, in his hours of quiet, he did not know what to do.

There would have been plenty, a new trip to Marly and Paris,

if he had gained the French alliance. He had liked the seven-

year-old boy. He had written Katyushka about him.

Somewhere among his papers lay the report of the Persian

mission concerning the great inland Caspian Sea. It had been

neglected for years.

But Peter remembered two things in it. That river. In an-

cient times the Amu Darya, like another Volga, had flowed

into the Caspian. The efficient Mongols had changed its

course, to discharge into the Aral Sea. His people wrote that

the river could easily be shifted back to its old bed and made

to flow into the Caspian again, by a dam up there on the

plateau. It flowed down from the mountains of the Afghans

that barred the way to India. It was navigable for barks and

the larger galleys.

The other thing: Persia was in chaos, a dynasty overthrown,

rebels seizing the port of Shamakhy on the Caspian, and con-

fiscating the goods of Russian merchants ... a suitable ex-

cuse for intervention . . . they said Persia was ready for the

coming of a second Alexander.

He was weary of the mists of Petersburg, where so many

papers and problems lay before him. . . . He had christened

the town among the new mines of the Urals Ekaterinburg, for

Catherine.

When the rivers rose with the spring floods Peter started

toward Asia. At Moscow he picked up the Guard regiments

that he had created so long ago out of the Transfiguration and

Semen' ev battalions. He gathered up other infantry and artil-

lery, until he had the best of his army with him. And he went

as his forebears had voyaged across the plain of Rus in an

armada of galleys under sail and oar.

Like Tsar Batu, who had been the Mongol master of the

Volga, Peter Alexeivich took with him his court of jesters,

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 259

secretaries, interpreters, and physicians. He took Catherine,

from whom he could not bring himself to part, and Apraksin,

who cheered him and harangued the galley crews, and Peter

Tolstoy, who knew something about Asiatics, having been

imprisoned within the Seven Towers of Constantinople.

When the cherry trees bloomed and the peasants plowed

the saturated riverbanks, Peter had his first glimpse of the

empire that, beyond Moscow, he ruled as tsar.

What John Bell of Antermony Saw

At Kazan, the Tatar city on the height where the Volga

swung south, a Scotsman joined the armada. He was John Bell,

a surgeon recommended by Erskine, and one of those wander-

ing men whose tranquillity can be shaken by no untoward

happening. Before then he had served on the mission to Persia;

with Lev Ismailov he had made his way to the court of

K'ang hsi, at Peking, and back; on that journey he had chatted

with Hugo Hamilton, the general of the Swedish army, a pris-

oner since Poltava. Of the Scottish and Swedish captives scat-

tered through Siberia, he said "they contributed not a little to

the civilizing of those distant regions, introducing several use-

ful arts which were almost unknown before their arrival."

(This had been before Gagarin's removal.)

John Bell found at Kazan an Englishman who had bought

for six rubles a Cheremiss wife "a woman of very pleasant

and open countenance."

By then nothing surprised John Bell, not even the sight of a

court combined with an army about to travel overland in a

fleet. (Stralenberg was altogether perplexed, whether "this

Monarch were leading the way to a promenade or to a war."

Bell, who knew Persia, believed they were to invade the coun-

try ostensibly to repel the Afghans who had descended from

their mountains near India to raid Isfahan.)

At Moscow he had witnessed the formal celebration of the

peace of Nystad, and the departure of the tsar for Persia com-

bined.

"The Russians in general," John Bell observes, "had a

strong aversion to shipping and maritime affairs. . . [The

AiVLA SALT MARSHES TOWNS

*- MAIN ROUTE .KAZAN TO SIBERIA

* ADVANCE OF COLONISTS INTO BARABA STEPPE

-. APPROXIMATE FRONTIER BETWEEN RUSSIAN

POSTS AND TRIBAL STEPPES , 1735

4 LINES OF ADVANCE PROJECTED BY PETER

IN HIS LAST YEARS, I72I-2S

VOLGA- DON CANAL

100 200 MILES 00 400 SOQ

262 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

tsar] represented to his people that the peace, the rejoicings

for which they were now celebrating, was obtained by means

of his naval strength."

A procession of naval floats was contrived as a spectacle.

"The first of the cavalcade was a galley, finely carved and

gilt, in which the rowers plied their oars as on the water. The

galley was commanded by the high admiral of Russia [ Aprak-

sin]. Then came a frigate, of 16 small brass guns, with three

masts completely rigged, manned by twelve or fourteen

youths habited like Dutch skippers in black velvet, who

trimmed the sails and performed all the maneuvers as of a ship

at sea. This ship required above 40 horses to draw it. Then

came most richly decorated barges, wherein sat the Empress

and the ladies of the court. There were also pilot boats heav-

ing the lead and above 30 other vessels, each filled with mas-

queraders in the dresses of different nations."

The festival ended, the departure took place, troops and

court alike embarking in three hundred galleys at Kolomna.

"The 1 6th [of May 1722] in the evening, His Majesty and

the Empress attended by a few ladies, went on board a mag-

nificent galley of forty oars, with all proper accommodations,

built on purpose for the voyage.

"The 1 7th at break of day the signal was given by firing

three great guns from His Majesty's galley, for the fleet to get

under sail. His Majesty's galley carried the standard of Russia,

the other vessels displayed their ensigns, with drums beating

and music playing, which altogether made an appearance per-

haps not to be equalled in any other country. In about an

hour's time we came into the river Oka, where the vessels had

more room to spread."

One of the few ladies who embarked happened to be Maria

Kantemir, now with child by Peter. For her alone Catherine

seemed to feel acute jealousy. Maria was handsome, younger,

and the daughter of a chieftain. Her child might be a boy, and

Catherine no longer had a son. For years Peter had shown

feeling for Maria. The year before he had forced Senate, offi-

cers, and people alike to swear loyalty to his successor, who-

ever that might be. The people had murmured, of course, in

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 263

giving their oath as it were in blank to whatsoever human

being Peter chose to name before his death. Eudoxia was still

alive in her Ladoga cell, but Catherine had no fear of her, after

the death of Alexis. No, Maria Kantemir was the one woman

who challenged her openly, and Maria was her companion of

the galley.

Their voyage swept them down the flooded Volga, where

the galleys sometimes stranded among the treetops. Yet they

celebrated Peter's birthday and were feted by Baron Stroga-

nov in the old Russian manner.

"The zoth [of May] the Emperor had appointed an inter-

view," John Bell relates, "with Ayuka Khan of the Kalmuks.

The Khan for that purpose, had his tents pitched on the east

bank of the Volga, not far from the river. . . . The Ayuka

Khan came on horseback attended by his sons, all exceedingly

well mounted. About twenty yards from the shore he alighted,

and was received by a privy counselor [Tolstoy? ] and an offi-

cer of the Guard. When the Emperor saw him advancing, he

went on shore, saluted him, and taking him by the hand, con-

ducted him on board the galley where he introduced him to

the Empress seated under a very rich awning.

"Soon after, the [Kalmuk] Queen arrived on the shore, in

a covered wheel-machine, attended by her daughter, who was,

in the eyes of the Kalmuks, a complete beauty. They were

richly dressed in long robes of Persian brocade with little

round caps bordered with sable-fur. The Emperor went on

shore to receive her.

"The Ayuka Khan is an old man about seventy years of

age, yet is hearty and cheerful. And I recollect that when I

was at Peking the Emperor of China made very honorable

mention of him. By his long experience, he is very well ac-

quainted with the state of affairs in the east."

Ayuka Khan at that time nearer eighty than seventy years

was head of the Oirat or western Kalmuks who had mi-

grated from the Chinese frontier to the Volga, where they

obligated themselves to furnish ten thousand horsemen at sum-

mons to the Russian tsars, in return for an allowance of money,

grain, and powder. These Kalmuks had given Peter vital aid

in the Poltava campaign. Two generations later they were to

264, ' THE CITY AND THE TSAR

forsake the Russian steppe and make the long trek back across

central Asia described romantically by De Quincey In The

Flight of a Tartar Tribe. Peter, as usual, made a point of

bringing women Into the meeting.

"The Emperor Intimated to the Ayuka Khan that he would

be desirous of ten thousand of his troops to accompany him

Into Persia. The King of the Kalmuks replied that ten thou-

sand were at the Emperor's service, but he thought one half

that number would be more than sufficient to answer all his

purposes; and immediately gave orders for five thousand to

march directly and join the Emperor at Terki. . . . The Em-

press gave the Queen a gold repeating watch, set with dia-

monds, which seemed very much to take her fancy.

"This treaty between two mighty monarchs was begun,

carried on and concluded, in less space of time than is usually

employed by the plenipotentaries of our western European

monarchs in taking a dinner."

Summer heat set in when they reached Astrakhan at the

Volga mouths. There Maria Kanternir, ill, was put ashore. She

had a miscarriage and so gave birth to no boy. The fleet,

strengthened by larger ships and escorted on the land by dra-

goons and Cossacks, had to feel its way against contrary winds

past the bare sandy islands and reed morasses, out to the blue

salt water of the Caspian.

"The Emperor accompanied the half-galleys which with

the troops on board steered to the west, close under the shore.

But I being on board one of the large ships kept the sea and

steered a direct course for Terki. . . . The town is a frontier

[post] strongly fortified, of singular use for keeping the Cir-

cassian mountaineers in order.

"Here the Emperor sent an officer to Shavkal, a prince of

authority among the mountaineers and a friend to the Rus-

sians. The zyth [of July] the fleet weighed anchor and sailed

south by east to the bay of Agrakhan. In the evening we an-

chored as near the shore as we judged convenient. The Impe-

rial standard was set up; all the troops landed and encamped.

"The same day a Cossack arrived in the camp with dis-

patches giving an account that the dragoons were attacked by

a strong party of mountaineers. This rash attempt of these

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 265

mountaineers was premeditated; for the General demanded

nothing but a free passage through the country, and engaged to

leave them unmolested. The poor people felt to their cost the

effects of' attacking regular troops, of which they had never

seen any before. Several of them were brought prisoners to the

camp; they were strong, able-bodied men, fit for any service.

"The Emperor before he left Astrakhan, had sent manifestos

to all the petty princes and chiefs of Daghestan [the moun-

tainous corner of the great Caucasus barrier along which the

army was now making its way, by the shore] declaring that he

did not come to invade; that he would pay ready money for

provisions. Some of them did not agree. Such is often the case

with free independent states, as are those of the Daghestan.

"The zpth and 30th the whole army with artillery and bag-

gage were transported across the river Agrakhan. The Em-

peror made a plan and ordered a small fortress to be raised, to

keep such stores as we could not carry along with us.

"In the meantime ten thousand Cossacks arrived from the

Don, all horsemen, and also the five thousand Kalmuks sent by

the Ayuka Khan. They had many spare horses which were of

great use. The Emperor, our great leader, reviewed the army

daily on horseback, which was now increased to more than

thirty thousand combatants a number sufficient to have con-

quered all Persia, had that been intended.

"At length the carriages arrived which Shavkal had engaged

to furnish for the artillery and baggage three hundred wag-

ons drawn by two oxen each. But their harnessing not being

such as we were used to, we had not a little trouble in setting

them a-going.

"About the middle of August the army was put in motion

and marched in several columns from Agrakhan. Our road lay

between the sea and the Circassian mountains. In the evening

we encamped at a brook of brackish, muddy water.

"Next morning we marched toward the mountains where

was plenty of grass, among which I observed great quantities

of a certain herb called Roman-wormwood, which the hungry

horses devoured very greedily. Next day we found about

five hundred of our horses dead. This was ascribed to their

eating the wormwood, which perhaps might be the case.

266 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Our Kalmuks feasted on the dead horses for several days.

"As both the water and grass were bad, we decamped. His

Majesty often walked on foot, in a white nightcap and a short

dimity waistcoat. In the heat of the day when the army halted,

he used to go into the Empress' coach and sleep for half an

hour. . . .

"August zzd, the day being exceedingly hot, no water was

found on the road, beneath a continuous cloud of dust, fa-

tiguing to the heavily armed troops and the cattle. At night we

came to some wells of fresh water, but there was hardly water

enough for the people to drink.

"The next day toward noon we perceived a number of

horse and foot on the tops of the neighboring hills; they came

down with intent to drive off some of our cattle which

brought on a skirmish. During the action our infantry kept

close in the camp.

"Our dragoons and irregulars [the Cossacks and Kalmuks]

were in pursuit of the enemy. The carrying off of cattle is

supposed to have been their principal aim, as it would have

been madness to have expected to gain any advantage by at-

tacking such an army of veteran troops, well provided and

well conducted."

Nevertheless, the Daghestani mountaineers were attacking

the army as John Bell half suspected, and as the action of the

Russians made evident. The horses and cattle of the army suf-

fered from lack of grazing the grass being dry at the end of

the summer and Peter himself began to show irresolution.

"The Emperor, being apprehensive of an ambush and of a

large body of mountaineers being lodged on the other side of

the hills ordered the army to break camp about three o'clock.

The march toward the mountains was performed in six col-

umns. The Emperor had hourly intelligence from the dra-

goons and irregulars, who at length dispersed the enemy, and

took possession of a town. However, it being then too late to

return to our former camp, the army encamped that night on

a plain between the hills, on the banks of a small rivulet where

we had but indiff erent quarters. The next day we marched

back to our former camp, staying there two days waiting for

the return of the dragoons and irregulars.

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 267

"The troops being all reassembled on the lyth the Emperor

marched again to the southeastward toward Derbent through

a dry parched plain . . . the city of Derbent 4 is the frontier

belonging to the Shah of Persia. . . . Near our camp there

are several pits flowing with the bituminous liquid called

naphtha. The naphtha here is of a blackish color, very inflam-

mable; it is used by the Persians to burn in their lamps, and not

easily extinguished by rain.

"The 3oth, the army set forward, the Emperor being on

horseback at the head of his troops which made a fine appear-

ance. The governor of Derbent, attended by his officers and

magistrates, came in a body to wait on the Emperor, and to

present him with the golden keys of the town and of the

citadel. They offered the keys on a cushion covered with very

rich Persian brocade, the governor and all his attendants kneel-

ing during this short ceremony. . . . The Emperor, at the

head of his army, marched through the city and camped

among the vineyards about an English mile to the southeast.

The Persian governor made His Majesty an offer of his house.

But to avoid putting the inhabitants to any inconvenience, or

perhaps for other reasons, the Emperor declined and [after in-

specting the city walls] returned to his camp.

"In this situation we continued some days and were making

the needful preparations for advancing farther into the coun-

try as soon as the transports with provisions and stores from

Astrakhan, which were daily expected, should arrive.

"They did arrive in safety. But a most unfortunate accident

happened. The night after their arrival, a violent storm of

wind from the northeast drove the greater part of them ashore

where they were wrecked and dashed to pieces.

"This misfortune put a stop to the further progress of His

Majesty's arms; having nothing before him but a country ex-

hausted of all necessaries, the Emperor determined to return to

Astrakhan by the same way we had come, leaving a garrison

in Derbent. ...

"As we had seen no rain since our landing on this coast, our

people suffered not a little from the great heat, continued

clouds of dust 5 and want of water. We were almost daily

alarmed by small parties of Daghestanis who made their ap-

268 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

pearance on the tops of the hills but fled always at the ap-

proach of our Cossacks.

"On the 29th of September, after a most fatiguing march,

Their Majesties and all the army arrived in safety at the fort

of Agrakhan."

Peter laid the cornerstone of his new fort, and sailed back

with the remainder of his army to Astrakhan. There he re-

ceived a message of congratulation from the Senate which

had heard of the start of his expedition down the Caspian by

thenurging him to "go forward in the footsteps of Alexan-

der."

Peter returned to Moscow, where Maria Kantemk had had

the miscarriage, so that no male child had come out of her.

He did not cross the invisible frontier into Asia again.

Failure in the Caucasus

Except for the brief narrative of the Scottish surgeon, John

Bell, there exists no detailed account of the extraordinary mis-

carriage of Peter's army of invasion. This time he made no

retort to the eulogy of the Senate, which received him, a little

uncertainly, in Petersburg, as a second Alexander returning

from conquest. (Stralenberg heard rumors later, which he

would hardly believe but which may well have been true, that

"Peter the Great going to Persia, passed whole days without

water, marched on foot like a common soldier, covered with

dust, his feet sinking into the sand, and so forth. On the other

side, the Empress who accompanied him, made exhausted sol-

diers come by turns into her carriage, five or six at a time, and

chatted with them familiarly, like a mother with her children."

That is Catherine to the life, not the titled empress that Stral-

enberg visualized in the post-Poltava days, but the complaisant

maid of Marienburg, the "joy of the army camp" of She-

remet'ev.)

Putting aside the topical nonsense about following Alexan-

der or making pleasure trips into the embattled Caucasus,

what Peter hoped to do, and what he failed to accomplish, is

quite clear.

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 269

Peter had not forgotten the surrender on the Pruth or the

loss of Azov, his first achievement.

Five years before, in 1717, the Kuban steppe and the Cau-

casus had been in revolt as well as the Volga and Kirghiz

steppe necessitating the building of the Tsaritsyn canal de-

fense line. The disaster to the Russian column on the east coast

of the Caspian had been damaging to Russian prestige.

The Caucasus, where the Azerbaijan communication corri-

dor led south to the fertile southern coast of the Caspian (part

of Persia then as now) , had become an area of contest between

Turkey, Persia, and the southward-pressing Russians. Who-

ever held the communications of the Caucasus held strategic

control of the Caspian and the Black seas. (And from that same

Black Sea Peter, the victor of Nystad, had been barred much

earlier by the Turks.)

It was almost inevitable that Peter, with the massive army

and fleet available in the Baltic area, should return to the Black

Sea-Caucasus front, which he wanted to enlarge to take in the

Caspian. He needed to clear the Volga end of the Baltic-Cas-

pian trade axis.

The way for such a sweep to the south had been most care-

fully prepared. Before its destruction, the Cherkasky expedi-

tion had built a fort on the east shore of the Caspian, at the

ancient mouth of the Amu Darya (Krasnovodsk) . On the

west shore the Russians had been sponsoring the Christian

Georgian and Armenian peoples, occupying the most fertile

valleys of the Caucasus. For a long time Airnenian patriarchs

and merchants had been urging the creation of an Armenian

state in the Caucasus, around Irivan, Tabriz, Shamakhi. Such a

plan had found great favor in Petersburg, especially since

Russian trade with that part of Asia had suffered, in competi-

tion with Turkish and Persian interests. And much of the

eastern trade passed through the hands of Armenians. Peter

himself had said that control of the trade avenues through the

Black Sea, Caucasus, and Caspian was "indispensable to Rus-

sia."

In the Caucasus the Russian interests had backed a puppet

Georgian-Persian, Forsidan Bey by name, who kept changing

270 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

his religion from Christian to Moslem as his varying prospects

turned.

After occupying the Caspian with his fleet and the mid-

Caucasus with his army, Peter intended to seize Trebizondor

so the Turkish diplomats thought. In August 1722 (when

Peter was accepting the keys of Derbent before the loss of his

ships and supplies) the wazir at Constantinople told Nepluyev

(the ambassador who had balked at eating Russian carrot pie) :

"The whole of the reign of this tsar has been one war, with-

out truce, in which he has given no respite to his neighbors."

About that time Nepluyev thought war with Turkey in the

Caucasus to be inevitable, and sent his son away to safety after

burning his papers. He feared that the Turks would be aided

by England and Denmark, who would bring pressure on the

Baltic.

The way into the Caspian provinces of Persia had been

opened. Russian agents had represented that the tsar was ad-

vancing thither to aid the hard-pressed Persians against the

Afghans and all rebels.

So the stage had been set for the Russian army to enter the

Caucasus, to occupy the mountains by aiding the Armenians

and Georgians against Turkish authority, and to occupy also

the north of Persia by pretending to aid the Isfahan govern-

ment against the Afghans. The diplomats and special agents

had done their part. John Bell and his confreres of the Persian

mission had been picked up on the way.

The powerful army had been concentrated at the frontier

port of Terki, and strengthened by the Don Cossacks and

Kalmuks. Even Tolstoy, who had married the daughter of the

Cossack hetman, had been included among the advisers.

All that remained was for the chief actor to appear on the

stage, as victor over the Turks, conqueror of the mighty Cau-

casus, admiral of the Caspian Sea, and occupant of the south-

ern, Persian shore of that sea. The Senate, obviously prepared

for such a triumphal climax, had addressed him as a second

Alexander.

But he turned back at the Derbent gate.

The drought, the failure of grazing, the harassment of the

Daghestani mountaineers, and the wreck of the supply fleet

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 2JI

should not have prevented an experienced army from pro-

ceeding. Peter, always cautious, remembered too keenly the

disaster at the Pruth, and the Cherkasky massacre. Apparently

he felt incapable of going on, and became frightened, and

took the easiest way out of this dilemma by retreating.

Still he tried to have the original plan carried out. The dip-

lomats were called in again hastily. Peter's ambassador on the

Caspian informed the Persians that the tsar would indeed aid

them in driving out the troublesome Kurds and Afghans. A

Russian brigade commanded by a colonel landed at Resht on

the southern shore of the Caspian and occupied it. Another

force advanced beyond Derbent and besieged Baku (now the

center of the great Caucasus-Caspian oilfields) in spite of the

Persian protest that they were quite able to protect them-

selves against rebels there.

Then the Persian ambassador in Petersburg was compelled

to agree to a new treaty between the two nations, by which

all the Caspian provinces were ceded to Russia.

But in the months intervening some sort of order had been

restored at Isfahan, and the new treaty was disowned, while

the Russian ambassador was besieged in his turn at Resht.

The end of the Persian venture was that the Russian forces

withdrew from the fertile southern coast but kept a foothold

on the west coast around Baku, and eventually got the Turks

to agree that they should stay there. The fleet dwindled. The

new state that Peter offered Christian Armenians in the moun-

tains did not take shape.

So the all-enveloping plan of an advance toward the inland

seas and India yielded only a short step forward of the fron-

tier posts along the shore where John Bell had spent some un-

comfortable weeks.

Peter, returning to his city, threw his energy into explora-

tion not by himself but by others toward a far distant frontier.

The Hidden Conflict

Peter returned from the Caspian in better health. His mind

seemed to be clear, and for a while he was free from parox-

272 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

ysm. Dr. Blumentrost, who had replaced Erskine as his per-

sonal physician, had stopped his drinking, so that John Bell

observed that the tsar "had an aversion to all sots."

In Petersburg he threw himself into his usual intense phys-

ical activity.

"I have more than once seen him stop in the street," Bell

relates, "to receive petitions from persons who thought them-

selves wronged ... he could dispatch more business in a

morning than a houseful of senators could do in a month. He

rose almost every morning in the wintertime before four

o'clock; was often at his cabinet, where two private secre-

taries paid constant attendance, by three o'clock. He often

went so early to the Senate as to occasion the senators being

raised out of their beds to attend him there.

"His Majesty never allowed his time of rest to be broken in

upon unless in case of fire. When any [such] accident hap-

pened, there was a standing order to awake him, and he was

frequently the first at the fire, where he always remained giv-

ing the necessary orders, till all further danger was over.

. . . In acts of religion he appeared devout, but not supersti-

tious. I have seen Mm, not liking the clerk's manner of read-

ing the Psalms, take the book from the clerk and read them

himself ... he sometimes diverted himself at his turning

loom ... in his later days he supped on hare or wild-fowl

roasted very dry, drank small beer and sometimes a few

glasses of wine, and generally was in bed before ten o'clock

at night.

"Seldom a day passed that he was not seen in every part of

his city."

Although following his physician's orders, for the first time

in his life, the builder of Petersburg seemed to be hurrying

activity into every minute of waking time in that spring of

1723. He sought after Italian and German books on the Slavs

and had them translated hastily "with useless words left out."

His longed-for central Academy of Sciences was forming at

last, with foreign savants, and maps and instruments he had

requisitioned at Paris. (There he had seen Cassini's new Plani-

sphere or world projection, and the splendid maps of Guil-

laume Delisle; his Academy followed out the vague concept

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 273

of aged Leibnitz, but it grew to resemble the Academic

Royale des Sciences that assembled the finest scientific minds

of Europe in Paris.)

Among the exhibits of the new Academy stood the jar with

the head of Mary Hamilton.

When he rode in his two-horse chaise through the streets

in the gray half-light of a summer's night, the spires, the

walled gardens, and the sculptured colonnades took on the

semblance of Paris itself.

To the building of this city he had deyoted the creative

energy of his alter ego, Alexashka Menshikov, for twenty

years. Now it rose about him, whole and beautiful in design,

utterly new and apart from the hinterland behind him. And

within it, Menshikov had enthroned himself, like a king.

The small son of Alexis was not there. Kept in Moscow un-

der the tutelage of a trustworthy man, an honest Scot, he spent

his time between the Transfiguration and the Kremlin. Bruce

1 himself relates, of Peter's visits to his namesake, "The tsar was

vastly pleased with his sprightliness; seeing some models of

fortification laying on the table, he asked the young prince

the use and advantage of each work, to which he gave his an-

swers so readily . . . that his grandfather, pleased, embraced

him and made him a present of his picture richly set with

diamonds, and gave him an ensign's commission in the first

regiment of Guards."

Yet Bruce knew and the elder Peter knew that the oath of

succession enforced by Peter had virtually put the six-year-

old boy apart from the throne. For by ancient custom the

grandson was heir to the tsardom of Russia. The populace

had sworn to acknowledge whoever should be named.

And the Guards themselves, now officered by the nobility,

had become in reality a Praetorian Guard, the instrument of

whoever sat upon the throne.

At the same time the clergy, ruled by the new Synod, was

being removed further from the authority of the tsafdom.

The Oberprocurator, heading the Synod council, did no more

than manage the finances of the churches that, in the Mos-

cow-Petersburg area, were directed to attend more closely to

274 E CITY AND THE TSAR

the education and health of the people than to archaic prayer

and pageantry of salvation.

As in the Synod, so in the new Senate. In that nine-man

conclave, the Oberprocurator was Yaghuzinsky the ex-boot-

black, who watched the others on Peter's behalf, and made

certain that Peter's wishes were carried out.

There was, then, no longer a patriarch of Moscow who

might interfere with the service of the state. There was no

longer a hetman of the Ukraine, for the military chieftains of

that vast plain were kept in the northern cities, provided with

titles and luxurious living, stripped of actual authority.

There was no longer a Duma or council with authority to

carry out the laws of the land.

That authority now lay without recourse in the hands of

Peter. Civilian law had come under military rule (the ukaz of

the Army, 1716, modeled after Swedish and German law)

and the ranks of the nobility depended upon rank in the army

(ukaz of the Table of Ranks, 1722).

In the autumn of 1723 Peter suddenly tested his people by a

new manifesto. His throne, and so his authority, was to be

shared by Catherine. She had aided him faithfully in the great

wars, and "it is the custom of every Christian monarch to

crown his consort."

Since no woman had been crowned in Russia except the

Polish princess, Marina, the empress of a week in the Time of

Troubles it was necessary to devise a title for Catherine.

That should be, the Senate and the Synod duly decided, Im-

peratritsa, Empress.

The Senate and the Synod bowed to Peter's wishes, as the

ancient servitors of the throne had bowed their heads down

to the girdle before the spoken command of the sitter on the

throne. No open debate took place, as in the time of Alexis,

the father of Peter. There was no Ordin Nastchokin to cry

out angrily. After the death of Peter's son, there was nobody

who cared to cross Peter's will.

But what could he effect among the people? He had be-

come remote, walled in by his city, apart from the land itself;

he had become the semblance of a tsar, issuing ukazi by the

score, arguing, quoting Saul and Absalom, making his notes

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 275

on the decrees of the Senate, controlling the wealth-ridden

Guard, and in consequence the army and navy of Russia,

Quietly Catherine nursed him and waited, while Menshikov

entertained foreign diplomats in his palace where the guests

bowed to him as "the Most Serene Highness." All three

waited for the popular response to the word of Catherine's

crowning.

It came by reports of informers, by courier from Yaghuzin-

sky at the Transfiguration office of that Public Prosecutor.

Down in the Ukraine the Cossacks were clamoring. Eleven

had blown themselves to death with gunpowder. An ex-sol-

dier, Varlaam, had taken to the roads, preaching the coming

of Antichrist.

Migration increased along the roads, away from Moscow.

Deserters from the army posts took their weapons with them,

and went off in groups that kept together. Some of these

bands disappeared toward the "wastelands"-~some took to

brigandage along the roads in expert fashion. They main-

tained themselves by arms against the regular troops.

At Verkhuturie in the Urals other bands were reported

slipping through the mountains and avoiding the road to

Tobolsk. The penalty of- knouting had been laid on such un-

authorized travel Segments of Old Believers joined the mi-

grants, to escape the new rigorous penalties laid on their sects.

Self -burning started up again, spasmodically.

Apparently these dissidents believed that in setting aside his

grandson Peter had condemned them to an unknown, unlaw-

ful future. What else could account for the popular murmur-

ing?

In spite of the murmuring, masked pageants and balls went

on at Petersburg. These centered more and more upon Men-

shikov and Catherine who appeared once as an Amazon

queen attended by sailors. Foreign envoys noted the contrast

between the spectacles and the popular feeling.

"Masquerading is at our doors," the French ambassador

wrote, "while the common people have tears in their eyes. We

are on the brink of some sad extremity. Misery increases

daily; the streets are thronged with people trying to sell their

children. Orders have been issued to give nothing to beggars.

276 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Yet what will become of them if they do not turn to robbing

on the highways? At night thieves come out into the streets.

Travelers are attacked openly on the Petersburg road. No

single storage depot in Russia is filled with grain. Two hun-

dred thousand rubles have been appropriated for the purchase

of grain from Prussia and Danzig, but what is that, for this

vast country? ... In Astrakhan food is stored up for an

army of eighty thousand, for more than a year." Again, he

wrote: "Appropriations for the army and navy have been

exhausted in useless expenditures." A fellow ambassador

added Ms word, more qualified: "Grain has been stored up so

that, if the harvest is not bad, there will be no fear of famine

. . . however, discontent in all ranks could hardly be

greater."

Peter understood the popular feeling and the danger of

rebellion. Open rebellion he could limit and cope with. This

silent resistance, bodiless and leaderless, was like a phantom

enemy impossible to grapple. He wished that he had not con-

fiscated for state sale all the wooden coffins in the land. In-

formers said that villagers complained that they had been

stripped living, and now had been left to die naked. Men held

to such foolish things, even to a dozen smooth planks after

their death. He issued a new direction to the Oberprocura-

tor of the Church. The Synod should make its teachings clear,

issue simple books on religion, "so the countrymen can under-

stand them."

When he was taken to see Catherine trying on her corona-

tion dress for the first time, he stopped in his tracks, flushed

with anger. On her plump body hung lengths of shining bro-

cade, heavy with gold and silver filigree that sparkled with

jewels. Gripping it in his hands, he shook it, shouting.

"These things would pay for my dragoonsa year."

After he calmed down, he helped design the crown she

should wear, after the imperial crowns of Byzantium, and he

added jewels of his mine to ornament it. Menshikov contrib-

uted a great pigeon's-blood ruby, bought in Peking.

Catherine was crowned in May 1724, in the Usspensky

cathedral of Moscow, near the tombs of the ancient tsars.

After her coronation, great courtiers and poor folk alike

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 277

sought to be admitted to her, to buy or to plead for her favor.

She became, as it were, protectress against the anger of the

tsar. In her new role Menshikov aided her; together they

dwarfed the others of the court. Catherine herself seemed to

change not at all; she mended quarrels, and nursed Peter with

the placidity of a peasant.

Informers brought before Peter the case of William Mons,,

the brother of the vintner's daughter of the Sloboda. This

handsome attendant of the throne, a chamberlain who had

sought Catherine's protection, had been aided by her to

wealth in devious ways. William Mons, so the informers said,

entered Catherine's room covertly at night. So, beyond doubt,

he had been intimate with her.

Under question by torture Mons confessed. He told the

sums he had got by his influence with Catherine and by the

service he rendered Menshikov. So many thousands of rubles.

He named all others involved. Of his relations with Catherine

he said nothing. Peter questioned him.

Rumors ran through the corridors of the imperial palace.

The word passed that the days of Catherine and Menshikov

were numbered. No one cared about William Mons. For Pe-

ter, obviously, was trying to control one of his fits of rage.

He was seen more often in talk with Maria Kantemir,

whom he had hardly visited since Astrakhan. For days he ap-

peared to be ill, and the French ambassador sent an urgent

dispatch to Versailles to report that, although Catherine did

not change her daily routine a particle, strain showed in her

face.

This was not like Peter's violent castigation of the thieving

of his favorites some years before. After a long hesitation, he

removed Menshikov from command of the War College, and

announced that no one was to carry out money transactions

with Catherine. Her personal property and deposits in foreign

lands were taken over by his Treasury officers, under pretense

of arranging them in due order, so there should be no further

talk of spoliation.

Once, when Catherine sat beside him in his light sleigh, he

drove her close to where the body of William Mons hung.

278 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

That might have been accident, yet witnesses hastened to tell

of it. Catherine acted as if nothing unusual had taken place

although her arm had brushed against the body of the man

who had been her lover.

Peter's actions were those of a man self -tormented. Ob-

viously shaken by the testimony against the two upon whom

he had most relied, he fell into indecision.

Unexpectedly he had the head of Mons put into a jar of

spirits and placed in the hall by which Catherine entered her

apartments. It was a boy's trick and the woman who had been

Marta of Marienburg ignored it. Yet Peter, in his growing

fatigue, had struck a weak blow at the two whom he had

helped rise to power.

He struck also at their accomplices. Where Mons's body

hung he had placards posted bearing the names of all the

nobles mentioned by Mons in his testimony under torture.

After that Peter had one of his worst spells. Still he forced

his body into the small sleigh to drive around the streets of his

city, to hear the petitions of the common folk waiting for

him in the alleys farthest from the Admiralty.

Ironically in those last days of extreme weakness, he felt

to the full his responsibility to his people, for whom he had

effected so little. He must have felt his mistake in raising to

such supreme authority the favorites upon whom he had doted

and depended. You might say that, dying, he became Peter

the Great.

The Birth of a New Nation

He turned his face away from the Baltic to the east. It was

too late. By now he was incapable of journeying there, and

he had always been incapable of visualizing what was beyond

his sight and touch.

He talked much with Prokopovich, the priest who wove

the thought of western savants deftly with the threads of re-

ligious belief. Prokopovich held an assured position at court.

Peter never saw a twelve-year-old boy making his way on foot

from Archangel now abandoned as a trading port and feed-

ing himself from the things on the ground with other "wan-

THE TURNING TO THE EAST

279

dering men." That boy Lomonosov had in him the feeling of

the old Russian byiini, of the language of the folk. His

writings, in poverty and in prison, would endure beyond

those of other Russians of Peter's time.

Peter had never known the "lands beyond the Volga." The

new textbooks sent thither by the Oberprocurator of the

churches could not be interpreted by the folk of those prai-

ries, part Bashkir and part Cheremiss. They had their own

"alphabet books" and "cipher books" handwritten by monks

or prisoners of war who wanted to educate their own chil-

dren.

In the new Academy of Sciences foreigners were preparing

to teach the elements of Euclid's geometry. The Volga monks

could not understand the need of measuring what God had

created.

Beyond the Urals Peter planned to effect local government

that would serve better than his gubernarm of the Moscow-

Petersburg land. But Grigori Stroganov, whose family had

owned the Ural passes in the century before, could not be

persuaded to leave his new Petersburg palace, or his hunting

park stocked with deer, pheasants, and boar. The Cherkasky

heir who had agreed to take the governor general appoint-

ment in Siberia had indeed been born in the east; but he had

observed the fate of Gagarin, and he contented himself with

residing in the governor's wooden citadel at Tobolsk, only a

few days' ride beyond the Urals, and carrying out to the let-

ter such orders as the War College issued.

Cherkasky was safely bound to Petersburg, since his daugh-

ter had married into the Sheremet'ev family, and the com-

bined families owned more than one hundred and fifty thou-

sand serfs on their huge estates near Moscow. At Moscow

the Sheremet'ev palace had walls of Siberian malachite; its

gardens had artificial lakes ornamented with Chinese pagodas.

Already the Moscow-Petersburg land was taking on the

semblance of a peer and peasant regime the peasantry fast be-

coming serfs.

Beyond the Urals as the fur revenues fell lower, and pio-

neer exploiters passed from the scene, the lands were coming

into the hands of small farming and mercantile communities,

280 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

widely separated and often out of touch with Tobolsk. The

first schools were being established by merchants on their

own account, who found teachers where they could. Usually

exiles became the teachers, or wandering priests yielding a

strange harvest of learning, out of Old Believers' catechisms,

Lutheran prayer books, or Ukrainian Latin grammars.

In Petersburg the new academies taught, first, military art;

second, naval science; third, mathematics.

In Siberia appeared churches with the old familiar towers

and bulbed domes, which were forbidden in Petersburg,

where even the cathedrals were French baroque.

Within this region known only as Siberia, the far frontiers

influenced the people, for the Baraba settlements carried on

commerce with the Kirghiz, their nearest neighbors, as did

Irkutsk and Nerchinsk with the Manchu Chinese. The Euro-

pean wigs and German vests and pantaloons ordained for Pe-

tersburg were seldom seen in such far places.

Very slowly as a glacier adheres together and moves by

weight of the particles within it, a new nationality was form-

ing east of the Urals. It was taking shape not by prearranged

plan but by the settlements adapting themselves to the land,

under stress of hardships. There was no common law. Genera-

tions later a western military commander sent to enforce

laws in Siberia would ask, "When was there ever law in Si-

beria?" The rude Muscovite nationality of the time of the

first Romanovs exerted no influence now that so many desert-

ers and exiles had permeated the east and the children of

Streltsi, Ukrainians, Poles, Livonians, and Swedes had grown

up to take their place in the population and because that

same Muscovite nationality was changing and becoming the

rule of the Petersburg court.

During Peter's time, while population around the city of

Moscow had diminished, the population of the eastern settle-

ments had grown four or five times in numbers. Families had

dwellings where individuals had hunted or cleared ground.

These families developed by necessity special skills, in trading

and handicraft as well as agriculture. Villages made im-

promptu treaties with their Kirghiz or Kalmuk neighbors.

More than ever, these villages were shifting to the warmer

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 28 1

southern valleys, out of the Ice tundras and the snowbound

northern taiga. They penetrated to the Chinese side of the Al-

tai; they reached the headwaters of the Irtysh River, where

Bucholtz's column had been driven back; they farmed the

land far south of the Baraba lake.

The far northern posts established during the first rash for

furs were deserted except for the penal colonies along the

Arctic's edge.

In an odd manner the government's exploitation of Siberian

metals during the Northern War added to the mixed eastern

population. So great was the demand for Iron and copper

from the Urals that serfs were conscripted throughout the

west for the "mining service." This labor in the shafts became

detested by the peasants, who ^deserted steadily and in num-

bers. The fugitives made their way east rather than face the

guards on the western roads. The ability of the foreign man-

ager, William Henning, and the skill of Demidov could not

keep the peasants in the mines and smelters*

In the quest for silver and the always elusive gold, bands of

laborers were shipped to old diggings and even to prehistoric

pits within the Siberian mountains. In the Yenisei River basin

the workers combed the Icy marshes. Free gold had been

found there by some earlier prospectors. It was not to be

found again. Yet beyond the Yenisei, there was the rumor of

gold at Baikal, and then at the mountains by the outer Ocean

Sea.

Always rumors centered around Kamchatka, the mass of

land that thrust into that ocean. The mountain spine that di-

vided Kamchatka into two coasts, the Bolshoi River that might

be rich in gold, the sable skins that rewarded hunters who

survived all these made the peninsula a breeding ground of

rumor. Moreover the way to it was still barred by the rein-

deer people, the Koriaks and Chukchi; Russian explorers had

to go across by sea, from Okhotsk, through ice and storms.

Few of them survived the sea and attacks by natives. Atlasov,

freed from prison, died on the peninsula. Only one of them

got back to Petersburg to tell his story to Peter.

For a while Kamchatka was ruled by a Pole who was also a

282 . THE CITY AND THE TSAR

mystic, Kosyrevsky, who had escaped from the iron mines.

He built a monastery at the edge of the sea and told of visions

that had revealed gold to him, out on the islands of the sea.

These islands stretched forth in two chains, to the south,

and to the east. They lay like steppingstones within easy sail

of each other. Kosyrevsky had ventured upon the islands to

the south, called the Kunls.

After that Peter sent two explorers out to Kamchatka, with

orders to report to no one but himself. They built boats and

penetrated farther to the south, toward the larger islands

called Nippon. Rumor had it that gold could be found in

Nippon, where the temples were plated with it.

About the islands to the east there was more uncertainty.

The Chukchi told of a greater land lying beyond them. That

might of course be the continent called America on the maps

of the European geographers. Still mariners heard of a land

not yet explored, Yezo-land. This might lie between the two

continents, or the continents themselves might be joined by a

mountain range not yet reached.

The Unknoivn Land

After the winter storms began in 1724 Peter insisted on be-

ing taken out to inspect the work on the Ladoga canalway.

And there he had tried to work with men freeing a stranded

boat, in water up to his waist. Ill after this exposure, he re-

turned to Petersburg. When snow set in, he kept much to his

house.

From the leaded glass window of his bedroom he could see

the spire of the Admiralty, and watch the shipping moored in

the river. Over in the palace his secretaries waited in the cab-

inet, filing away his scrawled notes as they came in, and hear-

ing the talk of the corridors that the tsar was in great pain,

attended constantly by the foreign physician Blumentrost

and the empress.

There were proclamations to be signed, new laws to be put

in writing, the transport of the geographer Delisle from Paris

to be arranged; the Senate had voluminous matters, post-

poned during the tsar's illness; the commanders of the Baltic

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 283

fleet had winter routine to be arranged. And there was whis-

pering about the succession to the throne. . . .

At the end of December Peter seemed to have one fixed

idea. It was to explore the farthest east by sea. Many of his

memories and longings linked together in that thought.

The world map he had seen in Paris had been a blank just

there, where Asia and America joined, or did not pin. The*

older Delisle had argued that the mountains of Siberia ex-

tended along an isthmus to the tip of what they called the

New World . . . the old map of that shrewd Nicholas

Witzen, who understood more than all the other wiseacres,

showed the sea between the continents.

Peter had no way of knowing that the Cossack Dezhnev

had sailed his small boat along the edge of that sea in the time

of his father Alexis.

But in those mountains or in that unknown land might be

found new deposits of iron, or the gold that Siberia had failed

to yield him. Had not the impoverished Swedes planned to

send an expedition by sea, to claim the island of Madagascar,

that might yield them new riches as those other stubborn

sea powers, the Dutch and English, had profited from the far

Indies and India itself? . . . He had ships enough lying Idle

and officers enough to launch an armada. He would send three

frigates himself to Madagascar, ships made to appear like mer-

chantmen, not to arouse suspicion, with two sets of orders.

The secret orders would empower them to take possession of

the island in his name. Of course troops would be carried in

the frigates.

When told that none of the ships were in condition for such

a voyage, he stormed at Apraksin, telling the old admiral how

to fit new sheathing over the hulls.

Then he was told that, as he commanded, the ships had set

out. Owing to bad weather, they had had to put into Revel

for the winter. They could not make the voyage.

Again Peter returned to his idea. Was it not possible, then,

to go by the Ice Sea, around the tip of Siberia, down to the

rich trading ports of China? And to go beyond China to In-

dia?

284 THE cmr AND THE TSAR

"I think a passage can be found," he said. "In France, they

believe it exists-they call it the strait of Anian."

Old Apraksin, more anxious about his master than about

a fantastic voyage, said that the Dutch and English would

have found it, if it was there.

"If we find it, it will be there." '

Hour by hour Peter worked out details of the plan in his

mind. It was true that the Dutch and English had failed to

find the northeast passage, above Siberia. Better to begin the

search on the waters of the Eastern Ocean. A skilled naviga-

tor and a captain would be needed. Admiral Sievers recom-

mended Vitus Bering, the Dane. A Russian must go also. Sina-

vin recommended Alexei Chirikov. . . . >

In the orders given him, Bering found the words "to in-

form yourself of the limits of Siberia and particularly if the

eastern coast of Siberia is separate from America."

Carefully, to have his directions exactly understood, Peter

wrote down in his own hand what the expedition was to ac-

complish. "Because I may not see the results," he told Aprak-

sin.

1. To build in Kamchatka or some suitable place two ships of

one or two decks.

2. To sail on these ships along the shore which runs to the

north and which (since its limits are not known) may be part of

the America coast.

3. To ascertain where it joins America. To sail on to the first

settlements ruled by Europeans, and if a European ship should

be met, learn from her the name of the coast, and put it down in

writing. Make a landing, make detailed inspection, draw a map,

and bring it here.

If his ships had not mastered the Caspian, and if they could

not voyage to Madagascar, they should by his orders explore

the Pacific to find the utmost extent of Siberia.

For days he did not sign the order, being in great pain. See-

ing preparations made by priests in the adjoining room, he

took interest in the chapel they were laying out. Ordering a

movable chapel made, he advised about setting it up, near his

bed. He had them place in the movable chapel the ikon with

THE TURNING TO THE EAST 285

which he had always traveled, and which he had never under-

stood.

But he did not forget the order for the voyage of discovery.

Sending for it, after he was too weak to speak, he signed it.

When, however, they brought him another paper and asked

him to write down the name of the person who would suc-

ceed him on the throne, and his directions to that person, he

could only scrawl on the paper. Two of the words he

scrawled have been taken to mean, "Forgive everything . . ."

In the night of January 27-28, 1725, Peter I died.

REACTION OF THE LAND

AGAINST THE CITY

Impotency of the Family

JIT THE time -of his death the country had been on the

/\ verge of revolt. The news that the Giant Tsar no

jf \longer lired sped from village to village with the speed

of hard-ridden horses. It came to the people like the clang of

Vyestnik.

It had the effect of a truce so unexpected as to stun the

minds of the people. This effect was much more pronounced

than that of the report of peace with the Swedes. The treaty

signed at Nystad had not changed the life of the Russian

people in any respect. Peter's end stunned the nation, because

there was no certainty as to what would come after him.

Only by slow degrees did the lower classes become aware

of the consequences of his actions.

Peter Alexeivich had a hard death, as he had a hard life.

The Italian specialist and the English surgeon Horn who at-

tended him found his body little more than a shell of infec-

tion, with kidneys diseased and loins swollen with pus, so that

a belated operation could only show that he had a limit of

hours to live. The French ambassador reported that the Giant

Tsar in great agony clung like a child to some hope of reli-

gion, embodied in the shrine beside his bed.

It was the tragedy of Peter's life that he realized the actual-

ity of what he was doing only in those last months, when he

could change nothing of what he had effected.

He had lived most of his life self-absorbed, saturated much

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 287

of the time with alcohol, filled with exultation or depression

by his own immediate actions. His restless journeying and

hurrying from person to person had acted as an anodyne.

Only in the building of his city beyond Russia, and his fleet

upon the outer Baltic Sea, had he shown a full awareness of

what he was undertaking.

Certainly there are indications of a change of mind during

those last months in his sudden attempt to explore the east

rather than return to his haunts in western Europe, in his re-

moval of Menshikov from the War Office and the charges

he laid against Menshikov, in his placing the head of William

Mons at Catherine's door, and in his turning to the one

woman, Maria Kantemir, who was Catherine's antagonist. His

last coherent act was to plan the exploration of the sea beyond

Siberia; at the same time he refused to name in so many words

either Catherine or her daughter or Menshikov the next ruler

of Russia. Would Peter have failed to provide in some way

for the future of his nation unless he distrusted the group of

great favorites he had put in power?

Menshikov and Catherine began to make certain of their

hold upon the throne as soon as they heard the result of the

operation by the English surgeon. They no longer had to

think of Peter's anger; they could pose as the cherished wife

and the heart-friend of the dying monarch. Catherine slipped

from the sick chamber to consult with Menshikov in the ante-

room. Among the officers of the Guards regiments, the Whis-

pering Favorite distributed a small fortune, and promised

them increase in pay besides. On her part Catherine remem-

bered to make up the arrears in pay of the garrison of the new

Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul

Officers were brought to her door to peer in at her, while

she wept and murmured distinctly, "I know you will not de-

sert me."

During the hours of the last night, leaders gathered at the

palace. There the favorites met the heads of the Senate and of

the old aristocracy, and the clergy. Since Peter had chosen no

successor, they would have to make a choice themselves. The

churchmen and many of the great Slav aristocrats, the boyars

of yesterday, hoped to name the young grandson Alexis' son.

2 88 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Dmitri Galitzin spoke for a joining together of all groups

with the grandson named tsar, Catherine his guardian.

But at this point the shadow of Peter fell across the con-

troversy. For Menshikov, Tolstoy, and the favorites as a

group had helped engineer the death of Alexis. They dared

not grant the tsardom to Alexis' son, young as he was. The

most resourceful of them, Tolstoy, made a brilliant presenta-

tion of the claim of the peasant empress. Catherine, he argued,

had shared the working hours of the Giant Tsar; she knew his

will better than anyone else; she had gone on campaign with

the army, and was favored by the army; Peter, by crowning

her, had tacitly favored her himself.

Was it not Catherine, Tolstoy demanded, who had saved

the tsar and the army itself at the Pruth?

Before midnight the controversy was decided by the en-

trance of Guards officers, demanding that Catherine be

named.

So, two generations before, a delegation of Streltsi had ap-

peared in Moscow before the patriarch and the tsarevnas and

boyars to voice their decision as to who should occupy the

throne. Yet the Streltsi had been actuated by religious motives

and the desires of their plebeian class. The Guard controlled

the new army, and it had been won over by Menshikov to

support, not a member of the Romanov family but a foreign

woman whom nobody in the room believed to be capable of

ruling.

The Guard and Tolstoy won. The opposition to Catherine

was silenced. And before daybreak life left the shell of a man

in the sickroom.

Beginning that gray morning in Petersburg for twenty-

seven years, the throne of Russia was held by a peasant

woman, an immature boy, two other womenone the daugh-

ter of an imbecile a child and a young drunkard without

sense. One was Livonian, three were Germans. Another Ger-

man manipulated affairs from behind the throne.

With one exception they were no more than figures to ap-

pear before the curtain, and to sign decrees. The conflict be-

tween the basic forces in Russia went on around them. It

was the old struggle between the people of the land and the

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 289

foreigners and favorites, the pull of the millions against the

thrust of the tens, the revolt of the outer frontiers against the

central control. But the conflict developed new phases.

Catherine, then, was empress for a year. To be exact, nearly

seventeen months. For long years she had drunk glass for

glass with Peter; she had nursed him and probably prolonged

his. lifeand she had endured much from him. Now she en-

joyed herself like any middle-aged prostitute or hautfrau, but

with great courage.

She had for that moment an incredible grandeur; an Alad-

din's lamp of unlimited powers had been placed in her hand.

From Asia she ordered jewels and from Paris she obtained

gilded carriages lined with embroidered silk she who had

never been allowed to visit Karlsbad, much less Paris.

Often she drank through the night with the adroit and man-

nerly foreign gentlemen who came to her apartment, as Wil-

liam Mons had come among them the Portuguese Devier,

chief of the Petersburg police. Now she saw no more the face

of Maria Kantemir, whose miscarriage at Astrakhan five years

before had happened under the hands of a Greek physician

who took pay from Catherine. Just as quietly Catherine dealt,

as empress, with the other woman of her dislike. In her La-

doga prison, Eudoxia was moved into a cell underground, and

there given only one attendant, a peasant woman without

sense. In so doing Catherine removed the actual tsaritsa of

Russia from public observation, although not from public

memory.

In her sixteen months' release from inhibitions, Catherine-

Marta had no effect for good or ill on the disordered state of

the nation except to worry Menshikov by her expenditures.

Menshikov, of course, attended to public affairs.

Released from the curb of Peter's anger, the Whispering

Favorite exerted himself to gain unchallenged mastery of the

Russia-to-be. Outwardly he supported Catherine loyally,

while contriving to betroth his daughter to the solitary Ro-

manov grandson.

His role for the present was to carry out, as Peter's alter

290 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

ego, the last measures of the Giant Tsar. (After first having

Peter's charges of maladministration and defalcation against

him dismissed.) Menshikov's very real interest lay in continu-

ing the move to the west. He had been identified too long

with the building of Petersburg, with its court and fleet, to al-

ter that policy now. Like the Great Galitzin in Moscow he

"had too many enemies." His only safety lay in appearing to

be what he was not, the executioner of Peter's last testament.

Since Peter had left no last testament, 1 that was very difficult

even for a Menshikov to manage.

All of Peter's known wishes were carried out in careful

detail, and at any cost. The Academy of Sciences across the

Neva had its dedication. The geographer Delisle received his

welcome when he arrived with other foreign scientists, to

join that Academy. Vitus Bering got his expedition, and

started on his way to explore the seas beyond Siberia. The

Petersburg Gazette came off the press as regularly as before,

although Menshikov determined what was to be printed in it.

Political prisoners were released from jail, and the hated poll

tax reduced a third, to pacify the public unrest.

Anna, the daughter of Peter, was married ceremoniously

to Frederick, Duke of Holstein (also related to the ruling

family of Prussia, and a claimant of sorts to the throne of

Sweden). Peter had arranged this betrothal while he experi-

mented with diplomacy in the Baltic zone. The fleet was kept

up, as before, to make a show of force against the maritime

powers, especially against England.

The outward show went on. It did not quite obscure the

truth that, without Peter, there was no purpose in the show.

Throughout the villages the folk invented a new cryptic par-

able: "The mice have buried the cat." That was Peter's fu-

neral And Menshikov himself soon had a new nickname:

"the proudful Goliath."

One primitive mind saw through the sham of the Peters-

burg court. The brutal Yakhuzinsky, whether drunk or sober,

whether wittingly or unwittingly, cast himself down on Pe-

ter's casket in the cathedral, tearing at it with his nails and

howling, "Come forth and see what these fools are making of

your Russia."

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 29!

Yaghuzinsky was sent to a distant post In the Ukraine,

and watched there. He had always had the courage to stand

against Menshikov, and he had served as Oberprocurator, or

watcher, of the Senate. After a while he was sent to Siberia.

Simultaneously another favorite reappeared at court from

exile. Shafirov had been condemned to death during the purge

of the extortioners of wealth. At the block, Peter had re-

prieved him, and Shafirov had contrived to be sent to mild

confinement in Novgorod instead of banishment to Siberia.

Returning to Petersburg, he aided Menshikov warily, and

started the accumulation of a new fortune.

That same court of Petersburg presented a strange picture.

While Catherine moved in and out of doors and coaches, cos-

tumed as a full autocrat since Peter had crowned her em-

pressthe Senate, which possessed theoretical authority to

make laws, had no authority, because it had been subject to

Peter's will. Nor did Menshikov dare strengthen the Senate.

On the other hand he could not hope to maintain his hidden

dictatorship long, when opposed by such families as the Dol-

gorukys and Galitzins.

The resourceful Tolstoy hit upon a happy solution of this

dilemma. He and Ostermann devised a coalition council, to

dictate measures to the Senate the Supreme Secret Council.

This body in turn advised Catherine what to do. At the same

time it stifled the internecine conflict among the favorites

around Menshikov. Besides Menshikov and Tolstoy, the

council included a popular figure who was also one of the in-

novators, Admiral Apraksin by then too old to take interest

in anything except his health and banquets two of the diplo-

mats, the drunken Slav Gabriel and the clever German,

Ostermann. To it were added a pair of Peter's coworkers

known to be honest, Demidov and Tatischev.

Thus constituted, the Supreme Secret Council had repre-

sentatives of both the old nobility and the innovators, between

whom the balance could be adjusted by Menshikov, with Tol-

stoy's influence. So at least it was planned to be.

Then Catherine died. And the reaction of the land made

itself felt, to weaken the brilliant improvisers.

By Lake Ladoga a strange happening took place. Into the

292 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

underground cell where Eudoxia still lived, men entered car-

rying lights. They wore court dress and they bowed to her,

addressing her as "tsaritsa."

From the confinement of thirty years she was led out

through doors that opened at her coming, to a waiting coach

of elegant French design. There Eudoxia, white-haired, stale

with poverty, was told that her grandson ruled the land as

Peter II. And in time she was taken not to the Petersburg that

she had glimpsed in its building but to the familiar upstairs

chamber of the Moscow palace.

Eudoxia, they say, could still smile at a jest. In little things

she showed keen interest, yet the palace seemed to her to offer

no more than a comfortable sleeping room, into which the sun

shone strangely in the morning.

Return to Moscow

In the struggle for power between the old aristocracy of

the land and the new favorites, the boy Peter was no more

than the token of authority, to be won by either side. Menshi-

kov tried to install him in his own Petersburg establishment,

surrounding him with luxuries and servitors, while the Dol-

goruky family coaxed him to go hunting with them. And

Peter had grown to rather like his former custodian, Oster-

raann.

A third group, however, was making its presence felt. The

new aristocracy of service those who had gained official rank

by military and other service sought for better leadership

and naturally influenced the army in its search. It sought re-

laxation of the intolerable burden of taxation, and its members,

who had been kept on duty at Petersburg and at sea, en-

deavored to return to their estates. To this middle group care-

ful thinkers like Ostermann paid heed, also the conscientious

Tatischev and the indefatigable Demidov.

Reaction was setting in, two years after the passing of the

Giant Tsar. That reaction worked against Menshikov, who

came under increasing strain, deprived of Catherine's docile

support. This strain caused him to clash "with his former col-

laborators, to send the harmless Apraksin into exile, with

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 293

Devier, the Portuguese, and to banish the far from harmless

Tolstoy to the Solovetsky monastery, Isolated in the icebound

White Sea. The loss of two great Slavs from the Supreme

Secret Council did not help Menshikov's case.

This man of expedients, so brilliant under Peter's driving,

seemed unable to cope with his own weakness. While he mul-

tiplied his exactions, he gave way to fits of helpless anger.

People were urging a return to Moscow; the young Peter

forsook the favorite's regal home. Menshikov had upbraided

him for making a gift of a few thousand rubles to his aunt

Elizabeth, who was seventeen and had no revenue of her own.

"You have no right to give away such a sum," Menshikov

insisted.

Elizabeth herself laughed at him, playfully. Winsome and

graceful, the girl dared pretend that he, Menshikov, who

owned ninety-one thousand souls and seven millions of gold

rubles, was actually nobody. "Goliath," she whispered, smil-

ing at him.

Menshikov had been given the rank of generalissimo. Eliza-

beth flirted with the younger officers of the Guard. Peter told

the officers of the Guard that they should take orders from

nobody but their own commanders. They decided to accept

this as the will of the tsar, and Menshikov fell

Apparently he was merely removed to the management of

his estates in the Ukraine, to Mazeppa's city of Baturin. From

Moscow he departed with a train of his stately coaches, still

possessor of his wealth. Like so many others who had fallen

from power, he found that his formal departure, in public

view, had nothing to do with his real destination.

Once Menshikov had been removed, the boy Peter discov-

ered that he had no actual need of the generalissimo. After a

while Menshikov and his family started the long journey to

Siberia, stripped of all possessions. Beyond the frontier their

carriage turned back and Menshikov rode on toward the Yeni-

sei in a cart.

On the way out his wife died. Sick and half blind, he lived

out his years in a stockaded settlement on the river. No one

mocked him or tormented him; he was barely watched by the

secret police. There were only two things to occupy him; he

294 THE GITY AND THE TSAR

learned to use an ax, and to help in building a new wooden

church for the settlement. In this he showed some interest.

And his daughter, whom he had meant to be tsaritsa, read

aloud to him by candlelight.

Yaghuzinsky did more than that in his exile, hundreds of

miles to the east. That gifted brute found his way somehow

to the Mongolian frontier, beyond the post of Selenginsk.

There he made his presence felt by negotiating on his own

responsibility with the Chinese. He even had a treaty drawn

in the name of Peter II, by which trade caravans might enter

Chinese territory at Kiakhta without paying duty. By that

treaty four Russian priests were allowed to dwell in Peking,

with six "fledglings" who would learn Chinese and Yaghu-

zinsky as overseer of the frontier trade might line his pockets.

In his own way, he was carrying out the testament of his dead

master.

Moscow was filling with people again. Great families moved

back in long caravans of carts to reoccupy their residences

in the Kitaigorod, after the Dolgorukys and Galitzins set the

example. It was not so easy to move the Senate, the Admiralty,

or the War College from Petersburg, so they remained up on

the Neva.

The removal began spontaneously, with officers resigning

from the armed forces to go home, with the Treasury officials

abandoning their efforts to collect the full poll tax, especially

on the multitudes of serfs. The military draft no longer at-

tempted to claim peasants needed in field work. Under popu-

lar demand the state monopolies of salt (needed for the curing

of fish) and tobacco (demanded more and more by workers)

were ended. Ships were allowed to enter Archangel and

ports other than Petersburg without paying prohibitive tolls.

And ordinary people could have their coffins again.

The gatherings along the Moskva River and in the Red

Place had almost a festive air. Ukrainians up from the south

rejoiced in the prospect of a return to their old way of life,

free from the oppression of the Petersburg office known as

the Agency for the Ukraine; miners in from the Urals talked

openly of better days now that the wars had ended. Listeners

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 295

counted the years on their fingers and agreed. For five yean

there had been no war.

Men like Pososhkov appeared from prison cells. One of the

Galitzins, going through the jails, had asked if anyone knew

why Pososhkov was imprisoned. As no one could, or would*

answer, the writer was released.

Merchants came in from the Kazan and Astrakhan fairs to

learn how trade was to be channeled. A young man named

Kirilov had an idea about that. A city could be built, he

argued, in the steppes of mid- Asia, among the Kirghiz and

Kalmuks, to revive the continental caravan trade.

Fewer foreigners showed themselves in the Moscow streets,

and fewer Russians clad themselves in the German-type wigs,

gaiters, and three-cornered hats. The Supreme Secret Council

had only one foreigner left in it, Ostermann.

Sight-seers around the Kremlin walls were shown where the

bodies of the Streltsi had hung, and told cryptically, "They

were hung up like pork and then salted down, but they sent

in their bill for it all, at the last."

Festive preparations for the marriage of Peter II occupied

the crowds. The tsar, still a boy fourteen years old was

being prepared for his coronation. Then he died of an infec-

tion followed by smallpox. The crowds remained, to watch his

funeral.

And the Supreme Secret Council sat through the nights,

faced by a great dilemma. Who, and in what way, could

govern Russia?

The council itself had only contingent power to act as

guardian authority for the throne. The Senate lay far apart,

in half-populated Petersburg. The colleges had sunk into con-

fusion. There was no longer a generalissimo to domineer over

them.

As for the family, from which an emperor or an empress

had to be conjured Eudoxia played with her beads and slept

in the sun; Elizabeth drove around in her carriage escorted

by a bevy of officers. But and here the secret counselors

argued wearily through the night what 'was Elizabeth? Born

before Catherine's "old" wedding to Peter, she was actually

no more than any other bastard of his. And she was developing

296 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

into an attractive nymphomaniac. The French court would

not hear to her marriage with the young Louis.

There was nothing else, except the army, without Peter to

control it.

At this point, in January 1730, Peter's family seemed to be

extinguished, his city half abandoned. Only the vast land and

its outlying peoples remained, little changed because of him.

Peter's Changes the Legend and the Reality

By then, five years after his death, the common people had

formed an idea about Peter. They decided that he had, indeed,

been a changeling, unlike the tsars of old. Out of the sea itself

and out of German learning he had drawn gigantic power.

Some things he had wrought with that power would endure,

and some things would be destroyed. So the millions had come

to think. And their concept is very close to the truth.

For by his gigantic hammer strokes Peter had widened

cleavages in the land. He had not meant to do this. In doing

away with the semireligious seclusion of the elder tsars, he

thought to present himself as a human, being. Pretense he

hated. Yet in enforcing his will he created an autocrat "who

does not have to answer for any of his actions to anyone in

the world." 2 His father had acknowledged the authority of

the Church, and had given weight to the complaints of the

people. His father had been both servant and guardian of those

people.

Peter lacked his father's sentiment and feeling for individu-

als in the mass. In mobilizing the peasantry for labor in war

and construction, he hardly meant to make them more like

inanimate property. When he learned how the peasantry was

being sold from owner to owner, he was frightened. The only

remedy he suggested was to urge that families be kept to-

gether and not sold separately.

His poll tax, logical enough in its plan, resulted in landown-

ers being made responsible, eventually, for the collection of

the "head money" from their peasantry. Except for putting

a serf to death, the owner had the right to inflict any punish-

ment, to collect the revenues.

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 297

Alexis and his "yoke fellows" had worked in the other

direction. They had also avoided putting foreigners in the

highest posts of the government. Clearly enough, Peter in-

tended to do likewise. His failure became apparent only in the

next generation. He tried to change his country into a Euro-

pean monarchy; the latent result was to introduce Europeans

into the country.

Within a few years Frederick of Prussia (soon to be known

as the Great) wrote of him to Voltaire:

"Lucky circumstances, favorable events, and foreign Ig-

norance have turned the Tsar into a phantom hero. A wise

historian, who witnessed part of his life, mercilessly lifts the

veil and shows us this Prince as possessing all the faults of man,

and few of his virtues. He is no longer that being of universal

mind who knows everything and desires to sift all things; he

is a man, governed by whims sufficiently novel to give him a

certain glamor and to dazzle the onlooker. He is no longer

that intrepid warrior who neither feared danger, nor recog-

nized it, but a mean-spirited and timid prince whose very

brutality forsook him in seasons of peril cruel in peace, feeble

in war."

Frederick had a caustic pen. Even when fighting his own

cowardice, Peter had no mean spirit. Frederick was aware

even then of the ignorance of most western Europeans con-

cerning Peter; he had heard the contemporary legends of the

great soldier and reformer, the man of destiny perfecting him-

self to rule a new nation the legendary "being" that Voltaire

himself drew in his Carpenter-of-Saardam concept of Peter.

By the year 1730, when the Supreme Secret Council sat to

decide upon some ruler for the nation, this much appeared to

remain of what Peter had sought to create.

The army had preserved its strength. It is the paradox of

Peter's life that, no soldier himself, he created a standing army

so strong that it served as the foundation of the despotism that

was to come. The Russians had never before been a warlike

people.

His navy never became as strong in performance except

298 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

for the galleys, to which the Russian burlaki took readily

enough, being at home on river craft as in appearance. 3 By

1730 no more than a half-dozen vessels of frigate strength

were able to take to the sea.

Of the canals he planned to link together the inland rivers

to give access to all the outer seas, only the Volga-Baltic work

was completed (known now as the Upper Volga Waterway).

Yet this concept of linking the water routes traversed since

the earliest times by portages has been carried out today.

Where Peter worked his flotilla through- from the shore of

the White Sea to Baltic waters, the Stalin canalway has been

completed through Lake Onega to Lake Ladoga and Lenin-

grad. The cut between the Don and Volga (joining the Black

Sea to the Caspian), that Peter abandoned and then turned

into a huge defensive ditch, was scheduled for completion

after 1945.

To the creation of the large and up-to-date army, however,

Peter had to drive his people with merciless determination.

Figures for the last years of the Great Northern War show

that desertions exceeded conscriptions very greatly in outlying

provinces. In Kazan, where conscription dropped from 20 to

10 per 100, desertion kept on at 37 to 39 per 100. On the lower

Don, when 6 l / 2 men were drafted, 29 absconded, in the 100.

Official figures give the military strength at the end of his

reign as: Guard regiments, 2616; regular army, 2 10,000; drafts

from outer provinces (Ukrainians, Kazan Tatars, etc.) 80,000-

109,000; the navy, 27,900 men 48 line-of-battle ships, 787

sloops, galleys, small craft. Population of the central areas

diminished by one fifth.

Unofficially, losses among recruits in training were so great

that a new type of song was noted, called "Lamentations of

the Recruits." Conscripted peasants, like the labor serfs at

Petersburg, often had to find their own food in the forests.

At times commanders kept the small amount of money ap-

propriated for rations, letting the peasants subsist on mush-

rooms and acorn brew. One officer was charged with causing

the deaths of hundreds by feeding them toadstools. Whit-

worth gives the food of the average conscripted peasant as

"oatmeal, bread, salt, mushrooms and roots on great days a

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 299

little fish or milk." Such rations did not suffice for Ukrainians

or Tatars, accustomed to some milk and meat, barley soup and

fruit, in their own districts.

These outer provinces, the old frontiers, were drained of

men and resources, to increase the armed force of the central

government. In 1724, the year before Peter's death, when

Ukrainian leaders were imprisoned in the St. Peter and St.

Paul Fortress, the Petersburg authorities took a hundred and

forty thousand rubles and forty thousand measures of grain

from the Ukraine. And the ten thousand Cossacks who had

joined Peter in his Caspian campaign were still kept at work

on his new fort in that sea.

So great was the disaffection then in the Ukraine that

Michael Galitzin, who held military command there, had

under him an occupation army sixty thousand strong. At

Peter's death, Galitzin was recalled hastily by Menshikov, who

wrote as if the tsar were still living to avoid the danger of

Galitzin joining his army to the Ukrainians in rebellion. ("If

they can only gain Galitzin in the Ukraine," the Saxon min-

ister Lefort wrote, "no trouble need be expected; but if they

don't, only God knows what will happen.")

Other border peoples, the Kalmuks and the Tatars of the

Kazan district, had been called to service in the central army,

so reducing the likelihood of a rebellion in those restless areas.

Peter said, "A revolt is like a conflagration; it gains power as

it expands; when confined, it is harmless as a fire pent within

a stone fireplace."

(In the incipient reaction under his grandson Peter II, the

burden of the armies upon the outer provinces was lightened;

they were no longer quartered upon the towns, with their

expenses imposed upon the inhabitants of the areas.)

The underlying purpose of such a heavy armament is not

clear at first glance. The Azov expeditions and the Swedish

war occasioned it at first. But Poltava decided the outcome

of the Swedish war in 1709. After Poltava, however, foreign

observers say that the munitions works at Moscow continued

to operate, turning out among other weapons an improved

lightweight eighteen-pounder cannon. In the dozen years that

followed Poltava, while the war went on officially, Peter actu-

JOO THE CITY AND THE TSAR

ally gave most of his attention to his city; often he would not

look at military reports for weeks at a time.

(In a military sense and an ostensible war must be judged

by the criteria of actual warfare there *wa$ no Great North-

ern War of twenty-one years' duration. At sea on the Baltic

no meeting engagements of fleets ever took place; the action

off Hango Head was a hit-and-miss affair; the two Russian

raids on the Swedish coast amounted to no more than demon-

strations, in the judgment of naval authorities. For such an

achievement as this the tsar constructed a Baltic fleet of forty

to fifty line-of-battle ships, which had to be replaced every

seven-odd years owing to the excessive deterioration of the

timbers. Very few merchant ships were built.)

Thrice Peter himself tried to arrive at a signed peace in the

Baltic zone, once when he began work at Petersburg, again

when he and his commanders were confronted by the united

Swedish armies moving toward Russia, and again when* the

Russians were left alone to face the weakened Swedes. But by

then Peter had set in ipotion forces around the Baltic which

could not be arrested by a formal peace in the old manner.

The only logical explanation of the twenty-one years' mo-

bilization is that Peter felt the need of it, to aid his maneuvers

in the German Baltic, and to guard against revolts, like that

planned by Gagarin in the frontier areas, or even at Moscow

after the liquidation of the Streltsi. His most dangerous antag-

onists were always within Russia, not outside.

The illogical explanation is that once Peter had fairly started

his European-plan armament, he did not know how to stop it

or dispense with it.

For twenty-one years he drew the men and resources of

inner Eurasia to array them in one way or another against the

western nations. Beyond any doubt, most of the industrial en-

deavor within the country was begun to meet the needs of the

army and navy. The new hospitals appeared mostly along the

western front, even at such a small port as Glouhof. To the

eastward, they ended at Kazan, a depot for military supplies.

The new education in Petersburg started with study of navi-

gation, engineering, and mathematics. Even Leibnitz under-

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 301

stood this stress upon military enlightenment, and he prefaced

a program of studies with the explanation, "for military affairs

and other matters worth knowing." 4

The other matters worth knowing had to wait. Moscow

waited until 1755 for its first university. As with the hospitals,

so the factories erected hastily by Menshikov, Shafirov, and

others contributed first of all to armament. Three industries

made great progress the arsenals, the cloth factories, and the

mines. The cloth works produced uniforms and sailcloth.

These new plants, operated by serfs and usually exploited

by the privileged favorites, stifled the native Russian genius

for handicraft. Yet the kustarnaya or small peasant shop con-

tributed metalwork, nails, and burlap. Peter encouraged skilled

woodcarvers and gunsmiths who worked without regard for

foreign technique. A peasant who could not learn the Italian

process of lacquer making turned out an improved lacquer of

his own.

The figureheads of the Baltic ships were beautiful.

As the giant armament, once begun, required more and

more to sustain its growth, so Petersburg itself led Peter more

and more into the struggle for the Baltic that was to cause

incalculable harm to his people. Stralenberg remarked that in

addition to the disadvantages of the site for a city it was easy

to attack and difficult to defend.

Peter understood that. The fortification of Kronstadt on the

outer island, begun at the very first, was not finished until the

end of the wars. Then, to secure the Gulf of Finland, it was

necessary to hold Viborg and Revel (Tallinn) or they could

have cut off Petersburg from the outer sea. To hold the gulf

secure, the outer Aland Islands had to be controlled.

Still that gave the Russians no hold upon the Baltic itself,

which continued to be a thoroughfare for Danish and Dutch

fleets, not to mention the enigmatic English. Possession of

Riga did not help greatly because it lay within a gulf of its

own.

Not so much from any will of his own as by the twin riddles

of geography and politics, he was drawn into the disputing for

the German coast line. In doing so he was thrown closer to

302 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Prussia. After arranging marriage liens upon Mecklenburg,

Holstein, and Courland, he held, with Prussia, claim to most of

the southern Baltic shore.

Such shadowy tenancy could not remain as it was. In the

brief reign of his grandson the Supreme Secret Council took

another step along the Baltic by an alliance with Prussia and

the first discussion of a three-way partition of declining Po-

land.

Another step came later.

Except that he had wanted to take the port of Narva in the

beginning, and then had thought of building Petersburg, there

is no evidence that Peter himself had a clear plan in all this.

For too long a time he followed where other minds influenced

him. From Gordon and Lefort to Patkul, Menshikov, and

Ostermann, not one of them had at stake the ultimate good of

Russia. Yet that good had motivated Peter himself.

The shy, mystical, and brutal Peter Alexeivich had been

devoted to Russia; to that devotion, never thinking of his own

career, he had sacrificed himself. Laboring at small tasks with

his hands, he had accomplished miracles. He had strained to

see his way toward results but had been unable to do so. 5

And in the years after his death the eff orts that he had made

in tune with Russian minds and ways began to yield fruit.

What he had done in imitation of foreigners often ceased to

be, *It vanished in a fashion known only to Slavs, or was

changed inexorably into something adapted to the land itself,

after a long time. So the conflict between the tsar and his peo-

ple went on for generations after his death.

"You deigned to ask me," a young student wrote him from

abroad, "how did Stephen learn geography when he did not

know the alphabet? I do not know. God enlightens even the

blind."

That was one of the "fledglings" ordered into Europe to

master practical sciences. Yet Peter himself set up an Academy

of Science, and stocked it with masters of research from the

west, in a country that had neither secondary schools nor uni-

versities. Peter being dead, after the first confusion of minds

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 303

and languages, the Academy turned German, during the influx

of Germans. For a while it remained aloof from the country,

except that it was caught in the vortex of politics at Peters-

burg. In the end it made itself useful in a way favored by the

Russians in exploring and mapping the country with its re-

sources. Men like Miiller began to gather the materials of his-

toriography. In his search of the eastern archives Miiller came

across the report of the Cossack Dezhnev, after Delisle had

executed magnificent maps of the seas around Siberia, explored

by the Russians themselves.

At Paris Peter had been fascinated at sight by the Gobelin

tapestries, and as usual he managed to import specialists in the

art, Manrou among them. When they arrived in Petersburg

they found no wool in the country suitable for the difficult

work. But they helped set up a stocking factory, with the

Russians.

The few general schools started by Peter became deserted

because they did not teach what the Church taught. (It is esti-

mated that not one tenth of his educational innovations en-

dured.) The imported foreign masters of learning tended to

remain within the orbit of the court at Petersburg, where their

languages could be understood. Centered so in the Academy,

they did introduce the city to intellectual life, but, changing

soon from German to French predominance, they served to

divorce Petersburg further from the country as a whole.

The architects who put the final touches to the city, like

Rastrelli, made it lovelier artistically and more like a second

Paris, but not a Russian city.

Throughout the land the folk learned more from the re-

turning soldiers who had dwelt along the Baltic or in Poland

than from the new schools. The veterans brought back handi-

work that was copied, and they had fresh ideas about the

making of old familiar things.

Peter had made a great effort to send sons of the boyars

abroad to study, much against their inclination. His hope had

been that they would, in turn, teach others at home. Posthu-

mously, something very different happened to this endeavor.

The young Russians developed a taste for living in Amsterdam

or Venice or Paris. Eventually their families began to visit

304 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

such European centers, becoming cosmopolitan as well as edu-

cated. This in turn served to separate the high nobility from

the lower classes in Russia. Within Russia education was con-

fined for a long time to the noble class, and to military studies.

The rift between the new intellectuals and the people wid-

ened. The tens who controlled Russia, and who were growing

into hundreds, were drawn toward Europe. They read Mo-

liere, listened to Vivaldi's concertos, danced the polonaise.

They hired Italian musicians for their gardens, and forgot the

church chorals of old time.

Not so with the millions, who had seen their art In the ikon

painting of the churches, had heard their melodies in the great

choruses that rose from a thousand voices, lamenting and giv-

ing praise to God. Their literature had been the bylini, the

tales of the folk about ancient heroes, wizards, bewitched,

women, and merry merchants. Their sculptors had been the

woodcarvers who ornamented windows, boxes, and altar

screens.

Out of such things were to come the music of Moussorgsky,

the tales of Gogol.

Originally all classes had shared such things. The Cossacks*

too, had their legends and their dancers, the Volga burlaki

their songs, the Kirghiz cattle tenders their stories of good and

bad spirits, the Kalmuks their wild chants.

The churches of old used no instruments but the rise and

fall of the human voice old as the laments of Asia. Yet the

village folk had gleaned instruments from the steppe, the pipes

and the saddle drums of the nomads, the cymbals of Samar-

kand. Then, too, they possessed their own one-string fiddles.

They never lacked for the dances of harvest time, the dances

of maidens circling together with linked arms, or the dances

of the jighitSj the bold young men, before the maidens the

Russian ballet of their time.

The artists of old had built the great gate of Kiev and the

great tower of the Kolomenskoe. Such arts as theirs had

changed little and because of the desire of the people for

them, they were young, and would endure. They were not to

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 305

be seen In the Petersburg of 1730. They had retreated into the

older dwindling towns and into the steppes.

They were traveling with the people into the new land

beyond the Urals, where a million of the folk had gathered by

now.

In Petersburg, half deserted by its population some fifty

thousand the followers of the new court already had forgot-

ten that the Giant Tsar had carved an altar screen out of ivory

with his own hands, and had sung in the choir of the Alexan-

der Nevsky Church. For religion was fast going out of fashion

along the Nevsky Prospekt.

Between the hundreds tending toward irreligion in the new

European fashion and the millions reacting toward the old

faith and native Russian ways, there was one small group with

independent ideas. They were the young sons of old families

who had become devoted to Peter as a man. They were a few

of the "fledglings" so few that they might almost have been

counted on the fingers of one hand.

They stood with the peasant-born Pososhkov on the truth

apparent to them that not what Peter had done but what he

had tried to do was important for the future of the Russian

land. Young Dmitri Galitzin, for instance, realized, after his

foreign studies, the mistakes the Giant Tsar was making. Like

Pososhkov, Dmitri Galitzin had been given no official recogni-

tion during Peter's lifetime. Nor was he admitted into the

charmed circle surrounding the Empress Catherine or the boy

Peter II. He continued to criticize with cynical honesty.

Basil Tatischev was the most discerning of Peter's proteges.

We catch only brief glimpses of him during those restless

years. With Ivan Nepluyev, he made the study itinerary from

Amsterdam to Venetian shipyards, and to service in Mediter-

ranean fleets to satisfy Peter. But both of them, with all the

versatility of Slavs, mastered much more "than the way of a

ship upon the sea. Tatischev especially dug into what mattered

most, beneath the formality and the rote learning of the Euro-

peans. Both the youngsters had caught from Peter a sense of a

mission to be performed.

Accompanying Peter on the Pruth campaign, Tatischev ex-

306 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

plored the unknown region for archaeological traces of the

early Slavs; on the Caspian expedition he brought along a man-

uscript to read to his master a new editing of the ancient

Chronicle of Murom that he had made himself. Sent to the

Urals in those last years to determine the actual capacity of the

new mines, he came back with a report on the amount of cop-

per available. In the Baltic conferences he acted as a check on

those too expert foreigners, Ostermann and Bruce.

These few youngsters would have been more truly "mak-

ers of the reign" than the great favorites, if they had had the

opportunity. Like Peter, they made themselves servants of a

Russia-to-be. They did not have the power to endure at court.

Tatischev was exiled.

Nepluyev who had been urged once by Peter to eat some

of the carrot pie of a Russian peasant, "lest our man be of-

fended" rendered invaluable service as ambassador at Con-

stantinople while Peter was trying to invade the Caucasus. It

is said that when Peter told him of his appointment to that

most critical post, Nepluyev fell on his knees in gratitude, and

Peter said, "Don't kneel. If you render good service, you will

have no need to kneel again to anyone."

It was Peter's real bequest to his people that he taught them

by example how to work as individuals for something beyond

themselves.

When Nepluyev heard of the death of the tsar, grieving in-

consolably, he said, "He taught us to know ourselves as human

beings."

End of the Dynasty

It is odd that Peter II should have died in the house of

Lefort, built by his grandfather for jolly entertainment. And

there, that night, the male line of the Romanovs died also the

dynasty of Michael, of Alexis, the gentle tsar, of Peter his son,

and now the tired, bewildered boy who kept talking about

the animals he had hunted, until he could talk no more.

Ostermann, the shrewdest of Peter's favorites, sat with this

shadow of a boy until the last. Ostermann, son of a West-

phalian pastor, had known poverty and had sat too long in the

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 307

counsels of the great not to realize disaster when he met with

it. Only he and the drunken Gabriel (friend Golovin of

Siberia) and the graceless Yaghuzinsky survived of "the mak-

ers of the reign." Gabriel counted for nothing, except that he

was a Russian, while Yaghuzinsky no longer had any friends.

There was no one to carry on the dynasty; there was no

longer a rule that could be enforced, unless a military dictator-

shipand who would head that? Peter himself had compelled

his people to swear obedience to an emperor or empress

unknown. . . . When the boy Peter ceased to breath, Oster-

mann rose heavily, because he had grown stout with prosper-

ity. Avoiding the chamber where the Supreme Secret Council

sat, he refused to join the others and took to his bed, complain-

ing of a most sudden attack of gout but suffering instead from

too acute an awareness of the futility of the session of the

council.

Without him, only Galitzins and Dolgorukys sat in wearied

argument, knowing that within a few hours the multitudes in

Moscow would demand the name of a successor to the boy

who had died.

These heads of great families nursed some very unpleasant

memories of their own desperate expedients and wild ideas of

wrangling over hurrying through Peter's marriage to a niece

of the Field Marshal Dolgoruky-of hoping the girl might be

smuggled in and impregnated in the boy's bed before he be-

came too weakof wakening the seventeen-year-old Eliza-

beth, his aunt, and trying to wean her away from her officer

lovers to play the part of the empress.

One of them had forged well enough a proclamation by

Peter II naming their niece, his betrothed, as empress. But

when the moment came to go out before the public assembly

with the forgery, they did not stir. It could not be done.

Outside, in Moscow, waited the high nobility, the clergy,

the schlachtathe officers of service-and the Guards who had

served the Romanovs. One whisper, of deceit and the Guards

would use their sabers.

The people in Moscow waited for a name. And a name had

to be presented to them, a familiar name.

In Russia there was no longer such a name. Outside Russia

308 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

only one remained. A daughter of the imbecile Ivan survived,

as Anna Ivanovna, widowed Duchess of Courland. Her hus-

bandto whom the Giant Tsar had betrothed her had died

and Anna Ivanovna herself had not been seen in the land for

twenty years. Still, the people knew she had been the daughter

of a Romanov who had worn the ancient shapka.

That night cynical Dmitri Galitzin made his plea to Their

Sublimities of the council (who were largely his own kins-

men). He saw in the impasse his opportunity to try for a new

government. And in the end he convinced the others. After

Menshikov, he pointed out, the people would accept no gener-

alissimo; nor would the jealous aristocrats accept the regency

of either the Galitzin or Dolgoruky family.

Galitzin pleaded with them to let the dead past bury its dead

and to face boldly to the future.

The way was open for an enlightened government, like the

English, like the Swedish a limited monarchy in which Anna

Ivanovna could hold the throne only by guaranteeing freedom

to all classes of her people. She would govern through a new

council, a Privy Council, larger than the old one; she could

not of her own will declare peace or war, impose new taxes,

give away or take state land, or condemn a subject to death.

There were other things which she should not do, as tsaritsa.

And if she violated one clause of Ker agreement with the

council, she would cease to be tsaritsa.

This, then, meant that Russia would become a monarchial

republic, like Poland, dominated by no individual or family.

When the papers were drawn, the bedridden Ostermann

complained that his gout made it impossible for him to sign

them. When Dmitri Galitzin insisted that he do so, Ostermann

wrote his name in such a way that it could not be read.

A deputation hurried to Mitau in Courland with the invita-

tion and the agreement. It seemed to Galitzin and the others

but not to Ostermann that a woman like Anna Ivanovna,

pent up so long in a small Baltic court, might agree to the con-

ditions, to seat herself on the throne of Russia; and that then

the republican government could be made to function.

Somehow in Moscow, where he had appeared for the wed-

ding, Yaghuzinsky heard of Galitzin's conditions, and sent a

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 309

courier of his own, disguised, to Mitau with a note advising

against signing the agreement, because the people would never

accept the ideas of the aristocrats.

However, the Duchess of Courland signed the agreement of

the limited monarchy. Yaghuzinsky's courier was caught re-

turning, and tortured until he confessed who had sent him.

The former prosecutor was imprisoned.

In the Moscow palace where Sophia had turned upon the

monks of the Streltsi, where Galitzin's new republic was to be

launched, he read the name of the empress-to-be to the gather-

ing of the land. They cried approval at the name, the officers

of the Generalitet (General Staff), the heads of the Synod, the

presidents of the colleges, and the fathers of the great families.

But when he read aloud the conditions of the agreement

that would limit the monarchy, there was utter silence. No

listener would approve or be the first to protest. "Those who

heard the letter," the Archbishop Feofan Prokopovich re-

ported, "trembled in their limbs. Even those who had hoped

much from this assembly lowered their ears like poor asses.

There was a whispering and a murmur, but no one dared

speak out."

In spite of their new titles these listeners held to old hopes

and fears. They murmured, "What good if eight noblemen

rule instead of one tsar . . . who then would be guardian of

the people?"

They wanted a Great Master, to become again the guard-

ian of the people. Galitzin's sudden proposal they took to be

the recreation of the Supreme Secret Council under a new

name and there had been so many new names.

Within a few hours the murmuring in the assembly had

passed outward into the streets. When the champions of a new

republic increased the guards around the Kremlin, the argu-

mentation also increased The foreign ambassadors began to

write hurried dispatches: "The Russians debate about an Eng-

lish parliament . . . they want freedom, but they do not

know what kind of freedom . . . they seem to be on the

verge of a revolt."

In the few days before the arrival of the empress-elect this

310 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

murmuring of the Slavs became articulate in the words, "Let

there be again the rule of the ancient tsardom."

The issue was decided very quickly, against the Dolgorukys

and Galitzins. They tried at first to keep the duchesses secluded

Anna Ivanovna's cousin of Mecklenburg arrived with her

but Ostermann and the imperialists got messages through to

her, until she understood that she could reject the signed con-

ditions boldly and be safe. When she contrived a face-to-face

meeting between Dmitri Galitzin's group and his antagonists,

she asked bluntly, "What is the truth? Were the conditions

sent me the will of the whole nation or not?"

So Anna Ivanovna tore up the conditions, and, pretending

anxiety at evidence of a conspiracy, placed herself under the

protection of the Guards declaring that only orders issued

through the commander of the Guards were to be obeyed. She

also took possession of the imperial regalia designed for Cath-

erine, being prompted thereto by her sister of Mecklenburg.

This volte-face within the palace seemed unreal as a scene

upon a stage, but Dmitri Galitzin had no doubt of its reality.

"The feast was prepared," he observed bitterly, "but the

guests would not come to it. I know what a price I shall have

to pay for it. But one day those who make me pay will have

an account of their own to settle."

As usual, the cynic was a true prophet. In appearance and in

mind Anna Ivanovna was uncompromising and masculine.

Disliked by those close to her in her girlhood, she had learned

how to inflict her will on others, and to inflict pain.

Very soon the court returned to Petersburg, where it was

safely removed from contact with the people at large. There

she placed reliance at first only in the consummate Ostermann,

in Yaghuzinsky released from his cell by virtue of the timely

advice he had sent to Mitau and the Guards.

She was thirty-seven, she had twenty years of neglect to

make up for, and the Dmitri Galitzin coup filled her with an

abiding distrust of Russians. At the same time she felt secure

with the Baltic Germans who could have no other incentive

than to strengthen the instruments of her rule.

To increase the revenues, the old wartime taxation was en-

forced again. To enforce the central authority within all the

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 311

provinces, the military establishment was brought up to

strength, and a Cadet Corps was formed at Petersburg, under

German tuition. To keep informed of subversive activities, the

old Prikaz of Secret Affairs reappeared under the name of the

Court of the Secret Police. It was almost as if Petersburg forti-

fied itself against the restive hinterland. The French ambassa-

dor wrote from Petersburg, "No one here dares murmur

against the will of the Empress. The evil-minded have so en-

tirely been put out of the way that now you can hardly find

a trace of the Russians whose antagonism is to be feared."

Those leaders of the Slav nobility, the Dolgorukys and

Galitzins, were at first dismissed to their estates, then got rid of

effectively two being beheaded, two (who happened to be

field marshals) dying in prison, while one was broken on the

wheel and others took the long road to Siberia under guard.

With German thoroughness, informed by the newly quick-

ened "tongues," the most powerful Slav families were intimi-

dated. One daughter was accused of sorcery; Dmitri Galitzin

was convicted of dealings with the devil, condemned and then

stripped of his possessions and immured in Schliisselburg (the

fortress at the Neva's end captured by Peter and Sheremet'ev) .

Even the editor of Peter the Tsar, Cornerstone of the Faith

was sought out and locked up his book had calumniated Lu-

theranism.

Political exiles went to Siberia at the rate of two thousand

a year, four times the number exiled before Peter's day.

So the German Baltic came to rule Peter's city, for a dozen

years.

Age of Biron

It was efficient, in its blind methodical manner; it taught the

wayward Russians the qualities they lacked in the hard school

of experience. And as usual the Russians soon had a word for

it. As Tatwrshtchina had been the Age of the Tatars, this be-

came known among them as Bironovshtchina, the Age of

Biron.

Like Sophia before her, the truculent Anna Ivanovna doted

on one man, Bieren (Biron to the Russians). A very common-

312 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

place German with a family of his own, he had accomplished

nothing at all until Anna lifted him to her side, making him

among other things a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire.

Biron had a remarkable disregard of human beings, except

those he favored, and an equally remarkable love for horses

a peculiarity that did not escape the Russian observers. "He

treats men like horses," they summed him up, "and horses like

men."

Under Anna's imperious domination, those same Russians

had to bow to the plump Biron's wishes "You Russians," he

called them as to the will of a Veliki Gosudar. Since Biron

took pleasure in radiant colors around him, even the heads of

old boyar families like Vasily Cherkasky came to court in pink

and saffron coats. Anna, too, demanded glitter and luxury.

The Italian ambassador said he had been in many courts but

none so heavily clad in silver, gold, and precious stones.

Like Catherine, the dour Anna thirsted for the appearance

of grandeur. At her few banquets she sat under a canopy with

her sister Duchess of Mecklenburg.

Manstein, the adjutant of the new field marshal, Miinnich,

explains how amusing it was to behold such tailored richness

joined to Tatarlike slovenness: "a gorgeous coat with an ill-

combed wig above it ... a guest beautifully clad arriving in

a shabby coach . . . the ladies with marvelous dresses and no

taste."

There were German operas, Italian intermezzo singers.

There were zoos of wild animals for Anna Ivanovna to shoot

with her musket as they were driven by through the gardens;

other fowling pieces were kept in the cornets of the chambers

at Peterhof or the Summer Palace, so that Anna could shoot at

birds out the windows. Killing gave her brief, minute satis-

faction.

She held to a routine as regular as the palace clocks, going

from the billiard table to faro, to light meals without drink,

and to bed on the stroke of eleven. Strangely, she would never

take money she won at gambling, but it gave her deep satisfac-

tion to drain the revenues of her vast empire into the display

of her court.

Biron amused himself with a riding academy.

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 313

In Anna's amusements there was a method. She cherished a

troupe of dwarfs who sometimes used knives on those who

displeased her. Among her jesters she placed young people of

great families Galitzins, Volkonskys, Balakevs. One Galitzin

she wedded to a Kalmuk woman named "Porkess"; two Rus-

sian girls she ordered to become hens, sitting in baskets and

eating bread balls tossed to them.

In the troupe of jesters an idiot took to running before her,

at her coming, crying, "Ding-d

Ivan the Terrible."

Ostermann managed brilliantly; he had become a match for

Campredon, the French ambassador; Miinnich forged through

the Ukraine and down to the Black Sea with his disciplined

columns; he broke Turkish armies along the Pruth where

Peter had retreated. A new regiment, the Ismailov, was added

to the Imperial Guards, new Horse Guards to the always inept

cavalry. Throughout the country tax arrears were collected

efficiently, by confiscation of cattle and goods. The survey of

the Academy located new minerals. New secondary schools

stemming out from Petersburg taught jurisprudence, heraldry,

the art of fortification, artillery ballistics, geography, and Ger-

man history not Russian.

Out in the Urals Tatischev had been traveling and ransacking

archives in a mad kind of search to get together some rough ma-

terials for the history of the Slavs, because he did not believe

the dictate of the German masters of learning as to the origin

of the Slavs. He had come to believe also that history could be

interpreted, not merely set down as a series of events with

their dates. When he brought his pile of manuscript pages

crudely written to the Academy, it was frowned upon and

Tatischev was told to revise it according to proper method.

He died before he could or would do that, and most of his

manuscript was lost in a fire. . . . Lomonosov, haunting the

taverns of Petersburg, also had a conviction that the different

sciences were not actually compartmented studies, to be

learned each for itself, but were related to each other. "He is

a genius," said Euler, the head of the mathematicians at the

Academy, but the other members would have none of Lo~

314 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

monosov, who wrote bad verses and thought you could trans-

late Ovid into simple Russian words. For a time he disappeared

and came back with a writing about small boats thrusting

through ice under the fires of the northern sky, which he

called a Memoir of an Arctic Expedition. There was no place,

then, for the young Slavs in Peter's Academy.

Anna gave a ball in which the natives of the land appeared

for the amusement of her guests Samoyeds and Tungusi and

Ostiaks in their fur and fishkin jackets. This ball she excelled

with an ice festival, which was also the wedding of one of her

fools. For the bridal couple a miniature palace was built of ice,

even to the cannon at the gate, which fixed without bursting,

and the bridal bed itself. As for the procession, it was drawn

in sleighs by reindeer and dogs, and oxen and swine ... in

that palace and on that bed of ice the bride and bridegroom

were forced to spend the night.

Dying, Anna Ivanovna whispered to Biron, "Never be

afraid." That night and for many days to come Ostermann

had one of his self-diagnosed attacks of gout that prevented

him from speaking, or writing any messages. For Anna Ivan-

ovna had signed a decree by which Biron was to be Regent of

Russia.

Even Ostermann and Miinnich were baffled by this new

impasse. Because Biron was not hated so much as he was de-

tested by all within sight and sound of Petersburg, including

themselves. He was simply a human clod, incapable of realiz-

ing even the danger in which he stood now that the will of the

dead tsaritsa had named him Regent of All the Russias.

Perhaps no man in their regime had been so hated as the

Russian Voluinsky (who had accomplished with Shafirov the

ransoming of Peter's army at the Pruth, and had prepared the

way for the march into Persia that failed), because Voluinsky

had amassed a fortune like Menshikov's in open mockery of

law and human life. Voluinsky had tried to overthrow Oster-

mann, and had been broken and exiled in his turn. Yet Voluin-

sky had mocked Biron and for that reason the people at large

held him to be a martyr.

Still the German colony in Petersburg realized very clearly

that their only security now lay in the circumstance that the

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 315

dead woman who appointed Biron had been tsaritsa. " Without

Biron," they admitted among themselves, "we are lost."

End of the Germans

Miinnich, a brilliant soldier, decided that inaction was the

worst of bad alternatives. Contriving the semblance of a palace

revolution, he led eighty Guard officers into Biron's bedroom

at night, to start him away to exile. A house was being pre-

pared for him in a place called Pelim, Miinnich explained a

comfortable house with a good stable of riding horses and

well-trained lackeys. To that house, some distance away, Biron

could take the duchess his wife and their children, in a first-

rate coach. It would be quite a long journey because the house

was in Siberia.

Biron did not understand. It seemed to him to be a mon-

strous bad joke that his chief of staff should wake him up to

tell him about a house in Siberia. And, while his wife screamed

and clung to him in her nightgown, he tried to resist. Between

his bed and the door his officer captors managed to give him

twenty small and painful wounds. . . .

When the news came to the barracks of the Transfiguration

Guards that night, the officers dressed hastily and spontane-

ously took oath to Elizabeth, daughter of Peter, the hard-

drinking and hard-riding woman, still young, who seemed to

them to be the one available tsaritsa. When their Elizabeth

had passed their gate in her sleigh, they had run out to jump

on the rear runners and whisper in her ear. She was their

"Lady Commander of the Guards" and if she did not have any

book learning, she knew the way to make love.

But it appeared next day that Miinnich, Ostermann, and the

greater portion of the army officers supported the remaining

Germans.

It made little difference who or what occupied the palaces

in Petersburg by then. The country outside heard only names

that shifted in kaleidoscopic fashion duchesses of Brunswick

and Brunswick-Bevern, a year-old child christened Ivan VI, a

Prince Anton of Brunswick-Bevern, and his mistress, another

316 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

Anna she of Mecklenburg, too indolent to dress herself or to

heed Ostermann's warning that she must get rid of Elizabeth,

the surviving daughter of Peter. Her Saxon lover appeared in

public for her.

In gardens and stove-heated drawing rooms these Germans

fought each other, more indolently than Peter's favorites had

torn each other down. Munnich resigned his post in disgust.

The reaction of the land had been gathering force for years.

Only the circumstance that the palaces lay in Petersburg, out

of observation, as it were, had kept the Germans installed for

so long. The Court of the Secret Police had full information

about that.

Old Believers had preached against the "woman like the

many-headed dragon of the Apocalypse" and "Biron, the ac-

cursed German." New proverbs appeared at crossroads: "If a

woman governs a city, it will not endure." And, "Walls built

by a woman are never high."

Munnich won his victories without stirring popular rejoic-

ing. His army devastated the once dreaded peninsula of the

Krim Tatars, sacking the palace of Bagche Serai, the last

stronghold of the khans. But tl|e army limped back, wounded.

... It won its way into Danzig, during the new Polish war,

and then had to retreat, with too many losses. The people

were aware only of the conscriptions and the deaths.

It did not seem to them to be any improvement, that tax

collectors took their cattle, to add to the state revenues. They

laid it all up against the "Germans who debase us with novel-

ties and grind down the poor with oppression."

A song was heard in the villages. It called for the tomb of

the Giant Tsar to open and for him to come forth, against the

accursed Germans. Even his merciless hand was better than

the oppression of the distant palaces. In Petersburg and in

Moscow and Viborg conflagrations started and burned mys-

teriously without being extinguished. This was a sign not to be

mistaken by the informers of the Court of the Secret Police,

because so many conflagrations could not start by accident,

and follow so fast.

In the snowbound night of December 6, 1741, the tall and

handsome lover of men, Elizabeth Petrovna, went in her sleigh

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 317

to the barrack of the Transfiguration Guards. Only her physi-

cian and her companion of the moment, one of the Voron-

tsovs, attended her.

The officers gathered around her.

"My children," she said to them, "you know whose daugh-

ter I am."

"Little Mother," they answered, "we know."

"I swear to die for you. Will you swear to die for me? "

They took the oath, to Elizabeth as tsaritsa.

Among the exiles to Siberia went Osterrnann, the last of

Peter's makers of the reign.

The Bronze Horseman and the Ne

When Elizabeth Petrovna was crowned, Lomonosov wrote,

exulting, "Now with Astraea comes again the age of gold."

The age that came, for twenty years, was one of relaxation

within Petersburg, of the liberation of the Russian nobility, of

unlimited wealth flowing in, of French fashions instead of

German. For Elizabeth had a French physician, and found the

easy manners of that nation much to her liking. She ordered

her dresses from Paris and would not wear the same dress

twice or pay for them. If a chimney smoked or the walls

around her turned moldy from damp, she did not care, but she

spent a year's revenue in embellishing her new Winter Palace.

A young Russian from the eastern settlements complained

of the disorder he saw in the city.

"Disorder?" observed Delisle de la Croyere. "Too much

order is not a good thing."

In this gilded age no one suffered the death penalty; torture

was frowned upon. The dwarfs, banished from the palaces,

were seen no more. Elizabeth liked to see able-bodied men

around her, and she married secretly a Ukrainian giant whom

she had heard singing in the church choir.

Yet she had a temper, and a latent savagery. At one of her

balls, where they danced the minuet, she noticed a Madame

Lopukhin, fairer than herself, educated and covertly con-

temptuous. This Lopukhin had dressed her hair like Eliza-

beth's, and adorned it with a similar red rose. The empress

318 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

made the woman kneel before her, while she cut off the other's

rose with the hair around it and slapped her face. . . . When

she heard that Madame Lopukhin had disparaged her to the

Austrian ambassador, Elizabeth ordered the noblewoman

knouted. Stripped of clothing to her hips, she was lashed until

the raw flesh, burned with hot embers, would make a mockery

of her beauty". There was some talk at the time of a conspiracy

to give foreign support to the child Ivan. Much more was

made of this supposed plot, later, to explain the exile of the

Lopukhin family. Ivan himself was sent away to Archangel,

either to lend substance to the talk of the plot, or to safeguard

him from Elizabeth's anger. She herself had no children.

Like her father, she lived restlessly, moving about as the

whim seized her, holding fetes in the forest, demanding that

her courtiers be clothed as at Versailles. When she was in-

clined to hear ballads sung by Locatelli's Italians, she sent out

her lackeys to round up spectators, not caring who they were.

More than that, when she heard of a merchant in Yaroslavl

who staged and directed an opera company of his own imi-

tating the Germans who had been in Petersburgshe sent for

him to perform before her, and allowed him to build an opera

house of his own. Later in Moscow, Surnarokov excelled the

pioneer company, performing, with the fashionable French

pieces, a story of the Slavs The False Dmitri. By then, at long

last, Moscow had its first university, much disparaged by the

foreigners of the Academy of Sciences.

Of such things Elizabeth Petrovna had little understanding.

Yet like Peter she had a loyalty to the something that was

Russia. It took twenty thousand horses, they say, to move her

and her court to Moscow, but to Moscow she went, and to

Kiev to visit the church where her lover-husband had sung in

his youth. Although, like her, he had no schooling, she ap-

pointed him field marshal and Prince of the Holy Roman Em-

piremaking his brother hetman of the Ukraine, bestowing on

him the sword and charter of privileges that the Cossacks had

possessed before the time of Mazeppa and Peter.

It was a nice gesture and Elizabeth was in almost every way

a kindly woman. "Do as you like," she told people who both-

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 319

ered her about legislation. Petersburg began to fill up with

population; Rastrelli designed public buildings in the neo-

classical style; over the entrance of the Winter Palace they

placed the naval crown and wings of a fleet that, somehow,

did not seem to exist.

Ministers with portfolios and urgent problems on their

minds had trouble catching the elusive Elizabeth for a moment

of serious talk; when she went out she was apt to be hurrying

to a festival or riding meet, or most frequently to a review at

an army camp. Documents accumulated, unsigned, on her

work desk. The documents had been prepared by the old Sen-

ate, revived, or by ministers whose tasks never seemed to be

done.

Her ministers used to put a map of Europe on her desk,

hoping she might become interested in it, but Elizabeth never

cared to master its geography.

In these years of festivity in Petersburg, the cleavage be-

tween it and the hinterland was widening.

Beyond the gates of Petersburg and Moscow, out of sight

of the guard posts, the roads belonged to those who could

hold them. Armed bands of deserters took toll of merchants,

or fled themselves from pursuit. Where ferries crossed the

rivers, masterless men took toll that was never ordained by the

Senate. Down the Volga drifted ships that preyed on govern-

ment craft. On these nameless craft tales were told of a second

Stenka Razin, a king of the river thieves, Vanka Kayin.

When rafts drifted down the Volga bearing crosses on

which the bodies of thieves hung from hooks, while the bell

on the cross clanged with the motion of the water, people

who watched them said that Vanka Kayin would never be

caught.

Because a law had been passed in Petersburg that the

mosques of the Volga shores were to be turned into churches,

the Mordvas and Chuvashes rebelled from authority and left

their villages to retreat into the plains.

Beyond the Volga, Kirilov's new city had been built and

fortified, where the Ural River touches the Samara. Kirilov

had no thought of reaching India by the rivers; he thought

that order could be brought into the wilderness, at the foot of

320 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

the Ural Mountains, between the Baraba Steppe and the

Volga.

His city of Orenburg was the first of its kind, thrust into

Kirghiz territory near the lands cultivated by the Baraba set-

tlers. His work had been taken over by another disciple of

Peter, Nepluyev, who built a chain of blockhouses along the

Samara to the Volga, to protect the colonists. They were not

able to penetrate the dry steppes to reach the shore of the Aral

inland sea, or Bokhara or Samarkand, as Kirilov had longed

to do.

Along the dry steppes the nomad peoples were astir again,

under the impulse of a second Tamerlane. From the heights of

the Caucasus where Peter had marched in the dust, to the

mountain passes of India, Nadir Shah ruled with a power that

could not be challenged.

Far to the east the expedition of Vitus Bering was making

its way patiently, year by year, to search the waters lying

between Russia and Japan and America, to learn what land

might be available there, as Peter had wished. Bering's first

attempt had labored through a rising on Kamchatka, to build

a vessel that wandered blindly through mists, meeting only

boats of the native Chukchi.

Now with the Great Expedition he was exploring his own

route, determined to bring back observations and maps veri-

fied beyond doubt. Beside the Russian Andrei Chirikov, who

had become a skilled navigator of the Arctic, Bering had with

him Louis Delisle de la Croyere and two naturalists, the Ger-

man Gmelin and the war veteran Steller, who were plotting

the animal and plant life as they went as Miiller was search-

ing the archives of the posts. For the first time a scientific

expedition was exploring the unknown portion of Eurasia, so

that the Academy and 'Petersburg itself could understand

what lay beyond the mines of the Urals.

Their voyage would take them to the tip of America.

It would also reveal the nature of a land where human

beings developed in settlements built according to their needs.

Those human beings now numbered a million. They had sur-

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 32!

vived almost out of touch with European culture. They had

existed on the rivers and by hunting at first, developing agri-

culture very slowly, in primitive fashion. They had fused

themselves with other peoples. European warfare was not

known to them. They had schooled themselves in primitive

fashion, and had built their own churches, practicing religion

as they knew it.

Out of the stream of their migration, diverted into colonies,

they had developed a different Russia. Beyond sight of the

outer seas, they had mastered a continent in a way that would

endure.

There was no force that could destroy them, in their hold

upon the land, because they had been subjected to every evil

already.

In the far west Petersburg, soon to be called St. Petersburg

after the new fashion, took another step outward, since it had

made Courland a protectorate. And a very slight step north,

into Finland, beyond Ladoga in a small war.

Beyond Courland in that moment of historical time the mili-

tary state of Prussia was expanding its man power, designing

to take over a portion of Poland.

Bestuzhev, the Russian chancellor, held fast to a policy,

under those conditions, of alliance with Vienna, and resistance

to Berlin, the capital of Prussia.

Elizabeth herself disliked Frederick of Prussia, who had

sponsored the marriage of the last male Romanov, christened

Peter, off in Holstein with a girl brought up in Prussian fash-

ion, Sophia of Anhalt.

Frederick, she knew, behaved with careful courtesy to Rus-

sians and termed them in private "barbarians."

"He is a bad prince," she told the English ambassador, "who

has no fear of God. He ridicules holy matters, and does not go

to church. He is the Nadir Shah of Prussia."

She was ill then, in 1756, hating the thought of death, and

bothered as always by politics. She understood how the Rus-

sians around her feared the army of Prussia, their former ally.

And England, still holding scornful mastery of the seas, acted

as Frederick's friend. Since Frederick undoubtedly meant to

322 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

possess Courland, it seemed necessary, her advisers believed,

"to reduce the numbers of the Prussian army."

In the Seven Years' War that followed the Russian armies

took part. There was a grim defeat, almost like Narva, at the

hands of Frederick. Then after years a slow advance through

East Prussia, to Frankfort and the Oder. And another battle,

Kiinersdorf, almost like Poltava, because the numbers and

steadfast courage of the Russian soldiers crushed Frederick's

last strong field army. Elizabeth, however, refused to hear of

peace until they had managed to "reduce the numbers of the

Prussians."

In 1760 the Russian armies entered Berlin and stripped it of

its war material.

After that all Europe recognized that Russia had become a

great power, and that its army must be reckoned with in the

future. The next year Elizabeth Petrovna died.

Peter had won his fight, with foreign powers and his own

people, for his city.

But the fate of that city he had not foreseen.

A year after the burial of his daughter Elizabeth, a German

dynasty took control of the city. The half -imbecile Peter III,

who had come to the throne from Holstein-Gottorp, was de-

throned by the Transfiguration Guards, the actual rulers of

the country, on behalf of the army. Escorted to his country

estate with his dogs and Prussian lackeys, this Peter was then

made to die conveniently, as Alexis, the heir of the Giant Tsar,

had been made to die. The young Ivan VI was also eliminated.

The Guards then crowned, in place of those male remnants

of the Romanovs, a young woman as personable as Elizabeth

but much more ambitious. She was Sophia Augusta Frederica,

daughter of the Lutheran Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, a Prussian

general.

While Sophia had been brought up in a small Prussian court,

she had mastered French culture to aid her in her self-ap-

pointed mission to become Tsaritsa of Russia. She had no

religion, and the parade of her lover-favorites far exceeded

Elizabeth's. In Russia she had been christened Catherine Alex-

eievna, like the first peasant-born Catherine. She is better

REACTION OF THE LAND AGAINST THE CITY 323

known as Catherine II, or the Great. Because, like Peter, this

shrewd German woman made herself autocrat of All the

Russias.

In her time St. Petersburg became no more than a European

court, divorced entirely from the core of the Russian land.

The Russian religion became secularized. By imperial ukaz,

the Russian nobility was released from the obligation of life-

long service that Peter had imposed on it.

In her most imposing victory parade, arranged by her fa-

vorite Potemkin, Catherine journeyed down into the Crimea

to have placed in her hand a sceptre that symbolized the van-

ished rule of the Krim khans.

In 1770 the French sculptor Falconet, assisted by Marie

Collot, wrought in bronze the equestrian statue of Peter the

Great, by the Neva's bank, with his hand pointing to the west.

His body wore a European uniform, which all the tsars after

him would wear.

In 1772 the northeastern portion of Poland fell to Russia in

the first partition of that nation.

In the outer lands, the Ukraine was fully subjected to the

city, the Zaporogian Cossacks liquidated; Siberia became more

a penal colony, its mines more productive those at Nerchinsk,

where Golovin had made the first treaty with China, were

possessed by the new imperial dynasty. Yakutsk was given a

penal prison for women, as well as the one for men.

Catherine reigned from 1762. Ten years later came the re-

action of the land. The Kalmuks who had aided Peter mi-

grated away from Russian authority, eastward to China. The

Ural frontier rose in rebellion under the Cossack Pugachev in

1774. This revolt of the Bashkirs, the peasants, and the eastern

peoples blotted out the defense line of the Tsaritsyn Canal,

and besieged Orenburg. Pugachev, claiming to be the dead

Peter III, fought for the abolition of serfdom, the return of

the old religion. The rebellion drew its munitions from the

Ural smelters, at which Swedish prisoners had worked under

Peter,

The ships of Russian traders, following the routes explored

by Bering's Great Expedition, reached Unalaska and Kodiak,

324 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

the outposts of the new continent where on the eastern sea-

board the first Continental Congress of Americans sat.

The Pugachev rebellion failed, and the continental Eurasia

was more fully dominated by the new Russian army. Yet the

hinterland beyond the Volga, born of rebellion and taking its

course slowly as a glacier moves, through migration to new

colonization, and settlement, endured that blow as it had en-

dured other ordeals.

It survived with slowly mounting strength, while St. Peters-

burg became Petrograd, and then Leningrad, torn by war.

AFTERWORD

The Different Judgments of Peter

DETER ALEXEIVICH has become without question the

most controversial figure in Russian history. At the same

Ltime he has become one of the most obscured figures in

>pean history. With the passage of time, the controversy

has heightened rather than diminished. Perhaps no other strong

man in history has gained so many champions and so many

critics so long after his death.

There is a good reason for this cleavage in judgment, which

is bound to continue for a long time to come. The judgments

have varied as time brought changes in ideas.

In Peter's own day, a Russian could curse "that ogre feeding

upon his people," and the English envoy extraordinary, Lord

Whitworth, could say in rather formal eulogy, "Peter tamed

his savages, raised cities, invited arts, converted forests into

fleets."

A little later an orator, Platon, stepped down from the altar

space of the St. Peter and St. Paul cathedral, to strike his hand

dramatically upon the tomb of the Giant Tsar, invoking him:

"Come forth, to behold thy fleet today." And one Russian

whispered to another, "Better not think what would happen

to us!"

The first verdict of foreign observersof those who spoke

their minds was hostile to the impetuous tsar, as with William

III, Bishop Burnet, and somewhat later, Frederick of Prussia.

They had seen a man who, as Kliuchevsky puts it, "managed

to combine in himself lack of judgment, moral lapses of all

kinds, and wide technical skill ... a good carpenter rather

than ... a good sovereign."

326 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

This disparaging verdict was strengthened quite naturally

by the publication in Vienna of the journal of Johann Korb,

with its details of the ordeal of the Streltsi. From then on

Peter Alexeivich began to appear in literature and court gossip

as monstrous, or noble and enlightened these two very differ-

ent Peters taking turn about, with changes in cultural or po-

litical concepts, like the automata of a Swiss weather gauge,

one smiling and gay to herald fine weather, the other dark and

scowling before a storm.

In Russia itself the reaction after his death brought first of

all a passionate longing for the old ways and beliefs. This reac-

tion continued, although it lessened, through the twenty years

of the reign of his daughter Elizabeth. Yet Elizabeth and her

court paid full tribute to the memory of the Giant Tsar even

supplying Voltaire with carefully edited material for writing a

sketch of his life. Obviously, at this point, the Russians them-

selves began to have a very different concept of Peter than the

western Europeans, who depended more on literary tradition.

Under Catherine and the oligarchy the Germanophile,

Junkerlike aristocracyPeter's memory returned to full favor.

Voltaire's praise of Catherine's regime and reasoned adulation

(the humble Carpenter of Saardam concept) of Peter helped

restore him, if not as the Man of Destiny, at least as the Bronze

Horseman-and-peasant-monarch blended in some fashion

known only to the minds of the costumed shepherds of Ver-

sailles. Popular opinion within Russia did not agree.

After the French Revolution Peter's memory suffered an-

other change. European intellectuals then had a horror of re-

volt. Peter had been a revolutionist. He had created "a nation

of officials, laborers, and soldiers, a land filled with camps and

factories."

After Napoleon, Peter acquired new attributes, or rather

old ones brought out anew. Obviously he, also, had been a

Man of Destiny on the whole more creative than Napoleon,

the soldier-opportunist* (Also the Russians had made Napo-

leon retreat from Moscow.)

In the curious afterglow of the Napoleonic wars, in the

atmosphere of banners and tombs and mild intellectual revo-

lution, Peter Alexeivich resumed stature as a benevolent mon-

AFTERWORD 327

arch. Pushkin, in his love for St. Petersburg rather than for

Peter, wrote his emotional tributes (Poltava, The Bronze

Horseman, The Negro of Peter the Great). The All-Know-

ing Monarch emerged in mystical guise. Peter was being

judged emotionally.

This continued to be the case throughout the nineteenth

century during the Carlylesque vogue of the full-scale por-

traits of great men. (Even at the turn of the century so careful

a biographer as R. Nisbet Bain, accurate with his detail, could

speak of "one of the very greatest of great men . . ." and of

the people as "the Muscovite people, whom it was his mission

to reform against their will." So Peter was portrayed in the

west as the "Great Reformer."

Among Russian historians that was not the case (unless with

Ustrayalov and Karamzin) . Sergei Solov'ev, almost the first to

trace out the migration of the eastern Slavs as a people sub-

jected to the unceasing impact of the racial groups of Asia,

saw in Peter a ruler who tried to serve his state, not his people.

That state Solov'ev portrayed as a rudimentary service state

centered in Moscow, aided or injured by its varying govern-

mentsa people contending with geography itself in a long-

enduring struggle to better the conditions of their land. To

Solov'ev, Peter is very human, an artisan of hasty changes that

did not benefit his people in their natural course of develop-

ment. v

At this point Kliuchevsky observes that those who debate

Peter are actually debating Russia itself. There were in Kliu-

chevsky's rime two schools of thought among the Russians

the "Westerners," who argued that progress could only come

from the adoption of western European ideas (who left, in

their argument, all Russia east of the Volga in a kind of blank

space), and the "Slavophiles," who held that Russia's true des-

tiny was to develop by itself apart from the west, over which,

by such development, it would eventually dominate. To these

Westerners the memory of Peter became that of their first

great leader, in effect the Father of their new Fatherland. 1

The master of the Russian historians, Vasily Kliuchevsky,

reminds us constantly that Peter had no such ideas in his

earlier lifethat he began his full self-sacrifice only when he

328 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

became aware of his mistakes. For those mistakes his people,,

Kliuchevsky points out, paid a grim price.

"Peter set himself to self education which in time revealed

to him the vast blanks in his mental equipment, and turned his

mind to such concepts, hitherto undreamed-of, as a state and

the people of a state . . . and duty . . . and the obligations

of a ruler."

That awareness seemed to come first at the age of twenty-

seven, after the deaths of those who had taken responsibility

during Peter's play yearshis mother, the Patriarch Joachim,

Gordon, Lefort -and after his return from the first European

journey.

That early awareness of a responsibility, Kliuchevsky adds,

did not stifle Peter's self-will. He did not as yet realize the

political consequences ' of his actions, or understand how to

cope with the psychology of the Russian people. (He realized

much more by 17 1 8, after the stagnation of the Northern War

and the execution of his son. Full understanding seemed to

come only in his last three years, when he had to contend with

the efforts of his favorites to succeed to his authority.)

Kliuchevsky adds, blaming Leibnitz partially, that Peter

failed because he held to the idea "that culture can be instilled

into a nation in a greater measure because that nation is igno-

rant of culture . . . that the impossible was not the impossi-

ble, and that the life of a nation could be diverted at any time

from its historical channel into an entirely different one.

"Peter turned his activity as a reformer entirely to measures

needing to be imposed by force. . . . True, in himself Peter

was sincere, as he was exacting of himself. But the unfortunate

thing was that the bent of his endeavor made him a better

manipulator of inanimate objects than a manager of human

beings. He looked upon people as so many mechanical instru-

ments. He knew how to use those instruments yet was power-

less to understand their nature . . . even when they were his

own home and family."

Regardless of the ideas of the nineteenth-century Western-

ers, Kliuchevsky and the more solid Russian historians point

out that Peter did not invent the service state, nor did he man-

age to alter very much the Muscovite state that had existed

AFTERWORD 329

before him. What he did was to put it into western dress and

propel it violently toward Europe by way of his city and the

Baltic. The great changes came as the effect of that thrust;

Muscovy ceased to be Muscovy and became the Russian Em-

pire. The court of Catherine the Great was hardly Russian in

a true sense, and certainly not as Peter had been. 2

That artificial cleavage between the Russia-facing-west at

St. Petersburg, and the true Russia 3 spanning the continent to

the east crept into nineteenth-century geography, where maps

depicted a Russia in Europe and an Asiatic Russia. For a while

a stone stood as a frontier marker in the Urals. It has been

taken down now.

With the Russian Revolution beginning in 1917, Peter's

memory suffered some drastic changes.

Ignored at first with other tsars as a figure of a dead past, he

revived very quickly and rather unexpectedly. The Marxian

interpretation of history had castigated the tsars as instruments

of capitalism. Under Lenin a different idea took hold that the

earlier tsars had been, in their way, leaders of national devel-

opment, especially in the case of Ivan IV and Peter I.

These different concepts clashed furiously during the Trot-

sky schism. Apparently the concept of such tsars as instru-

ments of an imperialistic Russia was relegated to Trotsky

(although his own writings hardly bear this out), while Ivan

and Peter, as creators of a Russian nation, belonged to the

Lenin side. In any case, Peter emerged (about 1937) from this

political storm as a forerunner of Leninism and (subsequently)

Stalinism. So the Central Committee held.

At the same time attention was directed backward to the

earlier history of the nation, especially to figures like Alexan-

der Nevsky, the leader of the resistance against the Teutonic

Knights (who were looked upon as the spearhead of German

eastward expansion), Russian operas like Glinka's A Life for

the Tsar were sponsored again, with certain rewording. "Our

Orthodox Sovereign Tsar" became, for instance, "Our be-

loved native land/' 4

Yet in Peter's case historical writers were warned by the

Moscow authority not to emphasize the revolt of the Streltsi

330 THE CITY AND THE TSAR

as a popular rebellion against a tsar that revolt, it seemed,

to be due to reactionary influence against the measures of

Peter. ' t

During the last war emphasis continued to be laid on j

"national" interpretation of history, especially upon R

leaders who opposed the Germans in the past, and those

defeated Napoleon. Peter seems to have remained firmly

place among the creators of the nation, with emphasis on his^

fellowship with ordinary people, his jesting at the "reactipn-

ary nobility" the cutting off of beards, etc. and his mobiHjjj^

tion of the army of Poltava. Primarily, his role became thpftof

the soldier who organized a defense of the land. /

What will happen to his memory now (1948) that pmpha-

sis is centered upon the degeneracy of western culture, and

upon western capitalism as an exploiter of ordinary human

beings, remains to be seen. )

It is odd that one of the most honest and unpretenti0tis of

human beings should have been interpreted in so many differ-

ent ways after his death.

Apart from political ideology and apart from Moscow also

a new examination of Russian history is being made. The

great prerevolutionary historians, Solov'ev and Kliuchevsky,

centered their attention on the development of Russia west of

the Urals. Miliukov has done likewise. The land beyond the

Urals remained for them a kind of limbo into which people

disappeared and out of which things arrived. (Only in the last

century has the eastern area been fairly attacked by historians;

until then most of the groundwork was done by amateurs.

Fine work was accomplished by Russian expeditions in explor-

ing Siberia, and in examining its ethnology, with its flora and

fauna. The materials of history were neglected, except by a

few foreigners.)

Very recently historians like P. N. Savitsky and George

Vernadsky have been examining the stubborn fact that Russia

actually extends through Asia. It does not end in a void at the

Urals. They look at Eurasia as a whole, and find that the

domain once conquered by the Mongols of Genghis Khan,

and ruled thereafter by the tsarist Russian Empire, is actually

AFTERWORD 3 3 I

a historic-geographic entity. That entity is the one ruled by

the U.S.S.R. by the Moscow of today.

The Mongols and the tsars after them were not greatly con-

cerned with the ideology of a central government; they had

to face the problem of the physical barriers of a continent

populated with varied and restless peoples. The Mongols met

that problem by abandoning their central control at Karako-

rum and dividing the continent into separate khanates that of

Batu Khan in Russia separating itself very quickly from the

Chinese khanate of Kubilai. The early Muscovite tsars met the

same problem by doing nothing about the eastern portion of

the domain except to draw from it some resources. That land

and its varied people have, in turn, become the latent force

shaping the development of the Russian state. They will con-

tinue so to influence it, unless the Moscow of today can estab-

lish a rigid control over the Eurasian continent.

The historians of this latest school of study have been called

"the Eurasians." They believe that the course of Russian his-

tory must follow the line of this place-development rather

than the convolutions of the political center, which has

changed leaders and beliefs so often without changing Russia

as a whole*

The Eurasian historians are pioneering new ground. Their

study may give more weight to Peter's plans for the east in

his last years, 5 and less weight to his experimentation with the

ideas of the west.

In time he will be judged by his acts, as they affected his

people as a whole.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

AM indebted to the library of the University of California,

Los Angeles, for its aid in the work upon this book, and

especially to Lawrence Powell, the director, and to the

patience and courtesy of Everett Moore and Jean C Anderson

in searching for available texts elsewhere. My deep indebted-

ness extends to George V. Lantzeff and to Anatole G. Mazour,

of the University of California, Berkeley, for the study of

colonial administration in seventeenth-century Siberia, and the

outline of modern Russian historiography, upon which por-

tions of this book have relied.

Use has been made chiefly of the following texts:

Narratives of the late seventeenth century

Avril, Father, Travels into Divers farts of Europe and Asia,

London, 1693.

De la Neuville, Foy, Relation Curieuse et Nouvelk de Mos-

covie, Paris, 1698.

Gerbillon, Father, Travels into W-estern Tartar y by Order o f

the Emperor of China. In Du Halde. (1689-98.)

Gordon, Patrick, Diary, Aberdeen, 1859.

Ides, Isbrant, Three Years Travels from Moscow overland to

China, London, 1706. (1692.)

Macarius, The Travels of Macarim, Patriarch of Antioch,

Written by His Attendant Archdeacon, Paul of Aleppo, in Ara-

bic, London, 1829. (Moldavia and Muscovy.)

Mayerberg, Relation d'un voyage en Moscovie, Leyden, 1688.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 333

Olearius, Adam, Voyages . . . faits en Moscovie, Tartarie, et

Perse,, par le Sr. Adam Olearius, Eibliothecaire du Due de Hoi-

stein et Mathematicien de sa Cour, Tr. De Wicquefort, Amster-

dam, 1727.

Spathary, Nicholas, Journal In John F. Baddeley, Russia, Mon-

golia, China, London, 1919,

Verbiest, Father, Journey into Eastern Tartary. In Du Halde.

(1682.)

Ustryalov, Nikolai, Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia, Vol.

Ill, maps, charts, and facsimiles, St. Petersburg, 1858.

General, the late seventeenth century

Cahen, Gaston, Histoire des relations de la Russie awec la Chine

sous Pierre le grand, Paris, 1912. (1689-1725.)

Czaplicka, M. A,, Aboriginal Siberia: A study in Social An-

thropology, Oxford, 1914.

Du Halde, J. B., Description . ... de r Empire de la Chine^

Paris, 1735.

Golder, F. A., Russian Expansion on the Pacific, Cleveland,

1914. (From 1641.)

Grum-Grzhimailo, Zapadnaya Mongoliya, Leningrad, 1926.

(Relations with the eastern Asiatics.)

Howorth, Sir Henry, History of the Mongols, London, 1876.

(Dynastic chronicle of the Kalmuks, Khalkas, and Mongols

proper.)

Kerner, Robert J., The Urge to the Sea: The Course of Rus-

sian History: The Role of Rivers, Portages, Ostrogs, Monas-

teries and Furs. University of California Press, 1946. (Routes, and

reasons; of expansion into the east,)

Lantzeff, George V., Siberia in the Seventeenth Century: A

Study of the Colonial Administration, University of California

Press, 1943.

O'Brien, Carl Bickford, Russia Prior to Peter the Great: The

Regency of Tsarevna Sophia, Dissertation, 1942, University of

California Library. (1682-89.)

Vernadsky, George V., The Expansion of Russia. Transac-

tions of the Connecticut Academy of Sciences, July 1933.

Narratives of the early eighteenth century (after Peter's assump-

tion of authority )

Anonymous, History of the Russian Fleet during the Reign of

Peter the Great by a Contemporary Englishman. Publications of

3 34 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

the Navy Records Society, Vol. XV, London (?), 1899. (Journal

of the English officer who served in the Baltic fleet from about

1703 to 1724.)

Anonymous, Nouveaux Memories sur UEtat Present de la

Grande Russie ou Moscovie, Paris, after 1721 (?). (A compila-

tion of accounts credited to individuals named Schutz and Lange,

and an unnamed Swedish prisoner, describing the city of Peters-

burg, the Russian army, the trial of Alexis, and a route to China,

from 1714 to 1721, and published after the visit of Peter to Paris

had aroused interest in Russia.)

Bell, John (of Antermony), Travels -from. St. Petersburgb in

Russia to Various Parts of Asm,, Edinburgh, 1788. (Notable for

its firsthand account of the Caspian expedition.)

Journal de Pierre le Grand: depuis VAnnee 1698 jttsqu^a ft la

conclusion de la Paix de Nystadt, a Londres, 1773. (The journal

of the Great Northern War, supposed to have been revised by

Peter not reliable except for chronology, in the main, and logis-

tics.*)

Korb, Johann Georg, Diarium Itineris in Moscoviarm . . , ad

Tzarwn . . . Petrum Alexiowicium Anno MDCXCVII1, Vienna,

1700. (Diary kept by a secretary to the imperial embassy, giving

glimpses of Peter's court, and the fullest account of the torture

liquidation of the Streltsi.)

1 Scenes from the Court of Peter the Great, New York,

1921. (Extracts, from Korb's Latin diary, edited by F. L. Glaser.)

Le Bruyn, Cornelius, Travels into Muscovy, Persia, London,

1737. (Detailed observations, 1701-07.)

Leibnitz, Gottfried, Oeuvres, par A. Foucher de Careil, Tome

septieme, Paris, 1875. (Correspondence with Witzen and Peter.)

Perry, John, Etat present de la grande Russie, The Hague, 1717.

*This is said to be not the journal of the Northern War as it hap-

pened, but as Peter would have liked it to have happened. In the ac-

count of Narva for instance the movements of the Russian army, and

of Peter himself, are given with some accuracy, but without indication

that Peter knew anything about the approach of the Swedes before he

left. So at the Pruth, the day-by-day movements and even the full list

of artillery appear accurate but without explanation of the withdrawal,

except: "The advance against the Turks had been undertaken too

rashly . . . although the situation into which we passed was grievous

and dangerous, it benefited us more than if we had gained a victory,

because then we should have advanced farther and . . suffered a

worse misfortune." While that may be true enough, it is not the whole

truth by any means.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 335

, The State of Russia under the Present Czar, London, 1716.

(Observations on the canal and ship construction to 1712.)

Stralenberg, Philip Johan, Description Historique de f Empire

Russien, Amsterdam, 1757. (Accurate observations by a Swedish

officer who had some firsthand experience with Siberia.)

Weber, Nouveaux memoires (2 vols.), Paris, 1725,

Whitworth, Charles (Baron), An Account of Russia as It Was

in the Year 27/0, Strawberry-hill, 1758. (Reliable account by an

English envoy extraordinary who made a careful study of Rus-

sian finances and shipbuildingand observed the court shrewdly.)

General

Bain, R. Nisbet, The First Romanovs, London, 1905. (1613-

1725.)

Hrushevsky, Michael, A History of Ukraine, Yale University

Press, 1941.

Kliuchevsky, Vasily O., A History of Russia, Vols. Ill and IV,

London, 1913.

Lesur, M., Histoire des Kosaques, 2 vols., Paris, 1814.

Levchine, Alexis, Description des Hordes et des Steppes des

Kirghiz-Kazaks, Paris, 1840,

Miliukov, Paul (with Seignobos and Eisenmann), Histoire de

Russie, 2 vols., Paris, 1935.

Mordovtsev, Daniel, Unpublished notes on expeditions of the

Don and Zaporogian Cossacks in the Black Sea area.

Sumner, B. HL, Survey of Russian History, London, 1944.

Vernadsky, George, History of Russia, Yale University Press,

1945.

Waliszewski, K, Peter the Great, 2 vols., London, 1897.

The Sea beyond Siberia

Burney, James, A Chronological History of North-eastern

Voyages of Discovery and of the Early Eastern Navigation of

the Russians, London, 1819. (To 1791.)

Coxe, William, Account of the Russian Discoveries between

Asia > and America^ London, 1787-

Delisle, J. N., Explication de la Carte des Nouvelles Decou-

vertes du Nord de la Mer du Sud, Paris, 1752.

Gmelin, Johann G., Voyage en SibMe, Paris, 1767.

FOOTNOTES

/ The Two Gates of Muscovy

TDezhnev apparently never claimed or received a reward for his ex-

ploration. When he visited Moscow twenty years afterward, in 1671,

little attention was paid him, apparently, by the Siberian Bureau. The

only man then in Moscow who would have known the truth of his

accomplishment was the son of Michael Staduchin, his enemy. His re-

port was not unearthed from the Yakutsk files until Miiller discov-

ered it in 1736.

For a long time no one else managed to round the end of the conti-

nent at East Cape, now known as Cape Dezhnev. The cossack him-

self explained that the way was usually closed by ice. All this led to

the story that the cape was impassable, and other voyagers started

the tale of an impassable mountain chain that stretched from Asia to

America, which in turn became confused with the report of a mythi-

cal "land of Yezo" between the continents. Thus Peter the Great did

not know for certain whether Asia was joined to America or not, and

launched his expedition in 1725 to search by sea for the end of Siberia

which Dezhnev had rounded long before.

2 The Moscow government had created a class of pioneers, usually

experienced colonists liable to combat duty, and called "cossacks."

These are not to be confused with the still independent Cossack

Hosts, of the Don, Dnieper, and elsewhere. In fact actual Cossacks of

those southern communities, who found their way to Siberia and en-

listed, resented the government classification. At least once they peti-

tipned to be called "men of service" or something different from

"cossack."

8 Native hunters had not killed off the animals in such wholesale

fashion. Too often an artel or band of Russian hunters would make

every effort to kill off the valuable animals of an area before another

band or a government inspector could catch up with them. They

would also loot all pelts from native villages. Then they would move

FOOTNOTES 337

on to winter quarters in untouched territory. The best pelts of course

could be obtained in winter in the coldest taiga areas where animals

had the thickest fur.

The black fox with its luxuriant long coat was the greatest prize of

all. One fine pelt brought the price of "forty acres," a team of horses,

a herd of cattle, tools, and seed grain a good living for a Muscovite

family of that day. White furs, of the Arctic fox and ermine, were

also valuable, while the thick-coated marten and gray squirrel were

sought after. Men spoke of good territory "where the sables and foxes

were darkest."

Easterners said, "Not only men but animals fled away at the com-

ing of the Urouss"

4 Lantzeff (Siberia in the Seventeenth Century) sums up this first

effort of Moscow at colonial administration in the east: "The whole

system lacked cohesion, and was marred by corrupt practices and op-

pression. It seemed, however, to satisfy the needs of the Muscovite

state at its particular stage of development at that time."

The system did operate to meet the needs of Moscow rather than

of Siberia itself.

G An account of the first epidemic of revolts, starting with the riot-

ing in Moscow itself and the uprising in the Ukraine under Khmiel-

nitsky, is given in The March of Muscovy : Ivan the Terrible and the

Growth of the Russian Empire, 1400-1648.

The second series of revolts seemed to start with the trouble over

the debased currency resulting in the "copper rebellion" in the Mos-

cow area, and spreading to the Volga where Stenka Razin headed the

resistance movement. These uprisings are sometimes described too

loosely as class wars. Although they did react against the landowning

class, in one way or another they fought against either the power or

the methods of Muscovite officialdom. Usually the native peoples like

the Bashkirs and Mordvas joined the resistance, and often as in the

case of Khmielnitsky or Stenka Razin their objective was to set up an

independent state along the frontier.

Actually they were, as George Vernadsky and B. H. Sumner point

out, the fight of the frontiers against the expanding center.

That fight spread t6 the eastern frontier. Stenka Razin had hardly

been executed before Siberia broke out, in the i6yos. Men at that time

spoke of Chernigovsky's settlement on the Amur as "another Don"

that is, as a sanctuary like the rudimentary republic on the river Don.

The Raskolniki or Separatists are usually known as Old Believers.

Some account of them, and of the Siberian exile of their leader, the

Archpriest Avvakum, is given in The March of Muscovy: Ivan the

Terrible and the Growth of the Russian Empire, 1400-1648.

338

FOOTNOTES

// The Young Westerners

a Golovin was criticized later in Moscow for having surrendered

the zone of the far east to the Chinese. But it is hard to see how he

could have accomplished more than he did. He drew a' frontier line

and established relations between the two empires.

Recent Soviet writings for popular reading speak of the Amur as

sought by the "ambition" of K'ang hsi, and obtained by the duplicity

of the Jesuit, Father Gerbillon. Yet the Amur basin had always been

peopled by Manchu and Mongol racial segments. The Russians were

the intruders. As for Gerbillon, his interest undoubtedly lay with the

Manchu ambassadors, who were adamant in their determination to

keep the Amur basin. The evidence shows that Gerbillon worked

conscientiously to arrive at a settlement, and that the treaty probably

could not have been drawn without his efforts.

Nerchinsk lies some hundred and fifty miles east of Chita on the

Trans-Siberian Railroad today, well north of the recent frontiers of

Outer Mongolia and Manchuria.

TDe la Neuville says of this army "although formidable in num-

bers, it was only a multitude of peasants, poor soldiers and little ex-

perienced." He adds that Galitzin departed unwillingly on the expedi-

tion. There was a strong feeling in the Moscow council and among

the great merchants that the Russian army should follow after the re-

treating Turks and penetrate the Ukraine, if not to the Danube. More-

over the understanding with Poland called for such a move, to re-

lieve Turkish pressure along the Carpathians.

3 Hollanders were only beginning to develop the schooning design

that became the handy schooners later. But they and the English had

done much with the fore-and-aft rig in small craft while the Mus-

covites had remained content for the most part with the ancient

square rig on their river craft.

The legend that the finding of this English boat inspired Peter

Romanov to foster Russian shipbuilding is a latter-day invention. The

chief Russian rivers were alive with small craft; the Don Cossacks ex-

plored into the Black Sea with their sailing saicks; Stenka Razin had

occupied the Caspian with a fleet of thirty or more sailing vessels a

generation before, when Ordin Nastchokin had ordered the first sea-

going brig to be built on the Oka- Volga waterway, Kliuchevsky be-

lieves that the ship models Peter got from the Arsenal were those

made for that earlier brig.

What interested Peter in the "English boat" was its new design. He

showed the same interest in a new model of an astrolabe, a grenade

thrower, or a magnifying glass.

FOOTNOTES

339

4 As a campaign this accomplished little beyond justifying Peter's

effort with his new soldiery. The Don and Dnieper Cossacks by them-

selves had captured Azov in 1637 and had held it for four years

against one of the strongest of the Turko-Tatar armies. They had

been forced to abandon Azov by pressure from Moscow which feared

to antagonize the Turks at that time. Peter had used the main Mus-

covite field army to recapture a Turkish outpost.

Strategically, however, Azov was important because while it was

the key to the Don River it also gave an outlet upon the Black Sea,

still a Turkish lake. Psychologically, the capture had great effect upon

the Muscovites, and Europeans.

/// The Tour of Europe and the Invasion

Teter had a way of pretending to be deaf when he was not ad-

dressed as "Master Peter" or as "Carpenter of Saardam." He may

have said once that he was only a student in search of a master, which

was not his case at all. Out of such anecdotes Voltaire rationalized

three generations later a young monarch who devoted himself to

handicrafts until at Saardam he learned to build a ship entire with his

own hands, isolating himself the while in humble solitude. Thus he

saw in Peter the "heroic apprentice" of later legendry. Upon this was

superimposed the concept of a monarch studying day and night to

advance his people in science, and upon this in turn came the concept

of a man aware of his own future, which grew into the idea of the

"Great Reformer" of the nineteenth-century writers of western Eu-

rope.

Kliuchevsky, the foremost of the Russian historians, reminds us,

"From his first foreign tour he derived no actual ideas for schemes

of reform, but only some cultural impressions, a fancy to transplant

to Russia a proportion of the things beheld abroad, and a project of

declaring war upon Sweden. . . Only during the last decade of his

fifty-three years was it borne in upon him that he had done anything

new. . . . And that tardy realisation of what he had done was no

more than a mental reflex ... an awareness of what had been ac-

complished."

a johann Korb's journal was published speedily at Vienna, in 1700,

under the title of Biarium itineris Moscoviam. As the title goes on to

say, it was an account of the embassy of Baron de Guarient, whom

Korb served as secretary.

Peter's satanic revels, held almost daily at the time of the torture-

deaths of the Streltsi, appeared to young Korb only as notable in-

cidents in Moscow. Korb was in no way critical of Peter, except

that he complains of the silver plate at the banquets never being

washed.

340 FOOTNOTES

However the Russian embassy at Vienna took immediate exceptior

to the volume. Guarient was never allowed to return to Moscow

After much friction, the Emperor Leopold agreed to order the re-

maining copies of Korb's work to be destroyed. The Russians bought

up others, until only ten or twelve survived, in state libraries for the

most part. (A Russian translation was made for Peter, but is not be-

lieved to be a good one. Another was published in 1906.)

A Scottish wanderer came across a copy in Italy and made an

English translation which was published in a small edition in 1863,

There are, or were, copies in the British Museum, Bibliotheque

Nationale, and the Library of Congress.

Peter is said to have had one copy burned publicly at Moscow.

a lt is often pointed out that Charles made a mistake in not following

the Russians on to Moscow, which he could have captured at that

time. But Charles was inexperienced, the main theater of the war lay

behind him in Poland. At that time and place he had good reasons

for not turning his back on Poland and plunging into the Russian

forests.

He underestimated the potentialities of the Russians, yet hardly

anticipated that he would be kept for five years, as Peter put it, "stuck

in the mud of Poland."

The surrender of the Swedish cavalry at the Dnieper. The question

arises, how did Menshikov, a civilian, manage to lead armies? He had

luck, because he took chances that won for him. Actually at Poltava

he neglected to pursue the Swedes for twenty-four hours, being too

occupied in systematic looting of their camp. When he was told to

start the pursuit he took too few Russian cavalry, and stumbled on

the once dreaded Swedish cavalry at the Dnieper, which they were

unable to cross. Instead of retreating or maneuvering for battle,

Menshikov simply rode up to them and demanded their surrender,

which he got from Lowenhaupt, who knew that his survivors had no

resistance left in them, and assumed that Menshikov must be leading

the advance of the main Russian forces.

So at Baturin, Mazeppa's fortified base. It was well garrisoned to

stand a siege. Menshikov simply threw his troops at the town headlong

as they came up, and carried the place in a day with great loss on both

sides. But after Poltava Peter removed Menshikov from direct com-

mand in the army and set him to governing Petersburg.

It was the heroic endurance of the Russian troops, not leadership,

that won such victories as Poltava. Exactly fifty years afterward that

same courage and endurance of Russian soldiers entrenched in the

sandhills of Kunersdorf broke the iron determination of Frederick the

Great, who watched the Russians stand their ground after forty-eight

per cent of his own Prussians had been casualties.

FOOTNOTES

34*

On the whole Peter fared better with his military commanders than

with his civil ministers. His most irretrievable mistake was to make

his favorites his ministers, and not vice versa.

In fact Peter indulged in another vagary that has defied all reasoned

explanation since his time. Persistently from first to last he bestowed

high rank on his favorites in reverse to their abilities. Passing over

the odd ranks he gave himself, and the play titles of the Pressburg

group and the mock titles of the All-Drunken Council, we find him

appointing Francois Lefort his first admiral. Lefort of course knew

nothing about ships. Gordon, a moderately experienced soldier, also>

became an admiral.

If we dismiss these early appointments as Falstaff fancies, we find

Golovin, an average diplomat, named commander in chief during the

Great Northern War. In the crisis of the war Menshikov, an ad-

venturer, became the first field commander. Apraksin, the high ad-

miral of the Baltic, had never been to sea. Yaghuzinsky, a natural

policeman, became Oberprocurator of the Senate, and Devier, a sea-

man, was named chief of police.

If there was a method in this madness, no one has been able to

point it out. Peter, in this perversity, may have been imitating some-

thing, but what? Perhaps in his blindness he felt convinced that men

who ministered to his own needs could minister to the state.

Oddly enough, Catherine II did much the same. Potemkin, her

great favorite, was no soldier. Yet she made him commander in chief

of all the Russian armed forces. The result was a terrible toll of

casualties and sickness.

B Some nineteenth-century Swedish historians explain the disaster

to Swedish arms by overemphasizing Mazeppa's importance by assum-

ing that Charles expected to be joined by a powerful Cossack army

that never materialized under Mazeppa.

But when Charles turned south at Moghilev on the upper Dnieper

(August 1708), Mazeppa had made him no offer of a Cossack army,

nor had the Swedish command at that point need of men as much as

supplies. Curiously enough, Pushkin and others have pictured Mazeppa

as being deceived by Charles as expecting strength where the Cossack

found actual weakness.

The Swedish army did not actually invade what was Russia then*

It moved south into the Ukraine to supply itself, and to operate in the

area of the revolt (in which Mazeppa had not participated) rather

than in the snowbound northern forests on the direct road to Moscow.

Depots of food and munitions existed at Veroneth, at Kiev and on a

smaller scale at Baturin and the Siech. But the Russian army kept the

Swedes from Veroneth; Kievit seems would have resisted them, and

the Cossack bases were destroyed by the Russians.

Mazeppa did not join Charles until the Swedes had entered the

steppe. His desertion had almost no influence upon events, except to

342 FOOTNOTES

make his name a byword in the Ukraine. It became an epithet like

"heretic" or "Antichrist." After the first World War I mentioned

to Cossacks of the Taganrog region that I might write sketches of

the Ukrainian hetmans from Khmielnitsky to Pugachev. "But not

Mazeppa!" they insisted.

6 Russian accounts of the campaign on the Pruth usually exaggerate

the strength of the Turks. The traditional account puts that strength

at a round 200,000 men, 300 cannon. The historians Kliuchevsky and

Rambaud speak of forces "five and six times" the Russian strength.

Turkish sources are almost as vague as the Russian about the realities

of this fantastic campaign. The best estimate from Turkish sources

is that the mobilization at Adrianople consisted of 50,000, to which the

Krim Tatar contingent should be added.

Peter's command, on the other hand, was much more numerous than

the "small detachment" sometimes spoken of. At the start it consisted

of from 32,000 to 38,000 regular troops, with an undisclosed number

of irregulars and servants. Apparently Peter had some 40,000 with him

when he crossed the Dniester. After that his losses appear to have been

constant and heavy. He had perhaps 23,000 to 24,000 men with him

at the capitulation on the Pruth.

7 "He was at no time a man sparing of human lives and material

resources, he redoubled his expenditure of both; but the real result

of the affair on the Pruth was to call a full half-century's halt to

Russia's naval progress on the Black Sea." . . . V. O. Kliuchevsky,

History of Russia, Vol. IV, "The Northern War."

A clear picture of the desolate state of Peter's first navy is given

(1710) by Charles, Lord Whitworth, who made a careful survey of

the southern rivers in his capacity of envoy of the English court.

Many of the warships, he reports, were used as salt carriers. At

Kazan "forty frigates of eight to fourteen guns ... lie rotting on

the shore." On the Don "thirty-six sail of Dutch designed ships of

from 80 to 30 guns ... rotten and planked only on the outside to

keep them above water for a show." At Veroneth he found the chan-

nel silted, the ways destroyed by floods, and malaria raging among the

remaining laborers. The work here had cost the lives of three or four

thousand men. At Stupena above Veroneth, eleven frigates built of

green timber had rotted before they were finished.

Of the three great canals laip! down by Peter, Whitworth found

work suspended at the Don-Volga, and unfinished on the eight-mile

waterway between the Don and the Tula munitions works. Only the

canal from the upper Volga to the north, along the Volkhov to

Petersburg, was finished.

At Petersburg itself, there were twelve frigates, eight galleys, six

fire ships. "Of the frigates only three are in a condition of service."

FOOTNOTES

343

IV Rise of the Makers of the Reign

"Translation by Professor Oliver Elton, in Verse from Pushkin.

2 "Before Poltava we find only two acts of a constructive tendency

... a ukaz on local government of 1699, and a ukaz on the redivision

of the Empire into provinces, 1708." Kliuchevsky, Vol. IV, "The

Effect of the War."

3 There was of course no question now of one of the great boyar

families being called to the throne, as had happened during the Time

of Troubles, a century before in fact the Romanovs had been such

a family, in exile.

For the time being, Peter's own personality had effaced any repre-

sentatives of the lineage of Rurik, or Ivan Grodzniy. Romodanovsky,

prince of an illustrious family, might easily have won Moscow's

allegiance to himself at the time of the Streltsi revolt. But his loyalty

to Peter was unswerving and besides he had appeared too often in the

guise of the mock King of Pressburg to be taken seriously now.

Sheremet'ev was worshiped by the army and watched by Secret

Affairs personnel. He was a man without personal ambition, entirely

devoted to Peter signing himself "The poorest of your slaves."

*A Swedish observer believed that "his father had been the chief

cause of the bad education of this prince."

Peter, according to this officer one of the numerous prisoners of

war should have known Menshikov's origin and qualities too well to

have entrusted Alexis' upbringing to him. Menshikov, on the rare

occasions when, he saw Alexis, spoke to him in "hard and filthy"

terms addressing the boy as "thou."

"This shamed and discouraged the prince, until he finally lost all

desire to stand up for himself or keep on with his studies. Alexis was

obliged to live continually at Preobrazensky, where he had only the

companionship of common folk and priests. ...

"His father made it a rule never to speak to him gently, and to meet

him as indifferently as if he had been a stranger. This intimidated

Alexis until he sought for excuses to avoid his father." Philip Johan

Stralenberg, Description Historique de VEmpire Rumen, Amsterdam,

*757-

There was much truth in this. From the first the court at Vienna

had been badly puzzled by the problem of what to do with the fugitive

heir to the throne of Russia. Tolstoy had managed to lift the problem

to the issue of war or peace with Moscow. Powerful Russian armies

344 FOOTNOTES

still operated in Poland, "and in consequence threatened the frontier

of the empire in Silesia. No doubt the officials in Naples as well as in

Vienna itself were relieved when Alexis departed without further

disturbance. Charles, however, did not share their conviction that all

was turning out for the best.

"Divan of Jallal-addin Rumi.

7 Kliuchevsky sums up the continuation of the Northern War from

Poltava as "the prolongation of a ruinous nine years' conflict for twelve

years more. In the end it compelled Peter to jettison much of his own

work, and to consent to help his antagonist not only to recover the

German provinces which he himself had been the prime cause of that

antagonist losing, but also to drive from the Polish throne the friend

who he had . . . supported. And on Charles' death . . . fortune still

further mocked Peter, for on that the Swedes concluded peace with

his allies but not with himself, and thenceforth he had to confront his

adversary alone."

8 In advancing into the west the Russian armies aroused fear among

the smaller maritime states-r-the Benelux group of that century by

their nature as well as their presence.

Until then even the aggressive armies of Charles had been of the

time-honored monarchial pattern, waging limited war for limited

objectives for certain supply depots, fortresses, ports, or forests. Such

western monarchs waged such wars by obtaining grants of money

from their parliaments and conscripting a portion of the peasantry

(or hiring regiments). In return for granting the war money the par-

liaments exacted privileges for themselves or managed to limit the

authority of the king in some new point.

The Russian armies appeared to the westerners to be something

new and strange; they appeared in unlimited numbers, reinforced by

Cossacks and Cheremiss Tatars; they were paid for with unlimited

funds; they fed themselves often on the countryside; a tsar of unlim-

ited authority commanded them. Worst of all, this tsar fought for

objectives not at all clear to western minds and apparently obscure

in his own.

It was actually the semblance of total war, more than the conduct

of the Russian armies, that startled the small western states.

In the diplomatic struggle, Peter had plunged into the partitioning

of the degenerating Polish and Swedish dominions one of the blackest

chapters of European history. By marrying his nieces into tiny feudal

states near Denmark, the key to the ocean outlet of the Baltic, he had

become the neighbor of Hanover, whose elector had become King

of England as George I. His massive fleet at Petersburg cut off supplies

of timber and hemp (needed by the Anglo-Dutch navies). At one

FOOTNOTES

345

point only Kuragin's skill kept England from declaring war on Den-

mark. The situation in the Baltic remained chaotic for generations.

9 A legend grew up around the execution of the girl. According to

the later tale, Peter stood by the block, picked up the severed head,

raised it, kissed its lips, and then lectured the spectators upon its

anatomy.

Peter might have done so. Yet the legend has all the markings of a

latter-day tale about Peter-i.e., that he had loved Mary Hamilton pas-

sionately (he was actually obsessed with Maria Kantemir at the time).

His actual habit of lecturing crowds about technical matters, his real

interest in anatomy, and the actual preservation of the severed head as

either a specimen or remembrance would account for the rest of the

legend.

In any case, Mary's execution was the origin of the Scottish ballad,

'The Queen's Marie."

In similar fashion a quite different legend grew up around the small

English sloop of Peter's boyhood on the Yauza. He had it brought

to Petersburg and placed on exhibition, and he may have said, "From

this little grandfather, mighty grandchildren have grown"-meaning

his huge new fleet. Whatever he did say, legend now relates that the

finding of the ancient sloop in the Romanov lumberyard was the in-

spiration for launching Russians upon the seas.

10 "The Russians destroyed 8 towns, 141 homes of the gentry, 1361

farms and 43 windmills. They destroyed 2 copper mines, 14 shops and

1 6 warehouses; they slaughtered 100,000 cattle, dumped into the sea

80,000 bars of iron, and in leaving, set fire to 80 leagues of forest land. 1 *

(Depping's note to Levesque.)

Different figures are given by other authorities, but the scope of

the operation is not questioned. Some younger people and artificers

of copper wire may have been carried back to Petersburg. This de-

struction of factories and ports seemed to go against the conscience

of Apraksin and the foreign commanders but would not have at-

tracted attention in the total warfare of modern times.

"This surrender of territory by Sweden in 1721 almost matches that

of Finland to the Soviets in 1940. The shore of Lake Ladoga, the

Karelian isthmus, Viborg, Esthonia were approximately the same in

both cases. The Livonia of Peter's conquest lay above the Dvina River

and Riga, the eastern half of Latvia prior to 1940.

"The new system of the Swedish-type colleges changed the Musco-

vite-type bureaus more in appearance than in reality. Peter did not

wish them to be managed by foreigners, and no Russian personnel had

sufficient training to make the Swedish system work. "Men near at

hand** were hard to find.

346 FOOTNOTES

Kliuchevsky observes that Peter's innovations made less impression

at the time upon the country than upon himself.

"He set himself to do what immediate circumstances demanded and

troubled himself little about the future . . . without noticing that his

every act was helping to change his environment. . . . Even from his

first foreign tour he derived no concrete ideas for schemes of reform,

but only some cultural impressions, a fancy to transplant to Russia

things beheld abroad, and a project of declaring war on Sweden. . . .

Only during the last decade of his fifty-three years was it borne in

upon him that he had done anything new. And that tardy realisation

of what he had done was no more than a mental reflex." Vol. IV,

"Peter's Evolution."

V The Turning to the East

kittle documentary evidence of the Gagarin process remains in

Russian archives. For various reasons at different rimes it was muted

down. A popular account of Siberia (The Conquest of Siberia: An

Epic of Human Passions, Yuri Semyonov, Berlin, 1937, London, 1944)

describes only Gagarin's exploitation of wealth, which, it seems,

attracted Peter's attention, and brought retribution upon Gagarin.

But if that were all and if there were no conspiracy against the gov-

ernment, why was Colonel Bucholtz's column sent out? Why was

Major Lilcarov of the Guards sent to examine- Gagarin in Tobolsk?

Exploitation of revenues and defalcation was endemic in Petersburg

at the time, and Peter had just overlooked Menshikov's share in it.

Why was Gagarin tortured "severely" seven times before he died?

Baron Stralenberg's account is that of an intelligent eyewitness, and

It must stand unless disproved.

^Baron Stralenberg's account of the objects brought in by the col-

umn brings up a riddle that has never been answered. Among the

objects were "idols" and rolls of manuscripts and printing on glazed

paper in Mongolian and other scripts. "The Tsar had some of these

sent to different academies." (To be translated.) But, Stralenberg

adds, it was reported falsely that these manuscripts had been found

around Samarkand, and the Caspian Sea.

But Samarkand was the area where the original specimens of gold

had been obtained by Gagarin. Did some narrator confuse the finds

of Bucholtz with the gleanings of Gagarin?

A still stranger point follows. "In 1720 they sent, again, up the

Irtish a Captain named Lycharow, who did not find any trace of gold

sand. The only result of this expedition was that they ascertained the

elevation of all places [mountain ranges?] along the Irtish." This

"Captain Lycharow" must be the Major Likarov or Likharev who was

sent to examine or to arrest Gagarin in Tobolsk in 1717, Was Peter

FOOTNOTES 347

still intent on finding out If gold did exist along the Irtish? Did

Likarov go back, on his own account? Did Gagarin,, under torture,

confess that his samples had been obtained actually from Bokhara-

Samarkand? Or did he swear to the end that there had been gold on

the Irtish? The riddle, like so many in Peter's reign, remains unan-

swered.

3 John Bell of Antermony visited this defense line formed out of the

half -finished canal. "These lines are drawn from the Volga to the

Don, being a deep ditch, about thirty feet broad, palisadoed on the

top, with high wooden towers at certain distances on top, within

sight of each other, well guarded. His Majesty erected them for the

preventing of incursions by the Kuban Tatars."

*Derbent, also known as "The Iron Gate,"' was the ancient fortress

built where a spur of the Caucasus juts into the sea. Legend insisted

that Alexander of Macedon had built its wall, which climbed a way

up the mountainside and so blocked the road along the coast. But

Alexander was never there. Unfortunately for Peter the small harbor

of Derbent had been ruined by slides of stone and sandbanks, as Bell

noticed. This contributed to the disaster to the supply fleet.

The army had required a month to advance from the Russian fort

of Agrakhan to the first Persian frontier post at Derbent, a distance

of one hundred miles. By then most of the Russian dragoons had lost

their horses and the army was badly in need of the supplies on the

convoy fleet commanded by Apraksin.

The dust of which John Bell complains in his taciturn fashion was

no ordinary dust but an acute hardship. That coast of the Caspian is

swept by sandstorms. Peter himself seems to have discussed with the

geographer Delisle these "whirlwinds" of the Caspian, akin to the

black sandstorms of the Persian desert, called as he repeated by the

Tatars Karaboga* (My own remembrance of that side of the Caspian

is one of continuing gales and driving sand. The Russians who gave

me a plane in July 1932 to fly down from Tiflis to Baku explained

that a start would have to be made at early daylight because wind

in the afternoon would prevent landing at Baku. As it was, reaching

Baku before noon, we could hardly see the ground for the driving

dust.)

VI Reaction of the Land against the City

*The so-called will of Peter, which outlines a plan for further con-

quest of Europe, is now known to have been a later forgery, by

French hands. It is 'important only because it was invoked by Napo-

leon in his explanations for the invasion of Russia.

348 FOOTNOTES

^'He aimed at transforming tsarism into a European kind of absolute

monarchy, and to a considerable extent he succeeded. Russia was

never the same again. . . . He declared himself to be 'an absolute

monarch who does not have to answer for any of his actions to anyone

in the world; but he has power and authority for the purpose of gov-

erning his states and lands according to his will and wise decision,

as a Christian sovereign.' This version of enlightened despotism, typi-

cally enough, appeared in Peter's new code for the army (1716)."

B. H. Sumner, Survey of Russian History.

Perhaps Peter's greatest mistake was in ridiculing Russian religious

belief without being able to substitute anything for it.

3 The anonymous Englishman (in 1724) sums up the qualities of the

Russian Baltic fleet in which he served so long, as follows: Few if any

foreign ships could better them in sailing qualities, "if well manned."

In combat performance, "if the Russian fleet is attacked in their own

roads, lying at anchor in an advantageous posture, the water smooth

and the [crew's] bodies well secured from small shot, and their com-

manders are men of resolution, then the common Russ . . . will make

a handsome defense, ever a Russian masterpiece being sure of the gal-

leys in great numbers to assist them."

4 "The prime factor impelling him . . . was the factor of war."

Kliuchevsky.

The officious Leibnitz was constantly apologizing in his letters for

disturbing this monarch engrossed by the cares of war. Later Euro-

pean historians often make the error of assuming that Peter could not

effect reforms until the last four or two years of his life because all

his efforts until then had been devoted to the wars. But Peter himself,

or his advisers, began those same wars, and throughout all those long

years he took plenty of time to travel and amuse himself. If the reform

of his nation had influenced Peter from the beginning, would he have

waited until he was exhausted and broken in health before under-

taking anything seriously?

It seems to be true beyond question, as Kliuchevsky maintains, that

Peter did not realize the consequences of his actions in warfare as in

other things. Yet he did more than any other man of his time to shape

the Europe of today.

5 It is too of ten forgotten in following Peter's intense activity that a

clear course for the reform of Russia and the shaping of her relations

with her neighbors had been laid down in the years i645~94~when

Peter began to take some interest in affairs. His father Alexis had been

a most sturdy champion of that reform.

Kliuchevsky says: "Tsar Alexis felt the attraction of the new move-

ment, without breaking with the older system, and he was followed

by Ordin-Nastchokin, Galitzin [the "Great" Galitzin] and others.

FOOTNOTES 349

"The most important points in the political program, which they

followed steadily, were:

"(i) Peace and alliance with Poland.

"(2) A struggle with Sweden for the eastern seaboard of the Baltic,

as well as with Turkey and the Crimea for Southern Russia [the

Ukraine],

"(3) Reorganization of the troops into a regular army.

"(4) Replacing the old complex taxes with a poll- and an agrarian-tax,

"(5) The development of foreign trade, and domestic manufactures.

"(6) Beginning self government in towns, with the aim of increasing

production of artisans.

"(7) Emancipation of serfs from their lands.

"(8) Beginning of schools, to be general, religious and technical also.

"All this was to be done on foreign models and with the help of

foreign guides. This is practically Peter's program, but one made

before he entered on his activity. In that lies the true importance

of the statesmen of the seventeenth century ... in some respects they

went further than he did." Kliuchevsky, Vol. Ill, "Tsar Alexis."

Afterword

^Those who reinterpreted Peter as the all-knowing monarch aware

of the destiny of his nation ran into serious trouble in explaining away

the All-Drunken Council and such satanic revelries as the marriage

of two aged fools made drunk, or the crosses fashioned out of long-

stemmed pipes. Various explanations were offered: (a) that serious

councils were held secretly under cover of such revelry, (b) that

Peter engineered it deliberately to take notes of remarks let slip by

his favorites and the diplomats when intoxicated, (c) that such sessions

really employed a kind of code, to discuss plans that the mock cardi-

nals, for instance, represented certain enemies of the state, and the

wine vintages certain preparations to be made. So the baffling corre-

spondence between Peter and favorites like Romodanovsky or Menshi-

kov was also said to be code that terms like Mine-Heart friend had

a deeper meaning.

Actually the object of the All-Drunken Council was to get drunk.

Peter staged public spectacles enough for propaganda purposes. He

found relaxation from strain in the private drinking sessions. He took

notes slyly at all times.

So the interpreters of Peter as the gifted soldier explain that his

insistence on fireworks was his method of accustoming his people to

gunpowder. It is silly to argue that Peter would keep on doing that

ten years after Poltava.

2 "In carrying out his reforms, Peter completely overlooked the

natbnal psychology. For this reason both his admirers and his enemies

350 FOOTNOTES

regarded him as a man foreign to the Russian spirit. But with all his

apparent opposition to Russian tradition and habits, Peter was a typi-

cal Russian." George Vernadsky, History of Russia.

8 ". . . the Russian people, for whom the touchstone was the Volga

and the steppe, Asia not Europe." B. H. Sumner. Survey of Russian

History*

*Anatole G. Mazour, An Outline of Modern Russian Historiogra-

phy, University" of California Press, 1939.

5 Historians have marked out the rhythm of Russia's return to the

east after a thrust toward the west. Usually this about-face toward

the east started with migration of the people, but almost always it

followed warfare (unsuccessful for the most part) along the rigid

western front.

So in the time of Ivan IV, after truce in the west (1582) carne the

first mass movement across the Urals (1581-87). After Moscow's

Time of Trouble with the western powers (1605-12) began the surge

eastward across the continent (at its height, 1611-37). Under Alexis

the "permanent" peace with Poland and Sweden (1686) preceded the

movement toward the Crimea and toward the Amur, and Golovin's

treaty with the Manchus (1684-89). After Peter's belated peace of

Nystad, he turned immediately to the Caspian and planned trade and

exploration through Turkestan toward India (1722-25).

After the Napoleonic wars in the west and the Congress of Vienna

(1815) there followed, after an interval, the rapid expansion of the

empire into the Caucasus, down through mid- Asia, and across the

Amur into Manchuria.

NDEX

INDEX

Academy of Sciences, Petersburg,

227, 272-73, 279, 290, 302-3

Adrian (patriarch), 135, 139

Afrosina, relationship to Peter Fs

son Alexis, 203^4, 2l

Agency for the Ukraine, 294

Agrakhan, bay of, 264

Agrakhan (fort), 268

Agrakhan River, 265

Aland Islands, 220; map, 148

Albazin, Siberia, 30, 31, 60, 62, 65;

map, 28

Aleutian Hands, no; map, 28

Alexander Nevsky (monastery),

242

Alexander's Fort, 155

Alexiev (merchant), 10, 12, 25

Alexis I, Russian tsar (1629-76),

2-9, 20-23, 33-49, illus., 37; east,

knowledge of (1674), 57-58;

people, servant and guardian of,

296-~97; political program, 349;

taxation, 20, 23; trade monopo-

lies, 55, See also his two wives,

Maria Miloslavskaya and Na-

talia Kirilovna Naryshkin; his

advisers, Matviev, Nastchokin,

Nikon, Simeon of Polotsk,

Vinius

Alexis, son of Peter I (1690-

1718), 178, 194-95, I 9 6 J execu-

tion, 208, 215-19, 238; father,

relationship to, 198-202; mar-

riage, 188-89, 198, 208, 209;

Vienna, flight to, 202-4. See

also his mother, Eudoxia

All-Drunken Council, 159, 349

Alphabet, Russian, 227

Altai Mountains, 69, 136; maps,

28, 260-61

Ambassadors' Bureau, 45, 56, 74,

80, 149, 185

Amsterdam, Holland, Peter's

visit, 118, 121

Amu Darya River, 258, 269; map,

260-61

Amur River, 14, 16, 17, 26, 27, 30,

3* 55* 5<5, 58, 62-66

Anadir River, n, 12

Anian, strait of, 284

Anna (daughter of Peter), 290

Anna Ivanovna, empress of Rus-

sia (1730-40), 308-15

Apraksin, Fedor Matveivich, Rus-

sian admiral, favorite of Peter

I (1671-1728), 166-67, *$9i 181,

210, 213-14, 223, 235, 247, 249,

255, 259, 262, 283, 284, 291, 292

354

Aral Sea, 256, 258; map, 260-61

Archangel, 45, 243; map, 148;

Peter's visit, 92, 94, 96-102

Arctic Circle, map 9 28

Aristocracy of service, 292

Armenians, 269, 270

Army, Russian, of Peter I, 223,

257; after Peter I, 297-300; ap-

propriations, 276; casualties,

244; cost of maintaining, 243;

fasting seasons, 245; medical

supplies, 225. See also Navy

Artel (band of Russian hunters),

336

Art galleries, 231

Asiatics, enslavement of, 25

Astrakhan (frontier town), 32,

81, 135, 248, 264, 267, 276, 295;

map, 260-61

Astrakhan uprising, 169-71

Astrolabe (instrument), 6, 9, 88,

Adasov, Vladimir, 109-13, 136-37,

281

Augustus II of Saxony (1670-

1733 )> *43 *47

Avril, Father (French Jesuit),

74-75i 77

Awakum, burned at the stake, 68

Ayuka Khan of the Kalmuks,

263, 264, 265

Azov, 113, 172-73; map, 260-61;

siege of, 102-9; Turks, surren-

der to, 1 86, 189-90

Baikal, Lake, 28, 55, 59, 64-66, 281

Bain, R. Nisbet (biographer), 327

Baku, map, 260-61

Balkash, Lake, map, 260-61

Baltaji Muhammad Pasha, 185,

186 ,

INDEX

Baltic Sea: diplomacy, 220-23;

map, 148; Muscovite ties, 140;

Russian fleet, 236, 237; Swedish

control and shipping, 141, 164,

179. See also Poltava

Baraba, lake, 281

Baraba Steppe, 66-69, I 3^? 2 5 !

280; colonists advance into,

map, 260-61

Bashkirs (people), 32, 279; revolt,

167-68, 169, 173, 323

Batu Khan of the Golden Horde

(d. 1255), 55

Baturin (town), 175

Bell, John, of Antermony (1691-

1780), 259, 263, 266, 268, 270,

271

Bells, Peter's confiscation, 150,

151

Bering, Vitus, Danish navigator

(1680-1741), 211, 284, 290, 320,

323

Bering Strait, 1 1

Berlin, Germany, Russian armies'

entry (1760), 322

Bessarabia, 181

Bestuzhev (chancellor), 321

Bieren. See Biron

Biron, Ernest John von, favorite

of Anna Ivanovna (1687-1772),

311-16

Bironovshtchma. See Biron

Black Sea, 140, 269; map, 260

Blaeu, Willem, Dutch cartog-

rapher (1571-1638), no

Blumentrost, Dr., personal phy-

sician to Peter I, 272, 282

Boerhaave, Hermann, Dutch

anatomist (1668-1738), 117

Bogdikhan, Chinese emperor

known as, 56, 59, 60

Bokhara, 253; map, 26oH5i

Bolshoi River, 281

Book publishing, 227-28

Boris, cousin of the Great Gali-

tzin, 94, 95

Boyars, illus., 247; beard shearing,

132; crowds, treatment of, 7;

Siberia, control in, 20; sons, 26-

Brahe, Tycho, Danish astrono-

mer (1546-1601), 114

Brandt, Karschten, 82, 87, 89, 99

Brandy, sale of, 23

Brigandage, 246

Browne, Richard, 166

Bruce, James, 138, 195, 210, 225,

231, 236, 273, 306

Bucholtz, Colonel, 254, 255

Buddhism, 169

Bulavin, Kondraty (Cossack

leader), 168, 172-73, 174

Bureau of Ambassadors. See Am-

bassadors' Bureau

Bureau of Brigands, 39

Bureau of Military Affairs. See

Razriad

Bureau of Secret Affairs, 39, 124

Bureau of Stables, 39

Bureau of the Great Court, 39

Buriats (people), 26, 32, 63, 66;

map, 28

Burlaki (boatmen), 153, 304

Burnet, Bishop, 117, 123, 325

Bylini (ballads), 157, 304

Calendar, 137, 157

Canals, 298; Don-Volga, 122, 139,

140, 1 68, 212; Ladoga, 176-77

Card playing, 240

Caspian Sea, 108-9, 249, 251, 256,

258, 269, 270, 271, 347;

260-61

Casualties, 244

INDEX 355

Cathay. See China

Catherine I, empress of Russia,

consort and wife of Peter I

(i684?-i727), 289, 291; corona-

tion, 274, 275, 276-77; death,

291; discovery, 160; eastern

voyage, 262, 263, 266, 268; Ga-

garin, 254; hold upon the

throne, 287; Kantemir, Maria,

jealousy for, 262-63; marriage,

193; Menshikov support, 160,

207-8; Mons, William, 277-78;

Peter, attitude change toward,

238, 239, 240; Peter, care of,

1 80-8 1, 183-84; Peter's care for,

192; presents and money, 230;

protection, bought through,

248-49; Pruth, capitulation,

186-88; Voltaire's praise, 326

Catherine II (the Great), em-

press of Russia (1762-96), 322-

*3> 329

Caucasus Mountains, 269, 270;

mapj 260-61

Census, 242'

Charles VI, Holy Roman Em-

peror (1711-40), 202, 203-4

Charles XII of Sweden (1682-

1718), 142, 149, 150, 151, 158-

59; death, 219, 220; description,

146-47; Mazeppa, 173-76, 177;

Poltava, battle, 161-65; Pruth*

truce at, 186; retaliation plans,

179; Turkey, 189-90, 219. See

also Narva

Charlotte of Wolfenbiittel, Prin-

cess, 1 88

Cheremiss (people), 32, 245, 252,

254. zsb *79

Cherkask, near Kiev, 172

Cherkasky, Prince Bekhovich,

256, 269, 279

356 INDEX

Cherkasky, Vasily, 312

Chernigovsky, Nikifor, 30-33, 55

China: Chernigovsky, 30-31; Ga-

litzin, 75; merchants, 55; mon-

arch, attitude toward, 64;

routes into, study of, 56-66;

Spathary, 56, 58, 60, 61; steppe

people, 67; strength, 55-56;

trade, 100, 101, 294. See also

Manchus; Peking

Chirikov, Alexei, 284, 320

Chorovod (dance), 35

Chronicle of Murom, 306

Chukchi (people), 10-11, 12, 281-

82, 320; map, 28

Church government, 230

Chuvash (people), 319

Circassian Mountains, 265

Cold Pole, io

College of Foreign Affairs, 247

Collot, Marie, 323

Constantinople, treaty of (1700),

144

Cook, John (physician), 233

Copenhagen, Denmark, 258

Cossack (frontiersman), io, 26

"Cossack republic." See Cherni-

govsky

Cossacks (people), 176-77, 304

Courland, 302, 321-22; map, 148

Court of the Secret Police,* 316

Crimea, 76

Croy, General, 145

Cruys, Mr., of Amsterdam, 156,

193, 210-12

Currency, 243

Daghestan, 265, 266, 270

Dahlberg, Graf, 115

Dalai, Lake, 59

Dalai Lama, 4

Danes. See Denmark

Danzig, map, 148

Danzig book, affair of, 45, 46, 47

Delisle de la Croyere, Louis

(geographer), 282-83, 290, 303,

320

Demidov, 251, 281, 291, 292

Denmark, 142-44, 220, 224; al-

liance with, 205

Deptford, England, 120, 124, 125

Derbent (city), 267, 270; map,

260-61

Desertion: armed forces, 242, 298;

army posts, 275; Siberia, 25-27

Devier (Portuguese cabin boy,

later chief of police), 122, 227,

230, 289, 293

Dezhnev, Semyen, 10-12, 16, 18,

Disease, deaths from, 244

Dmitri, son of Feodor, 51

Dnieper River, 126, 172, 173, 179

Dniester River, 181-82

Dolgoruky, Vasily, 216, 217

Dolgoruky, Yakov, 255

Dolgoruky, Prince Yury, 172

Dolgoruky family, 91, 214-15,

307-8, 310, 311

Don Cossack uprising, 171-72

Don River, 102, 104, 105, 106,

107, 1 68

Donets River, map, 260-61

Don- Volga canal, 122, 139, 140,

1 68, 212

Draft, military, 242, 294

Dresden, Germany, 188

Druijina (feudal term), 89

Drunkenness, 44

Duma (council), 274

Dvina River, 140, 179

Dyak (secretary-inspector), 12;

l8, 21-22

Education: Anna Ivanovna, 313;

church, 274; merchant commu-

nities, 280; people's attitude to-

ward, 229; Peter I, 117, 226-29,

302-3, 328; Petersburg, 231,

300-1

Ekaterinburg, 258; map, 260-61

Ekaterinhof (palace), 238

Elena, Sister. See Eudoxia

Elizabeth Petrovna, empress of

Russia (1741-62),, 293, 295, 307,

315-19, 321, 322, 326

England, Peter's visit, 119-20, 208

Erskine, Dr., 225, 251, 272

Esthonia, 220; map, 148

Eudoxia, first wife of Peter the

Great (1669?-! 731): Catherine

I, 263, 289; convent, retirement

to, 132-33* 193-94* 2 4> 2l8 ;

marriage, 93, 95; Peter's treat-

ment, 107, 113, 124; release of,

293, 295. See also her son,

Alexis

Eurasian historians, 331

European dress, 253, 280, 295; Si-

beria, 280

Evelyor, John, 120

Falconet (French sculptor), 323

Famine, 3.3

Feodor, son of Alexis I ( 1656-82),

34, 49; coronation, 50; death, 51,

52; illness, 50-51

Finland, Gulf of, 154

Forsidan Bey, 26-9-70

Fortress of St. Peter and St.

Paul, Petersburg, 2,18, 231, 241,

287

Four Frigates (tavern), 156

Foy de la Neuville, See Neuville

France, Peter's seeking a Rus-

sian alliance, 221-23

INDEX 357

Frederica, Sophia Augusta, 322

Frederick, Duke of Holstein

(i47i?-i533>, 290

Frederick of Prussia (1712-86),

321-22, 325; on Peter the Great,

quoted, 297

Gabriel (Slav), 247, 291, 307

Gagarin, Prince, 252-57, 279

Galitzin, Boris (1654-1714), 123,

I2 . 4

Galitzin, Dmitri, 288, 305, 308,

309,^310,311

Galitzin, Michael, 299

Galitzin, Vasily, the "Great Ga-

litzin" (1643-1714), 44, 50, 51,

67, 68, 81; Peter I, 95, 103, 108,

113; Sophia's regency, 71, 72,

74-76, 77, 78, 80, 84, 85

Galitzin family, 307-8, 310, 311

Generalitet (General Staff), 309

Gerasim (archbishop), 19-20

Gerbillon, Father Jean Francois

(Jesuit), 62-66

Germany: Peter's visit, 127;

Thirty Years' War, i

Giliaks (people), 22

Glebe v, Major, 216, 217

Glouhof (port), 300

Gluck, Pastor, 226

Goldi 281-82

Golovin, Feodor, 62, 63, 64, 65,

66, 75, 94, 104, 113, 123, 142,

144, 145, 181

Gordon (rear admiral), 213

Gordon, Patrick (1635-99), 77,

82-83, 84, 87, 91-95, 103-5, **4>

128-31, 137

Government, central, Peter's

plans, 229-30

Governmental agencies, stream-

lining of, 229-30

358 INDEX

Grain deficiency, 23-24

Great Northern War, 220, 300.