A history of Russianaïvelydesignates one of its chapters "The Period of Troubles"! When was there not a period of troubles in this land? The historian wearies, and doubtless the reader too, of such prolonged disorder and calamity. But a chapter telling of peace and tranquillity would have to be invented. The particular sort of trouble that developed upon the death of Feodor was of a new variety. Alexis had left two families of children, one by his first wife and the other by Natalia. There is not time to tell of all the steps by which Sophia, daughter of the first marriage, came to be the power behind the throne upon which sat her feeble brother Ivan, and her half-brother Peter, aged ten years. Sophia was an ambitious, strong-willed, strong-minded woman, who dared to emancipate herself from the tyranny of Russian custom.
Theterem, of which we hear so much, was the part of the palace sacred to the Tsaritsa and the Princesses—upon whose faces no man ever looked. If a physician were needed he might feel the pulse and the temperature through a piece of gauze—but see the face never. It is said that two nobles who one day accidentally met Natalia coming from her chapel were deprived of rank in consequence.
But theterem, with "its twenty-seven locks," was not going to confine the sister of Peter. She met the eyes of men in public; studied them well, too; and then selected the instruments for her designs of effacing Peter and his mother, and herself becoming sovereign indeed. A rumor was circulated that the imbecile Ivan (who was alive) had been strangled by Natalia's family. In the tumult which followed one of her brothers, Peter's uncle, was torn from Natalia's arms and cut to pieces. But this was only one small incident in the horrid tragedy. Then, after discovering that the Prince was not dead, the bloodstains in the palace were washed up, and the two brothers were placed upon the throne under the Regency of Sophia. But while she was outraging the feelings of the people by her contempt for ancient customs, and while her friendship with her Minister, Prince Galitsuin, was becoming a public scandal, Sophia was at the same time being defeated in a campaign against the Turks at the Crimea; and her popularity was gone.
In the meantime Peter was growing. With no training, no education, he was in his own disorderly, undisciplined fashion struggling up into manhood under the tutelage of a quick, strong intelligence, a hungry desire to know, and a hot, imperious temper. His first toys were drums and swords, and he first studied history from colored German prints; and as he grew older never wearied of reading about Ivan the Terrible. His delight was to go out upon the streets of Moscow and pick up strange bits of information from foreign adventurers about the habits and customs of their countries. He played at soldiers with his boy companions, and after finding how they did such things in Germany and in England, drilled his troops after the European fashion. But it was when he first saw a boat so built that it could go with or against the wind, that his strongest instinct was awakened. He would not rest until he had learned how to make and then to manage it. When this strange, passionate, self-willed boy was seventeen years old, he realized that his sister was scheming for the ruin of himself and his mother. In the rupture that followed, the people deserted Sophia and flocked about Peter. He placed his sister in a monastery, where, after fifteen years of fruitless intrigue and conspiracy, she was to die. Then, conjointly with his unfortunate brother, he commenced his reign (1689).
If Sophia had freed herself from the customary seclusion of Princesses, Peter emancipated himself from the usual proprieties of the palace. Both were scandalous. One had harangued soldiers and walked with her veil lifted, the other was swinging an ax like a carpenter, rowing like a Cossack, or fighting mimic battles with his grooms, who not infrequently knocked him down. In 1693 he gratified one great thirst and longing. With a large suite he went up to Archangel—and for the first time a Tsar looked out upon the sea! He ate and drank with the foreign merchants, and took deep draughts of the stimulating air from the west. He established a dock-yard, and while his first ship was building made perilous trips upon that unknown ocean from which Russia had all its life been shut out! His ship was the first to bear a Russian flag into foreign waters, and now Peter had taken the first step toward learning how to build a navy, but he had no place yet to use one. So he turned his nimble activities toward the Black Sea. He had only to capture Azof in the Crimea from the Turks, and he would have a sea for his navy—and then might easily make the navy for his sea! So he went down, carrying his soldiers and his new European tactics—in which no one believed—gathered up his Cossacks, and the attack was made, first with utter failure—all on account of the new tactics—and then at last came overwhelming success; and a triumphant return (1676) to Moscow under arches and garlands of flowers. Three thousand Russian families were sent to colonize Azof, which was guarded by some regiments of theStreltsuiand by Cossacks—and now there must be a navy.
There must be nine ships of the line, and twenty frigates carrying fifty guns, and bombships, and fireships. That would require a great deal of money. It was then that the utility of the system of serfdom became apparent. The prelates and monasteries were taxed—one vessel to every eighty thousand serfs!—according to their wealth all the orders of nobility to bear their portion in the same way, and the peasants toiled on, never dreaming thattheywere building a great navy for the great Tsar. Peter then sent fifty young nobles of the court to Venice, England, and the Netherlands to learn the arts of shipbuilding and seamanship and gunnery. But how could he be sure of the knowledge and the science of these idle youths—unless he himself owned it and knew better than they? The time had come for his long-indulged dream of visiting the Western kingdoms.
But while there were rejoicings at the victory over the Turks, there was a feeling of universal disgust at the new order of things; with the militia (theStreltsui) because foreigners were preferred to them and because they were subjected to an unaccustomed discipline; with the nobles because their children were sent into foreign lands among heretics to learn trades like mechanics; and with the landowners and clergy because the cost of equipping a great fleet fell upon them. All classes were ripe for a revolt.
Sophia, from her cloister, was in correspondence with her agents, and a conspiracy ripened to overthrow Peter and his reforms. As the Tsar was one evening sitting down to an entertainment with a large party of ladies and gentlemen, word was brought that someone desired to see him privately upon an important matter. He promptly excused himself and was taken in a sledge to the appointed place. There he graciously sat down to supper with a number of gentlemen, as if perfectly ignorant of their plans. Suddenly his guard arrived, entered the house, and arrested the entire party, after which Peter returned in the best of humor to his interrupted banquet, quite as if nothing had happened. The next day the prisoners under torture revealed the plot to assassinate him and then lay it to the foreigners, this to be followed, by a general massacre of Europeans—men, women, and children. The ringleaders were first dismembered, then beheaded—their legs and arms being displayed in conspicuous places in the city, and the rest of the conspirators, excepting his sister Sophia, were sent to Siberia.
With this parting and salutary lesson to his subjects in 1697, Peter started upon his strange travels—in quest of the arts of civilization!
The embassy was composed of 270 persons. Among them was a young man twenty-five years old, calling himself Peter Mikhailof, who a few weeks later might have been seen at Saardam in Holland, in complete outfit of workman's clothes, in dust and by the sweat of his brow learning the art of ship-carpentry. Such was the first introduction to Europe of the Tsar of Russia! They had long heard of this autocrat before whom millions trembled, ruling like a savage despot in the midst of splendors rivaling the Arabian Nights. Now they saw him! And the amazement can scarcely be described. He dined with the Great Electress Sophia, afterwards first Queen of Prussia, and she wrote of him: "Nature has given him an infinity of wit. With advantages he might have been an accomplished man. What a pity his manners are not less boorish!"
But Peter was not thinking of the impression he made. With an insatiable inquisitiveness and an omnivorous curiosity, he was looking for the secret of power in nations. Nothing escaped him—cutlery, rope-making, paper manufacture, whaling industry, surgery, microscopy; he was engaging artists, officers, engineers, surgeons, buying models of everything he saw—or standing lost in admiration of a traveling dentist plying his craft in the market, whom he took home to his lodgings, learned the use of the instruments himself, then practiced his new art upon his followers.
At The Hague he endured the splendid public reception, then hurried off his gold-trimmed coat, his wig and hat and white feathers, and was amid grime and dust examining grist-mills, and ferry-boats, and irrigating machines. To a lady he saw on the street at Amsterdam he shouted "Stop!" then dragged out her enameled watch, examined it, and put it back without a word. A nobleman's wig in similar unceremonious fashion he snatched from his head, turned it inside out, and, not being pleased with its make, threw it on the floor.
Perhaps Holland heard without regret that her guest was going to England, where he was told the instruction was based upon the principles of ship-building and he might learn more in a few weeks than by a year's study elsewhere. King William III. placed a fleet at his disposal, and also a palace upon his arrival in London. A violent storm alarmed many on the way to England, but Peter enjoyed it and humorously said, "Did you ever hear of a Tsar being lost in the North Sea?" England was no less astonished than Holland at her guest, but William III., the wisest sovereign in Europe, we learn was amazed at the vigor and originality of his mind. The wise Bishop Burnet wrote of him: "He is mechanically turned, and more fitted to be a carpenter than a Prince. He told me he designed a great fleet for attacking the Turkish Empire, but he does not seem to me capable of so great an enterprise." This throws more light upon the limitations of Bishop Burnet than those of Peter the Great, and fairly illustrates the incompetency of contemporary estimates of genius; or, perhaps, the inability of talent to take the full measure of genius at any time. The good Bishop adds that he adores the wise Providence which "has raised up such a furious man to reign over such a part of the world." Louis XIV. "had procured the postponement of the honor of his visit"; so Peter prepared, after visiting Vienna, to go to Venice, but receiving disturbing news of matters at home, this uncivilized civilizer, this barbarian reformer of barbarism, turned his face toward Moscow.
There was widespread dissatisfaction in the empire. TheStreltsui(militia) was rebellious, the heavily taxed landowners were angry, and the people disgusted by the prevalence of German clothes and shaved faces. Had not the wise Ivan IV. said: "To shave is a sin that the blood of all the martyrs could not cleanse"! And who had ever before seen a Tsar of Moscow quit Holy Russia to wander in foreign lands among Turks and Germans? for both were alike to them. Then it was rumored that Peter had gone in disguise to Stockholm, and that the Queen of Sweden had put him into a cask lined with nails to throw him into the sea, and he had only been saved by one of his guards taking his place; and some years later many still believed that it was a false Tsar who returned to them in 1700—that the true Tsar was still a prisoner at Stockholm, attached to a post. Sophia wrote to theStreltsui—"You suffer—but you will suffer more. Why do you wait? March on Moscow. There is no news of the Tsar." The army was told that he was dead, and that theboyarswere scheming to kill his infant son Alexis and then get into power again. Thousands of revolted troops from Azof began to pour into Moscow, then there was a rumor that the foreigners and the Germans—who were introducing the smoking of tobacco and shaving, to the utter destruction of the holy faith—were planning to seize the town. Peter returned to find Moscow the prey to wild disorder, in the hands of scheming revolutionists and mutineers. He concluded it was the right time to give a lesson which would never be forgotten. He would make the partisans of Old Russia feel the weight of his hand in a way that would remind them of Ivan IV.
On the day of his return the nobles all presented themselves, laying their faces, as was the custom, in the dust. After courteously returning their salutations, Peter ordered that every one of them be immediately shaved; and as this was one of the arts he had practiced while abroad he initiated the process by skillfully applying the razor himself to a few of the long-beards. Then the inquiry into the rebellion commenced. The Patriarch tried to appease the wrath of the Tsar, who answered; "Know that I venerate God and his Mother as much as you do. But also know that I shall protect my people and punish rebels." The "chastisement" was worthy of Ivan the Terrible. The details of its infliction are too dreadful to relate, and we read with incredulous horror that "the terrible carpenter of Saardam plied his own ax in the horrible employment"—and that on the last day Peter himself put to death eighty-four of theStreltsui, "compelling hisboyarsto assist"—in inflicting this "chastisement!"
The Baltic was at this time a Swedish sea. Finland, Livonia, and all the territory on the eastern coast, where once the Russians and the German knights had struggled, was now under the sovereignty of an inexperienced young king who had just ascended the throne of his father Charles XI., King of Sweden. If Peter ever "opened a window" into the West, it must be done by first breaking through this Swedish wall. Livonia was deeply aggrieved just now because of some oppressive measures against her, and her astute minister, Patkul, suggested to the King of Poland that he form a coalition between that kingdom, Denmark, and Russia for the purpose of breaking the aggressive Scandinavian power in the North. The time was favorable, with disturbed conditions in Sweden, and a youth of eighteen without experience upon the throne. The Tsar, who had recently returned from abroad and had settled matters with hisStreltsuiin Moscow, saw in this enterprise just the opportunity he desired, and joined the coalition.
At the Battle of Narva (1700) there were two surprises: one when Peter found that he knew almost nothing about the art of warfare, and the other when it was revealed to Charles XII. that he was a military genius and his natural vocation was that of a conqueror. But if Charles was intoxicated by his enormous success, Peter accepted his humiliating defeat almost gratefully as a harsh lesson in military art. The sacrifice of men had been terrible, but the lesson was not lost. The next year there were small Russian victories, and these crept nearer and nearer to the Baltic, until at last the river upon which the great Nevski won his surname was reached—and the Neva was his! Peter lost no time. He personally superintended the building of a fort and then a church which were to be the nucleus of a city; and there may be seen in St. Petersburg to-day the little hut in which lived the Tsar while he was founding the capital which bears his name (1703). No wonder it seemed a wild project to build the capital of an empire, not only on its frontier, but upon low marshy ground subject to the encroachments of the sea from which it had only half emerged; and in a latitude where for two months of the year the twilight and the dawn meet and there is no night, and where for two other months the sun rises after nine in the morning and sets before three. Not only must he build a city, but create the dry land for it to stand upon; and it is said that six hundred acres have been reclaimed from the sea at St. Petersburg since it was founded.
Charles XII. was too much occupied to care for these insignificant events. He sent word that when he had time he would come and burn down Peter's wooden town. He was leading a victorious army toward Poland, he had beheaded the traitorous Patkul, and everything was bowing before him. The great Marlborough was suing for his aid in the coalition against Louis XIV. in the War of the Spanish Succession. Flushed with victory, Charles felt that the fate of Europe was lying in his hands. He had only to decide in which direction to move—whether to help to curb the ambition of the Grand Monarque in the West, or to carry out his first design of crushing the rising power of the Great Autocrat in the East. He preferred the latter. The question then arose whether to enter Russia by the North or by way of Poland, where he was now master. The scale was turned probably by learning that the Cossacks in Little Russia were growing impatient and were ripe for rebellion against the Tsar.
Peter was anxious to prevent the invasion. He had a wholesome admiration for the terrible Swedish army, not much confidence in his own, and his empire was in disorder. He sent word to Charles that he would be satisfied to withdraw from the West if he could have one port on the Baltic. The king's haughty reply was: "Tell your Tsar I will treat with him in Moscow," to which Peter rejoined: "My brother Charles wants to play the part of an Alexander, but he will not find in me a Darius."
It is possible that upon Ivan Mazeppa, who was chief or Hetman of the Cossacks at this time, rests the responsibility of the crushing defeat which terminated the brilliant career of Charles XII. Mazeppa was the Polish gentleman whose punishment at the hands of an infuriated husband has been the subject of poems by Lord Byron and Pushkin, and also of a painting by Horace Vernet. This picturesque traitor, who always rose upon the necks of the people who trusted him, whose friendships he one after another invariably betrayed, reached a final climax of infamy by offering to sacrifice the Tsar, the friend who believed in him so absolutely that he sent into exile or to death anyone who questioned his fidelity. Mazeppa had been with Peter at Azof, and abundant honors were waiting for him; but he was dazzled by the career of the Swedish conqueror, and believed he might rise higher under Charles XII. than under his rough, imperious master at Moscow. So he wrote the King that he might rely upon him to join him with 40,000 Cossacks in Little Russia. He thought it would be an easy matter to turn the irritated Cossacks from the Tsar. They were restive under the severity of the new militaryrégime, and also smarting under a decree forbidding them to receive any more fugitive peasants fleeing from serfdom. But he had miscalculated their lack of fidelity and his own power over them.
It was this fatal promise, which was never to be kept, that probably lured Charles to his ruin. After a long and disastrous campaign he met his final crushing defeat at Poltova in 1709. The King and Mazeppa, companions in flight, together entered the Sultan's dominions as fugitives, and of the army before which a short time ago Europe had trembled—there was left not one battalion.
The Baltic was passing into new hands. "The window" opening upon the West was to become a door, and the key of the door was to be kept upon the side toward Russia! Sweden, which under Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XI., and Charles XII. had played such a glorious part, was never to do it again; and the place she had left vacant was to be filled by a new and greater Power. Russia had dispelled the awakened dream of a great Scandinavian Empire and—so long excluded and humiliated—was going to make a triumphal entry into the family of European nations.
The Tsar, with his innovations and reforms, was vindicated. For breadth of design and statesmanship there was not one sovereign in the coalition who could compare with this man who, Bishop Burnet thought, was better fitted for a mechanic than a Prince—and "incapable of a great enterprise."
Of Charles XII. it has been said that "he was a hero of the Scandinavian Edda set down in the wrong century," and again that he was the last of the Vikings, and of the Varangian Princes. But Mazeppa said of him, when dying in exile: "How could I have been seduced in my old age by a military vagabond!"
Ivan, Peter's infirm brother and associate upon the throne, had died in 1696. Another oppressive tie had also been severed. He had married at seventeen Eudoxia, belonging to a proud conservative Russian family. He had never loved her, and when she scornfully opposed his policy of reform, she became an object of intense aversion. After his triumph at Azof, he sent orders that the Tsaritsa must not be at the palace upon his return, and soon thereafter she was separated from her child Alexis, placed in a monastery, and finally divorced. At the surrender of Marienburg in Livonia (1702) there was among the captives the family of a Lutheran pastor named Glück. Catherine, a young girl of sixteen, a servant in the family, had just married a Swedish soldier, who was killed the following day in battle. We would have to look far for a more romantic story than that of this Protestant waiting-maid. Menschikof, Peter's great general, was attracted by her beauty and took the young girl under his protection. But when the Tsar was also fascinated by her artless simplicity, she was transferred to his more distinguished protection. Little did Catherine think when weeping for her Swedish lover in Pastor Glück's kitchen that she was on her way to the throne of Russia. But such was her destiny. She did not know how to write her name, but she knew something which served her better. She knew how to establish an influence possessed by no one else over the strange husband to whom in 1707 she was secretly married.
While Peter was absorbing more territory on the Baltic, and while he was with frenzied haste building his new city, Charles XII. was still hiding in Poland. The Turks were burning with desire to recapture Azof, and the Khan of Tartary had his own revenges and reprisals at heart urging him on; so, at the instigation of Charles and the Khan, the Sultan declared war against Russia in 1710.
It seemed to the Russian people like a revival of their ancient glories when their Tsar, with a great army, was following in the footsteps of the Grand Princes to free the Slav race from its old infidel enemies. Catherine, from whom Peter would not be separated, was to be his companion in the campaign. But the enterprise, so fascinating in prospect, was attended with unexpected disaster and suffering; and the climax was finally reached when Peter was lying ill in his tent, with an army of only 24,000 men about to face one of over 200,000—Tatars and Turks—commanded by skilled generals, adherents of Charles XII. This was probably the darkest hour in Peter's career. The work of his life was about to be overthrown; it seemed as if a miracle could not save him. Someone suggested that the cupidity of the Grand Vizier, Balthazi, was the vulnerable spot. He loved gold better than glory. Two hundred thousand rubles were quickly collected—Catherine throwing in her jewels as an added lure. The shining gold, with the glittering jewels on top, averted the inevitable fate. Balthazi consented to treat for peace upon condition that Charles XII. be permitted to go back to Sweden unmolested, and that Azof be relinquished (Treaty of Pruth). Peter's heart was sorely wrung by giving up Azof, and his fleet, and his outlet to the Southern seas. The peace was costly, but welcome; and Catherine had earned his everlasting gratitude.
The Tsar now returned to the task of reforming his people. There were to be no more prostrations before him: the petitioner must call himself "subject," not "slave," and must stand upright like a man in his presence, even if he had to use his stick to make him do so! The Asiatic caftan and the flowing robes must go along with the beards; theterem, with its "twenty-seven locks," must be abolished; the wives and daughters dragged from their seclusion must be clothed like Europeans. Marriage must not be compelled, and the betrothed might see each other before the wedding ceremony.
If it is difficult to civilize one willing barbarian, what must it have been to compel millions to put on the garment of respectability which they hated! Never before was there such a complete social reorganization, so entire a change in the daily habits of a whole people; and so violently effected. It required a soul of iron and a hand of steel to do it; and it has been well said that Russia was knouted into civilization. A secret service was instituted to see that the changes were adopted, and the knout and the ax were the accompaniment of every reforming edict. This extraordinary man was by main force dragging a sullen and angry nation into the path of progress, and by artificial means trying to accomplish in a lifetime what had been the growth of centuries in other lands. Then there must be no competing authorities—no suns shining near to the Central Sun. The Patriarchate—which, after Nikon's attempt in the reign of his grandfather, had been shorn of authority—was now abolished, and a Holy Synod of his own appointing took its place. For theSoboror States-General there was substituted a Senate, also of his own appointing. TheStreltsui, or militia, was swept out of existence; the military Cossacks were deprived of theirHetmanor leader; and a standing army, raised by recruiting, replaced these organizations. Nobility meant service. Every nobleman while he lived must serve the state, and he held his fief only upon condition of such service; while a nobleman who could not read or write in a foreign tongue forfeited his birthright. This was the way Peter fought idleness and ignorance in his land! New and freer municipal organizations were given to the cities, enlarging the privileges of the citizens; schools and colleges were established; the awful punishment for debtors swept away. He was leveling up as well as leveling down—trying to create a great plateau of modern society, in which he alone towered high, rigid, and inexorable.
If the attempt was impossible and against nature, if Peter violated every law of social development by such a monstrous creation of a modern state, what could have been done better? How long would it have taken Russia togrowinto modern civilization? And what would it be now if there had not been just such a strange being—with the nature and heart of a barbarian joined with a brain and an intelligence the peer of any in Europe, capable of seeing that the only hope for Russia was by force to convert it from an Asiatic into a European state?
One act bore with extreme severity upon the free peasantry. They were compelled to enroll themselves with the serfs in their Communes, or to be dealt with as vagrants. Peter has been censured for this and also for not extending his reforming broom to the Communes and overthrowing the whole patriarchal system under which they existed—a system so out of harmony with the modern state he was creating. But it seems to the writer rather that he was guided by a sure instinct when he left untouched the one thing in a Slavonic state, which was really Slavonic. He and the long line of rulers behind him had been ruling by virtue of an authority established by aliens. Russia had from the time of Rurik been governed and formed after foreign models. Peter was at least choosing better models than his predecessors. If it was an apparent mistake to build a modern, centralized state in the eighteenth century upon a social organization belonging to the eleventh century, it may be that in so doing, an inspired despot builded wiser than he knew. May it not be that the final regeneration of that land is to come some day, from the leaven of native instincts in her peasantry, which have never been invaded by foreign influences and which have survived all the vicissitudes of a thousand years in Russia?
TheRaskolniks, composed chiefly of free peasants and the smaller merchant class, had fled in large numbers from these blasphemous changes—some among the Cossacks, and many more to the forests, hiding from persecution and from this reign of Satan. The more they studied the Apocalypse the plainer became the signs of the times. Satan was being let loose for a period. They had been looking for the coming of Antichrist and now he had come! The man in whom the spirit of Satan was incarnate was Peter the Great. How else could they explain such impious demeanor in a Tsar of Russia—except that he was of Satanic origin, and was the Devil in disguise? By his newly invented census had he not "numbered the people"—a thing expressly forbidden? And his new "calendar," transferring September to January, was it not clearly a trick of Satan to steal the days of the Lord? And his new titleImperator(Emperor), had it not a diabolic sound? And his order to shave, to disfigure the image of God! How would Christ recognize his own at the Last Day?
Hunted like beasts, these people were living in wild communities, dying often by their own hands rather than yield the point of making the sign of the cross with two fingers instead of three—2700 at one time voluntarily perishing in the flames, in a church where they had taken refuge. Peter put an end to their persecution. They were permitted to practice their ancient rites in the cities and to wear beards without molestation, upon condition of paying a double poll-tax.
The millions ofRaskolniksin Russia to-day still consider New Russia a creation of the evil one, and the Tsar as Antichrist. They yield a sullen compliance—pray for the Tsar, then in private throw away the handle of door if a heretic has touched it. It is a conservative Slavonic element which every Tsar since Mikhail Romanoff has had to deal with.
Not one of the reforms was more odious to the people than the removal of the capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg. It violated the most sacred feelings of the nation; and many a soul was secretly looking forward to the time when there would be no Peter, and they would return to the shrine of revered associations. But the new city grew in splendor—a city not of wood, to be the prey of conflagrations like Moscow; but of stone, the first Russia had yet possessed. The great Nevski was already there lying in a cathedral bearing his name, and the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul was ready to entomb the future Tsars. And Peter held his court, a poor imitation of Versailles, and gave great entertainments at which the shy and embarrassed ladies in their new costumes kept apart by themselves, and the attempt to introduce the European dances was a very sorry failure. In 1712 Peter planned a visit to Paris, with two ends in view—a political alliance and a matrimonial one. He ardently desired to arrange for the future marriage of his little daughter Elizabeth with Louis XV., the infant King of France. Neither suit was successful, but it is interesting to learn how different was the impression he produced from the one twelve years before. Saint-Simon writes of him: "His manner was at once the most majestic, the proudest, the most sustained, and at the same time the least embarrassing." That he was still eccentric may be judged from his call upon Mme. de Maintenon. She was ill in bed, and could not receive him; but he was not to be baffled. He drew aside the bed-curtains and stared at her fixedly, while she in speechless indignation glared at him. So, without one word, these two historic persons met—and parted! He probably felt curious to see what sort of a woman had enthralled and controlled the policy of Louis XIV. Peter did not intend to subject his wife to the criticism of the witty Frenchwomen, so prudently left her at home.
Charles XII. died in 1718, and in 1721 there was at last peace with Sweden. But the saddest war of all, and one which was never to cease, was that in Peter's own household. His son Alexis, possibly embittered by his mother's fate, and certainly by her influence, grew up into a sullen, morose, and perverse youth. In vain did his father strive to fit him for his great destiny. By no person in the empire—unless, perhaps, his mother—were Peter's reforms more detested than by the son and heir to whom he expected to intrust them. He was in close communication with his mother Eudoxia, who in her monastery, holding court like a Tsaritsa, was surrounded by intriguing and disaffected nobles—all praying for the death of Peter. Every method for reaching the head or heart of this incorrigible son utterly failed. During Peter's absence abroad in 1717, Alexis disappeared. Tolstoi, the Tsar's emissary, after a long search tracked him to his hiding place and induced him to return. There was a terrible scene with his father, who had discovered that his son was more than perverse, he was a traitor—the center of a conspiracy, and in close relations with his enemies at home and abroad, betraying his interests to Germany and to Sweden.
The plan, instigated by Eudoxia, was that Alexis, immediately upon the death of his father—which God was importuned to hasten—should return to Moscow, restore the picturesque old barbarism, abandon the territory on the Baltic, and the infant navy, and the city of his father's love; in other words, that he should scatter to the winds the prodigious results of his father's reign! It was monstrous—and so was its punishment! Eudoxia was whipped and placed in close confinement, and thirty conspirators, members of her "court," were in various ways butchered. Then Alexis, the confessed traitor, was tried by a tribunal at the head of which was Menschikof—and sentenced to death.
On the morning of the 27th of June, 1718, the Tsar summoned his son to appear before nine of the greatest officers of the state. Concerning what happened, the lips of those nine men were forever sealed. But the day following it was announced that Alexis, the son of the emperor, was dead; and it is believed that he died under the knout.
The question of succession now became a very grave one. Alexis, who had under compulsion married Charlotte of Brunswick, left a son Peter. The only other heirs were the Tsar's two daughters Anna and Elizabeth, the children of Catherine. Shortly after the tragedy of his son's death, Peter caused Catherine to be formally crowned Empress, probably in anticipation of his own death, which occurred in 1725.
The chief objection to a wise and beneficent despotism is that its creator is not immortal. The trouble with the Alexanders and the Charlemagnes and the Peters is that the span of human life is too short for their magnificent designs, which fall, while incomplete, into incompetent or vicious hands, and the work is overthrown. Peter's rest in his mausoleum at Sts. Peter and Paul must have been uneasy if he saw the reigns immediately succeeding his own. Not one man capable of a lofty patriotism like his, not one man working with unselfish energy for Russia; but, just as in the olden time, oligarchic factions with leaders striving for that cause which would best protect and elevate themselves. Menschikof, Apraxin, Tolstoi promoting the cause of Catherine that they may not suffer for the death sentence passed upon Alexis; Galitsuin and others seeing their interests in the succession of Peter, son of Alexis and grandson of the Emperor.
Catherine's harmless reign was over in two years (1727) and was followed by another, equally brief and harmless, by the young Peter II. The wily Menschikof succeeded in betrothing his daughter to the young Emperor, but not in retaining his ascendency over the self-willed boy.
We wonder if Peter saw his great minister scheming for wealth and for power, and then his fall, like Wolsey's, from his pinnacle. We wonder if he saw him with his own hands building his hut on the frozen plains of Siberia, clothed, not in rich furs and jewels, but bearded and in long, coarse, gray smock-frock; his daughter, the betrothed of an Emperor, clad, not in ermine, but in sheep-skin. Perhaps the lesson with his master the Carpenter of Saardam served him in building his own shelter in that dread abode. Nor was he alone. He had the best of society, and at every turn of the wheel at St. Petersburg it had aristocratic recruits. The Galitsuins and the Dolgorukis would have joined him soon had they not died in prison, and many others had they not been broken on the wheel or beheaded by Anna, the coarse and vulgar woman who succeeded Peter II., when he suddenly died in 1730.
Anna Ivanovna was the daughter of Peter's brother Ivan V., who was associated with him upon the throne. She had the force to defeat an oligarchic attempt to tie her hands. The plan had originated with the Galitsuins and Dolgorukis, and was really calculated to benefit the state in a period of incompetent or vicious rulers by having the authority of the Crown limited by a council of eight ministers. But it was reactionary. It was introducing a principle which had been condemned, and was a veiled attempt to undo the work of the Ivans and the Romanoffs, and to place the real power as of old in the hands of ruling families. The plan fell, and the leaders fell with it, and a host of their followers. The executioners were busy at St. Petersburg, and the aristocratic colony in Siberia grew larger.
Anna's reign was the period of a preponderating German influence in politics and at court. Germans held high positions; one of them, Gustav Biron, the highest and most influential of all. Anna's infatuation for this man made him the ruling spirit in her reign and the Regent in the next, until he had his turn in disgrace and exile. Added to the dissatisfaction on account of German ascendency was a growing feeling that the succession should come through Peter, instead of through Ivan, his insignificant associate upon the throne. Such was the prevailing sentiment at the time of Anna's death (1740). The Tsaritsa named Ivan, a grand-nephew, the infant son of her niece Anna, her successor under the Regency of Biron, the man who had controlled the policy of the administration during her reign.
This was only a brief and tragic episode. Biron was swiftly swept out of power and into exile, and succeeded in the Regency by Anna, the mother of the infant Emperor; then, following quickly upon that, was a carefully matured conspiracy formed in the interest of Elizabeth Petrovna, the beautiful daughter whose marriage with the young Louis XV. had been an object of the great Peter's hopes.
In this connection it is well to mention that the terminationsvichandvna, so constantly met in Russian names, have an important significance—vichmeaning son of, andvnadaughter of.Elizabeth Petrovnais Elizabeth the daughter of Peter, andPeter Alexievichis Peter the son of Alexis. In like manner Tsarevich and Tsarevna are respectively the son and daughter of the Tsar; Czar, Czarevich, and Czarevna being the modern form, and Czarina instead of Tsaritsa. The historian may for convenience omit the surname thus created, but in Russia it would be a great breach of decorum to do so.
By a suddencoup d'état, Elizabeth Petrovna took her rightful place upon the throne of her father (1741). In the dead of night the unfortunate Anna and her husband were awakened, carried into exile, and their infant son Ivan VI. was immured in a prison, where he was to grow up to manhood,—shattered in mind by his horrible existence of twenty years,—and then to be mercifully put out of the way as a possible menace to the ambitious plans of a woman.
Of the heads that dropped by orders of Elizabeth it is needless to speak; but of one that was spared there is an interesting account. Ostermann, a German, had been vice chancellor to the Empress Anna, and had also brought about the downfall of Biron the Regent. Now his turn had come. He was taken to the place of execution with the rest; his gray head was laid upon the block, his collar unbuttoned and gown drawn back by the executioner—when a reprieve was announced. Her Gracious Majesty was going to permit him to go to Siberia. He arose, bowed, said: "I pray you give me back my wig," calmly put it on the head he had not lost, buttoned his shirt, replaced his gown, and started to join his company of friends—and of enemies—in exile.
Elizabeth was a vain voluptuary. If any glory attaches to her reign it came from the stored energies left by her great father. The marvel is that in this succession of vicious and aimless tyrannies by shameless women and incompetent men, Russia did not fall into anarchy and revolution. But nothing was undone. The dignity of Moscow was preserved by the fact that the coronations must take place there. But there was no longer a reactionary party scheming for a return to the Ancient City. The seed scattered by Peter had everywhere taken hold upon the soil, and now began to burst into flower. A university was founded at Moscow. St. Petersburg was filled with French artists and scholars, and had an Academy of Art and of Science, which the great Voltaire asked permission to join, while conferring with Ivan Shuvalof over the History of Peter the Great which he was then engaged in writing. There were no more ugly German costumes; French dress, manners and speech were the fashion. Russia was assimilating Europe: it had tried Holland under Peter, then Germany under Empress Anna; but found its true affinity with France under Elizabeth, when to write and speak French like a Parisian became the badge of high station and culture.
So of its own momentum Russia had moved on without one strong competent personality at its head, and had become a tremendous force which must be reckoned with by the nations of Europe. In every great political combination the important question was, on which side she would throw her immense weight; and Elizabeth was courted and flattered to her heart's content by foreign diplomatists and their masters. Frederick the Great had reason to regret that he had been witty at her expense. It was almost his undoing by turning the scale against him at a critical moment. Elizabeth did not forget it and had her revenge when she joined Maria Theresa in the final struggle with Frederick in 1757. And Frederick also remembered it in 1760, when, as he dramatically expressed it, "The Barbarians were in Berlin engaged in digging the grave of humanity."
But all benefit from these enormous successes was abandoned, when the commanding Russian officer Apraxin mysteriously withdrew and returned with his army to Russia. This was undoubtedly part of a deeply laid plot of which Frederick was cognizant, and working in concert with a certain distinguished lady in Elizabeth's own court—a clever puller of wires who was going to fill some important chapters in Russian history!
The Empress had chosen for her successor her nephew Peter, son of her only sister and the Duke of Holstein. The far-seeing Frederick had brought about a marriage between this youth and a German Princess, Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst. Then the Future Emperor Peter III. and his German bride took up their abode in the palace at St. Petersburg, she having been rechristenedCatherine, upon adopting the Greek faith. A mutual dislike deepened into hatred between this brilliant, clever woman and her vulgar and inferior husband; and there is little doubt that the treacherous conduct of the Russian commander was part of a plan to place her infant son Paul upon the throne instead of his father, and make her Regent. Elizabeth's death was apparently at hand and the general mistrust of Peter's fitness for the position opened the way for such a conspiracy—which, however, is not known, but only suspected.
The one merciful edict which adorns this reign is the "abolishing of the death penalty." But as the knout became more than ever active, we are left to infer that by a nice distinction in the Russian mind death under that instrument of torture was not considered "capital punishment."
It is said that when the daughter of the austere Peter died, she left sixteen thousand dresses, thousands of slippers, and two large chests of silk stockings—a wardrobe which would have astonished her mother at the time she was serving the table of the Pastor Glück. Elizabeth expired in 1761, and the throne passed to Peter III., grandson of Peter the Great and Catherine I.
The first act of the new Tsar was a delightful surprise to the nobility. He published a manifesto freeing the nobles from the obligation of service imposed by Peter the Great, saying that this law, which was wise at the time it was enacted, was no longer necessary, now that the nobility was enlightened and devoted to the service of their ruler. The grateful nobles talked of erecting a statue of gold to this benign sovereign, who in like manner abolished the Secret Court of Police and proclaimed pardon to thousands of political fugitives. The Birons were recalled from Siberia, and the old Duke of Kurland and his wife came back like shades from another world, after twenty years of exile.
But this pleasant prelude was very brief. The nobles soon found that their golden idol would have to be made instead of very coarse clay. Nothing could exceed the grossness and the unbalanced folly of Peter's course. He reversed the whole attitude of the state toward Germany. So abject was his devotion to Frederick the Great that he restored to him the Russian conquests, and reached the limit which could be borne when he shouted at one of his orgies: "Let us drink to the health of our King and master Frederick. You may be assured if he should order it, I would make war on hell with all my empire." He was also planning to rid himself of Catherine and to disinherit her child Paul in favor of Ivan VI.; and with this in view that unfortunate youth, who after his twenty years' imprisonment was a mental wreck, was brought to St. Petersburg.
Catherine's plans were carefully laid and then swiftly executed. The Emperor was arrested and his abdication demanded. He submitted as quietly as a child. Catherine writes: "I then sent the deposed Emperor in the care of Alexis Orlof and some gentle and reasonable men to a palace fifteen miles from Peterhof, a secluded spot, but very pleasant."
In four days it was announced that the late Emperor had "suddenly died of a colic to which he was subject." It is known that he was visited by Alexis Orlof and another of Catherine's agents in his "pleasant" retreat, who saw him privately; that a violent struggle was heard in his room; and that he was found lying dead with the black and blue mark of a colossal hand on his throat. That the hand was Orlof's is not doubted; but whether acting under orders from Catherine or not will never be known.
This is what is known as the "Revolution of 1762," which placed Catherine II. upon the throne of Russia. Her son Paul was only six years old; and in less than two years Ivan VI., the only claimant to the throne who could become the center of a conspiracy against her authority, was most opportunely removed. It was said that his guards killed him to prevent an attempted rescue. No one knows or ever will know whether or not Catherine was implicated in his "taking off." But certainly nothing at the time could have pleased her better.