[1698A.D.]
King William made Peter a present of theRoyal Transport, a very beautiful yacht, which he generally used for his passage over to Holland. Peter went on board this vessel, and got back to Holland in the end of May, 1698. He took with him three captains of men-of-war, five-and-twenty captains of merchant ships, forty lieutenants, thirty pilots, thirty surgeons, two hundred and fifty gunners, and upwards of three hundred artificers. This colony of ingenious men in the several arts and professions sailed from Holland to Archangel on board theRoyal Transport; and were sent thence to the different places where their service was necessary. Those whom he engaged at Amsterdam took the route of Narva, at that time subject to Sweden.
While the czar was thus transporting the arts and manufactures from England and Holland to his own dominions, the officers whom he had sent to Rome and Italy succeeded so far as also to engage some artists in his service. General Sheremetrev, who was at the head of his embassy to Italy, made the tour of Rome, Naples, Venice, and Malta; while the czar proceeded to Vienna with the other ambassadors. All he had to do now was to observe the military discipline of the Germans, after seeing the English fleet and the dockyards in Holland. But it was not the desire of improvement alone that induced him to make this tour to Vienna, he had likewise a political view; for the emperor of Germany was the natural ally of the Russians against the Turks. Peter had a private audience of Leopold, and the two monarchs stood the whole time of the interview, to avoid the trouble of ceremony.
EXECUTION OF THE STRELITZ BY COMMAND OF PETER THE GREAT(Painted forThe Historians’ History of the Worldby Thure de Thulstrup)
EXECUTION OF THE STRELITZ BY COMMAND OF PETER THE GREAT
(Painted forThe Historians’ History of the Worldby Thure de Thulstrup)
During his stay at Vienna, there happened nothing remarkable, except the celebration of the ancient feast of “landlord and landlady,” which Leopold thought proper to revive upon the czar’s account, after it had been disused during his whole reign. The manner of making this entertainment, to which the Germans gave the name ofWirthschaft, was as follows: The emperor was landlord, and the empress landlady; the king of the Romans, the archdukes, and the archduchesses were generally their assistants; they entertained people of all nations, dressed after the most ancient fashion of their respective countries. Those who were invited as guests drew lots for tickets; on each of which was written the name of the nation, and the character to be represented. One had a ticket for a Chinese mandarin, another for a Tatar mirza, another for a Persian satrap, or a Roman senator; a princess might happen to be allotted the part of a gardener’s wife, or a milkwoman; and a prince might act the peasant or soldier. They had dances suited to these different characters; and the landlord and landlady with their family waited at table. On this occasion Peter assumed the habit of a Friesland boor, and in this character was addressed by everybody, at the same time that they talked to him of the great czar of Muscovy. “These indeed are trifles,” says Voltaire,from whom the account is taken, “but whatever revives the memory of ancient customs is, in some measure, worthy of being recorded.”
Peter was preparing to continue his journey from Vienna to Venice and Rome when he was recalled to his own dominions by news of a general insurrection of the strelitz, who had quitted their posts on the frontiers, and marched on Moscow. Peter immediately left Vienna in secret, passed through Poland, where he had an interview with King Augustus, and arrived at Moscow in September, 1698, before anyone there knew of his having left Germany.e
When Peter I arrived from Vienna he found that his generals and the douma had acted with too great leniency. He cherished an old grudge against the strelitz; they had formed the army of Sophia which had been arrayed against that of the czar, and in his mind was still alive the memory of the invasion of the Kremlin, the murder of his maternal relatives, the terrors undergone by his mother in Troitsa, the plots that had well-nigh prevented his departure for the west, and the check placed by the mutineers on the plans he had matured for the good of his country during his journey through Europe. He resolved to seize the opportunity thus placed in his hands to crush all his enemies at one blow, and to inaugurate in old Russia a reign of terror that should recall the days of Ivan IV. The particular point of attack had been his taste for foreign fashions, for shaven chins, and abbreviated garments. These therefore should be the rallying-sign of the Russia of the future. Long beards had been the standard of revolt; long beards must fall. He ordered all the gentlemen of his realm to shave, and even performed that office with his own hand for some of the highest nobles of his court. On the same day the Red Square was covered with gibbets. The patriarch Adrian tried in vain to divert the anger of the czar. “My duty is to protect the people and to punish rebels,” was the only answer he received.
On the 10th of October a first consignment of two hundred prisoners arrived in the Red Square, followed by their wives and children, who ran behind the carts chanting funeral dirges. The czar ordered several officers to assist the headsman in his work. Johann Korb, an Austrian who was an eye-witness of the scene, relates that the heads of “five rebels were struck off by the noblest hand in Russia.” Seven more days were devoted to the executions, and in all about a thousand victims perished. Many were previously broken on the wheel or given up to other frightful tortures. The czar forbade the removal of any of the bodies, and for five months Moscow was given the spectacle of corpses hanging from the turrets of the Kremlin, or exposed in the public squares. Two of Sophia’s female confidantes were buried alive, and Sophia herself and the repudiated czarina, Eudoxia Lapukhin, noted for her attachment to old customs, were confined in monasteries. After the revolt of the inhabitants of Astrakhan, who murdered their voyevod (1705), the militia was abolished and the way was clear for the establishment of a new army.g
[1699A.D.]
The external relations as well as the domestic circumstances of the empire were at this juncture peculiarly favourable to the czar’s grand design of opening a communication with the Baltic. He had just concluded a treaty ofpeace for thirty years with the Turks, and he found himself at the head of a numerous army, a portion, at least, of which was well disciplined, and eager for employment. The death of General Lefort, in 1699, at the early age of forty-six, slightly retarded the progress of his movements; but in the following year he prepared to avail himself of events that called other powers into action and afforded him a feasible excuse for taking the field.
Charles XII, then only eighteen years of age, had recently succeeded to the throne of Sweden. The occasion seemed to yield an auspicious opportunity to Poland and Denmark for the recovery of certain provinces that in the course of former wars had either been wrested from them by Sweden, or ceded by capitulation. Augustus, the elector of Saxony, called by choice to the throne of Poland, was the first to assert this doctrine of restitution, in which he was quickly followed by the Danish king. Livonia and Esthonia had been ceded by Poland to Charles XI, and the provinces of Holstein and Schleswig had been conquered from Denmark in the same reign, and annexed to the Swedish territories. The object of the allies was to recover those places. Sweden, thus assailed in two quarters, presented an apparently easy victory to the czar, whose purpose it was to possess himself of Ingria and Karelia, that lay between him and the sea. A confederacy was, therefore, entered into by the three powers for the specific view of recovering by war those provinces that had previously been lost by war. But Peter miscalculated his means. The arms of Sweden were crowned with triumphs, and her soldiery were experienced in the field. The Russian troops, on the contrary, were for the greater part but raw recruits, and, except against the Turks and Tatars, had as yet but little practice in military operations. The genius of Peter alone could have vanquished the difficulties of so unequal a contest.
The preparations that were thus in course of organisation awakened the energies of Charles. Without waiting for the signal of attack from the enemy, he sent a force of eight thousand men into Pomerania, and, embarking with a fleet of forty sail, he suddenly appeared before Copenhagen, compelled the king of Denmark within six weeks to sign a peace by which the possession of Holstein was confirmed to the reigning duke, and a full indemnity obtained for all the expenses of the war. He had no sooner overthrown the designs of the Danish monarch than he turned his arms against Poland. Augustus had laid siege to Riga, the capital of Livonia; but that city was defended with such obstinacy by Count Dalberg that the Polish general was glad to abandon the enterprise, upon the shallow pretext that he wished to spare the Dutch merchandise which was at that time stored in the port. Thus the confederation was dissolved, and the struggle was left single-handed between the Russians and the Swedes.
Peter, undismayed by the reverses of his allies, poured into Ingria an army of sixty thousand men. Of these troops there were but twelve thousand disciplined soldiers; the remainder consisted of serfs and fresh levies, gathered from all quarters, rudely clad, armed only with clubs and pikes, and unacquainted with the use of firearms. The Swedish army, on the other hand, was only eight thousand strong; but it was composed of experienced battalions, flushed by recent successes, and commanded by able generals. The advanced guards of the Russians were dispersed on their progress, in some skirmishes with the Swedes; but the main body penetrated to the interior, and intrenched itself before the walls of Narva, a fortified place on the banks of the Narova, a river that flowed from Lake Peipus into the Baltic Sea. For two months they lay before the town, when Peter, finding it necessary to hasten the movements of some regiments that were on their march fromNovgorod, as well as to confer with the king of Poland in consequence of his abandonment of the siege of Riga, left the camp, delegating the command to the duke of Croy, a Flemish officer, and prince Dolgoruki, the commissary-general.
[1701A.D.]
His absence was fatal to this undertaking. Charles, during a violent snow-storm, that blew directly in the face of the Russians, attacked the enemy in their intrenchments. The besiegers were filled with consternation. The duke of Croy issued orders which the prince Dolgoruki refused to execute, and the utmost confusion prevailed amongst the troops. The Russian officers rose against the Germans and massacred the duke’s secretary, Colonel Lyons, and several others. The presence of the sovereign was necessary to restore confidence and order, and, in the absence of a controlling mind the soldiers, flying from their posts and impeding each other in their attempts to escape, were slaughtered in detail by the Swedes. In this exigency, the duke of Croy, as much alarmed by the temper of the Russians as by the superiority of the enemy, together with almost all the German officers in the service, surrendered to the victorious Charles, who, affecting to despise his antagonist, contented himself with retaining a few general officers and some of the Saxon auxiliaries, as prisoners to grace his ovation at Stockholm, and suffered the vanquished troops to return home. Thus failed the first descent upon Ingria, which cost Russia, even on the statement of the czar himself, between five thousand and six thousand men. The loss of the Swedes is estimated by Peter at three thousand, but Voltaire reduces the number to twelve hundred, which, considering the relative positions of both armies, and the disadvantages of other kinds under which the Russians were placed, is more likely to be accurate.
This unpropitious event did not discourage Peter. “The Swedes,” he observed, “will have the advantage of us for some time, but they will teach us, at last, how to beat them.” If Charles, however, had followed up his success, and pushed his fortunes into the heart of Russia immediately after this victory, he might have decided the fate of the empire at the gates of Moscow. But, elated with his triumphs in Denmark, and tempted by the weakness of the Poles, he embraced the more facile and dazzling project of concentrating his whole power against Augustus, declaring that he would never withdraw his army from Poland until he had deprived the elector of his throne. The opportunity he thus afforded Peter of recruiting his shattered forces, and organising fresh means of aggression, was the most remarkable mistake in the whole career of that vain but heroic monarch.
While Charles was engaged in Poland, Peter gained time for the accomplishment of those measures which his situation suggested. Despatching a body of troops to protect the frontiers at Pskov, he repaired in person to Moscow, and occupied himself throughout the ensuing winter in raising and training six regiments of infantry, consisting of 1000 men each, and several regiments of dragoons. Having lost 145 pieces of cannon in the affair at Narva he ordered a certain proportion of the bells of the convents and churches to be cast into field pieces; and was prepared in the spring of the year 1701 to resume hostilities with increased strength, and an artillery of 100 pieces of cannon, 142 field pieces, 12 mortars, and 13 howitzers.
Nor did he confine his attention to the improvement of the army. Conscious of the importance of diffusing employment amongst his subjects, and increasing their domestic prosperity, he introduced into the country flocks ofsheep from Saxony, and shepherds to attend to them, for the sake of the wool; established hospitals, and linen and paper manufactories; encouraged the art of printing; and invited from distant places a variety of artisans to impart to the lower classes a knowledge of useful crafts. These proceedings were treated with levity and contempt by Charles, who appears all throughout to have despised the Russians, and who, engrossed by his campaign in Courland and Lithuania, intended to turn back to Moscow at his leisure, after he should have dethroned Augustus, and ravaged the domains of Saxony.
Unfortunately the divisions that prevailed in the councils of Poland assisted to carry these projects rapidly into effect. Peter was anxious to enter into a new alliance with Augustus, but, in an interview he held with that prince at Birzen, he discovered the weakness of his position and the hopelessness of expecting any effectual succour at his hands. The Polish diet, equally jealous of the interference of the Saxon and Russian soldiery in their affairs, and afraid to incur the hostility of Charles, refused to sanction a league that threatened to involve them in serious difficulties. Hence, Augustus, left to his own resources, was easily deprived of a throne which he seemed to hold against the consent of the people, while Peter was forced to conduct the war alone. His measures were consequently taken with promptitude and decision. His army was no sooner prepared for action than he re-entered Ingria, animating the troops by his presence at the several points to which he directed their movements. In some accidental skirmishes with small bodies of the Swedes, he reaped a series of minor successes, that inspired the soldiers with confidence and improved their skill for the more important scenes that were to follow. Constantly in motion between Pskov, Moscow, and Archangel, at which last place he built a fortress called the New Dvina, he diffused a spirit of enthusiasm amongst the soldiers, who were now becoming inured to action.
[1702A.D.]
An open battle at last took place in the neighbourhood of Dorpat, on the borders of Livonia, when General Sheremetrev fell in with the main body of the enemy on the 1st of January, 1702, and, after a severe conflict of four hours, compelled them to abandon their artillery and fly in disorder. On this occasion, the Swedes are said to have lost three thousand men, while there were but one thousand killed on the opposite side. General Sheremetrev was immediately created a field-marshal, and public thanks were offered up for the victory.
Following up this signal triumph, the czar equipped one fleet upon Lake Peipus to protect the territory of Novgorod, and manned another upon Lake Ladoga, to resist the Swedes in case they should attempt a landing. Thus guarded at the vulnerable points, he was enabled to prosecute his plans in the interior with greater certainty and effect.
Marshal Sheremetrev in the meantime marched upon Marienburg, a town on the confines of Livonia and Ingria, achieving on his progress another triumph over the enemy near the village of Humolova. The garrison at Marienburg, afraid to risk the consequences of a siege, capitulated at once, on condition that the inhabitants should be permitted a free passage, which was agreed to; but an intemperate officer having set fire to the powder magazine, to prevent the negotiation from being effected, by which a number of soldiers on both sides were killed, the Russians fell upon the inhabitants and destroyed the town.
Catherine I(1679-1727)
Catherine I
(1679-1727)
Amongst the prisoners of war was a young Livonian girl, called Martha, an orphan who resided in the household of the Lutheran minister of Marienburg.She had been married the day before to a sergeant in the Swedish army; and when she appeared in the presence of the Russian general Bauer, she was bathed in tears, in consequence of the death of her husband, who was supposed to have perished in the melée. Struck with her appearance, and curious to learn the history of so interesting a person, the general took her to his house, and appointed her to the superintendence of his household affairs. Bauer was an unmarried man, and it was not surprising that his intercourse with Martha should have exposed her to the imputation of having become his mistress; nor, indeed, is there any reason, judging by the immediate circumstances as well as the subsequent life of that celebrated woman, to doubt the truth of the charge. Bauer is said to have denied the fact, which is sufficiently probable, as it was evidently to his interest to acquit the lady of such an accusation; but, however that may be, it is certain that Prince Menshikov, seeing her at the general’s house, and fascinated by her manners, solicited the general to transfer her services to his domestic establishment; which was at once acceded to by the general, who was under too many obligations to the prince to leave him the option of a refusal.
Martha now became the avowed mistress of the libertine Menshikov, in which capacity she lived with him until the year 1704, when, at the early age of seventeen, she enslaved the czar as much by her talents as by her beauty, and exchanged the house of the prince for the palace of the sovereign. The extraordinary influence she subsequently exercised when, from having been the mistress she became the wife of the czar, and ultimately the empress Catherine, developing, throughout the various turns of her fortune, a genius worthy of consort with that of Peter himself, opens a page in history not less wonderful than instructive. The marriage of the sovereign with a subject was common in Russia; but, as Voltaire remarks, the union of royalty with a poor stranger, captured amidst the ruins of a pillaged town, is an incident which the most marvellous combinations of fortune and merit never produced before or since in the annals of the world.
The most important operations of the campaign in the year 1702 were now directed to the river Neva, the branches of which issue from the extremity of Lake Ladoga, and, subsequently reuniting, are discharged into the Baltic. Close to the point where the river flowed from the lake was an island, on which stood the strongly fortified town of Rottenburg. This place, maintaining a position that was of the utmost consequence to his future views, Peter resolved to reduce in the first instance; and, after laying siege to it for nearly a month, succeeded in carrying it by assault. A profusion of rewards and honours were on this occasion distributed amongst the army, and a triumphal processionwas made to Moscow, in which the prisoners of war followed in the train of the conqueror. The name of Rottenburg was changed to that of Schlüsselburg, or city of the key, because that place was the key to Ingria and Finland. The solemnities and pomp by which these triumphs were celebrated were still treated with contempt by Charles, who, believing that he could at any moment reduce the Russians, continued to pursue his victories over Augustus. But Peter was rapidly acquiring power in the very direction which was most fatal to his opponent, and which was directly calculated to lead to the speedy accomplishment of his final purpose.
The complete occupation of the shores of the Neva was the first object to be achieved. The expulsion of the enemy from all the places lying immediately on its borders and the possession or destruction of all the posts which the Swedes held in Ingria and Karelia were essential to the plans of the czar. Already an important fortress lying close to the river was besieged and reduced, and two Swedish vessels were captured on the lake by the czar in person. Further successes over the Swedish gunboats, that hovered near the mouth of the river, hastened his victorious progress; and when he had made himself master of the fortress of Kantzi, on the Karelian side, he paused to consider whether it would be advisable to strengthen that place, and make it the centre of future operations, or push onwards to some position nearer to the sea. The latter proposal was decided upon; and a marshy island, covered with brushwood, inhabited by a few fishermen, and not very distant from the embouchure of the Neva, was chosen as the most favourable site for a new fortress. The place was, by a singular anomaly, called Lust Eland, or Pleasure Island, and was apparently ill adapted for the destinies that in after-times surrounded it with glory and splendour. On this pestilential spot, Peter laid the foundations of the fortress of St. Petersburg, which gradually expanded into a city and ultimately became the capital of the empire.
The country in the neighbourhood of this desolate island, or cluster of swamps, was one vast morass. It did not yield a particle of stone, and the materials with which the citadel was built were derived from the ruins of the works at Nianshantz. Nor were these the only difficulties against which Peter had to contend in the construction of the fortifications. The labourers were not furnished with the necessary tools, and were obliged to toil by such expedients as their own invention could devise. So poorly were they appointed for a work of such magnitude that they were obliged to carry the earth, which was very scarce, from a considerable distance in the skirts of their coats, or in bags made of shreds and matting. Yet the fortress was completed within five months, and before the expiration of a year St. Petersburg contained thirty thousand houses and huts of different descriptions.
So gigantic an undertaking was not accomplished without danger, as well as extreme labour. Peter, who could not be turned aside from his purposes by ordinary obstacles, collected a vast concourse of people from a variety of countries, including Russians, Tatars, Kalmucks, Cossacks, Ingrians, and Finlanders; and employed them, without intermission, and without shelter from an inclement climate of sixty degrees of latitude, in deepening the channels of the rivers and raising the general level of the islands which were in the winter seasons usually sunk in the floods. The severity of the labour, and the insufficiency of provisions, caused a great mortality amongst the workmen. A hundred thousand men are said to have perished in the first year. While this fort was in progress of erection, Peter despatched Menzikov to a little island lying nearer to the mouth of the river, to build another fortress for the protection of the entrance. The model of the fortresswas made by himself in wood. He gave it the name of Kronstadt, which, with the adjacent town and buildings, it still retains. Under the cannon of this impregnable fortress the largest fleet might float in shelter.
The establishment of a new city on so unfavorable a site, and the contemplated removal of the seat of government, received considerable opposition from the boyars and upper classes, as well as from the inferior grades, who regarded the place with terror, in consequence of the mortality it had already produced. The discontent of the lower orders broke out in loud complaints during Peter’s temporary absence. No measures short of the most despotic could have compelled the inhabitants of Moscow to migrate to the bleak and dismal islands of the Neva, and Peter was not slow to carry such measures into effect.
If the people could have looked beyond the convenience of the moment into the future prospects of the empire, they must at once have perceived the wisdom of the change. The paramount object of Peter’s policy was the internal improvement of Russia. The withdrawal of the nobility, the merchants, and the artisans from their rude capital in the interior, to an imperial seat on the gulf of Finland, by which they would be brought into closer intercourse with civilised Europe, and acquire increased facilities for commercial enterprise, was evidently calculated to promote that object, which was distinctly kept in view in the place upon which the city was built. Peter had not forgotten the practical lessons he had learned during his residence in Holland. That country, the inhabitants of which in Pliny’s time were described to be amphibious, as if it were doubtful to which element, the land or the sea, they really belonged, had been redeemed from the ocean by the activity and skill of the people; and Peter, profiting by their experience, adopted Amsterdam as his model in securing the foundations of St. Petersburg. He employed several Dutch architects and masons; and the wharfs, canals, bridges, and rectilineal streets, planted with rows of trees, attest the accuracy with which the design was accomplished. To a neighbouring island, which he made a depot for timber, he gave the name of New Holland, as if he meant to leave to posterity an acknowledgement of the obligations he owed to that country.
The speculations of the czar were rapidly fulfilled in the commercial relations invited by the establishment of St. Petersburg. Five months had scarcely elapsed from the day of its foundation when a Dutch ship, freighted with merchandise, stood into the river. Before the expiration of a year, another vessel from Holland arrived; and the third vessel, within the year, that entered the new port was from England. These gratifying facts inspired confidence amongst those who had been disposed to look upon the project with such hasty distrust; and Peter, whose power was now rapidly growing up on all sides, was enabled to extend his operations in every direction over Ingria. The variety of affairs which, at this juncture, occupied his attention sufficiently proves the grasp of his capacity and the extraordinary energy of his mind. At nearly the same time that he founded a new capital he was employed in fortifying Pskov, Novgorod, Kiev, Smolensk, Azov, and Archangel; and in assisting the unfortunate Augustus with men and money. Cornelius van Bruyer, a Dutchman, who at that period was travelling in Holland, states that Peter informed him that, notwithstanding all these undertakings, he had 300,000 roubles remaining in his coffers, after providing for all the charges of the war.
The advances that the czar was thus making in strengthening and civilising the empire were regarded with such contempt by Charles that he isreported to have said that Peter might amuse himself as he thought fit in building a city, as he should soon find him to take it from him and set fire to his wooden houses. The Porte, however, did not look with indifference upon his movements, and sent an ambassador to him to complain of his preparations; but Peter replied that he was master of his own dominions, as the Porte was of his, and that his object was not to infringe the peace, but to render Russia “respectable” upon the Euxine.
[1704A.D.]
The time was now approaching when the decision of the disputes in Poland enabled Charles to turn back upon Ingria, where Peter was making so successful a stand. On the 14th of February, 1704, the primate of Warsaw threw off his allegiance to Augustus, who was in due form deposed by the diet. The nomination of the new king was placed in the hands of Charles, who proposed Stanislaus Leszczynski, a young nobleman distinguished for his accomplishments, who was accordingly declared king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania. But Lithuania had not as yet sent in her adherence to either side; and Peter, still taking a deep interest in the fortunes of Augustus, whose Saxon troops were every day suffering fresh discomfitures from the Swedish army, sent that monarch a reinforcement of twelve thousand men to support his claims in the undecided province. The military force of Russia had now become a formidable body, highly disciplined, and fully equipped; and Peter, without loss of time, in the spring of 1704, disposed the remainder of his army into two divisions, one of which he sent under the command of Field-Marshal Sheremetrev, to besiege Dorpat, while he took in person the conduct of the other against Narva, where he had formerly endured a signal defeat.
Dorpat, which is better known by this siege than by the university which Gustavus Adolphus had previously established there, was forced to capitulate by aruse de guerre. It was necessary in the first instance to become master of Lake Peipus, for which purpose a Russian flotilla was placed at the entrance of the Embach. Upon the advance of a Swedish squadron a naval battle ensued, which ended in the capture or destruction of the whole of the enemy’s fleet. Peter now sat down before Dorpat, but, finding that the commandant held out for six weeks, he adopted an ingenious device to procure entrance into the town. He disguised two regiments of infantry and one of cavalry in the uniforms of Swedish soldiers, giving them Swedish standards and flags. These pretended Swedes attacked the trenches, and the Russians feigned a fight. The garrison of the town, deceived by appearances, made a sortie, when the false attackers and the attacked reunited, fell upon the troops, and entered the town. A great slaughter ensued, and, to save the remainder of the garrison, the commandant surrendered.
At Narva Peter was equally successful. The siege was conducted under his own personal command. Sword in hand, he attacked three bastions that offered the strongest points of defence, carried them all, and burst into the town. The barbarities that ensued were of a nature to revolt even the czar himself. Pillage, slaughter, and lustful excesses were committed by the infuriated men; and Peter, shocked at the cruelties he witnessed, threw himself amongst the barbarians who refused to obey his orders and slew several of them in the public streets. A number of the unfortunate citizens had taken refuge in the hôtel de ville; and the czar, appearing in the midst of them, cast his bloody sword on the table, declaring that it was stained notwith the blood of the citizens but of his own soldiers, which he had shed to save their lives.
These victories were decisive of the position of Peter. He was now master of all Ingria, the government of which he conferred upon Menzikov, whom he created a prince of the empire and major-general in the army. The elevation of Menzikov, through the various grades of the service, from his humble situation as a pastrycook’s boy to the highest dignities in the state, was a practical reproof to the indolent and ignorant nobility, who were now taught to feel that merit was the only recommendation to the favour of the czar. The old system of promotion was closed. The claims of birth and the pride of station ceased to possess any influence at court. The great body of the people, impressed with the justice that dictated this important change in the dispensation of honour and rewards, began for the first time to be inspired with a spirit of emulation and activity; and exactly in proportion as Peter forfeited the attachment of the few, whose power was daily on the decline, he drew around him the mixed wonder and allegiance of the many, whose power he was daily enlarging. Thus were laid the foundations of a mighty empire in the hearts of a scattered population, as various in habits and in language as it had always been discordant in interests and disunited in action.
Having acquired this valuable possession, and secured himself in St. Petersburg against the Swedes, it was the profound policy of Peter to keep up the war between Charles and Augustus, with a view to weaken by diversion the strength of the former. He accordingly made a great offer of assistance to the dethroned king, and despatched General Repuin with six thousand horse and six thousand foot to the borders of Lithuania; while he advanced in person into Courland at the head of a strong force. Here he received a severe check, having fallen in with the Swedish general Lewenhauft, who defeated the Russians after an obstinate battle, in which the czar’s troops lost between five thousand and six thousand men, and the Swedes no more than two thousand. Peter, notwithstanding, penetrated into Courland, and laid siege to the capital, which surrendered by capitulation. On this occasion the Swedes degraded themselves by committing an extensive pillage in the palace and archives of the dukes of Courland, descending even into the mausoleums to rob the dead of their jewels. The Russians, however, before they would take charge of the vaults, made a Swedish colonel sign a certificate that their sacrilegious depredations were the acts of his own countrymen.
The greatest part of Courland, as well as the whole of Ingria, had now been conquered in detail by Peter, and, as Charles was still engrossed by his operations in Poland and Saxony, he returned to Moscow to pass the winter; but intelligence of the approach of the Swedish king at the head of a powerful force towards Grodno, where the combined armies of Russia and Saxony were encamped, recalled him from his repose. Peter immediately hastened to the field, and found all the avenues occupied by Swedish troops. A battle ensued near Frauenstadt, in which the flower of the confederated battalions, under the command of General Schullemberg, to the number of eighteen thousand men, six thousand of whom were Russians, suffered a complete defeat. With an insignificant exception, they were nearly all slain. Some authorities attribute this disaster to the treachery of a French regiment, which had the care of the Saxon artillery; but it is certain that the most sanguinary atrocitieswere committed on both sides, in a contest upon the issues of which two crowns appeared to be dependent.
Wife of a Merchant of Kalonga
Wife of a Merchant of Kalonga
The consequences of this overthrow would have been immediately fatal to Augustus, but for the energy of the czar, who, rapidly organising an army of twenty thousand men, urged that wavering prince to take advantage of the absence of Charles in Saxony, and throw himself once more into Poland. A revolt in Astrakhan called Peter into that part of his territories; but he deputed General Patkul, a brave Livonian, who had formerly made his escape from the hands of Charles, and had passed from the service of Augustus into that of the czar, to explain the necessity of the measure. Augustus yielded to the advice of his ally, and marched into Poland; but he had no sooner made good his progress than, suddenly panic-struck by the increasing successes of Charles, he resolved to sue for peace upon any terms at which it could be procured. He accordingly invested two ambassadors with full powers to treat confidentially with Charles, and had the temerity to cast Patkul into prison. While the plenipotentiaries were negotiating this shameful treaty at the camp of Charles XII, Menshikov joined the forces of Augustus at Kalish with thirty thousand men. The consternation of Augustus at this unexpected reinforcement was indescribable; and his confusion amounted almost to despair upon the receipt of intelligence that ten thousand Swedes, under the command of General Meierfeldt, were on their march to give him battle.
In this dilemma he transmitted a private message to General Meierfeldt to inform him of the negotiation he had opened with his master; but that general, naturally treating the whole affair as a mere pretext to gain time, made preparations for hostilities. The superior force of the Russians decided the fate of the day, and, after having defeated the Swedes with great slaughter, they entered Warsaw in triumph. Had Augustus relied upon the energy and friendship of his ally, he would now have been replaced upon his throne; but the timidity that tempted him to cast himself upon the mercy of Charles was prolific of misfortunes. He had scarcely entered Warsaw as a victor when he was met by his own plenipotentiaries, who placed before him the treaty theyhad just concluded, by which he had forfeited the crown of Poland forever. His humiliation was complete. Thus the weak and vacillating Augustus, fresh from a triumph that ought to have placed him upon the throne of Poland, was a vassal in its capital, while Charles was giving the law in Leipsic and reigning in his lost electorate.
His struggles to escape from the disgrace into which his folly and his fears had plunged him only drew down fresh contempt upon his head. He wrote to Charles a letter of explanation and apology, in which he begged pardon for having obtained a victory against his will, protesting that it was entirely the act of the Russians, whom it was his full intention to have abandoned, in conformity with the wishes of Charles; and assuring that monarch that he would do anything in his power to render him satisfaction for the great wrong he had committed in daring to beat his troops. Not content with this piece of humility, and fearing to remain at Warsaw, he proceeded to Saxony, and, in the heart of his own dominions, where the members of his family were fugitives, he surrendered in person to the victorious Swede. Charles was too conscious of his advantages not to avail himself of them to the full, and not only made the timid Augustus fulfil all the stipulations of the treaty, by which he renounced the crown of Poland, abandoned his alliance with the czar, surrendered the Swedish prisoners, and gave up all the deserters, including General Patkul, whom Augustus had arrested by a violation of good faith, but he forced him to write a letter to Stanislaus, congratulating him on his accession to the throne. The unfortunate Patkul was no sooner delivered into the hands of Charles than he condemned him to be broken on the wheel and quartered.
The timid and treacherous conduct of Augustus and the deliberate cruelty of Charles drew from Peter expressions of unbounded indignation. He laid a statement of the whole circumstances before the principal potentates of Europe, and declared his determination to use all the means in his power to drive Stanislaus from the throne of Poland. The first measure he adopted was the holding of a conference with several of the Polish grandees, whom he completely gained over to his side by the suavity of his manners. At a subsequent meeting it was agreed that the throne of Poland was in fact vacant, and that a diet should be summoned for the purpose of electing a king. When the diet assembled, Peter urged upon their attention the peculiar circumstances in which the country was placed, and the impossibility of effecting any substantial resistance against the ambitious intrigues of Charles, unless a new king were placed upon the throne. His views were confirmed by the voice of the assembly, who agreed to the public declaration of an interregnum, and to the investiture of the primate in the office of regent until the election should have taken place.
[1707A.D.]
But while these proceedings were going forward at Lublin, King Stanislaus, who had been previously acknowledged by most of the sovereigns of Europe, was advancing into Poland at the head of sixteen Swedish regiments, and was received with regal honours in all the places through which he passed. Nor was this the only danger that threatened to arrest the course of the proposed arrangements for the settlement of the troubles of Poland. Charles, whose campaign in Saxony had considerably enriched his treasury, was now prepared to take the field with a well-disciplined army of forty-five thousand men, besides the force commanded by General Lewenhaupt; and he did not affectto conceal his intention to make Russia the theatre of war, in which purpose he was strengthened by an offer on the part of the Porte to enter into an offensive alliance with him against Peter, whose interference in the affairs of Poland excited great jealousy and alarm in Turkey. Charles calculated in some degree upon the support he might receive from the Russians themselves, who, he believed, would be easily induced to revolt against Peter, in consequence of the innovations he had introduced and the expenses that he would be likely to entail upon them by a protracted war.
But the people of Russia were well aware that mere personal ambition did not enter into the scheme of Peter, and that, although he had broken through many antiquated and revered customs, yet that he had conferred such permanent benefits upon the empire as entitled him to their lasting gratitude. Whatever prospects of success, therefore, Charles might have flattered himself upon deriving from the dissatisfaction of the great mass of the community were evidently vague and visionary. But the argument was sufficient for all his purposes in helping to inspire his soldiers with confidence. About this time the French envoy at the court of Saxony attempted to effect a reconciliation between Charles and the czar, when the former made his memorable reply that he would treat with Peter in Moscow; which answer being conveyed to Peter produced his equally memorable commentary—“My brother Charles wishes to play the part of Alexander, but he shall not find a Darius in me.”
Rapid preparations were made on both sides for the war which had now become inevitable. In the autumn of 1707 Charles commenced his march from Altranstadt, paying a visit to Augustus at Dresden as he passed through that city, and hastening onwards through Poland, where his soldiers committed such devastations that the peasantry rose in arms against them. He finally fixed his winter quarters in Lithuania. During the time occupied by these movements Peter was wintering at Moscow, where, after an absence of two years, he had been received with universal demonstrations of affection. He was busily occupied in inspecting the new manufactories that had been established in the capital, when news reached him of the operations of the Swedish army. He immediately departed, and, with six hundred of the guards established his headquarters in the city of Grodno. Charles no sooner heard of his arrival at that place than, with his usual impetuosity, he hastened forwards with only eight hundred men to besiege the town.
By a mistake, the life of Peter was nearly sacrificed. A German officer, who commanded the gate towards which Charles approached, imagining that the whole Swedish army was advancing, fled from his post and left the passage open to the enemy. General consternation prevailed throughout the city as the rumour spread; and the victorious Charles, cutting in pieces the few Russians who ventured to contest his progress, made himself master of the town. The czar, impressed with the belief that the report was true, retreated behind the ramparts, and effected his escape through a gate at which Charles had placed a guard. Some Jesuits, whose house, being the best in the town, was taken for the use of Charles, contrived in the course of the night to inform Peter of the real circumstances; upon which the czar re-entered the city, forced the Swedish guard, and contended for possession in the streets. But the approach of the Swedish army compelled him at last to retire, and to leave Grodno in the hands of the conqueror.
The advance of the Swedes was now marked by a succession of triumphs; and Peter, finding that Charles was resolved to pursue him, and that the invader had but five hundred miles to traverse to the capital, an interval unprotected by any places of consequence, with the exception of Smolensk,conceived a masterly plan for drawing him into a part of the country where he could obtain neither magazines nor subsistence for his army, nor, in case of necessity, secure a safe retreat. With this design he withdrew to the right bank of the Dnieper,[40]where he established himself behind sheltered lines, from which he might attack the enemy at an advantage, preserving to himself a free communication with Smolensk, and abundant means of retreat over a country that yielded plentiful resources for his troops.
In order to render this measure the more certain, he despatched General Goltz at the head of fifteen thousand men to join a body of twelve thousand Cossacks, with strict orders to lay waste the whole province for a circle of thirty miles, and then to rejoin the czar at the position he had taken up on the bank of the Dnieper. This bold movement was executed as swiftly as it was planned; and the Swedes, reduced to immediate extremity for want of forage, were compelled to canton their army until the following May. Accustomed, however, to the reverses of war, they were not daunted by danger or fatigue, but it was no longer doubtful that both parties were on the eve of decisive events. They regarded the future, however, with very different hopes. Charles, heated with victories, and panting for further acquisitions, surveyed the vast empire, upon the borders of which he now hung like a cloud, as if it were already within his grasp; while Peter, more wary and self-possessed, conscious of the magnitude of the stake for which he fought, and aware of the great difficulties of his situation, occupied himself in making provision against the worst.c
Meantime there were foes at home that had demanded the attention of he czar.aThe strelitz were not the only military body belonging to old Russia whose existence had become incompatible with the requirements of a modern state. The undisciplined Cossack armies, which had hitherto formed a rampart for Russia against barbarian hordes, were also to undergo transformation. The empire had many causes of complaint against the Cossacks, particularly those of the Ukraine and the Don who had formerly sustained the usurper, Dmitri, and from whose ranks had issued the terrible Stenka Radzin.
In 1706 the Cossacks of the Don had revolted against the government of the czar because they were forbidden to give asylum in their camp to refugee peasants or taxpayers. The ataman Boulavine and his aids, Nekrassov, Frolov, and Dranyi, called them to arms. They murdered Prince George Dolgoruki, defeated the Russians on the Liskovata, took Tcherkask, and menaced Azov, all the while proclaiming their fidelity to the czar and accusing the voyevods of having acted without orders. They were in turn defeated by Vasili Dolgoruki, Bulavin was murdered by his own soldiers and Nekrassov with only two thousand men took refuge in the Kuban. After clearing out the rebel camps Dolgoruki wrote: “The chief traitors and mutineers have been hung, together with one out of ten of the others; and all the bodies have been placed on rafts and allowed to drift with the current that the Dontsi may be stricken with terror and moved to repent.”
Since the disgrace of Samoilovitch, Mazeppa had been the hetman of the Little Russian Cossacks in Ukraine. Formerly a page of John Casimir, king of Poland, he had in his youth experienced the adventure made famous bythe poem of Lord Byron and the pictures of Horace Vernet. Loosened from the back of the untamed horse that fled with him to the deserts of Ukraine, he at once took rank in the Cossack army, and rose by means of treachery, practised against all the chiefs in turn, to fill the highest posts in the military service. His good fortune created for him numerous enemies; but the czar, who admired him for his intelligence and had faith in his fidelity, invariably delivered over to him his detractors. He put to death the monk Solomon for revealing his intrigues with Sophia and the king of Poland, and later denunciators shared the same fate.
Ukraine, meanwhile, was being undermined by various factions. In the Cossack army there was always a Russian party, a party that wished to restore the Polish domination, and a party which designed to deliver over the country to the Turks. In 1693 Petrik, a Turkish chief, invaded Ukraine but failed in his attempts at subjugation. Moreover, profound dissent existed between the army and the sedentary populations of Ukraine. The hetman was constantly scheming to make himself independent, the officers of the army objected to rendering an account of their actions to others, and the soldiers wished to live at the country’s expense without working or paying taxes. The farmers, who had founded the agricultural prosperity of the country, the citizens in towns who were not secure in the pursuit of their avocations, the whole peaceful and laborious population, in fact, longed to be free from this turbulent military oligarchy and called upon the czar at Moscow to liberate them.
Mazeppa represented the military element in Ukraine and knew that he was odious to the quiet classes. The czar showered proofs of confidence upon him, but Mazeppa had reason to fear the consolidation of the Russian state. The burdens that the empire imposed upon the vassal state were day by day becoming heavier, and the war against Charles XII served to increase them still more. There was everything to fear from the imperious humour and autocratic pretensions of the czar, and the imminent invasion of the Swedes was certain to precipitate a crisis; either Little Russia would become independent with the aid of strangers, or their defeat on her soil would deal the death-blow to her prosperity and hopes for the future. Knowing that the hour was approaching when he should be obliged to obey the white czar Mazeppa allowed himself to be drawn into communication with Stanislaus Leszczynski, the king of Poland elected by the Swedish party. The witty princess Dolskaia gave him an alphabet in cipher. Hitherto Mazeppa had given over to the czar all letters containing propositions of betrayal, just as the czar had surrendered to him his accusers. On receiving the letters of the princess he remarked with a smile: “Wicked woman, she wishes to draw me away from the czar.”
When, however, the hand of the sister of Menshikov was refused to one of his cousins, when the Swedish war and the passage of Muscovite troops limited his authority and increased taxation in his territory, when the czar sent urgent injunctions for the equipment of troops after the European fashion, and he could feel the spirit of rebellion against Moscow constantly growing around him, he wrote to Leszczynski that though the Polish army was weak in numbers it had his entire good will. His confidant Orlik was in the secret of all these manœuvres, and several of his subordinates who had divined them undertook to denounce him to the czar. The denunciation was very precise and revealed all the secret negotiations with the emissaries of the king and of the princess Dolskaia; but it failed before the blind confidence of the czar. Palei, one of the denunciators, was exiled to Siberia; Iskra andKotchonbei, the remaining two, were forced by torture to avow themselves calumniators, and were then delivered over to the hetman and beheaded. Mazeppa realised that good fortune such as his could not long endure, and the malcontents urged upon him the consideration of the common safety. At this juncture Charles XII arrived in the neighbourhood of Little Russia. “It is the devil who brings him here!” cried Mazeppa, and placed between his two powerful enemies he exerted all his craft to preserve the independence of his little state without giving himself into the hands of either Charles XII or Peter the Great. When the latter invited him to join the army he feigned illness; but Menshikov approaching simultaneously with Charles XII, it was necessary to make a choice. Mazeppa left his bed, rallied his most devoted Cossacks about him, and crossed the Desna for the purpose of effecting a junction with the Polish army. At this the czar issued a proclamation denouncing the treason of Mazeppa, his alliance with the heretics, his plots to bring Ukraine once more under vassalage to Poland and to restore the temples of God and the holy monasteries to the uniates. Mazeppa’s capital, Baturin, was taken by Menshikov and rased to the ground, his accomplices perished on the wheel or the scaffold.g