The Gallery of Portraits: with Memoirs. Volume 2 (of 7)

by Arthur Thomas Malkin

He left London in April, 1698, and proceeded to Vienna, principally to inspect the Austrian troops, then esteemed among the best in Europe. He had intended to visit Italy; but his return was hastened by the tidings of a dangerous insurrection having broken out, which, though suppressed, seemed to render a longer absence from the seat of government inexpedient. The insurgents were chiefly composed of the Russian soldiery, abetted by a large party who thought every thing Russian good, and hated and dreaded the Czar’s innovating temper. Of those who had taken up arms, many were slain in battle; the rest, with many persons of more rank and consequence, suspected of being implicated in the revolt, were retained in prison until the Czar himself should decide their fate. Numerous stories of his extravagant cruelties on this occasion have been told, which may safely be passed over as unworthy of credit. It is certain, however, that considerable severity was shown. Many citizens who had not borne arms were condemned to death as instigators of the rebellion, and their frozen bodies exposed on the gibbets, or thrown by the way-side, remained throughout the winter, a fearful spectacle to passers by. In some accounts it is stated that two thousand of the soldiery were put to death: but the absurd falsehoods told of Peter’s conduct on this occasion afford opportunity for a doubt, which we gladly entertain, whether justice was suffered to lead to such wholesale butchery. This insurrection led to the complete remodelling of the Russian army, on the same plan which had already been partially adopted.

During the year 1699 the Czar was chiefly occupied by civil reforms. According to his own account, as published in his journal, he regulated the press, caused translations to be published of various treatises on military and mechanical science, and history; he founded a school for the navy; others for the study of the Latin, German, and other languages; he encouraged his subjects to cultivate foreign trade, which before they had absolutely been forbidden to do under pain of death; he altered the Russian calendar, in which the year began on September 1, to agree in that point with the practice of other nations; he broke through the Oriental custom of not suffering women to mix in general society; and he paid sedulous attention to the improvement of his navy on the river Don. We have the testimony of Mr. Deane, an English ship-builder, that the Czar had turned his manual labours to good account, who states in a letter to England, that “the Czar has set up a ship of sixty guns, where he is both foreman and master builder; and, not to flatter him, I’ll assure your Lordship, it will be the best ship among them, and it is all from his own draught: how he framed her together, and how he made the moulds, and in so short a time as he did, is really wonderful.”

He introduced an improved breed of sheep from Saxony and Silesia; despatched engineers to survey the different provinces of his extensive empire; sent persons skilled in metallurgy to the various districts in which mines were to be found; established manufactories of arms, tools, stuffs; and encouraged foreigners skilled in the useful arts to settle in Russia, and enrich it by the produce of their industry.

We cannot trace the progress of that protracted contest between Sweden and Russia, in which the short-lived greatness of Sweden was broken: we can only state the causes of the war, and the important results to which it led. Peter’s principal motive for engaging in it was his leading wish to make Russia a maritime and commercial nation. To this end it was necessary that she should be possessed of ports, of which however she had none but Archangel and Asof, both most inconveniently situated, as well in respect of the Russian empire itself, as of the chief commercial nations of Europe. On the waters of the Baltic Russia did not possess a foot of coast. Both sides of the Baltic, both sides of the Gulf of Finland, the country between the head of that gulf and the lake Ladoga, including both sides of the river Neva, and the western side of lake Ladoga itself, and the northern end of lake Peipus, belonged to Sweden. In the year 1700, Charles XII. being but eighteen years of age, Denmark, Poland, and Russia, which had all of them suffered from the ambition of Sweden, formed a league to repair their losses, presuming on the weakness usually inherent in a minority. The object of Russia was the restoration of the provinces of Ingria, Carelia, and Wiborg, the country round the head of the Gulf of Finland, which formerly had belonged to her; that of Poland, was the recovery of Livonia and Esthonia, the greater part of which had been ceded by her to Charles XI. of Sweden. Denmark was to obtain Holstein and Sleswick. But Denmark and Poland very soon withdrew, and left Russia to encounter Sweden single-handed. To this she was entirely unequal; her army, the bulk of it undisciplined, and even the disciplined part unpractised in the field, was no match for the veteran troops of Sweden, the terror of Germany. In the battle of Narva, a town on the river which runs out of the Peipus lake, fought November 30, 1700, nine thousand Swedes defeated signally near forty thousand Russians, strongly intrenched and with a numerous artillery. Had Charles prosecuted his success with vigour, he might probably have delayed for many years the rise of Russia; but whether from contempt or mistake he devoted his whole attention to the war in Poland, and left the Czar at liberty to recruit and discipline his army, and improve the resources of his kingdom. In these labours he was most diligent. His troops, practised in frequent skirmishes with the Swedes quartered in Ingria and Livonia, rapidly improved, and on the celebrated field of Pultowa broke for ever the power of Charles XII. This decisive action did not take place until July 8, 1709. The interval was occupied by a series of small, but important additions to the Russian territory. In 1701–2, great part of Livonia and Ingria were subdued, including the banks of the Neva, where, on May 27, 1703, the city of St. Petersburg was founded. It was not till 1710 that the conquest of Courland, with the remainder of Livonia, including the important harbours of Riga and Revel, gave to Russia that free navigation of the Baltic sea which Peter had longed for as the greatest benefit which he could confer upon his country.

After the battle of Pultowa Charles fled to Turkey, where he continued for some years, shut out from his own dominions, and intent chiefly on spiriting the Porte to make war on Russia. In this he succeeded; but hostilities were terminated almost at their beginning, by the battle of the Pruth, fought July 20, 1711, in which the Russian army, not mustering more than forty thousand men, and surrounded by five times that number of Turks, owed its preservation to Catharine, first the mistress, at this time the wife, and finally the acknowledged partner and successor of Peter in the throne of Russia. By her coolness and prudence, while the Czar, exhausted by fatigue, anxiety, and self-reproach, was labouring under nervous convulsions, to which he was liable throughout life, a treaty was concluded with the Vizier in command of the Turkish army, by which the Russians preserved indeed life, liberty, and honour, but were obliged to resign Asof, to give up the forts and burn the vessels built to command the sea bearing that name, and to consent to other stipulations, which must have been very bitter to the hitherto successful conqueror. Returning to the seat of government, his foreign policy for the next few years was directed to breaking down the power of Sweden, and securing his new metropolis by prosecuting his conquests on the northern side of the Gulf of Finland. Here he was entirely successful; and the whole of Finland itself, and of the gulf, fell into his hands. These provinces were secured to Russia by the peace of Nieustadt, in 1721. Upon this occasion, the senate or state assembly of Russia requested him to assume the title of Emperor of all the Russias, with the adjuncts of Great, and Father of his Country.

Of the private history and character of Peter, we have hitherto said nothing. He was passionately fond of ardent spirits, and not only drank very largely himself, but took a pleasure in compelling others to do the same, until the royal banqueting-room became a scene of the most revolting debauchery and intoxication. But towards the close of life, his habits, when alone, were temperate even to abstemiousness. In his domestic relations he was far from happy. At the age of seventeen he married a Russian lady, named Eudoxia Lapouchin, whom he divorced in less than three years. According to some accounts, this separation was caused by her infidelities; according to others, by her obstinate hostility to all his projects of improvement: a hostility inculcated and encouraged by the priesthood, in whose eyes all change was an abomination, and the worst of changes those made professedly in imitation of the barbarous nations inhabiting the rest of Europe. By her the Czar had one son, Alexis, heir to the throne; who, under the guardianship of his weak and bigoted mother, grew up in the practice of all low debauchery, and with the same deference to the priesthood, and dislike to change, which had cost herself the society of her husband. The degeneracy of this, his eldest, and long his only son, was a serious affliction to Peter; the more so, if he reflected justly, because he could not hold himself guiltless of it, in having intrusted the education of his legitimate successor to one, of whose incapacity for the charge he had ample proof. It appears from authentic documents that even so early as the battle of the Pruth, Peter had contemplated the necessity of excluding his son from the throne. In the close of the year 1716, he addressed a serious expostulation to Alexis, in which, after reviewing the errors of his past life, he declared his fixed intention of cutting off the prince from the succession, unless he should so far amend as to afford a reasonable hope of his reigning for the good of his people. He required him either to work a thorough reformation in his life and manners, or to retire to a monastery; and allowed him six months to deliberate upon this alternative. At the end of the time Alexis quitted Russia, under pretence of going to his father at Copenhagen; but instead of doing so he fled to Vienna. He was induced, however, to return by promises of forgiveness, mixed with threats in the event of his continued disobedience, and arrived at Moscow, February 13, 1718. On the following day the clergy, the chief officers of state, and the chief nobility were convened, and Alexis, being brought before them as a prisoner, acknowledged himself unworthy of the succession, which he resigned, entreating only that his life might be spared. A declaration was then read on the part of the Czar, reciting the various delinquencies of which his son had been guilty, and ending with the solemn exclusion of him from the throne, and the nomination of Peter, his own infant son by Catharine, as the future emperor. To this solemn act of renunciation Alexis set his hand. Thus far there is nothing to blame in the parent’s conduct, unless it be considered that in the promise of forgiveness, a reservation of his son’s hereditary right was implied. His subsequent conduct was severe, if not faithless. Not content with what had been done, Peter determined to extract from Alexis a full confession of the plans which he had entertained, and of the names of his advisers. For near five months the wretched young man was harassed by constant interrogatories, in his replies to which considerable prevarication took place. It was on the ground of this prevarication that, in July, 1718, the Czar determined to bring his son to trial. By the laws of Russia a father had power of life or death over his child, and the Czar absolute power over the lives of his subjects. Waving these rights, however, if such oppressive privileges deserve the name, he submitted the question to an assembly of the chief personages of the realm; and the document which he addressed to them on this occasion bears strong evidence to the honesty of his purpose, unfeeling as that purpose must appear. On July 5, that assembly unanimously pronounced Alexis worthy of death, and on the next day but one Alexis died. The manner of his death will never probably be entirely cleared up. Rumour of course attributed it to violence; but there are many circumstances which render this improbable. One argument against it is to be found in the character of Peter himself, who would hardly have hesitated to act this tragedy in the face of the world, had he thought it necessary to act it at all. Why he should have incurred the guilt of an action scarce one degree removed from midnight murder, when the object might have been effected by legal means, and the odium was already incurred, it is not easy to say. He courted publicity for his conduct, and submitted himself to the judgment of Europe, by causing the whole trial to be translated into several languages, and printed. His own statement intimates that he had not intended to enforce the sentence; and proceeds to say that on July 6, Alexis, after having heard the judgment read, was seized by fits resembling apoplexy, and died the following day; having seen his father and received his forgiveness, together with the last rites of the Greek religion. This is the less improbable, because intemperance had injured the prince’s constitution, and a tendency to fits was hereditary in the family.

If our sketch of the latter years of Peter’s life appear meagre and unsatisfactory, it is to be recollected that the history of that life is the history of a great empire, which it would be vain to condense within our limits, were they greater than they are. Results are all that we are competent to deal with. From the peace of Nieustadt, the exertions of Peter, still unremitting, were directed more to consolidate and improve the internal condition of the empire, by watching over the changes which he had already made, than to effect farther conquests, or new revolutions in policy or manners. He died February 8, 1725, leaving no surviving male issue. Sometime before, he had caused the Empress Catharine to be solemnly crowned and associated with him on the throne, and to her he left the charge of fostering those schemes of civilization which he had originated.

Of the numerous works which treat wholly or in part of the history of Peter the Great, that of Voltaire, not the most trustworthy, is probably the most widely known. Fuller information will be found in the ‘Journal de Pierre le Grand, ecrit par lui-même;’ in the memoirs published under the name of Nestesuranoi, and the Anecdotes of M. Stæhlin. For English works, we may refer to Tooke’s History of Russia, and the ‘Life of Peter,’ in the Family Library.

END OF VOL. II.