Such a city, in such a situation, should have taken years to build. Peter wished to have it done in months, and he pushed the labor with little regard for its cost in life and treasure. Men were brought from all sections of Russia and put to work. Disease broke out among them, engendered by the dampness of the soil; but the work went on. Floods came and covered the island, drowning some of the sick in their beds; but there was no alleviation. History tells us that Swedish prisoners were employed, and that they died by thousands. Death, in Peter's eyes, was only an unpleasant incident, and new workmen were brought in multitudes, many of them to perish in their turn. It has been said that the building of the city cost two hundred thousand lives. This is, no doubt, an exaggeration, but it indicates a frightful mortality. But the feverish impatience of the czar told in results, and by 1714 the city possessed over thirty-four thousand buildings, with inhabitants in proportion.
The floods came and played their part in the work of death. In that of 1706, Peter measured water twenty-one inches deep on the floor of his hut. He thought it "extremely amusing" as men, women, and children were swept past his windows on floating wreckage down the stream. What the people themselves thought of it history does not say.
SLEIGHING IN RUSSIA.
As yet Peter had no design of making St. Petersburg the capital of his empire. That conception seems not to have come to him until after the crushing defeat of the Swedish monarch Charles XII. at the battle of Pultowa. And indeed it was not until 1817 that it was made the capital. It was the fifth Russian capital, its predecessors in that honor having been Novgorod, Kief, Vladimir, and Moscow.
To add a commercial quarter to the new city, Peter chose the island of Vasily Ostrof,—the Finnish "Island of Buffaloes,"—where a town was laid out in the Dutch fashion, with canals for streets. This island is still the business centre of the city, though the canals have long since disappeared. The streets of St. Petersburg for many years continued unpaved, notwithstanding the marshy character of the soil, and in the early days boats replaced carriages for travel and traffic.
The work of building the new capital was not confined to the czar. The nobles were obliged to build palaces in it,—very much to their chagrin. They hated St. Petersburg as cordially as Peter hated Moscow. They already had large and elegant mansions in the latter city, and had little relish for building new ones in this desert capital, four hundred miles to the north. But the word of the czar was law, and none dared say him nay. Every proprietor whose estate held five hundred serfs was ordered to build a stone house of two stories in the new city. Those of greater wealth had to build more pretentious edifices. Peter's own taste in architecture was not good. He loved low and small rooms. None of his palaces were fine buildings. In building the Winter Palace, whose stories were made high enough to conform to others on the street, he had double ceilings put in his special rooms, so as to reduce their height.
The city under way, the question of its defence became prominent. The Swedes, the mortal enemies of the czar, looked with little favor on this new project, and their prowling vessels in the gulf seemed to threaten it with attack. Peter made vigorous efforts to prepare for defence. Ship-building went on briskly on the Svir River, between Lakes Ladoga and Onega, and the vessels were got down as quickly as possible into the Neva. Peter himself explored and measured the depth of water in the Gulf of Finland. Here, some twenty miles from the city, lay the island of Cronslot, seven miles long, and in the narrowest part of the gulf. The northern channel past this island proved too shallow to be a source of danger. The southern channel was navigable, and this the czar determined to fortify.
A fort was begun in the water near the island's shores, stone being sunk for its foundation. Work on it was pressed with the greatest energy, for fear of an attack by the Swedish fleet, and it was completed before the winter's end. With the idea of making this his commercial port, Peter had many stone warehouses built on the island, most of which soon fell into decay for want of use. But to-day Cronstadt, as the new town and fortress were called, is the greatest naval station and one of the most flourishing commercial cities in Russia, while its fortifications protect the capital from dangers of assault.
In those early days, however, St. Petersburg was designed to be the centre of commerce, and Peter took what means he could to entice merchant vessels to his new city. The first to appear—coming almost by accident—was of Dutch build. It arrived in November, 1703, and Peter himself served as pilot to bring it up to the town. Great was the astonishment of the skipper, on being afterwards presented to the czar, to recognize in him his late pilot. And Peter's delight was equally great on learning that the ship had been freighted by Cornelis Calf, one of his old Zaandam friends. The skipper was feasted to his heart's content and presented with five hundred ducats, while each sailor received thirty thalers, and the ship was renamed the St. Petersburg. Two other ships appeared the same year, one Dutch and one English, and their skippers and crews received the same reward. These pioneer vessels were exempted forever from all tolls and dues at that port.