Was it not God who had implanted in his heart the desire to learn? At sixteen he scarcely knew how to write; and could only do addition and subtraction sums with the greatest difficulty. But even then he already felt what afterwards he so clearly realised. “The salvation of Russia lies in knowledge. All other nations have adopted the policy of keeping Russia in ignorance and have prevented her acquiring knowledge, especially in military affairs, lest she should realise her own powers.” He decided to go abroad himself and learn. When this decision was known in Moscow, the Patriarch, Boyars, Tsaritsas and Princesses came to him, laid his son Alexis at his feet, wept, and with foreheads bowed to the floor implored him not to go to school to the foreigners; for the like had never happened in Russia before. The people too wept, and saw him off as if to his death. And yet he went, and something unheard of happened; the Tsar took into his hands and wielded an axe instead of a sceptre. “My rank is that of a mere scholar, and I need teachers. You cannot buy for money what you do yourself.” And God blessed his labours: a formidable army had been the outcome of his playing at soldiers, with what Sophia contemptuously termed—“grooms and riffraff”; the little toy boats in which he sailed on artificial lakes had led to a victorious fleet. His first contest with the Swedes was the defeat at Narva. “The whole action was like child’s play, without the least approach to military art. And now as I think it over, I consider it a dispensation of God, for when this misfortune befell us, necessity drove us from indolence to hard work, and made us apply ourselves to the study of military art night and day.” The defeat seemed hopeless. Charles XII went about boasting, “whips, and not swords, would have sufficed to have driven the Russian canaille not only from their own country, but out of the world.” If the Lord had not helped him then, surely he would have been lost!
There had been no copper for cannons. Peter melted down church bells. The monks threatened him with God’s punishment. But he knew God was with him. There were no horses; men harnessed themselves and dragged the new artillery “cast in tears.”
All was in a ferment like new wine. Outside the state war; within revolution, a mutiny in Astrakhan and Boulavinsk. Charles crossed the Vistula, the Niemen, and entered Grodno, two hours after Peter left it. Expecting day by day to see the Swedes advance towards Moscow or Petersburg, he reinforced both cities, and prepared them for siege. At the same time he was very ill, so ill that his life was despaired of. Again God intervened. Charles, contrary to all expectations and probabilities, stopped in his course, turned south-west and marched towards Small Russia. The mutiny subsided of itself. “The Lord had wonderfully quenched flame with flame, and showed us anew that all depends not on man’s will but God’s.”
Then came the first victories over the Swedes. At the battle of Lesnoy, having stationed Cossacks and Kalmucks with spears in the rear, he ordered them to mercilessly demolish all deserters, not excepting even the Tsar. They stood the whole day under fire, their ranks remained unbroken, they did not yield an inch; four times the guns became red hot with firing, four times the pouches and cartridges boxes had to be filled with cartridges. “Since I began to serve, I have not witnessed such play. We executed this dance well before the eyes of the hot-headed Charles. Henceforward the Swedes became more manageable.”
Poltava! Never in his whole life did he feel God’s help more than on that day. Again good luck, almost a miracle! On the eve Charles had been wounded by a Cossack’s stray shot. Again, quite at the beginning of the day of battle, a shell struck the king’s litter. The Swedes thinking Charles was killed, confusion ensued in their ranks. Peter looked at the flying Swedes and felt he was lifted on invisible wings; he knew the day of the Poltava battle was the day of Russia’s resurrection, and the radiant sun of that day the sun of the new Russia.
Now the existence of Petersburg is assured; henceforth it will be possible to sleep peacefully in Petersburg. This town, created in defiance of the elements, amid bogs and woods, “grows like a child in beauty,” “it is a holy land, a paradise of God.” Is it not also a great miracle, a sign of God’s favour towards him, which will not pass away but remain visible before the face of the coming generations?
And now, when everything seemed to be accomplished, it all falls. God has withdrawn, and abandoned him? Having granted him victories over external foes He strikes Peter in his very heart, in his own flesh and blood, in his son. His son’s most dreaded allies are not the foreign troops, but the armies of knaves, parasites and extortioners and other worthless folk which swarm in the Empire.
Peter judged how things would go after his death by the way they went during his last absence from Russia, when in the space of a couple of months all had begun to creak and stagger like some old vessel which had struck in a storm.
Enormous corruptions sprang into being. Ukase succeeded ukase in regard to bribery, the last always more severe than the preceding. Nearly every one of them began with the words: “Should any one defy this our last decree,” but it was generally followed up by another containing the same threats and the addition that it was the last.
At times his heart would sink in despair. He felt a terrible impotence. Alone against them all, like a great wild animal bitten to death by gnats and flies.