As for the Tsar Peter, none assuredly would have recognised him at this time for the stripling of Preobrajensky—he who had once been wont to take life no more seriously than as a long holiday, to be spent in playing with pleasure armies and toy fleets, in the drinking of much beer and honey-mead, and in rioting with stable youths, and perhaps also with the other sex of that class.
For see him now the great Autocrat, the genius of a powerful nation, whose incarnate spirit he is; the rival of Charles of Sweden, with whom he will throw at Pultowa for an empire. Great he is to-day, and yet how small! for the taste for debauchery and drunkenness, begun in boyhood, has survived; and when the Tsar is not busy fashioning his empire within and without, upsetting the old Russia and building up the new, showing his greatness here, there, and everywhere, he is buffooning, drinking, revealing all that is small and grotesque in his marvellous character, without shame and without reserve, as though he neither knew nor cared to know what is deemed seemly and expedient in civilised societies.
Yet, though Peter rarely showed the slightest respect for women, his attitude towards Vera was ever most dignified and respectful. He had soon wearied of Avdotia Lapouchine, the Tsaritsa, and had condemned her to take the veil; but though from that time onwards his relations with women had altogether lacked chivalry, an exception was always made in Vera’s favour. As for Mazeppa, I saw him but rarely. And so the years rolled on, until the great day of Pultowa.
Charles of Sweden had marched within a few days’ journey of Moscow, which he might have sacked had he thrown himself immediately against the city; but when about to do so he received a letter from Mazeppa which caused him to sweep round through Batourin in the Ukraine, Mazeppa’s capital, in order to pick up a contingent of fifty thousand lances offered by the Hetman for use against his most faithful and indulgent master, the Tsar.
For Mazeppa had made the fatal mistake of believing that the sun of the Swede was in the ascendant, whereas the light now reddening in the sky was the dawn of Russia’s great day: the day of her New Beginning.
Now Peter, ignorant of Mazeppa’s treachery, had meanwhile sent orders that the Hetman and his fifty thousand men should hold themselves in readiness to join the Russian army at a moment’s notice. Mazeppa replied by letter that he was ill of the gout and unable to move. A second missive on the following day, written by a secretary, explained that the Hetman was dying, and had already received the last offices of the Church. When he had despatched this last letter, Mazeppa left Batourin with as many of his lances as he could persuade that treachery such as his would prove the best policy—about two thousand men. Two thousand dupes out of the promised fifty thousand!
‘Here is thy chance, Chelminsky,’ said Peter the Tsar. ‘Thou hast waited long. Mazeppa is dead or dying; his lances want a leader: Menshikof shall ride with thy Cossacks, and thou shalt be Hetman of the Ukraine.’
But I was devoted by this time to my own Cossacks, and preferred to remain by the Tsar’s side.
‘Let me wait and see these Ukraine Cossacks—what Mazeppa has made of them,’ said I. ‘Better my own, who are used to me, than his, Tsar, when it comes to fighting! In any case, I will have only thee for master, whether there or here!’
But when Peter with his army reached Batourin, he found that the old fox had left his hole.