The ascendancy of France, 1598-1715

by Henry Offley Wakeman

Such was the condition of Russia when the Czar Alexis died suddenly in 1676, leaving behind him by his first marriage two sons, Theodore and Ivan, both extremely delicate in health; and one sturdy little boy of four years of age, named Peter, by his second wife Natalia Naryshkin, whom he had married in 1669. The death of Alexis was the signal for the outbreak of a series of palace revolutions, which afflicted the unfortunate country for some years. Recognition of Peter as Czar, 1682. The Naryshkins, who had absorbed all places of profit and influence during the later years of Alexis, were banished at the accession of Theodore in 1676, but on the death of that prince without children in 1682 they came back to power, and with the assistance of the boyárs were able to procure the recognition of the young Peter as Czar, in exclusion of his elder brother Ivan, who was physically deformed and intellectually incapable. An act so high-handed naturally created many enemies. Revolt of the Streltsi. The opposition party among the nobles called in the aid of the Streltsi, espoused their grievances, fanned their discontent, and, persuading them that the life of Ivan was in danger hurled them suddenly in riotous fury against the palace, in May 1682. The Naryshkins were murdered. Ivan was proclaimed Czar in company with his brother Peter, and the princess Sophia, the most capable of his sisters, was made regent during the infancy of the Czars. The regency lasted for seven years. Regency of Sophia. During that time the real power was in the hands of prince Basil Golitsin, the head of one of the oldest of the noble families of Russia, and the acknowledged lover of the princess Sophia. His talent however proved unequal to his opportunities. In 1686 a definitive peace with Poland, called the treaty of Eternal Peace, put a finishing touch to the truce brought about by the treaty of Andrusoff in 1667, on terms which secured the important town of Kief to Russia, but obliged her to join the Emperor and the Poles in their efforts to beat back the Ottoman Turks. In consequence of this pledge, Golitsin waged two campaigns against the Tartars of the Crimea, who were subjects of the Porte, in 1687 and 1689, the unsuccessful issue of which filled up to overflowing the cup of hatred which was preparing for him. Peter allowed himself to be put at the head of the opposition. On September 17th, 1689, the regency came to an end. The princess Sophia was sent to a convent, prince Basil Golitsin banished to an obscure village in the inaccessible north, and the government fell into the hands of the rival aristocratic faction.

Peter becomes the head of the government, 1689.

At the age of seventeen, in the year when William III. made himself master of Great Britain, and the war of the league of Augsburg really began, Peter the Great became nominally the head of the government of Russia. In reality he exercised but little influence upon the fortunes of his country for some years. He was as yet but a boy, brimming over with health and spirits, exulting in the physical enjoyment of life, supremely happy when he could get away from the wearisome routine of the palace to his forge and his carpenter’s shop, or his ship-building yards at Pereyaslavl and Archangel. The demon of ambition had not yet waked in his breast, and his ships and his military sham fights, like his displays of fireworks and his theatricals, were the amusements of a spoilt child’s fancy, rather than the materials of a man’s policy. War with the Turks, 1695. The rude touch of actual war quickly brought about a change. In 1695 the government determined to revive the slumbering war with the Turks, and attack the port of Azof on the Black Sea. Peter threw himself into the scheme with characteristic impetuosity, worked as a bombardier in the army like a common soldier, and took his place as Czar in the councils of the generals. But the result was unfortunate. Partly through sheer bad management, partly through the inexperience and impulsiveness of the Czar, the attack on the fortress completely failed, and the Russian army had to retreat as best it could across the frozen steppes amid great privations. But Peter was one of those who learn best by experience. The campaign taught him the necessity of forethought and preparation. Next year all was different. A flotilla of boats, constructed especially for the river service at Voronezh, occupied the mouths of the Don under Peter’s own orders, and prevented the Turks from relieving Azof from the sea; while the engineering works on land were pushed on by General Gordon. On July 29th 1696 a general assault was ordered, but the Turks seeing that the town was no longer tenable surrendered, and Peter found himself to his great joy the master of a port on the Black Sea. The capture of Azof is the turning-point in the life of Peter the Great. His imagination was fired by the opportunities opened out to his country by the possession of an outlet for her commerce and a harbour for her fleet in southern waters. The death of his brother Ivan without male heirs in February left him undisputed master of his vast dominions. From that moment he bent all the energies of his powerful intellect and iron will to the service of Russia. He took the reins of government into his own hands, and, without regard to precedent, to tradition, to public or private right, he drove the chariot of the state straight towards the goal of his own ambition, and his country’s greatness.

Character of Peter the Great.

Peter himself was well fitted to become the hero of such a policy. His friendship with Gordon and Lefort and others of the foreign residents at Moscow had taught him how far Russia lagged behind all other European countries in the march of civilisation. His quick wit showed him that he must organise his country on the European model, and make it formidable by its army and navy to its enemies, and useful by its resources to its friends, before it could be admitted into the brotherhood of European nations. To change the institutions and overthrow the traditions of a country like Russia was a revolution, but Peter was not the man to shrink back appalled at the consequences, when he had once made up his mind to act. Sunny, jovial and open-hearted under ordinary circumstances, in the presence of opposition, when his blood was up, he became a fiend incarnate. No savage could be more cruel, no tyrant more brutal, no criminal more lustful and drunken. He knew not what it was to accept a rebuff, or deny himself a desire. To incur his suspicion was torture, to thwart his will was death. After the revolt of the Streltsi in 1698 more than a thousand men were put to death and eighteen hundred tortured by the knout and roasted at the fire, many of them in the presence of the Czar himself. He allowed his eldest son Alexis to be knouted to death in 1718, and personally superintended the torture of many of his alleged accomplices. His drunken orgies lasted for days, and were worthy only of Comus and his crew. Yet with all this hateful savagery there was much that was attractive about Peter. When free from his fits of depression, there was a buoyancy and vivacity of intellect, which, combined with singular simplicity of thought, made him a most delightful companion. No one could be a truer friend, if no one could be a more brutal enemy. He was perfectly natural. If there was much of the barbarian about him, there was nothing of the schemer. He was free from the civilised vices of deceit and double dealing. Rough, honest, and quick-tempered, he moved through society like a lion cub among pet dogs, dangerous but noble.

Objects of his home government.

His two years of foreign travel enabled him to see with his own eyes the advantages of European civilisation and government, and to learn how to make with his own hands the ships which were to spread the greatness of the Russian name round the shores of the Black Sea. Neither lesson was thrown away. Directly he got back to Russia he began to foster everything western at the expense of everything national. He introduced western dress, western habits, western dancing, and even western shaving. He encouraged the settlement of foreigners, and spent a good deal of his time in the German suburb of Moscow with his foreign friends. Directly he obtained possession of the mouth of the Neva, he built his new capital S. Petersburg, to take the place of conservative and traditional Moscow, as the centre of his new polity. At the same time he took good care to make the foundations of his government secure. The revolt of the Streltsi in 1698 gave him the opportunity of abolishing a force, which was too much mixed up with the old aristocracy of Russia ever to be really loyal to the new regime, and to replace them by a professional army trained on the European model under foreign officers. He tried as much as possible to depress the power of the boyárs, surrounding himself with friends and ministers like Menschikoff, who were drawn from a lower class of society. So successful was this policy that in 1711 he felt himself able to bring the political power of the boyárs to an end by forbidding their council to meet any longer. With a similar object he refused to nominate a successor to the patriarch Adrian on his death in 1700, but placed the powers of the patriarchate in the hands of a commission, afterwards called the Holy Governing Synod, which brought the affairs of the Church more definitely under his own control.

His foreign policy.

While Peter was thus engaged in winding the chains of despotism more tightly round the necks of his subjects at home, he was equally busy in trying to extend the frontiers of Russia to the sea, at the expense of his neighbours abroad. No one could doubt that the first essential of the due development of Russia was to obtain a footing upon the Baltic. The port of Archangel on the frozen White Sea, and the port of Azof on the Black Sea, closed as it was to the trade of the Mediterranean by the straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles in the hands of the Turks, were not sufficient to enable Russia to expand into a commercial nation. But since the treaties of Stolbovo and Kardis, renewed as late as 1684 by the princess Sophia, Russia had acquiesced in the annexation of the Baltic lands by Sweden, and it was certain that Sweden would not tamely surrender her treaty rights. But in the year 1697 an opportunity offered, which was too tempting for Peter’s slender stock of virtue to resist. Coalition against Sweden, 1699. Charles XI. of Sweden died, leaving as his heir and successor his youthful son Charles XII., only fifteen years of age. Patkul, a nobleman of Livonia, who was eager to restore the independence of his country, applied to Denmark, Poland, and Russia, the hereditary enemies of Sweden, for assistance. Each power, thinking only of its own aggrandisement, caught willingly at the chance of crushing Sweden when she was weak, and in 1699 this nefarious alliance was concluded, in which the independence of Livonia was used merely to cloak a policy of pure aggression.

Defeat of the allies by Charles XII.