Not infrequently the Norse passed through Russia to the great metropolis of the eastern world (whence Russia had received her faith), New Rome, or Constantinople itself. So much were they impressed by that splendid city that they knew it as Micklegarth. The stalwart arms of the Norsemen, organised in the Vaeringian Guard, propped the Byzantine Empire against its Asian foes and gained for the Scandinavians much wealth. Among others the founder of Oslo (p. [95]) had in that realm gotten enormous riches. "But when Harald came to Holmgarth, King Jarisleif gave him a wondrous good welcome, and there he tarried the winter over, and took into his own keeping all the gold which he had sent afore thither from Micklegarth, and many kinds of dear-goods. That was so mickle wealth, that no man in northern lands had seen such in one man's owning. Harald had three times come into palace-spoil whiles he was in Micklegarth. For that is law, that whenever the king of the Greeks dies the Vaerings shall have palace-spoil; they shall then go over all the king's palaces where are his wealth hoards, and there each one shall freely have for his own whatso he may lay hands on."[138]
Strangely similar, both in weakness and in strength, were Alexander and Peter, both of them most justly surnamed Great. Each was born to a kingdom, each had marvellous foresight and each had imperial ideas. Semi-barbarous sceptres they both inherited, and they realised how much might be done by importing the civilisation of sea-powers further west; each was a worker with his own hands, each cared much for the science and art of his generation, but neither was superior to amusements of the grossest and pastimes of the beastliest. Both drank themselves into the other world at an untimely age, leaving their work half done.
Each is commemorated by a city placed on the sea with the express purpose of attracting foreign influence, beyond the ancient limits of the country whose capital it became. More attractive in some ways the career of the Ptolemaic successors of Alexander at Alexandria than that of the immediate Romanoff descendants of Peter at Petersburg, but the story of an ancient nation ruled from a corner of its territory by a half foreign court is in both cases very much the same.
Many of the capitals of Europe know at least traditional founders, but on none is impressed the stamp of an individual to such an extent as here. No city on earth of anything like equal importance is so entirely the creation of a single mind, nor so truly a monument to individual force of character. No capital except Tokyo is to such an extent the symbol of a new era in a nation's life.
Peter heard the call of Europe and saw that it had something to offer that Asia could not give. Asiatics have felt a strange attraction toward European lands in all the ages of the world. Persian, Hun, Saracen and Turk have each in turn sought a footing on European soil. Despite administrative inconvenience the successive rulers of the House of Othman early desired to have as their capital some city famous in the story of the West. Peter's people were not Asiatics; their early organisation had come from the purest European stock, the conquering Norse themselves, their civilisation and religion had come straight from Rome. Not indeed old Rome on the Tiber, but during the tenth century the daughter city by the Bosphorus was probably the more cultured of the two.
On the border-land of the continents the Russians had for centuries looked east and not west, the very year of Peter's accession to power (1689) they had fixed their first frontier with China. He desired that Russia should be definitely European, and in order to consolidate his reforms a westward-looking window was essential. Its communications must be by sea, Poland shut out direct intercourse with Europe overland. Southward was the better climate, but a Black Sea port would have increased relations with a purely Oriental Empire. At the farthest end of the icy Baltic, where the Neva flows into the Gulf of Finland, as near to ancient Novgorod as a seaside town could be, there eventually he decided the new capital of Russia should stand.
From a glance at the map it is difficult to realise why no town had risen in so convenient a spot long before, but it is at once explained by a glance at the ground. Swampy forest, liable to floods and dangerous to health, extended over all the land where the City of Peter was to rise. The island that became the nucleus of the settlement had received a name from its hares. A few Finnish fishers, alone among mankind, broke the silence of its woods. The noble river communicates with little except timber forests, and wood is to-day brought down to Petersburg in temporary boats remarkable for their size, their frailty, and their graceful appearance.
The difficulties in the way of founding a city in such a spot were such as might well have appalled any ordinary mind. The site had but a few years before belonged to the Swedes, who maintained a small fort on the edge of Ladoga, the lake which the Neva drains. They were constantly making attacks; Charles XII. remarked that Peter was founding cities only that he might capture them. Petersburg might well have anticipated the fate of Port Arthur.
The wretched conditions in which operations had to be carried on brought about an appalling mortality among the workmen employed in building the new town, however much exaggerated may have been the foreign reports that two hundred thousand died. The mechanical appliances available were so extraordinarily poor that earth had to be carried by each workman as best he could; there was no one about who could construct a wheelbarrow! Brigands made communications with Russia unsafe and sometimes did as they pleased in the city itself, while sentries on duty or citizens going about their business were occasionally carried off by the wolves. Provisions had to be fetched from an enormous distance, the cost of living was extremely high. Though the woods were all around, fuel was so scarce that even the nobles (who most unwillingly had been compelled to live here for part of the year) were not allowed to have hot baths excepting once a week.