“Victrices copias aliam laturus in orbem.”—Lucan.
CHAPTER I
THE Czar Peter listened in silence to the news from Poland; he had appeared lately to have forgotten the war, and to have become entirely absorbed in the building of his new city and fort on the mud-banks of the Neva.
Anxious to break the spirit of the Malo-Russians who had shown themselves restive under his autocratic rule, he had transported thousands of these men whose forced labor was draining the morass as a preliminary to the foundations of the new city.
That hundreds of them died through the unhealthfulness of the district and the hard conditions of their life was nothing to the Czar.
He had decided that the new capital was to be called St Petersburg, and that the great fortress therein was to be named St. Peter and St. Paul and used for the burial-place of the Czars of Russia, instead of the church of St Michael in Moscow.
When General Patkul joined his master at the little house called Marli, he found, to his great disappointment, that Peter exhibited a moody indifference with regard to the war and the astonishing conquests of Karl XII.
He was now often in his carpenter’s shed dressed like a Dutch skipper, and working with his hands.
“Karl could not do this,” he said one day to Patkul, who was surveying his occupation with some dismay.
“Do what, sire?” asked the Livonian.