PETER THE GREAT, CZAR OF RUSSIA.
By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
[Creator of the modern Russian empire, born 1672; died 1725. Shortly after assuming the throne of a nation of barbarians, and vigorously repressing internal disturbances, he began that series of reforms by which he hoped to civilize his people. He spent seventeen months traveling and studying the arts and sciences, which had made other nations great. On returning to Russia he enforced many revolutionary changes with the strictness of a despot, and introduced institutions before unknown to Russia. He built St. Petersburg in the marshes at the mouth of the Neva, and displayed extraordinary energy in recasting the whole military and civil polity of the nation. He displayed marked ability as a soldier in his wars with his neighbors, but his genius shone most brightly in civil administration, though he never ceased to be a barbarian and the sternest of despots.]
Our ancestors were not a little surprised to learn that a young barbarian, who had, at seventeen years of age, become the autocrat of the immense region stretching from the confines of Sweden to those of China, and whose education had been inferior to that of an English farmer or shopman, had planned gigantic improvements, had learned enough of some languages of Western Europe to enable him to communicate with civilized men, had begun to surround himself with able adventurers from various parts of the world, had sent many of his young subjects to study languages, arts, and sciences in foreign cities, and finally had determined to travel as a private man, and to discover, by personal observation, the secret of the immense prosperity and power enjoyed by some communities whose whole territory was far less than the hundredth part of his dominions.
It might have been expected that France would have been the first object of his curiosity. For the grace and dignity of the French Court, the splendor of the French Court, the discipline of the French armies, and the genius and learning of the French writers, were then renowned all over the world. But the Czar’s mind had early taken a strange ply which it retained to the last. His empire was of all empires the least capable of being made a great naval power. The Swedish provinces lay between his states and the Baltic. The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles lay between his states and the Mediterranean. He had access to the ocean only in a latitude in which navigation is, during a great part of every year, perilous and difficult. On the ocean he had only a single port, Archangel; and the whole shipping of Archangel was foreign. There did not exist a Russian vessel larger than a fishing boat. Yet, from some cause which can not now be traced, he had a taste for maritime pursuits which amounted to a passion, indeed almost to a monomania. His imagination was full of sails, yardarms, and rudders. That large mind, equal to the highest duties of the general and the statesman, contracted itself to the most minute details of naval architecture and naval discipline.
The chief ambition of the great conqueror and legislator was to be a good boatswain and a good ship’s carpenter. Holland and England therefore had for him an attraction which was wanting to the galleries and terraces of Versailles. He repaired to Amsterdam, took a lodging in the dockyard, assumed the garb of a pilot, put down his name on the list of workmen, wielded with his own hand the caulking iron and the mallet, fixed the pumps, and twisted the ropes. Ambassadors who came to pay their respects to him were forced, much against their will, to clamber up the rigging of a man-of-war, and found him enthroned on the cross-trees.
Such was the prince whom the populace of London now crowded to behold. His stately form, his intellectual forehead, his piercing black eye, his Tartar nose and mouth, his gracious smile, his frown black with all the stormy rage and hate of a barbarian tyrant, and above all a strange nervous convulsion which sometimes transformed his countenance, during a few moments, into an object on which it was impossible to look without terror, the immense quantities of meat which he devoured, the pints of brandy which he swallowed, and which, it was said, he had carefully distilled with his own hands, the fool who jabbered at his feet, the monkey which grinned at the back of his chair, were, during some weeks, popular topics of conversation. He meanwhile shunned the public gaze with a haughty shyness which inflamed curiosity. He went to a play; but as soon as he perceived that pit, boxes, and gallery were staring, not at the stage, but at him, he retired to a back bench where he was screened from observation by his attendants. He was desirous to see a sitting of the House of Lords; but, as he was determined not to be seen, he was forced to climb up to the leads, and to peep through a small window. He heard with great interest the royal assent given to a bill for raising fifteen hundred thousand pounds by land-tax, and learned with amazement that this sum, though larger by one half than the whole revenue which he could wring from the population of the immense empire of which he was absolute master, was but a small part of what the Commons of England voluntarily granted every year to their constitutional king.
William judiciously humored the whims of his illustrious guest, and stole to Norfolk Street so quietly that nobody in the neighborhood recognized his Majesty in the thin gentleman who got out of the modest-looking coach at the czar’s lodgings. The czar returned the visit with the same precautions, and was admitted into Kensington House by a back door. It was afterward known that he took no notice of the fine pictures with which the palace was adorned. But over the chimney of the royal sitting-room was a plate which, by an ingenious machinery, indicated the direction of the wind, and with this plate he was in raptures.
He soon became weary of his residence. He found that he was too far from the objects of his curiosity, and too near to the crowds to which he was himself an object of curiosity. He accordingly removed to Deptford, and was there lodged in the house of John Evelyn, a house which had long been a favorite resort of men of letters, men of taste, and men of science. Here Peter gave himself up to his favorite pursuits. He navigated a yacht every day up and down the river. His apartment was crowded with models of three-deckers and two-deckers, frigates, sloops, and fire-ships. The only Englishman of rank in whose society he seemed to take much pleasure was the eccentric Caermarthen, whose passion for the sea bore some resemblance to his own, and who was very competent to give an opinion about every part of a ship from the stem to the stern. Caermarthen, indeed, became so great a favorite that he prevailed on the czar to consent to the admission of a limited quantity of tobacco into Russia. There was reason to apprehend that the Russian clergy would cry out against any relaxation of the ancient rule, and would strenuously maintain that the practice of smoking was condemned by that text which declares that man is defiled, not by those things which enter in at the mouth, but by those things which proceed out of it. This apprehension was expressed by a deputation of merchants who were admitted to an audience of the czar; but they were reassured by the air with which he told them that he knew how to keep priests in order.
He was indeed so free from any bigoted attachment to the religion in which he had been brought up that both Papists and Protestants hoped at different times to make him a proselyte. Burnet, commissioned by his brethren, and impelled, no doubt, by his own restless curiosity and love of meddling, repaired to Deptford and was honored with several audiences. The czar could not be persuaded to exhibit himself at St. Paul’s, but he was induced to visit Lambeth Palace. There he saw the ceremony of ordination performed, and expressed warm approbation of the Anglican ritual. Nothing in England astonished him so much as the archiepiscopal library. It was the first good collection of books that he had seen; and he declared that he had never imagined that there were so many printed volumes in the world.