Peter profited by these circumstances to discipline his troops, and to acquire, if possible, the empire of the Black Sea. General Gordon marched along the Don towards Azov, with his regiment of five thousand men; he was followed by General Lefort, with his regiment of twelve thousand; by a body of strelitz, under the command of Sheremetrev and Schein, officers of Prussian extraction; by a body of Cossacks, and a large train of artillery. In short everything was ready for this grand expedition (1694). The Russian army began its march under the command of Marshal Sheremetrev; in the beginning of the summer of 1695, in order to attack the town of Azov, situated at the mouth of the Don. The czar was with the troops, but appeared only as a volunteer, being desirous to learn before he would take upon him to command. During their march they stormed two forts which the Turks had erected on the banks of the river.
This was an arduous enterprise, Azov being very strong and defended by a numerous garrison. The czar had employed several Venetians in building long-boats like the Turkish saicks, which, together with two Dutch frigates, were to fall down the Voroneje; but not being ready in time, they could not get into the sea of Azov. All beginnings are difficult. The Russians, having never as yet made a regular siege, miscarried in this their first attempt.
A native of Dantzic, whose name was Jacob, had the direction of the artillery under the command of General Schein; for as yet they had none but foreign officers belonging to the train, and indeed none but foreign engineers and foreign pilots. This Jacob had been condemned to the rods by Schein, the Prussian general. It seemed as if these severities were necessary at that time in support of authority. The Russians submitted to such treatment, notwithstanding their disposition to mutiny; and after they had undergone that corporal punishment, they continued in the service as usual. This Dantziker was of another way of thinking, and determined to be revenged; whereupon he spiked the cannon, deserted to the enemy, turned Mohammedan, and defended the town with great success. The besiegers made a vain attempt to storm it, and after losing a great number of men, were obliged to raise the siege.
[1696 A.D.]
Perseverance in his undertakings was the characteristic of Peter the Great. In the spring of 1696 he marched a second time to attack the town of Azov with a more considerable army. The most agreeable part of the czar’s success was that of his little fleet, which he had the pleasure to see completely equipped and properly commanded. It beat the Turkish saicks that had been sent from Constantinople, and took some of them. The siege was carried on regularly, though not entirely after the English manner. The trenches were three times deeper than the English, and the parapets were as high as ramparts. At length the garrison surrendered, the 28th of July, 1696, without obtaining any of the honours of war; they were likewise obliged to deliver up the traitor Jacob to the besiegers.
The czar immediately began to improve the fortifications of Azov. He likewise ordered a harbour to be dug, capable of holding large vessels, with a design to make himself master of the straits of Caffa, which open the passage into the Black Sea. He left two-and-thirty armed saicks before Azov, and made all the preparations for fitting out a strong fleet against the Turks, which was to consist of nine sixty-gun ships, and of one-and-forty carrying from thirty to fifty pieces of cannon. The principal nobility and the wealthiest merchants were obliged to contribute to the fitting out of this fleet; and, as he thought that the estates of the clergy ought to bear a proportion in the service of the common cause, orders were issued that the patriarch, the bishops, and the superior clergy should find money to forward this new expedition, in honour of their country, and for the general advantage of Christendom. He likewise obliged the Cossacks to build a number of light boats, such as they use themselves, with which they might easily infest the whole coast of the Crimea. The scheme was to drive the Tatars and Turks forever out of the Crimea, and afterwards to establish a free and easy commerce with Persia, through Georgia. This is the very branch of trade which the Greeks formerly carried on to Colchis, and to this peninsula of the Crimea, which the czar seemed likely to subdue.
Before Peter left the Crimea he repudiated his wife Eudoxia, and ordered her to be sent to a convent, where, before his return to Moscow, she became a nun, under the name of Helena. She had long made herself distasteful to her husband by her querulous jealousy, for which, indeed, she had ample cause, and by her aversion to his foreign favourites and the arts they introduced.
After his successful campaign against the Turks and Tatars, Peter wished to accustom his people to splendid shows, as well as to military toil. With this view, he made his army enter Moscow under triumphal arches, in the midst of fireworks and other tokens of rejoicing. The soldiers who had fought on board the Venetian saicks against the Turks led the procession. Marshal Sheremetrev, generals Gordon and Schein, Admiral Lefort, and the other general officers, took precedence of their sovereign, who pretended he had no rank in the army, being desirous to convince the nobility by his example that merit ought to be the only road to military preferment.
This triumphal entry seemed, in some measure, to resemble those of the ancient Romans, especially in that as the triumphers exposed the captives to public view in the streets of Rome, and sometimes put them to death, so the slaves taken in this expedition followed the army; and Jacob, who had betrayed them the year before, was carried in a cart, with the gibbet, to which he was fastened after he had been broken upon the wheel.