To the north is the province of Revel and Esthonia, also conquered from the Swedes by Peter. The Gulf of Finland borders Esthonia; and here at this junction of the Neva and Lake Ladoga is the city of Petersburg, the youngest and the fairest of the cities of the empire, built by Peter in spite of a mass of obstacles. Northward, again, is Archangel, which the English discovered in 1533, with the result that the commerce fell entirely into their hands and those of the Dutch. On the west of Archangel is Russian Lapland. Then, ascending the Dwina from the coast, we arrive at the territories of Moscow, long the centre of the empire. A century ago Moscow was without the ordinary amenities of civilisation, though it could display an Oriental profusion on state occasions.
West of Moscow is Smolensk, recovered from the Poles by Peter's father Alexis. Between Petersburg and Smolensk is Novgorod; south of Smolensk is Kiev or Little Russia; and Red Russia, or the Ukraine, watered by the Dnieper, the Borysthenes of the Greeks--the country of the Cossacks. Between the Dnieper and the Don northwards is Belgorod; then Nischgorod, then Astrakan, the march of Asia and Europe with Kazan, recovered from the Tartar empire of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane by Ivan Vasilovitch. Siberia is peopled by Samoeides and Ostiaks, and its southern regions by hordes of Tartars--like the Turks and Mongols, descendants of the ancient Scythians. At the limit of Siberia is Kamschatka.
Throughout this vast but thinly populated empire the manners and customs are Asiatic rather than European. As the Janissaries control the Turkish government, so the Strelitz Guards used to dispose of the throne. Christianity was not established till late in the tenth century, in the Greek form, and liberated from the control of the Greek Patriarch, a subject of the Grand Turk, in 1588.
Before Peter's day, Russia had neither the power, the cultivated territories, the subjects, nor the revenues which she now enjoys. She had no foothold in Livonia or Finland, little or no control over the Cossacks or in Astrakan. The White, Black, Baltic, and Caspian seas were of no use to a nation which had not even a name for a fleet. She had to place herself on a level with the cultivated nations, though she was without knowledge of the science of war by land or sea, and almost of the rudiments of manufacture and agriculture, to say nothing of the fine arts. Her sons were even forbidden to learn by travel; she seemed to have condemned herself to eternal ignorance. Then Peter was born, and Russia was created.
II.--At the School of Europe
It was owing to a series of dynastic revolutions and usurpations that young Michael Romanoff, Peter's grandfather, was chosen Tsar at the age of fifteen, in 1613. He was succeeded in 1645 by his son, Alexis Michaelovitch. Alexis, in his wars with Poland, recovered from her Smolensk, Kiev, and the Ukraine. He waged war with the Turk in aid of Poland, introduced manufactures, and codified the laws, proving himself a worthy sire for Peter the Great; but he died in 1677 too soon--he was but forty-six--to complete the work he had begun. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Feodor. There was a second, Ivan; and Peter, not five years old, the child of his second marriage. Dying five years later, Feodor named Peter his successor. An elder sister, Sophia, intrigued to place the incapable Ivan on the throne instead, as her own puppet, by the aid of the turbulent Strelitz Guard. After a series of murders, the Strelitz proclaimed Ivan and Peter joint sovereigns, associating Sophia with them as co-regent.
Sophia ruled with the aid of an able minister, Gallitzin. But she formed a conspiracy against Peter, who, however, made his escape, rallied his supporters, crushed the conspiracy, and secured his position as Autocrat of the Russias, being then in his seventeenth year (1689).
Peter not only set himself to repair his neglected education by the study of German and Dutch, and an instinctive horror of water by resolutely plunging himself into it; he developed an immediate interest in boats and shipping, and promptly set about organising a disciplined force, destined for use against the Strelitz. The nucleus was his personal regiment, called the Preobazinsky. He had already a corps of foreigners, under the command of a Scot named Gordon. Another foreigner, Le Fort, on whom he relied, raised and disciplined another corps, and was made admiral of the infant fleet which he began to construct on the Don for use against the Crim Tartars.
His first political measure was to effect a treaty with China, his next an expedition for the subjugation of the Tartars of Azov. Gordon and Le Fort, with their two corps and other forces, marched on Azov in 1695. Peter accompanied, but did not command, the army. Unsuccessful at first, his purpose was effected in 1696; Azov was conquered, and a fleet placed on its sea. He celebrated a triumph in Roman fashion at Moscow; and then, not content with despatching a number of young men to Italy and elsewhere to collect knowledge, he started on his travels himself.
As one of the suite of an embassy he passed through Livonia and Germany till he arrived at Amsterdam, where he worked as a hand at shipbuilding. He also studied surgery at this time, and incidentally paid a visit to William of Orange at The Hague. Early next year he visited England, formally, lodging at Deptford, and continuing his training in naval construction. Thence, and from Holland, he collected mathematicians, engineers, and skilled workmen. Finally, he returned to Russia by way of Vienna, to establish satisfactory relations with the emperor, his natural and necessary ally against the Turk.