but, so far as Moscow is concerned, his coming would be more truthfully regarded as of the nature of an eclipse than as the harbinger of light. Probably his reputation is due to the prominence of his person in western Europe—where it is customary to mistake renown for greatness—rather than his achievements.
Peter forsook Moscow, left her to the Church, which he served badly—and to her citizens, whom he treated even worse. Benevolence was foreign to his character; he could not mould Moscow to his ideal—if a passing whim can be so termed—but before he realised his impotence in this, he became brutal and fierce. He quarrelled with the Church, cruelly ill used his wife—whom he forsook eventually, shamefully treated his blood-relations—even torturing his half-sisters himself, and was to his subjects such a father as he proved to his own unfortunate son Alexis, who was done to death at his hands; in all these things behaving so savagely that even the strongest were awed into hypocrisy. The citizens of Moscow considered themselves the children of the Father of the people—the Tsar who lived in the Kremlin—who cared for them and never ceased to be anxious for their welfare. He alone was responsible for their direction, with him was the Church, they knew not how to act independently. The streltsi, the fighting men, the armed citizens, were first of the Moscow townsmen to act of their own initiative, but they were disciplined men who trusted their leaders—even when betrayed.
Peter exterminated the streltsi, the men who first of all his subjects had supported his claims and protected his rights; it is in connection with the streltsi that Peter is most enduringly associated with Moscow. The scenes of that long struggle were, for the most part, enacted outside the Kremlin; in the Kitai-Gorod of the merchants, in the Bielo-Gorod of the freemen, in the sloboda of the foreign settlers, and the Preobrajenski quarter where Peter was reared. It is this Moscow that has suffered most from the invader and from fire; its memorials of antiquity are few, those appertaining to Peter the Great and his time may be counted on the fingers of one mutilated hand. The most conspicuous marks are those of the Church. Continuing by that route indicated in the last chapter, on issuing by the Valdimirski Gate from the Kitai-Gorod, the road north is the Big Lubianka, running along the crest of the hill towards the old village of
Kuchko, long since incorporated with the town; on the right hand is the palace of that Count Rostopchin who ordered the destruction of Moscow in 1812; on the left at the corner of the Kuznetski Most is the old church, set apart from time immemorial for the benediction of fruit. As an old writer states, “the Mahommedans would as soon eat pork as a Russian unconsecrated apples.” Further on, also on the left is the old monastery of the Srietenka (Meeting), founded by Vasili Dmitrivich in gratitude of the deliverance of Moscow threatened by the Tartars under Tamerlane in 1397; rebuilt by Theodore II. and containing a chapel to the Patriarch Joachim, constructed by Peter I. in 1706. It has two other old churches, one dedicated to St Nicholas, and the other to the Egyptian Virgin Mary, neither of particular interest. This is a part of Moscow longest inhabited by the peasant class, and continuing on past the boulevard, which marks the old wall of the Bielo-Gorod, the Srietenka traverses the Zemliaa Gorod, or earthen town, until the Sadovia is reached, where was once the by no means formidable rampart of the outer wall; beyond this the Miaschanska continues the road to the Kammer College earth rampart at the Krestovski-Zastava. Beyond that is the highway to Ostankina, the Marina Roshcha, and the village of Mordva. The eighteenth church passed after leaving the Grand Square is dedicated to the Trinity and is remarkable for a number of small shops within its walls, the windows but a couple of feet high and the ceiling so near the pavement that buyers have to stoop or kneel to bargain. An old order forbids that shops be within a church, and a more recent one, any without it. These being neither within nor without continue unmolested. In this district the Streltsi were living at the close of the seventeenth century, and a little further on is the Sukharev Bashnia, Peter’s memorial to the fidelity of a regiment of the force he exterminated. It is a curious pile: an octagonal tower rises 200 feet above the roadway over high archways and a large two-storeyed gallery above them. The beholder who is told that this is like a ship will possess the credulity of Polonius if he assent; but actually Peter modelled it as a ship to serve for the elementary instructions of his future sailors. As all know, Peter derived his idea of ships from the Dutch, but even that explains little and leaves much to the imagination. As remote is the connection of Sukharev with ships and the sea, so if not exactly a suitable monument for an officer of Moscow’s soldiery it was what Peter thought would serve his purpose better than any other design. Its closest connection with ships is at present; as a water tower it is not wholly useless still. Its architecture is not remarkable, a mixture of Lombard with Gothic that might have resulted from copying the Vosskresenski Gate and substituting a tall straight tower for the ornate Gothic spires then the fashion in Moscow. Considered a ship—the tower is the mast, the rooms below are supposed to resemble the poop-deck and quarter-galleries of an old man-of-war. The entrance is by a flight of steps from the Srietenka; in the large room a number of Moscow youths were instructed in arithmetic by a Scotch schoolmaster named Farquharson, and two Christ Church scholars, Gwynne and Graves, whom Peter held practically as prisoners there. Sometimes these pupils were taken to St Petersburgh to drive piles for foundations of the new town, at others they were exercised in elocution and deportment that they might the better represent comedies for the diversion of the Court.
The teachers of the school knew nothing of Russian and the scholars only their native tongue—such was Peter’s way. Unhappy the scholars
Зане разумъ весь собралъ и чинъ
Природный русскій, не нѣмчинъ.[E]