Poles. Peter the Great imprisoned his sister Sophia within its walls, and executed many of the streltsi before her windows that their agony might awe her bold spirit. Some years after he made it a foundling hospital, and 250 infants were housed there before the Hospitalrie Dom was built; it was abolished in 1725. Napoleon visited it in 1812 and at first it suffered little; the King of Naples ordering divine service to be celebrated daily as usual, but later Davoust was billeted there, and after the disaster the French before quitting it did their utmost to blow up the belfry, the cathedral and stores. The nuns at considerable risk interrupted the fired train and, by their intrepidity and subsequent perseverance in combating the fire, saved the convent from destruction.
Russian monasteries and convents are not rigorously closed to the public like those of the Roman church. Generally from sunrise to sunset the great gates stand open that all may enter who desire to do so; and the nuns, so far from being secluded from the world, are rather encouraged to go out into it, both on errands of charity and, at need, to supplement by their own handicraft a too scanty income. For the most part the cells are shared in common by three inmates who unite their daily rations of tea, salt, and black-bread, and whilst the infirm sisters busy themselves in copying ikons or producing lace, needle-work and the like, the more active go into the town to dispose of the produce. In convents as elsewhere the Russian rule holds good that one’s room is inviolate: strictly private if the inmates wish, yet open to whomsoever it is their pleasure to entertain.
CHAPTER XIII
Moscow of the English
“O, how glad was I that the Tsar took notice of those few Englishmen.”—Horsey.
MOSCOW still bears witness to the thoroughness of English handicraft just as it shows the unmistakable impress of the French heel. When the discovery of the new world by Columbus had awakened England to enterprise and adventure, among the expeditions fitted out to find new markets for English manufactures was one of three ships sent on the advice of Sebastian Cabot, to the Arctic seas in 1553. Sir Hugh Willoughby was in command; Richard Chancellor, a young protégé of Sir Henry Sydney, his able lieutenant, and King Edward VI. himself the patron. The merchant venturers each found £25 for the undertaking; £6000 in all was subscribed; two Tartars in the King’s stable were interrogated as to that land on “the East of the Globe,” but they answered nothing at all that was in point. Three ships sailed from Rudcliff Harbour on the 20th May, but a few days later a storm separated them. Chancellor sailed on, and notwithstanding “the counsel of three friendly Scotchmen” to proceed no further, he reached the White Sea where he awaited the coming of his chief. Sighting a smack he got the men on board; they at once fell prostrate to kiss his feet but he himself raised them, “an act of humanity that won for him much goodwill.” The natives dared not trade without leave of their prince, and in some six weeks an invitation was given Chancellor to proceed from Kholmogori (Archangel) to Moscow. There he was sumptuously entertained. Furnished with a reply to King Edward’s letter and permission to trade, he returned to London. In April 1555, Chancellor was again sent to Moscow; the Tsar in the meanwhile had found the remains of Sir Hugh Willoughby’s other two ships, the crews of which had been starved to death. The result of this second voyage was the establishment of the Russia Company at Kholmogori and Moscow, and the visit of a Russian envoy to the Court of St James’s. Ill-luck attended the return voyage; Chancellor, his son and seven Russians, were drowned when their ship was wrecked, near Kinnaird Head.
The English were not deterred by untoward events, and pressed trade briskly. They had to deal with a sovereign whose methods were detestable and whose aim was a political and matrimonial alliance with the Tudors, not commercial intercourse with the English people; the Tsar was foiled, and the English traders succeeded. No doubt the venturers were misled by the too glowing reports of their servants, who represented Russia as a new Indies. Wondrous were the stories they gave of the country and its inhabitants; of the immense wealth of the Tsar; of the strange animals that roamed in the forests. Of these last one was the “Rossmachia,” which devoured food so ravenously that it had to pass between great growing trees in order to reduce its distended stomach—an animal not identified; another was the Ass-camel, having the attributes of both these beasts, which was so far believed in as to figure in the arms of the Eastland Company and is thought to be the yak. To these early voyagers, earnest and austere in their new-found protestantism, the religion of the Muscovites seemed idolatrous, and to their prejudiced writings, reproduced by generation after generation, many of the still current misconceptions concerning the Eastern Church are due.