A General History for Colleges and High Schools (Myers)/Chapter 56
CHAPTER LVI.
THE RISE OF RUSSIA: PETER THE GREAT.
(1682–1725.)
General Remarks.—The second great struggle between the principles of Liberalism and of Despotism, as represented by the opposing parties in the English Revolution, took place in France. But before proceeding to speak of the French Revolution, we shall first trace the rise of Russia and of Prussia, as these two great monarchies were destined to play prominent parts in that tremendous conflict. We left Russia at the close of the Middle Ages a semi-savage, semi-Asiatic power, so hemmed in by barbarian lands and hostile races as, to be almost entirely cut off from intercourse with the civilized world (see p. 508). In the present chapter we wish to tell how she pushed her lines out to the seas on every side,—to the Caspian, the Euxine, and the Baltic. The main interest of our story gathers about Peter the Great, whose almost superhuman strength and energy lifted the great barbarian nation to a prominent place among the powers of Europe.
Accession of Peter the Great (1682).—The royal line established in Russia by the old Norseman Ruric (see p. 507), ended in 1589. Then followed a period of confusion and of foreign invasion, known as the Troublous Times, after which a prince of the celebrated house of Romanoff came to the throne. For more than half a century after the accession of the Romanoffs, there is little either in the genius or the deeds of any of the line calculated to draw our special attention. But towards the close of the seventeenth century there ascended the Russian throne a man whose capacity and energy and achievements instantly drew the gaze of his contemporaries, and who has elicited the admiration and wonder of all succeeding generations. This was Peter I., universally known as Peter the Great, one of the remarkable characters of history. He was but seventeen years of age when he assumed the full responsibilities of government.
(After a painting at Hampton Court, by G. Kneller 1698.)
In 1695 Peter sailed down the Don and made an attack upon Azof, the key to the Black Sea, but was unsuccessful. The next year, however, repeating the attempt, he succeeded, and thus gained his first harbor on the south.
Peter's First Visit to the West (1697–1698).—With a view to advancing his naval projects, Peter about this time sent a large number of young Russian nobles to Italy, Holland, and England to acquire in those countries a knowledge of naval affairs, forbidding them to return before they had become good sailors.
Not satisfied with thus sending to foreign parts his young nobility, Peter formed the somewhat startling resolution of going abroad himself, and learning the art of ship-building by personal experience in the dockyards of Holland. Accordingly, in the year 1697, leaving the government in the hands of three nobles, he set out incognito for the Netherlands. Upon arriving there he proceeded to Zaandam, a place a short distance from Amsterdam, and there hired out as a common laborer to a Dutch ship-builder.
Notwithstanding his disguise it was well enough known who the stranger was. Indeed there was but little chance of Peter's being mistaken for a Dutchman. The way in which he flew about, and the terrible energy with which he did everything, set him quite apart from the easy-going, phlegmatic Hollanders.
To escape the annoyance of the crowds at Zaandam, Peter left the place, and went to the docks of the East India Company in Amsterdam, who set about building a frigate that he might see the whole process of constructing a vessel from the beginning. Here he worked for four months, being known among his fellow-workmen as Baas or Master Peter.
It was not alone the art of naval architecture in which Peter interested himself; he attended lectures on anatomy, studied surgery, gaining some skill in pulling teeth and bleeding, inspected paper-mills, flour-mills, printing-presses, and factories, and visited cabinets, hospitals, and museums, thus acquainting himself with every industry and art that he thought might be advantageously introduced into his own country.
From Holland Master Peter went to England to study her superior naval establishment. Here he was fittingly received by King William III., who had presented Peter while in Holland with a splendid yacht fully armed, and who now made his guest extremely happy by getting up for him a sham sea-fight. Returning from England to Holland, Peter went thence to Vienna, intending to visit Italy; but hearing of an insurrection at home, he set out in haste for Moscow.
Peter's Reforms.—The revolt which had hastened Peter's return from the West was an uprising among the Strelitzes, a body of soldiers numbering 20,000 or 30,000, organized by Ivan the Terrible as a sort of imperial body-guard. In their ungovernable turbulence, they remind us of the Pretorians of Rome. The mutiny settled Peter in his determination to rid himself altogether of the insolent and refractory body. Its place was taken by a well-disciplined force trained according to the tactics of the Western nations.
The disbanding of the seditious guards was only one of the many reforms effected by Peter. So intent was he upon thoroughly Europeanizing his country, that he resolved that his subjects should literally clothe themselves in the "garments of Western Civilization." Accordingly he abolished the long-sleeved, long-skirted Oriental robes that were at this time worn, and decreed that everybody save the clergy should shave, or pay a tax on his beard. We are told that Peter stationed tailors and barbers at the gates of Moscow to cut off the skirts and to train the beards of those who had not conformed to the royal regulations, and that he himself sheared off with his own hands the offending sleeves and beards of his reluctant courtiers. The law was gradually relaxed, but the reform became so general that in the best society in Russia at the present day one sees only smooth faces and the Western style of dress.
As additional outgrowths of what he had seen, or heard, or had suggested to him on his foreign tour, Peter issued a new coinage, introduced schools, built factories, constructed roads and canals, established a postal system, opened mines, framed laws modelled after those of the West, and reformed the government of the towns in such a way as to give the citizens some voice in the management of their local affairs, as he had observed was done in the Netherlands and in England.
Charles XII. of Sweden.—Peter's history now becomes intertwined with that of a man quite as remarkable as himself, Charles XII. of Sweden, the "Madman of the North." Charles was but fifteen years of age when, in 1697, the death of his father called him to the Swedish throne. The dominions which came under his sway embraced not only Sweden, but Finland, and large possessions along the Southern Baltic,—territory that had been won by the arms of his ancestors.
Taking advantage of Charles's extreme youth, three sovereigns, Frederick IV. of Denmark, Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and Peter the Great of Russia, leagued against him (1700), for the purpose of appropriating such portions of his dominions as they severally desired to annex to their own.
The Battle of Narva (1700). But the conspirators had formed a wrong estimate of the young Swedish monarch. Notwithstanding the insane follies in which he was accustomed to indulge, he possessed talent; he had especially a remarkable aptitude for military affairs. With a well-trained force—a veteran army that had not yet forgotten the discipline of the hero Gustavus Adolphus— Charles now threw himself first upon the Danes, and in two weeks forced the Danish king to sue for peace; then he turned his little army of 8,000 men upon the Russian forces of 20,000, which were besieging the city of Narva, on the Gulf of Finland, and inflicted upon them a most ignominious defeat. The only comment of the imperturbable Peter upon the disaster was, "The Swedes will have the advantage of us at first, but they will teach us how to beat them."
The Founding of St. Petersburg (1703).—After chastising the Czar[1] at Narva, the Swedish king turned south and marched into Poland to punish Augustus for the part he had taken in the conspiracy against him. While Charles was busied in this quarter, Peter was gradually making himself master of the Swedish lands on the Baltic, and upon a marshy island at the mouth of the Neva was laying the foundations of the great city of St. Petersburg, which he proposed to make the western gateway of his empire. The spot selected by Peter as the site of his new capital was low and subject to inundation, so that the labor requisite to make it fit for building purposes was simply enormous. But difficulties never dismayed Peter. In spite of difficulties the work was done, and the splendid city stands to-day one of the most impressive monuments of the indomitable and despotic energy of Peter.
Invasion of Russia by Charles XII.—Meanwhile Charles was doing very much as he pleased with the king of Poland. He defeated his forces, overran his dominions, and forced him to surrender the Polish crown in favor of Stanislaus Lesczinski (1706). With sufficient punishment meted out to Frederick Augustus, Charles was ready to turn his attention once more to the Czar. So marvellous had been the success attendant upon his arms for the past few years, nothing now seemed impossible to him. Deluded by this belief, he resolved to march into Russia and dethrone the Czar, even as he had dethroned the king of Poland.
In 1708, with an army of barely 40,000 men, Charles marched boldly across the Russian frontier. At Pultowa the two armies met in decisive combat (1709). It was Charles's Waterloo. The Swedish army was virtually annihilated. Escaping with a few soldiers from the field, Charles fled southward, and found an asylum in Turkey.[2]
Close of Peter's Reign.—In 1721 the Swedish wars which had so long disturbed Europe were brought to an end by the Peace of Nystadt, which confirmed Russia's title to all the Southern Baltic lands that Peter had wrested from the Swedes. The undisputed possession of so large a strip of the Baltic seaboard vastly increased the importance and influence of Russia, which now assumed a place among the leading European powers.
In 1723 troubles in Persia that resulted in the massacre of some Russians afforded Peter a pretext for sailing down the Volga and seizing the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, which now became virtually a Russian lake. This ended Peter's conquests. The Russian colossus now " stood astride, with one foot on the Baltic ' and the other upon the Caspian."
Two years later, being then in his fifty-fourth year, Peter died of a fever brought on by exposure while aiding in the rescue of some sailors in distress, in the Gulf of Finland (1725).
Peter's Character and Work.—Peter's character stands revealed in the light of his splendid achievements. Like Charlemagne he was a despotic reformer. His theory of government was a rough, brutal one, yet the exclamation which broke from him as he stood by the tomb of Richelieu [3] discloses his profound desire to rule well: "Thou great man," he exclaimed, " I would have given thee half of my dominion to have learned of thee how to govern the other half." He planted throughout his vast empire the seeds of Western civilization, and by his giant strength lifted the great nation which destiny had placed in his hands out of Asiatic barbarism into the society of the European peoples.
The influence of Peter's life and work upon the government of Russia was very different from what he intended. It is true that his aggressive, arbitrary rule strengthened temporarily autocratic government in Russia. He destroyed all checks, ecclesiastical and military, upon the absolute power of the crown. But in bringing into his dominions Western civilization, he introduced influences which were destined in time to neutralize all he had done in the way of strengthening the basis of despotism. He introduced a civilization which fosters popular liberties, and undermines personal, despotic government.
Reign of Catherine the Great (1762–1796).—From the death of Peter on to the close of the eighteenth century the Russian throne was held, the most of the time, by women, the most noted of whom was Catherine II., the Great, "the greatest woman probably," according to the admission of an English historian (McCarthy), "who ever sat on a throne, Elizabeth of England not even excepted." But while a woman of great genius, she had most serious faults of character, being incredibly profligate and unscrupulous.
Carrying out ably the policy of Peter the Great, Catherine extended vastly
(After a painting by Schebanow.)
It was in the year 1783 that Catherine effected the subjugation of the Crimea. The possession of this peninsula gave Russia dominion on the Black Sea, which once virtually secured by Peter the Great had been again lost through his misfortunes. Catherine greatly extended the limits of her dominion on the west at the expense of Poland, the partition of which state she planned in connection with Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria Theresa of Austria. On the first division, which was made in 1772, the imperial robbers each took a portion of the spoils. In 1793 a second partition was made, this time between Russia and Prussia; and then, in 1795, after the suppression of a determined revolt of the Poles under the lead of the patriot Kosciusko, a third and final division among the three powers completed the dismemberment of the unhappy state, and erased its name from the roll of the nations. The territory gained by Russia in these transactions brought her western frontier close alongside the civilization of Central Europe. In Catherine's phrase, Poland had become her "door mat," upon which she stepped when visiting the West. Besides thus widening her empire, Catherine labored to reform its institutions and to civilize her subjects. Her labors in bettering the laws and improving the administration of the government, have caused her to be likened to Solon and to Lycurgus; while her enthusiasm for learning and her patronage of letters led Voltaire to say, "Light now comes from the North."
By the close of Catherine's reign Russia was beyond question one of the foremost powers of Europe, the weight of her influence being quite equal to that of any other nation of the continent.
- ↑ Czar is probably a contraction of Cæasar. The title was adopted by the rulers of Russia because they regarded themselves as the successors and heirs the Cæsars of Rome and Constantinople.
- ↑ After spending five years in Turkey, Charles returned to Sweden, and shortly afterwards was killed at the siege of Frederickshall, in Norway (1718). At the moment of his death he was only thirty-six years of age. He was the strangest character of the eighteenth century. Perhaps we can understand him best by regarding him, as his biographer Voltaire says we must regard him, as an old Norse sea-king, born ten centuries after his time.
- ↑ In 1716 Peter made a second journey to the West, visiting France, Denmark, and Holland.