him to torture, and thereby discovered that Alexis and his mother were the soul of a conspiracy to destroy Peter's work. Eudocia was beaten with rods; the counsellors and partisans of Alexis died amid the most dreadful sufferings; and Alexis himself, having been subjected to torture several times, died in consequence, or was executed, in 1718. By his ukase in 1723, Peter the Great declared Catherine empress. She was a native of Livonia who, after being the mistress of Sheremeteff and Menshikoff, had become the mistress of Peter, who had married her in 1712. The great reformer died in 1725. However historians may differ in their opinions of him, Peter was certainly the founder of modern Russia.
E. The Successors of Peter the Great.—The brief reigns of Catherine I (1725-27) and of Peter II Alexeevitch, son of Alexis and Charlotte of Brunswick, offer nothing of interest, except the struggle for political influence between the Menshikoffs and the Dolgorukis. At the death of Peter II, Anna Ivanovna, Duchess of Courland, became Empress of Russia, and an attempt by the aristocracy to establish a supreme council to limit the autocratic power cost the lives of its authors, among whom were several of the Dolgoruki. The empress surrounded herself with Germans; and among them, a Courlander of low extraction, named Biren, became very influential. On his account the reign of Anna Ivanovna received the name of Bironovshshina. Very many nobles paid with their lives for the antipathy they felt towards the new regime, and measures of public finance reduced the peasants to extreme poverty, while Anna indulged in unheard of luxury, and her court distinguished itself for its immorality and dissipation. At the death of Anna in 1740 the regency passed to Anna Leopoldovna of Mecklenburg, who continued the German regime and gave to Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, timely occasion to drive her from the throne and to imprison her with her husband and her children at Kholmogory, while Elizabeth proclaimed herself Empress of all the Russias. Elizabeth Petrovna (1756-1762), notwithstanding her dissolute habits, continued the traditions of her father: the senate was reestablished; industry was developed; great impulse was given to commerce; the severity of corporal punishment was mitigated; the University of Moscow was established; St. Petersburg was embellished with splendid buildings designed by the Italian architect Rastrelli; the Academy of Sciences, founded by Peter the Great and Catherine I, began its period of fruitful literary work; while the Russian armies conquered southern Finland and weakened the power of Prussia, which suffered the disasters of Grossjagernsdorf (1757) and Kunersdorf (1759). In 1760 the armies of Elizabeth made their triumphal entrance into Berlin.
Elizabeth was succeeded by Peter III, a son of Anna Petrovna and Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein. His reign was very short, for his ambitious consort, Princess Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, who became celebrated under the name of Catherine II, compelled him to abdicate, leaving her to reign alone in 1762. The first great events of her government were the war with the Turks and the partition of Poland. Against the Turks, Catherine sent Prince Galitzin, who in 1769 near Chotin defeated a Turkish army three times larger than his own. In the following year (1770), Rumiantzeff obtained a still more decisive victory at Kagul, where with 17,000 Russians he defeated a Turkish army of 150,000 men. In 1771 Prince Dolgoruki took possession of the whole of the Crimea, from which he drove the Turks. At the same time, the Russian Baltic fleet annihilated the Turkish fleet in the roads of Chios and in the port of Tchesme. Hostilities were resumed in 1772, and culminated in the treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji (1774), by which the independence of the Tatars of the Crimea was recognized, while Azoff, Kinburn, and the strongholds of the peninsula were ceded to Russia, which received a war indemnity of 4,500,000 roubles. The treaty of January 15, 1772, between Russia and Prussia sanctioned the iniquitous division of Poland, which was desired by Frederick II and was hastened by the policy of the Polish nobility and, to a great extent, of the clergy. By this division Russia added to her dominions White Russia (Polotsk, Vitebsk, Orsha, Mohileff, Mstislavl, and Gomel), with 1,600,000 inhabitants; Austria received eastern Galicia and Ruthenia (or Red Russia), with 2,500,000 inhabitants; and Prussia received the provinces of western Prussia (except Thorn and Danzig), with 900,000 inhabitants.
To these victories and conquests Catherine added her efforts to give to Russia a good internal government: she established a commission, a species of national representation of the different peoples of Russia, to frame a new code of laws (1766-68); she suppressed the revolt of Emilius Pugatcheff, a Raskolnik Cossack, who, pretending to be Peter III, escaped from his butchers, carried fire and sword through the region of the Volga, stirred the serfs and the Cossacks to revolt, and massacred many nobles (1773); by a ukase in 1775 she divided Russia into fifty governments, and the governments into districts; she reorganized the administration of justice, and established a better apportionment of the rights and privileges of the various social classes; she secularized the property of the clergy, and founded at Moscow the Vospitatelnyi dom for orphans, gave efficient aid to the literary movement of her age, and became famous also as a writer; she corresponded with learned Europeans (especially with the French Encyclopaedists), promoted the arts, and enriched the museums. Meanwhile skillful generals, among whom was Catherine's favorite, Potemkin, added new glories to the military history of Russia. Gustavus III of Sweden, notwithstanding the naval victory of Svenska-Sund (July 9, 1790), was unable to take land from Russia. Rumiantzeff, Potemkin, Suvaroff, and Soltikoff, one after another, defeated the Turkish armies, took Otchakoff and Ismail by assault, and compelled Turkey, at the Peace of Jassy (1792), to make new cessions of territory (Otchakoff and the coast between the Bug and the Dnieper) and to grant independence to the principalities of the Danube.
Under Catherine II there took place the third Partition of Poland, which the heroism of Kosciuszko was not able to avert. By this partition Russia added Volhynia, Podolia, Little Russia, and the remainder of Lithuania to her empire (1795). Catherine died November 17, 1796, at the age of 67 years. Thanks to her policy and to the victories of her generals she had greatly increased the territory of Russia, extending its frontiers to the Niemen, the Dniester, and the Black Sea. Paul I (1796-1801) at first followed a policy of peace; he introduced wise economic reforms, and reestablished the principle of succession to the throne in the male line. But the French Revolution compelled him to enter an alliance with Turkey, England, and Austria against France. The Russian troops, under the orders of Rimsky-Korsakoff, entered Switzerland, and under Suvaroff they marched into upper Italy. The campaign was not a successful one for the Russians, but their retreat under Suvaroff through the Alps, where they were shut in by the French armies (1799), has remained famous. Paul I was assassinated by a palace conspiracy on the night of 23—March 24, 1801, and Alexander I (1801-25) ascended the throne. The new emperor took part in the epic struggle of Europe against Napoleon. On December 2, 1805, was fought the battle of Austerlitz, which cost Russia the flower of her army and very nearly the life of Alexander him-
