wear distinctive clothing. They must pay for the liberty of nonconformity; they must live as marked men. Peter did not disguise his opinion that their position was an error, and he treated it as such. He prohibited them from propagating their views with threats of a penalty. Attendance at church every Sunday and at the Easter communion was made obligatory.
The tsar protected the Capuchins at Astrakan, because, as Voltaire remarked, these monks were of no consequence; but in the year 1718 he expelled the Jesuits from Russia as dangerous politicians. Although he was particularly friendly with the Dutch and the English, he persecuted his own Protestants. For instance, a Russian Protestant lady, Natasia Zima, was conducted with her husband and six other converts to "the terrible chancelry" and there cruelly tortured.[1]
Peter the Great died in the year 1725 at the age of fifty-three. He had compressed an enormous amount of work into his comparatively short life. He found Russia remote from the world's progress, sunk in mediæval barbarism, more Oriental than Western in life and manners. Solely owing to his own energy, against the wishes and feelings of most of his people, before his death he had the satisfaction of seeing his country in vital relations with the rest of Europe and on the road to progress. His schools and colleges, libraries and museums, galleries of painting and sculpture, only touched the few; his canals and his ships brought fresh life and new energy to a larger number of his subjects. Peter cared nothing for pomp and state, had no personal dignity, no manners. He was tyrannous, cruel, coarse, gluttonous. His practical jokes were those of a rude schoolboy. On the other hand, his scorn of old-fashioned proprieties had its good points. Quite indifferent to the opinion of the orthodox, he would freely visit heretics and stand godfather to their children. Perhaps his chief claim to honour, next to the throwing open of his country to Europe, is his zeal for education.
- ↑ Rambaud, p. 394.
