423 ) 



RUSSIA, AS IT REALLY IS, AND NOT AS IT IS 

 COMMONLY REPRESENTED. 



OF all the European states, the Ottoman empire excepted, Russia is 

 undoubtedly the least civilized, the least peopled, and the most de- 

 spotically governed ; its heterogeneous, semi-barbarous, and lawless 

 inhabitants are justly regarded as the modern Vandals and Huns of 

 the north, and its rulers have for centuries been if not worse, cer- 

 tainly not much better, than the Genserics and the Attilas of old. 



In fact, until Peter the Great was placed on the throne of the 

 Muscovite czars, Russia was scarcely considered as an European state 

 of any rank, and its vast uncultivated and frosty dominions were 

 almost unknown to the rest of the civilized world. Peter therefore, 

 with all his brutal crimes and vices, was the first Russian autocrat, 

 who scattered among his subjects a few seeds of civilization; and 

 having with great difficulty introduced order and discipline into the 

 military department, he organized the Muscovite army by the Eu- 

 ropean tactics, and thus imparted some lustre to his empire. 



When the brave, but crazy-brained Swedish monarch Charles XII. 

 was completely routed and defeated at the battle *of Pultawa, Peter 

 availed himself of that advantage by wantonly seizing Livonia, 

 Ingria, Finland, and great part of the Swedish Pomerania ; and by 

 his so doing the gulf of Finland, and the Baltic were opened to his 

 subjects. Having afterwards called to his aid many able ,"and clever 

 foreigners, Peter, with zeal and perseverance, undertook to reform 

 some of the greatest abuses which had heretofore existed in his do- 

 minions ; but unfortunately all his improvements had only one end 

 in view, self-aggrandisement and the promotion of the absolute 

 power of the Muscovite czars. It is true that he in some measure 

 lessened the hardships of some millions of slaves ; but in the mean 

 time he took good care to reserve for himself and his successors 

 the inhuman right of disposing both of them and of their masters 

 according to the absolute will and pleasure of a despot. 



The czarina, Catherine II., whose extraordinary character is stained 



with the basest crimes, must be considered after Peter the greatest 



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