

27 



ohuroh, and of the gradual absorption bj the czar of all actual 

 power, which ln held, nevertheless, aa all despotic rulera muxt 

 in.!, | thi-ir I...W.T, l.y the good-will of the guard* who are the 

 .-!.* of their mil. Alexis caine to the throne in 1645, 

 and soon proved to be tho " still, strong man " who know how 

 t. rulo, not merely in th-- interests of his family, but in 

 those of his people. He did something towards lessening the 

 power of the soldiers, diminished that of the priesthood, and 

 by protecting merchants who came from the southward and 

 .., ,i,-n with their wares, encouraged commerce and to 

 a slight extent Russian manufacture. But he had a difficult 

 task to perform hard, unimpressionable stuff to work upon ; 

 and in consequence of tho geographical position of Russia, and 

 tho extreme ignorance which prevailed in Europe as to its cha- 

 racter and resources, he had little or no sympathy from without. 

 Fur in that <lav Russia was to tho other nations of Europe what 

 .nia is to them now, a land little known save by bold 

 adventurers, who, unable to got employment or living in the 

 wouth, or actuated by curiosity and the lovo of adventure, 

 travelled into the north, and cither settled there and were no 

 moro hoard of, or returned and related marvellous accounts of 

 tho people and countries which were included in the empire of 

 the Czar of Muscovy, for so Russia was called. Occasionally 

 there were state embassies sent from Moscow to some European 

 court in order to make some special representation, and mes- 

 sengers from European courts occasionally made their way to 

 Moscow to lay before the czar some complaint against his 

 border-subjects, which the czar was commonly wholly unable 

 to attend to. But the interchange of visits was very seldom, 

 and there was not till tho time of Peter the Great any regular 

 representative of Russia in any capital in Europe. 



Alexis did his best for his countrymen, and dying in 1676, 

 was succeeded by his son Feodor, who entered fully into all his 

 father's plans, and proceeded on his accession to the throne to 

 develop the policy of improvement begun by the lato czar. 

 " He lived the joy and delight of his people, and died amidst 

 their sighs and tears. On the day of his decease Moscow was 

 in tho same state of distress which Rome felt at the death of 

 Titus," wrote a Russian historian of this prince, who reigned 

 six. years, and dying, bequeathed his crown to his youngest 

 child, Peter, a lad of no moro than ten years of age. Ivan, 

 Feodor' s eldest son, -was half-witted, and his sister Sophia, 

 without authority from any one, took the government upon her- 

 self, and during seven years did nearly as much to throw Russia 

 back into barbarism as her father and grandfather had done 

 to bring her out of it. Peter, who knew that the crown had 

 been left to him, was angry, even as a child, at the usurpation 

 of which he was the victim. Ho chafed at the restraints to 

 which his sister and her ministers and advisers subjected him, 

 and he saw with indignation as he grew older that the forward 

 steps taken by his father were being deliberately retraced. 

 Disgust for this policy probably heightened the spirit which 

 descended to him from his father, the spirit of dislike for the 

 old Muscovite party, undying hatred for those soul-numbing 

 principles which hung as tremendous dead- weights on the nation 

 and kept it back. Then there was something more than a hint 

 that his sister and her favourite, a profligate barbarian, con- 

 templated keeping him out of his inheritance. The people 

 murmured at the gross misgovernment of the princess, and 

 loudly demanded the termination of her rule. By means of 

 large bribes to the soldiers, she succeeded for a while in main- 

 taining her position by force ; but when the means of bribery 

 began to fail, and the conduct of the rulers became too bad 

 oven for the Russians to put up with, Peter, then in his seven- 

 teenth year, took advantage of the popular feeling to assert 

 himself. He gained the co-operation of tho soldiers, and of all 

 the men of influence in the state, for even the heads of the old 

 Muscovite section knew they could not have worse rulers than 

 Sophia and her lover, and they hoped to mould the young 

 prince, still a mere youth, into their own effete notions of go- 

 vernment and public policy. 



Peter assumed the reins of power, shut his sister up in a 

 nunnery, and banished her lover to a distant part of the empire. 

 Ivan Romanoff, Peter's brother, was nominally associated with 

 him in the empire, but he had no real authority, so that vir- 

 tually from the age of seventeen Peter was lord and autocrat of 

 the Russian dominions. 



As soon as he had reduced chaos into something like order 



at Moscow, Peter began that deadly war against the Turkish 

 power which hau burst oat at intervals erer since, and which, 

 if Russia works its will, will probably never know its final 

 ond till the cross shall have been again planted in Con- 

 stantinople, and the Turkish power, which entered Europe in 

 1453, shall have been driven once more into Alia, whence it 

 came out. Peter's enterprises against the Turks were very 

 Buooesuful. He defeated them with troop* inferior in discipliiw 

 and armament to their own, and took from them the port of 

 Azof, so opening the Black Sea to Boasian commerce, and 

 securing an outlet for Busnan enterprise to the southward. 

 Penetrated with the belief that commercial intercourse with 

 other nations could alone enable Bossia to become civilised, 

 he conceived tho plan of making a watery highway through his 

 empire, from the Baltic to the Caspian and Black Seas, by 

 means of canals which should unite the rivers Dwina, Volga, 

 and Don. To secure the communication on the north-western 

 | side, and to obtain for Rusxia the command on the Baltic 

 perhaps, also, with the idea of more thoroughly breaking with 

 tho Russian past he determined to build on an island in the 

 Neva, a few miles above the place where that river falls into 

 the Baltic, a city which should be at once the emporium of 

 commerce for northern Europe and the capital of the empire. 

 For ten years these wars and these great national works occu- 

 pied his attention, and then, in 1698, finding himself deficient 

 in technical and material education, and that there was not any 

 one in his dominions who was capable of teaching him, he 

 resolved to set out on his European tour of inspection and self- 

 education. 



In 1699 Peter returned home, with men of all trades and 

 professions in his train, who were to help him in his public 

 works, and to teach his people the knowledge of other countries. 

 Generals, military officers of all grades, engineers, shipwrights, 

 architects, gunsmiths, cutlers, medical men, artificers and me- 

 chanics of all kinds, naval officers and experienced seamen, 

 were gathered out of those countries which had specialities in 

 them. Great Britain and Ireland, Holland, and the Nether- 

 lands furnished the greater part, but artists were allured from 

 France and Italy, by the tempting offers of the Czar, to under- 

 take a residence in the cold climate of the north. 



Emboldened by his contact with civilisation, and disgusted 

 from the same cause with much that he saw when he got home, 

 Peter summarily abolished immediately after his return some of 

 the most cherished and most barbarous institutions of the 

 empire. He hanged some objectors who had been troublesome 

 during his absence, and he refused to listen to the complaints 

 of those, the priests included, who stood forward as the advo- 

 cates of the old order. His will was supreme, and, being as 

 strong and unyielding as that of the most obstinate man in 

 his empire, carried all opposition before it : and the people, 

 venerating him as the czar, and ignorant of what new coercive 

 power he might have brought with his other novelties from 

 the south, gave in to him, and suffered him to tame them, even 

 to shaving their beards tbia reform almost cost a revolution 

 without resistance. General Gordon set to work upon the 

 army, and succeeded, by dint of unremitting attention and th ; 

 exercise of the utmost severity, in putting it into shape, though 

 it required many a defeat from the hands of Swedes before 

 it could be made at all confident in the presence of European 

 enemies. 



Scarcely was tho army removed one degree from the class 

 " rabble," ere occasion called for a display of its powers. In 

 1697 Charles XII. of Sweden came to his father's throne, and 

 commenced that series of wars which astounded and convulsed 

 Europe. Peter entered into alliances with the King of Den- 

 mark and the Elector Frederick Augustus of Saxony, who had 

 been chosen King of Poland, and in 1700 the war began 

 by the Danes invading the territory of the Duke of Hblstein- 

 Gottorp, the brother-in-law of the King of Sweden. Charles 

 XII. appeared suddenly before Copenhagen, which he blockaded 

 by sea and besieged by land, and he so pressed the Danes that 

 their king was compelled to make peace on humiliating terms, 

 and to leave his allies to their fate. From Copenhagen Charles 

 went straight and swiftly to Narva, which was besieged by the 

 Russians with 80,000 men. The Swedes numbered only 10,000, 

 but Charles did not hesitate to attack the entrenched camp 

 of the besiegers, which, after being breached by the Swedish 

 artillery, was carried by storm at the point of the bayonet. 



