YOUNG RUSSIA 



445 



the Tsar?' 'Tsar!' replied the man, with 

 his tongne in his cheek ; 'we are all Tsars 

 here.' " * 



Peter was starting from Vienna to 

 Venice to. learn the art of navigation 

 more thoroughly when he was recalled 

 to Moscow to put down an incipient 

 revolution. He "had 2,000 hanged or 

 broken on the wheel and 5,000 be- 

 headed." Then he took up his work of 

 establishing reforms, "the knout and the 

 axe being the accompaniment of every 

 reforming edict." 



In these reforms he followed the ideal 

 of the modern Japanese, showing no 

 sentimental predilection for any one 

 country, but borrowing with impartiality 

 the best that each had to offer. Some of 

 the things that worked well with the peo- 

 ple of Western Europe were unsuited to 

 Russia ; but Peter made the man to fit 

 the coat and not the coat to fit the man. 



One of his first orders was that the 

 beards of Russian officials should go ; 

 and, although the masses would have 

 thought beheading little more shocking 

 to their ideals, the beards went, as evi- 

 dence that the old order was changing. 

 Men were ordered to change their dress, 

 women to discard their veils, and inti- 

 mately personal affairs were reformed 

 as well as public matters. The power of 

 the clergy, who had constantly opposed 

 his plans, was broken by the replacing 

 of the patriarchate with a synod whose 

 members were absolutely dependent upon 

 the Tsar. He founded schools, built up 

 a powerful army, and had the virtue of 

 economy. 



* This was ten years after the peaceful revo- 

 lution in England. Already the main prin- 

 ciples of English government, Macaulay says, 

 "had been engraven on the hearts of English- 

 men during 400 years. That, without the con- 

 sent of the representatives of the nation, no 

 legislative act could be passed, no tax imposed, 

 no regular soldiery kept up ; that no man could 

 be imprisoned, even for a day, by the arbitrary 

 will of the sovereign; that no tool of power 

 could plead the royal command as a justifica- 

 tion for violating any right of the humblest 

 subject, were held, both by Whigs asd Tories, 

 to be fundamental laws of the realm." 



These words of the brilliant historian make 

 us realize the political backwardness of Russia, 

 ?nd of every other continental power of Eu- 

 rope at that time, as compared with England. 



Peter foresaw the future of Siberia 

 and of the great Amur River Valley and 

 sought to develop both. He wanted a 

 palace from whose window he could 

 look out upon Europe, and he got it by 

 building a city in a vast marsh. Forty 

 thousand men were drafted annually to 

 get logs from the forests and drive them 

 as piling to make a foundation for his 

 capital. Imagination staggers when try- 

 ing to comprehend the vastness of the 

 undertaking ; but Petrograd stands as 

 the twentieth-century fulfillment of his 

 ideals in city-building. 



At the age of 53 Peter sacrificed his 

 life to save a peasant woman and her 

 child from drowning (see page 485). 



NAPOLEON IN MOSCOW 



The taking of Moscow by Napoleon, 

 its subsequent destruction, and the re- 

 treat of his army constitute one of the 

 most thrilling pages in the annals of 

 war. It was on the 14th of September, 

 1812, that the golden minarets and 

 starry domes of the great city first met 

 the gaze of the French army. "All this 

 is yours," exclaimed the great chieftain, 

 and a mighty shout swept over his army 

 from front rank to rear guard, like a 

 great billow over a sea. 



The day before the Russians had 

 evacuated the city and the way of the 

 French was unopposed. But when they 

 arrived they were chagrined to find that 

 the 300,000 inhabitants had left, and that 

 only the liberated prisoners, the rabble, 

 and the feeble had remained behind. 

 Napoleon himself occupied the Kremlin 

 on the 15th, and that very night, while 

 he was waiting to receive a deputation 

 of notables, who sent in their stead a 

 deputation of rich raskolnik merchants 

 (as dissenters from the Greek Catholic 

 Church are called), fires were lit in all 

 parts of the city by Russians chosen for 

 the work. Fanned by a high wind, the 

 flames quickly spread into a great con- 

 flagration. The hospitals, containing 

 20,000 wounded, soon fell prey to the 

 fire, and the spectacle was one of in- 

 finite horror. 



After the fire came the orgy of pil- 

 lage. Soldiers, sutlers, galley slaves, and 



