The reign of Peter the First. — Beginning of the grand reformation.
Peter the Great was tall, genteel, well made, with a noble aspect, piercing eyes and a robust constitution, fitted for all kinds of hardship and bodily exercise. He had a sound understanding, which is the basis of all real abilities; and to this was joined an active disposition, which prompted him to undertake and execute the greatest things. His education was far from being worthy of his genius. The princess Sophia was, in a peculiar manner, interested to let him remain in ignorance, and to indulge himself in those excesses which youth, idleness, custom, and the high rank he held, made but too allowable. Nevertheless, he had been lately married, (June 1689) like others of his predecessors, to one of his own subjects, the daughter of colonel Lapuchin; but, as he was young, and for some time enjoyed none of the prerogatives of the crown, but that of indulging his pleasures without restraint, the ties of wedlock were not always sufficient to keep him within just bounds. The pleasures of the table, in which he indulged himself rather too freely, with foreigners, who had been invited to Moscow by prince Galitzin, seemed not to presage that he would one day become the reformer of his country; however, in spite of bad examples, and even the allurements of pleasure, he applied himself to the arts of war and government, and which, even then, shewed that he had the seeds of greatness in him.
It was still less expected, that a prince, who was subject to such a constitutional dread of water, as to subject him to cold sweats, and even convulsions, when he was obliged to cross a small river or brook, should become one of the best seamen in all the north. In order to get the better of nature, he began by jumping into the water, notwithstanding the horror he felt at it, till at length this aversion was changed into a fondness for that element.
He often blushed at the ignorance in which he had been brought up. He learned, almost of himself, without the help of a master, enough of German and high Dutch, to be able to write and explain himself tolerably well in both those languages. The Germans and Dutch appeared to him as the most civilized nations, because the former had already erected, in Moscow, some of those arts and manufactures which he was desirous of seeing established in his empire, and the latter excelled in the art of navigation, which he already began to look upon as the most necessary of all others.
Such were the dispositions which Peter cherished, notwithstanding the follies of his youth. At the same time, he found himself disturbed by factions at home, had the turbulent spirit of the strelitzes to keep under, and an almost uninterrupted war to manage against the Crim Tartars. For though hostilities had been suspended in 1689, by a truce, it had no long continuance.
During this interval, Peter became confirmed in his design of introducing the arts into his country.
His father Alexis had, in his lifetime, entertained the same views, but he wanted leisure, and a favourable opportunity to carry them into execution; he transmitted his genius to his son, who was more clear-sighted, more vigorous, and more unshaken by difficulties and obstacles.
Alexis had been at a great expense in sending for Bothler, a ship builder and sea captain, from Holland, together with a number of shipwrights and sailors. These built a large frigate and a yacht upon the Wolga, which they navigated down that river to Astracan, where they were to be employed in building more vessels, for carrying on an advantageous trade with Persia, by the Caspian Sea. Just at this time the revolt of Stenko-Rasin broke out, and this rebel destroyed these two vessels, which he ought to have preserved for his own sake, and murdered the captain; the rest of the crew fled into Persia, from whence they got to some settlements belonging to the Dutch East India company. A master-builder, who was a good shipwright, staid behind in Russia, where he lived a long time in obscurity.
One day, Peter taking a walk at Ishmaelof, a summer-palace built by his grandfather, he perceived, among several other rarities, an old English shallop, which had lain entirely neglected: upon which he asked Timmerman, a German, and his mathematical teacher, how came that little boat to be of so different a construction from any he had seen on the Moska? Timmerman replied, that it was made to go with sails and oars. The young prince wanted instantly to make a trial of it; but it was first to be repaired and rigged. Brant, the ship-builder abovementioned, was by accident found out at Moscow, where he lived retired; he soon put the boat in order, and worked her upon the river Yauza, which washes the suburbs of the town.
Peter caused his boat to be removed to a great lake, in the neighbourhood of the convent of the Trinity; he likewise made Brant build two more frigates, and three yachts, and piloted them himself. A considerable time afterwards, viz. in 1694, he made a journey to Archangel, and having ordered a small vessel to be built in that port, by the same Brant, he embarked therein on the Frozen Sea, which no sovereign beside himself had ever beheld. On this occasion, he was escorted by a Dutch man of war, under the command of captain Jolson, and attended by all the merchant-vessels then in the port of Archangel. He had already learned the manner of working a ship; and, notwithstanding the pains his courtiers took to imitate their master, he was the only one who made a proficiency in it.
He found it no less difficult to raise a well disciplined body of land forces, on whom he could depend, than to establish a navy. His first essay in navigation, on a lake, previous to his journey to Archangel, was looked upon only as the amusements of a young prince of genius; and his first attempt to form a body of disciplined troops, likewise appeared as nothing more than that of diversion. This happened during the regency of the princess Sophia; and, had he been suspected of meaning any thing serious by this amusement, it might have been attended with fatal consequences to him.
He placed his confidence in a foreigner, the celebrated Le Fort, of a noble and ancient family in Piedmont, transplanted near two centuries ago to Geneva, where they have filled the most considerable posts in the state. He was intended to have been brought up to the trade, to which the town is indebted for the figure it now makes; having formerly been known only as the seat of religious controversies.
But his genius, which prompted him to the greatest undertakings, engaged him to quit his father’s house at the age of fourteen; and he served four months in quality of a cadet in the citadel of Marseilles; from thence he went to Holland, where he served some time as a volunteer, and was wounded at the siege of Grave, a strong fortified town on the Meuse, which the prince of Orange, afterwards king of England, retook from Lewis XIV. in 1674. After this, led by hopes of preferment, wherever he could find it, he embarked with a German colonel, named Verstin, who had obtained a commission from Peter’s father, the czar Alexis, to raise soldiers in the Netherlands, and bring them to Archangel. But, when he arrived at that port, after a most fatiguing and dangerous navigation, the czar Alexis was no more; the government was changed, and Russia in confusion. The governor of Archangel suffered Verstin, Le Fort, and his whole troop, to remain a long time, in the utmost poverty and distress, and even threatened to send them into the extremity of Siberia; upon which every man shifted for himself. Le Fort, in want of every thing, repaired to Moscow, where he waited upon the Danish resident, named De Horn, who made him his secretary: there he learned the Russian language, and some time afterwards found means to be introduced to the czar Peter; the elder brother, Iwan, not being a person for his purpose. Peter was taken with him, and immediately gave him a company of foot. Le Fort had seen very little service, he knew but little of letters, not having studied any particular art or science; but he had seen a great deal, and had a talent of making the most of what he saw. Like the czar, he owed every thing to his own genius; he understood the German and Dutch languages, which Peter was learning, as those of two nations that might be of service in his designs. Every thing conspired to make him agreeable to Peter, to whom he strictly attached himself. From being the companion of his pleasures, he became his favourite, and confirmed himself in that station by his abilities. The czar made him his confidant in the most dangerous design that a prince of that country could possibly form, namely, that of putting himself in a condition to be able one day to break the seditious and barbarous body of forces called the strelitzes. It had cost the great sultan or basha Osman his life, for attempting to disband the janissaries. Peter, young as he was, went to work in a much abler manner than Osman.
He began with forming, at his country-seat at Preobrazinski, a company of fifty of his youngest domestics; and some young gentlemen, the sons of boyards, were chosen for their officers: but, in order to teach these young noblemen a subordination, to which they were wholly unaccustomed, he made them pass through all the different military degrees, and himself set them the example, by serving first as a drum, then as a private soldier, a serjeant, and a lieutenant of the company. Nothing was ever more extraordinary, nor more useful, than this conduct. The Russians had hitherto made war in the same manner as our ancestors at the time of the feudal tenures, when the unexperienced nobles took the field at the head of their vassals, undisciplined, and ill armed: a barbarous method, sufficient indeed to act against the like armies, but of no use against regular troops.
This company, which was formed wholly by Peter himself, soon increased in numbers, and became afterwards the regiment of Preobrazinski guards. Another regiment, formed on the same plan, became in time the regiment of Semeniousky guards.
The czar had already a regiment of five thousand men that could be depended upon, trained by general Gordon, a Scotchman, and composed almost entirely of foreigners. Le Fort, who had borne arms but a short time, but whose capacity was equal to every thing, undertook to raise a regiment of twelve thousand men, which he effected: five colonels were appointed to serve under him, and he saw himself on a sudden general of this little army, which had been raised, as much to oppose the strelitzes, as the enemies of the state.
One thing worthy of being remarked, and which fully confutes the hasty error of those who pretend that France lost very few of its inhabitants by the revocation of the edict of Nantz, is, that one-third of his army, which was only called a regiment, consisted of French refugees. Le Fort disciplined his new troops, as if he had been all his lifetime a soldier.
Peter was desirous of seeing one of those images of war, the mock fights, which had lately been introduced in times of peace: a fort was erected, which was to be attacked by one part of his new troops, and defended by the other. The difference between this fight, and others of the like nature, was, that instead of a sham engagement, there was a real one, in which some of his men were slain, and a great many wounded. Le Fort, who commanded the attack, received a considerable wound. These bloody sports were intended to initiate the young troops into the service of the field; but it required much labour, and even some degree of sufferings to compass this end.
These warlike amusements did not take off the czar’s attention to his naval project. As he had made Le Fort a general by land, notwithstanding his having never borne a command; he now made him admiral, though he had never had the direction of a ship, but he knew him deserving both of the one and the other. It is true, that he was an admiral without a fleet, and a general with only his regiment for an army.
By degrees the czar reformed that great abuse in the army, viz. the independence of the boyards, who, in time of war, used to bring into the field a multitude of their vassals and peasants: this was exactly the ancient government of the Franks, Huns, Goths, and Vandals, who indeed subdued the Roman empire in its state of decline, but would have been totally destroyed, had they had the warlike disciplined legions of ancient Rome to encounter, or such armies as are now brought into the field.
Admiral Le Fort was not long, however, before he had something more than an empty title. He employed some Dutchmen and Venetians in building a number of barcolongos, or kind of long barks, and also two ships of about thirty guns each, at the mouth of the Woronitz, which falls into the Tanais, or Don: these vessels were to fall down the river, and keep in awe the Crim Tartars, with whom hostilities had been renewed.
The czar was now to determine (in 1689) against which of the following powers he would declare war, whether against the Turks, the Swedes, or the Chinese. But here it will be proper to premise on what terms he then stood with China, and which was the first treaty of peace concluded by that nation.