the White Sea. His natural bent was now patent. From the first the lad had taken an extraordinary interest in the technical and mechanical arts, and their application to military and naval science. He was taught the use of the astrolabe (which Prince Yakov Dolgoruki, with intent to please, had brought him from Paris) by a Dutchman, Franz Timmerman, who also instructed him in the rudiments of geometry and fortifications. He had begun to build his own boats at a very early age, and the ultimate result of these pastimes was the creation of the Russian navy. He had already surrounded himself with that characteristically Petrine institution “the jolly company,” or “the company,” as it was generally called, consisting of all his numerous personal friends and casual acquaintances. “The company” was graduated into a sort of mock hierarchy, political and ecclesiastical, and shared not only the orgies but also the labours of the tsar. Merit was the sole qualification for promotion, and Peter himself set the example to the other learners by gradually rising from the ranks. In 1695 he had only advanced to the post of “skipper” in his own navy and of “bombardier” in his own army. It was, however, the disreputable Lefort who, for the sake of his own interests, diverted the young tsar from mere pleasure to serious enterprises, by persuading him first to undertake the Azov expedition, and then to go abroad to complete his education.
By this time the White Sea had become too narrow for Peter, and he was looking about him for more hospitable waters. The Baltic was a closed door to Muscovy, and the key to it was held by Sweden. The Caspian remained; and it had for long been a common saying with foreign merchants that the best way of tapping the riches of the Orient was to secure possession of this vast inland lake. But so long as the Turks and Tatars made the surrounding steppes uninhabitable the Caspian was a possession of but doubtful value. The first step making for security was to build a fleet strong enough to provide against the anarchical condition of those parts; but this implied a direct attack not only upon the Crimean khan, who was mainly responsible for the conduct of the Volgan hordes, but upon the khan’s suzerain, the Turkish sultan. Nevertheless Peter did not hesitate. War against Turkey was resolved upon, and Azov, the chief Turkish fortress in those regions, which could be approached by water from Moscow, became the Russian objective. From the 8th of July to the 22nd of September 1695 the Muscovites attempted in vain to capture Azov. On the 22nd of November Peter re-entered Moscow. His first military expedition had ended in unmitigated disaster, yet from this disaster is to be dated the reign of Peter the Great.
Immediately after his return he sent to Austria and Prussia for as many sappers, miners, engineers and carpenters as money could procure. He meant to build a fleet strong enough to prevent the Turkish fleet from relieving Azov. The guards and all the workmen procurable were driven, forthwith, in bands, to all the places among the forests of the Don to fell timber and work day and night, turning out scores of vessels of all kinds. Peter himself lived among his workmen, himself the most strenuous of them all, in a small two-roomed wooden hut at Voronezh. By the middle of April two warships, twenty-three galleys, four fireships and numerous smaller craft were safely launched. On the 3rd of May “the sea caravan” sailed from Voronezh, “Captain Peter Aleksyeevich” commanding the galley-flotilla from the galley “Principium,” built by his own hand. The new Russian fleet did all that was required of it by preventing the Turks from relieving Azov by water, and on the 18th of July the fortress surrendered. Peter now felt able to advance along the path of progress with a quicker and a firmer step. It was resolved to consolidate the victory by establishing a new naval station at the head of the Sea of Azov, to which the name of Taganrog was given But it was necessary to guarantee the future as well as provide for the present. Turkey was too formidable to be fought single-handed, and it was therefore determined to send a grand embassy to the principal western powers to solicit their co-operation against the Porte. On the 10th of March 1697 this embassy, under the leadership of Lefort, set out on its travels. Peter attached himself to it as a volunteer sailorman, “Peter Mikhailov,” so as to have greater facility for learning ship-building and other technical sciences. As a political mission it failed utterly, the great powers being at that period far more interested in western than in eastern affairs. But personally Peter learnt nearly all that he wanted to know—gunnery at Königsberg, ship-building at Saardam and Deptford, anatomy at Leiden, engraving at Amsterdam—and was proceeding to Venice to complete his knowledge of navigation when the revolt of the stryeltsy, or musketeers (June 1698), recalled him to Moscow. This revolt has been greatly exaggerated. It was suppressed in an hour’s time by the tsar’s troops, of whom only one man was mortally wounded; and the horrible vengeance (September–October 1698) which Peter on his return to Russia wreaked upon the captive musketeers was due not to any actual fear of these antiquated warriors, but to his consciousness that behind them stood the reactionary majority of the nation who secretly sympathized with, though they durst not assist, the rebels.
Peter’s foreign tour had more than ever convinced him of the inherent superiority of the foreigner. Imitation had necessarily to begin with externals, and Peter at once fell foul of the long beards and Oriental costumes which symbolized the arch-conservatism of old Russia. On the 26th of April 1698 the chief men of the tsardom were assembled round his wooden hut at Preobrazhenskoye, and Peter with his own hand deliberately clipped off the beards and moustaches of his chief boyars. The ukaz of the 1st of September 1698 allowed as a compromise that beards should be worn, but a graduated tax was imposed upon their wearers. The wearing of the ancient costumes was forbidden by the ukaz of the 4th of January 1700; thenceforth Saxon or Magyar jackets and French or German hose were prescribed. That the people themselves did not regard the reform as a trifle is plain from the numerous rebellions against it. By the ukaz of the 20th of December 1699 it was next commanded that henceforth the new year should not be reckoned, as heretofore, from the 1st of September, supposed to be the date of the creation, but from the first day of January, anno domini.
The year 1700 is memorable in Russian history as the starting-point of Peter’s long and desperate struggle for the hegemony of the north. He had concluded peace with the Porte (June 13, 1700) on very advantageous terms, in order to devote himself wholly to a war with Sweden to the end that Russia might gain her proper place on the Baltic. The possession of an ice-free seaboard was essential to her natural development, the creation of a fleet would follow inevitably upon the acquisition of such a seaboard; and she could not hope to obtain her due share of the trade and commerce of the world till she possessed both. All the conjunctures seemed favourable to Peter. The Swedish government was in the hands of an untried lad of sixteen; and the fine fleets of Denmark, and the veteran soldiers of Saxony, were on the same side as the myriads of Muscovy. It seemed an easy task for such a coalition to wrest the coveted spoil from the young Charles XII.; yet Peter was the only one of the three conspirators who survived the Twenty-one Years’ War in which they so confidently embarked during the summer of 1701. He was also the only one of them who got anything by it. Charles’s “immersion in the Polish bog” (1702–1707), as Peter phrased it, enabled the tsar, not without considerable expense and trouble, to conquer Ingria and lay the foundations of St Petersburg. In these early days Peter would very willingly have made peace with his formidable rival if he had been allowed to retain these comparatively modest conquests. From 1707 to 1709 the war on his part was purely defensive; Charles would not hear of peace till full restitution had been made and a war indemnity paid, while Peter was fully resolved to perish rather than surrender his “paradise,” Petersburg. After Pultava (June 26, 1709), Peter, hitherto commendably cautious even to cowardice, but now puffed up with pride, rashly plunged into as foolhardy an enterprise as ever his rival engaged in. The campaign of the Pruth (March to July 1711) must have been fatal to the
