Peter the Great

Peace finally came in 1678, but the suspicions raised in William by Louis' ambitions were never assuaged. Opposition to the great French King became William's obsession. He understood that the power of France could never be matched by any other single power; therefore, his life work became the tireless weaving of coalitions of European states strong enough to repulse the Sun King's ambition, which was, as William saw it, to establish in Europe "a universal monarchy and a universal religion."

The young hero grew quickly into an experienced statesman and warrior. Physically couragous and energetic, a ruthless disciplinarian of himself and his men, William was nevertheless not a great soldier. Although he commanded Dutch and English armies for almost three decades, he never rose above the second rank as a military commander; he certainly was not to be compared with the lieutenant who succeeded him as generalissimo of the anti-French coalition, John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough. William's talent lay not in winning battles—he was frequently beaten—but in surviving defeat, in remaining in the field, in pulling back, enduring, and preparing for the next campaign. His genius lay in diplomacy. Stern, unlovable, impatient, self-willed, passionate, his true nature was to tolerate no obstruction, smashing through everything to his objective. But because Holland had not the power to indulge this side of his character, he was forced to suppress these feelings, to compromise with his allies, to make concessions, to soothe and to wait.

William was a Calvinist, but he tolerated all religions: The Pope was his ally, so was the Catholic Emperor; there were Catholic officers in his army. Every other prejudice and antagonism was set aside; his sole vendetta was with Louis. At bottom, however, his life was guided by a steely Calvinist belief in predestination. He was convinced that he, like others in his family before him, was acting as an instrument of God. The Deity, he believed, had chosen his family and now himself to save the Netherlands and the Protestant cause in Europe. He even saw his mission as personal: himself and Louis locked in single combat for the future of Europe. Given this granite foundation to his faith, it did not dismay William when his armies failed in battle: Everything was preordained by God, and defeat was only a challenge to his worthiness, a test of his ability to continue as God's champion. Although William sometimes doubted and even despaired, he never gave up, believing that somehow, through miracles if necessary, God would save his cause. Thus, although his power was much less than Louis', William, unlike Louis, was prepared to run great risks. It was a risk of this magnitude, a second miracle almost, which in 1688 suddenly catapulted William onto the throne of England.

For years, William's primary diplomatic objective, after the safeguarding of Holland, had been to pull his cynical uncle, Charles II of England, away from France, and to attach England to Holland in alliance against France. He never entirely succeeded, but after 1672 England remained neutral in the uneasy peace that followed. In 1677, to further his policy, twenty-six-year-old William married his first cousin, Charles II's niece, the fifteen-year-old Princess Mary of England. It was not a love match, as women in general meant little to William, and the marriage was childless. The Princess, however, was a devoted wife who gave up England and dedicated herself to-becoming a Princess of Holland, not even visiting her own country for ten years after her marriage. She became much beloved by the Dutch people, and she returned their affection. She had no expectation of ever mounting the English throne: Before her stood first the incumbent king, her uncle Charles II, then any legitimate male heirs whom he might sire, then her father, the Duke of York, followed by his legitimate male heirs.

In 1685, however, after twenty-five years on the English throne, Charles II died, leaving no legitimate child, and the throne passed to his younger brother, England's finest admiral, James, Duke of York. This change of monarchs greatly altered England's position. James was honest, blunt, proud, single-minded and devoid of subtlety. Born a Protestant, he had converted to Catholicism at the age of thirty-five, displaying thereafter all the special fanaticism of the convert, a trait in which he was enthusiastically encouraged by his Catholic second wife, Mary of Modena. On the decks of his ships or in a special little wooden chapel mounted on wheels and trundled along in the midst of his army, James heard mass twice a day.

Once on the throne, James moved quickly to change the balance of political forces in England. His first objective was simply to remove the restrictions placed on English Catholics by the strongly anti-Catholic Protestant majority. Increasingly, however, Catholics were promoted into key positions. Catholic governors were installed in the Channel ports and a Catholic admiral was given command of the Channel fleet. Although Protestant anxiety and opposition mounted swiftly, one important fact stifled overt action: James had no son, and his two daughters, Mary and Anne, were both Protestants. English Protestants, thus, were prepared to await James' death and Mary's succession. And Mary's husband, who would suceed with her to the throne, was William of Orange. William's title to rule came only partially from his status as Mary's husband; in his own right he was also, as the only nephew of both King Charles II and King James II, the next heir after Mary and Anne.

William did not dislike his uncle, but he deeply feared the presence of a Catholic monarch on the English throne, with its implications of an alignment of Catholic France and Catholic England against Protestant Holland. Nevertheless, he, too, was prepared to wait for James to die and his own wife, Mary, to come to the throne. But on June 20, 1688, James' Queen, Mary of Modena, produced a son. The Catholic King had a Catholic heir. This challenge flung down before the Protestants of England turned them immediately to William. Although what happened next was seen by James' supporters (who came to be called Jacobites) as a stroke of monstrous ambition by a ruthless nephew and son-in-law usurping the throne of England, the motive for William's action had almost nothing to do with England and everything to do with France and Europe. It was not that William wanted to be King of England or cared about preserving the liberties of Englishmen or the rights of Parliament; what he wanted was to keep England in the Protestant camp.

The invitation to William to replace his uncle on the English throne was sent to William by seven of the most respected Protestants leaders in England, including both Whigs and Tories. Obtaining the support and permission of the States General of Holland, William embarked a Dutch army of 12,000 men on 200 merchant vessels escorted by 49 warships, almost the entire Dutch fleet. Slipping past the watching English and French fleets, he landed at Torbay on the Devonshire coast. He came ashore behind a banner carrying the ancient creed of the House of Orange, "Je maintiendrai" ("I shall maintain"), to which William had added the words: "the liberties of England and the Protestant religion."

James sent his most skilled military commander and his intimate personal friend, John Churchill, then Earl of Marlborough, to confront William's army, but Marlborough, himself a Protestant, promptly defected to the invaders. So did James' other daughter, Princess Anne, along with her husband, Prince George of Denmark. This broke the King's spirit. Crying, "God help me! Even my own children have deserted me!" he fled unshaven from London, throwing the Great Seal into the river as he crossed the

Thames and embarked for France. There, in the chateau of St. Germain-en-Laye, where he now lies buried, the proud and obstinate monarch lived for thirteen years as a pensioner of Louis. He kept a shadow court and a handful of Irish Guards, all dependent for their daily bread on Louis, whose vanity was gratified by the presence at his feet of a suppliant exiled monarch.

Mary's position in the quarrel between her father and her husband was painful, but, as a Protestant and a wife, she supported William. When she arrived in England, she quickly rejected proposals that she become the sole monarch to the exclusion of her husband. William and Mary were proclaimed joint sovereigns by a Parliament which, in turn, extracted from them a Bill of Rights and other privileges which are today the centerpieces of the British constitution.

Ironically, although the events of 1688 marked an overwhelming change in the political and constitutional history of England, and are referred to as the Glorious Revolution, William did not much care about them. He acquiesced in whatever Parliament asked, in order to keep its support for the struggle in Europe. He left domestic policy in the hands of others while striving to control England's foreign policy himself, coordinating it with Dutch policy and even merging the Dutch and English diplomatic services to act as one. His foreign policy was, simply, war with France, and in taking William, England also took his war. In essence, a trade had been made: Parliament accepted William's war in order to protect the Protestant religion and assert its supremacy; William accepted Parliament's supremacy in order to keep England's support in fighting Louis.

William did not feel at home among the islanders. He hated the English weather, which aggravated his asthma, and he disliked the English people: "I am sure that this people has not been made for me, nor J for it." He longed for Holland. In 1692, when The Hague was holding its annual fair, he sighed, "I wish I were a bird and could fly over." On another occasion, he spoke of Holland, "for which I am longing as a fish for water."

And the English heartily returned William's dislike. They commented on his unsociability, his silence and his surliness toward his English subjects, as well as on his distaste for their habits, their traditions, their parties and politics, and for London. But although he took the witty Elizabeth Villiers as his mistress, Queen Mary remained devoted to him, ruling England in his behalf whenever he was absent from the realm and retiring from politics completely whenever he returned. When she died of smallpox at the age of thirty-two, William mourned her bitterly. He continued on as sole monarch, a childless, lonely man whose heir was Mary's sister, Princess Anne. The French, ever ready to believe the worst of the strange little man who so desperately opposed them, spread rumors that he was in love with the Earl of Albemarle.

What William most disliked about the English was what he regarded as their naive disregard of their own long-term interests and their selfish lack of concern about what happened to Europe; in other words, their wavering commitment to his great cause. As King of England, he bound English interests to the Dutch, but he did not subordinate the one to the other. Instead, as leader of the coalition of Europe, he took an overall view of his role. He began to speak of Europe as an entity, and in his correspondence the objective became "the general interest of Europe."

Predictably, within two years of William's coronation, England was at war with France. The war lasted nine years, the result was inconclusive and the Treaty of Ryswick, being drawn up at The Hague in 1697 at the moment of Peter's visit to Holland, altered no boundaries, although by its terms Louis finally recognized William as King of England. Thereafter, in a brief interlude of peace, Louis and William even worked together to head off the international crisis which would inevitably be precipitated when the feeble King of Spain, Carlos II, died without an heir. The agreed solution was partition, but Carlos upset their plans by leaving his kingdom and empire to Louis's grandson, and the Sun King tore up his treaty with William. William, naturally, refused to accept this merger of the territory and power of France and Spain, and tirelessly began once again to assemble an anti-French coalition.

The great war which followed, called the War of the Spanish Succession, lasted eleven years and marked the dividing line between seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century Europe. In immediate terms, the war was won and William's goal achieved: France was held within its boundaries, Holland preserved its freedom and the Protestant religion was maintained in Europe. But William did not live to see it. In the spring of 1702, on the eve of his declaration of war, the King went for a ride on Sorrel, his favorite horse, in the park at Hampton Court. The horse stumbled, pitching William out of the saddle, breaking his collarbone. At first, the accident did not seem serious, but William, at fifty, was exhausted. His eyes were deeply sunken, his asthmatic cough never stopped. His emaciated body lacked the strength to resist, and on March 19, 1702, he died.

It was Peter's good fortune that William happened to be in Holland when the Great Embassy arrived. Ever since the Tsar's adolescence, William had been his foremost hero among Western leaders. Through the long evenings in the German Suburb, talking with Hollanders, Germans and other foreigners, most of them adherents to William's Protestant, anti-French cause, Peter had listened to innumerable tales about the dauntless, skillful and persistent Dutchman. In 1691, at Pereslavl, he had ordered the cannon of his ships on the lake fired in salute when he heard of the English and Dutch victory over the French fleet at La Hogue. Predisposed to value all things Dutch, wanting to learn the secrets of Dutch shipwrights, hoping to enlist Dutch help in his war against the Turks, Peter was eager to meet the King and Stadholder whom he so admired.

Their first encounter took place at Utrecht, Peter being escorted there by Witsen and Lefort. The meeting was completely private and informal, as both monarchs always preferred. They were an unlikely pair: the small, coldly disciplined Dutchman with his bent back and asthmatic wheeze, and the towering, youthful, impulsive Russian. Peter's proposal that William join him in a Christian alliance against the Turks drew no response. William, although negotiating peace with France, wanted no major war in the East which could distract and divert his Austrian ally and tempt Louis XIV to renew his adventures in the West. In any case, Peter's appeal was to be officially delivered not by himself to William, but by the Russian ambassadors to the formal rulers of Holland, Their High Mightinesses the States General, who sat in the national capital, The Hague. It was to them that the Great Embassy would present its credentials and state its business, and Peter took this event extremely seriously. As Russia had no permanent ambassadors or embassies abroad, the arrival of this large delegation headed by three leading men of the Russian state (even apart from the unacknowledged presence of the sovereign) and the manner of its reception were matters of great importance to Peter. He was eager that the Embassy's debut be auspicious, and for this purpose Ryswick provided an excellent stage. The most celebrated statesmen and diplomats of all the major European powers were present to conduct or oversee the crucial peace negotiations; anything that happened in Ryswick would be carefully noted and reported back to every capital and monarch in Europe.

The Russian ambassadors fussed for days in Amsterdam preparing themselves for their audience. They ordered three magnificent state carriages, new wardrobes for themselves and new liveries for their servants. Meanwhile, in The Hague, two hotels were readied for them and stocked with large quantities of wine and food. As the Embassy prepared, Peter told Witsen that he wanted to accompany his ambassadors incognito to observe how they were received. This request was difficult for Witsen to comply with, but even harderto refuse. Peter went along in one of the lesser carriages, insisting that his favorite dwarf accompany him even though the coach was crowded. "Very well," he said, "then I'll put him on my knees." All along the road from Amsterdam to The Hague, Peter kept seeing new things. Passing a mill, Peter asked, "What is this for?" Told it was a mill to cut stones, he declared, "I want to see it." The carriage stopped, but the mill was locked. Even at night, crossing a bridge, Peter wanted to study its construction and take measurements. The carriage stopped again, lanterns were brought and the Tsar measured the bridge's length and width. He was measuring the depth of its pontoons when the wind blew out the lights.

At The Hague, Peter was taken to the Hotel Amsterdam, where he was shown a beautiful room with a luxurious bed. He rejected both, choosing instead a small room at the top of the hotel with a simple camp bed. A few minutes later, however, he decided that he wanted to be with his ambassadors. It was after midnight, but he insisted that the horses be put back in the carriage and driven to the Hotel des Doelens. Here, again, he was shown a handsome apartment which did not please him and he went in search of his own accommodations. Spotting one of the Embassy servants fast asleep on a bearskin, Peter pushed him with his feet, saying, "Come on, come on, get up!" The servant rolled over, growling. Peter kicked him a second time, crying, "Quickly, quickly, I want to sleep there." This time, the servant understood and leaped to his feet. Peter threw himself on the warm bearskin and went to sleep.

On the day the ambassadors were received by the States General, Peter was dressed in European style as a gentleman on the court. He wore a blue suit with gold ornaments, a blond wig and a hat with white plumes. Witsen ushered him into a chamber next to the hall in which the reception would take place; through a window, Peter was able to observe and hear everything. There he stood and waited for the ambassadors to appear. "They are late," he complained. His impatience grew as he saw everyone turning constantly to look at him and heard the growing buzz of excitement as whispers passed that the Tsar was in the next room. He wanted to escape, but could not without crossing the crowded audience hall. Distraught, he asked Witsen to command the members of the States General to turn their head away in order not to see him as he crossed. Witsen told him that he could not command these gentlemen who were the sovereign in Holland, but that he would ask them. They replied that they would be willing to rise in the presence of the Tsar but would not consent to turn their backs. On hearing this, Peter covered his face with his wig and walked rapidly across the hall into the vestibule and down the stairs.

A few minutes later, the ambassadors arrived in the hall and the audience took place. Lefort made a speech in Russian which was translated into French, and presented Their High Mightinesses with a large collection of sables. Lefort, who wore European clothes in Moscow, was dressed for the occasion in Muscovite robes of cloth of gold, bordered with furs. His hat and sword sparkled with diamonds. Golovin and Voznitsyn were dressed in black satin sewn with gold, pearls and diamonds; on their breasts they wore medallions enclosing a portrait of the Tsar, and their shoulders were covered with a gold embroidery of the double eagle. The ambassadors made a good impression, the Russian costumes were much admired and everyone talked about the Tsar.

While in The Hague, Peter maintained his official incognito, meeting privately with Dutch statesmen but refusing any public recognition. He attended a banquet for the diplomatic corps, sitting next to Witsen. He continued to meet privately with William, although no record of their conversations has remained. Finally, satisfied with the reception of his ambassadors and leaving them to conduct the actual negotiations with the States General, he returned to his work in the shipyard at Amsterdam. The Embassy had limited success. The Dutch were not interested in a crusade against the Turks, and because of the debts piled up from their war against France and the need to rebuild their own navy, they rejected the Russian request for help in building and arming seventy warships and more than one hundred galleys for use on the Black Sea.

During the autumn, often escorted by Witsen, Peter made frequent excursions by carriage across the flat Dutch countryside. Rolling along through regions once at the bottom of a shallow sea, he looked out at a landscape dotted with windmills and brick church spires, meadows filled with grazing cows, and little brick towns with brick streets. The rivers and canals packed with boats and barges were a delight for Peter. Often, when the water was hidden by the flatness of the landscape, it seemed as if the brown sails and masts were moving independently across the wide fields.

Aboard a ptate yacht, Witsen took Peter to the island of Texel on the North Sea coast to watch the return of the Greenland whaling fleet. The place was remote, with long, rolling dunes and scrub trees growing at the edge of the white sand. In the harbor, Peter boarded one of the sturdy, three-masted vessels, examined everything and asked many questions about whales. To demonstrate, the whaler lowered a whaleboat and the crew demonstrated attacking a whale with a harpoon. Peter marveled at their precision and coordination. Then, although the ship reeked of whale blubber, the Tsar descended below-decks to see the rooms where the whales were butchered and the blubber was boiled for its precious oil.

Several times, Peter returned quietly to Zaandam to visit his comrades who were still working there. Menshikov was learning to make masts, Naryshkin was learning navigation, Golovkin and Kurakin were working on hull construction. Usually, he traveled there by water, or went sailing during his visit. Once, when he was sailing during a storm against advice, his boat capsized. Peter clambered out and patiently sat on the upturned bottom, waiting to be rescued.

Although his privacy was protected as long as he worked on the docks, it was impossible to isolate him when he sailed on the Ij. Small boats filled with curious people regularly tried to accost him. This always made Peter angry. Once, at the urging of several lady passengers, the captain of a mail boat tried to draw alongside Peter's craft. In a fury, Peter threw two empty bottles at the captain's head. He missed, but the mail boat reversed course and left him alone.

Early in his visit, Peter met the leading Dutch admiral of the day, Gilles Schey, a pupil of de Ruyter's. It was Schey who offered him the most striking and agreeable spectacle of his visit: a great sham naval battle on the Ij. The boat owners in northern Holland were invited to attend, and cannon were placed on all the craft able to carry them. Companies of volunteer soldiers were distributed among the decks and riggings of the larger boats, charged to simulate the fire of musketeers during the battle. On a Sunday morning, under a cloudless sky with a fresh wind, hundreds of boats assembled along the edge of a dike lined with thousands of spectators. Peter and members of his Embassy boarded the grand yacht of the East India Company and sailed toward the two fleets already ranged in opposing lines of battle. After a salute to the guest, the battle began. First, the two lines of ships fired salvos at each other, then a number of individual ship-to-ship engagements commenced. The battle, with its advance and retreat, its grappling and boarding, its smoke and noise, pleased the Tsar so much that he made his own ship steer for the place of hottest action. With the cannon thundering continually so that no one could hear, "the Tsar was in a state of rapture difficult to describe." In the afternoon, a number of collisions forced the Admiral to signal both sides to break off the action.

Peter dined often with Schey and tried to persuade the Admiral to come to Russia to supervise construction of the Russian fleet and to take command when it put to sea. He offered Schey all the titles he might want, a pension of 24,000 florins, more for his wife and children in case they preferred to remain behind in Holland, and promised to make the arrangements himself with William. Schey declined, which did not in any way diminish Peter's respect for him, and proposed another admiral to Peter as a man capable of supervising and commanding a navy. This was Cornelius Cruys, born in Norway of Dutch parents. With the rank of rear admiral, he was Chief Inspector of Naval Stores and Equipment of the Dutch Admiralty at Amsterdam, and in this capacity had already been advising the Russians in their purchases of naval equipment. He was exactly the kind of man Peter wanted, but, like Schey, Cruys showed little enthusiasm for Peter's offer. Only the united efforts of Schey, Witsen and other prominent persons who understood that Cruys in Russia would have a powerful influence on Russian trade persuaded the reluctant Admiral to accept.

Except for the time needed for his visit to The Hague and his trips to see various places and people in other parts of Holland, Peter worked steadily in the shipyard for four months. On November 16, nine weeks after the laying of his frigate's keel, the hull was ready for launching, and at the ceremony Witsen, in the name of the city of Amsterdam, presented the vessel to Peter as a gift. The Tsar, deeply moved, embraced the Burgomaster and immediately named the frigate Amsterdam. Later, loaded with many of the objects and machines Peter had purchased, she was dispatched to Archangel. Pleased as he was with the ship, Peter was even prouder of the piece of paper he received from Gerrit Pool, the master shipwright, certifying that Peter Mikhailov had worked four months in his dockyard, was an able and competent shipwright and had thoroughly mastered the science of naval architecture.

Nevertheless, Peter was disturbed by his instruction in Holland. What he had learned had been little more than ship's carpentry—it was better than the ship's carpentry he had landed in Russia, but it was not what he was seeking. Peter wanted to grasp the basic secrets of ship design; in effect, naval architecture. He wanted blueprints, made scientifically, controlled by mathematics, not simply a greater handiness with axe and hammer. But the Dutch were empirical in shipbuilding as in everything else. Each Dutch shipyard had its own individual rule-of-thumb design, each Dutch shipwright built what had worked for him before and there were no basic principles which Peter could carry back to Russia.

In order to build a fleet a thousand miles away on the Don with a force of largely unskilled laborers, he needed something which could be easily explained, understood and copied by men who had never seen a ship before.

Peter's growing dissatisfaction with Dutch methodology in shipbuilding expressed itself in several ways. First, he sent word back to Voronezh that Dutch shipwrights working there were no longer to be allowed to build as they pleased, but were to be placed under the supervision of Englishmen, Venetians or Danes. Second, now that his frigate was finished, he resolved to go to England to study English shipbuilding techniques. In November, in one of his interviews with William, Peter mentioned his desire to visit England. When the king returned to London, Peter sent Major Adam Weide after him with a formal request that the Tsar be allowed to come to England incognito. William's response elated Peter. The King replied that he was making a present to the Tsar of a superb new royal yacht, still unfinished, which, when completed, would be the most gracefully proportioned and fastest yacht in England. In addition, King William announced that he was sending two warships, Yorke and Romney, with three smaller ships, commanded by Vice Admiral Sir David Mitchell, to escort the Tsar to England. It was Peter's decision that he should come alone, except for Menshikov and several of the "volunteers," leaving Lefort and the majority of the Embassy in Holland to continue negotiating with the Dutch.

On January 7, 1698, after almost five months in Holland, Peter and his companions boarded the Yorke, Admiral Mitchell's flagship, and early the next morning set sail across the narrow strip of gray sea that separates the continent from England.

16

PETER IN ENGLAND

At the time of Peter's visit, London and Paris were the two most populous cities in Europe. In commercial wealth, London ranked second to Amsterdam, which it was soon to succeed. What made London unique, however, was the degree to which it dominated the nation in which it lay. Like Paris, London was the national capital and seat of government, and, like Amsterdam, it was the country's greatest port, the center of its commerce, art and culture. In England, however, the size of the city dwarfed all else. London, counting its immediate environs, had 750,000 inhabitants; the next largest city in England, Bristol, had a mere 30,000. Or, to put it differently, one Englishman in ten was a Londoner; only one Frenchman in forty lived in Paris.

London in 1698 lay mainly on the north bank of the Thames, stretching from Tower Hill to the Houses of Parliament. The great boulevard of the city, spanned by a single bridge, London Bridge, was the Thames. The river, 750 feet across, flowed between marshy banks thick with reeds, interspersed with trim gardens and green meadows—its stone embankments came later. The Thames played a key role in the city's life. Always crowded with ships, it was used as a thoroughfare for getting from one part of the city to another. Hundreds of watermen rowing little boats provided a quicker, cleaner and safer service than could be had by traveling through the crowded streets. In autumn and winter, great mists and fogs swirled up from the Thames to roll through the streets, shrouding everything in a thick, brown, poisonous vapor created by the fog mixing with the smoke pouring from thousands of chimneys.

The London that Peter visited and explored on foot was rich, vital, dirty and dangerous. The narrow streets were piled with garbage and filth which could be dropped freely from any overhanging window. Even the main avenues were dark and airless because greedy builders, anxious to gain more space, had projected upper stories out over the street. Through these Stygian alleys, crowds of Londoners jostled and pushed one another. Traffic congestion was monumental. Lines of carriages and hackney cabs cut deep ruts into the streets, so that passengers inside were tossed about, arriving breathless, nauseated and sometimes bruised. When two coaches met in a narrow street, fearful arguments ensued, with the two coachmen "saluting each other with such diabolical titles and bitter execrations as if every one was striving which should go to the Devil first'." For short distances, to avoid the mud and pushing of the crowds, sedan chairs carried by two strong men were popular. Biggest of all were the overland coaches which rolled into London from the highroads, carrying commercial travelers and visitors from the country. Their destinations were the inns, where weary passengers could dine on cabbage and a pudding. Westphalian ham, chicken, beef, wine, mutton steaks and pigeons, and rise the next morning to a breakfast of ale and toast.

London was a violent city with coarse, cruel pleasures which quickly crushed the unprotected innocent. For women, the age of consent was twelve (it remained twelve in England until 1885).

Crimes were common, and in some parts of the city people could not sleep for the cries of "Murder!" rising from the streets. Public floggings were a popular sight, and executions drew vast crowds. On "Hanging Day," workmen, shop-keepers and apprentices left their jobs to jam the streets; joking and laughing, and hoping to catch a glimpse of the condemned's face. Wealthy ladies and gentlemen paid for places in windows and balconies overlooking the route from Newgate Prison to Tyburn, where executions took place, or, best of all, in wooden stands especially erected to provide an unobstructed view. The most ghastly execution was the penalty for treason: hanging, drawing and quartering. The condemned man was strung up until he was almost dead from strangulation, then cut down, disemboweled while still alive, beheaded, and his trunk was then chopped into quarters.

Sports were heavily stained with blood. Crowds paid to see bulls and bears set upon by enraged mastiffs; often, the teeth of the bear had been filed down and the cornered beast could only swat with his great paws at the mastiffs that leaped and tore at him. Cockfights attracted gamblers, and large purses were wagered on the specially trained fowl.

But, for all its violence, London was also a city where grace, beauty and civilized life were important. It was during this age that Sir Christopher Wren, the greatest of English architects, erected fifty-two new parish churches in London on sites wiped clean by the Great Fire. Their thin, glittering steeples gave London a breathtakingly distinctive skyline, dominated by Wren's masterpiece, the gigantic domed structure of St. Paul's Cathedral. The church was forty-one years in building; on the eve of Peter's arrival, the choir had just been opened for public worship.

For intelligent men, life in London centered on hundreds of coffee houses where the conversation could center on anything under the sun. Gradually, the different houses began to specialize in talk about politics, religion, literature, scientific ideas, business, shipping or agriculture. Choosing the house by the talk he wished to hear, a visitor could step in, sit by the fire, sip coffee and listen to every shade of opinion expressed in brilliant, learned and passionate terms. Good conversationalists could sharpen their wits, writers could share their dilemmas, politicians could arrange compromises, the lonely could find simple warmth. In Lloyd's coffee house, marine insurance had its beginnings. At Will's, Addison was to have his chair by the fire in winter and by the window in summer.

* * *

This was London in 1698. As for the larger polity, England itself, the seventeenth century was a time of transition from the small, relatively insignificant sixteenth-century island kingdom of Queen Elizabeth I to the great European power and world empire of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. When Elizabeth died in 1603, and with her the Tudor Dynasty, England was free of the ambitions of Spain, having beaten off Philip II and his armada. But England remained a peripheral factor in the affairs of Europe. The dynastic question was settled when King James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Queen of Scots, came down from Edinburgh to take the English throne as James I and begin a century of Stuart rule. During the first half of this century, England was absorbed in its own problems, trying to sort out the tangled strands of religious conscience and the relative power of crown and Parliament. When the debate burst into civil war, the second Stuart, Charles I, lost his head, and for eleven years England was ruled under the stern eye of the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. Even when Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, religious tension remained acute. The nation was divided between Catholic and Protestant, and, among the Protestants, between Church of England and Nonconformists.

Yet, England's power and ambitions were growing. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Dutch dominated the world's trade routes, but English seamen and merchants were eager to compete, and three naval wars with Holland jarred this Dutch supremacy. Later, during the War of the Spanish Succession, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, won four major victories over the French armies in the field, besieged and captured supposedly invincible fortresses and was on the verge of driving the Sun King out of Versailles itself when victory was snatched from him by a government decision to end the war. England triumphed, nevertheless, not only over France but also over its own ally, Holland. The long war had overstrained even the superbly organized resources of the wealthy Dutch. The Dutch position on the continent was far more vulnerable than that of England, and during the struggle Holland's vast ocean trade was heavily restricted while that of England flourished and grew. The status of the two powers, nearly equal in the seventeenth century, changed rapidly in the eighteenth. Dutch power waned quickly and Holland slipped to the rank of a lesser state. England emerged from Marlborough's wars supreme on the oceans, and its maritime power ledj to world empire with colonies in every corner of the globe.

Peter's visit to England came at a pivotal moment of this transition to world power. The Treaty of Ryswick ended the first great war against Louis, with the Sun King's power held in check. The final struggle, the War of the Spanish Succession, was four years off, but already England was bustling with the energy which would fuel Marlborough's victories on land and make the Royal Navy mistress of the seas. The wealth of England's commerce still could not compete with the fertile soil of France, but England had an insuperable advantage: it was an island. Its security lay not in the chain of fortresses that Holland maintained in the Spanish Netherlands, but in the waves and its fleet. And although fleets were expensive, they cost less than armies and fortresses. Louis raised dozens of magnificent French armies, but to do so left his people crushed by taxes. In England, the taxes voted by Parliament hurt but did not crush. Europe was amazed by the resilience of the English economy and by the apparent wealth of the English Treasury. It was a system which could not fail to impress a visiting monarch anxious to lift his people up from a simple agrarian economy and into the modem world.

H.M.S. Yorke was the largest warship Peter had yet sailed on, and during his twenty-four-hour trip across the Channel he watched the handling of the ship with interest. Although the weather was stormy, the Tsar remained on deck through the entire voyage, constantly asking questions. The ship was pitching and rolling in the heavy seas, but Peter insisted on going aloft to study the rigging.

Early the next morning, the little squadron arrived off the Suffolk coast and was saluted by the guns of the coastal forts. At the mouth of the Thames, Peter and Admiral Mitchell transferred from the Yorke onto the smaller yacht Mary. This yacht, escorted by two others, sailed up the Thames and, on the morning of January 11, anchored near London Bridge. Here, Peter transferred onto a royal barge and was rowed upriver to a landing quay on the Strand. He was met by a court chamberlain with a welcome from King William. Peter replied in Dutch, and Admiral Mitchell, who spoke Dutch, acted as translator. Peter admired Mitchell, and his first request to the King was that Mitchell be assigned as his official escort and translator throughout his stay.

Peter spent his first days in London in a house at 21 Norfolk Street. At his request, the building selected was small and simple, with a door opening directly onto the riverbank. Two days after the Tsar's arrival, the King himself paid an informal visit. Arriving in a small, unmarked carriage, William found the Tsar still in shirt sleeves in the bedroom he shared with four other Russians. The two rulers began to talk, but William soon found the air in the tiny room too warm and heavy for his asthma—on arrival, Peter had closed the window in the fashion of Moscow, where double windows are sealed against the cold from early autumn until late spring. Unable to breathe, William begged that the window be opened, and when it was, he inhaled deeply the fresh, cold air that poured into the room.

On the 23rd, Peter, accompanied by Admiral Mitchell and two Russian companions, drove to Kensington Palace to pay his first visit to William as King of England, and this meeting was longer than the brief conversations in Holland or the short interview in Peter's stifling room on Norfolk Street. Although the relationship between Peter and William never became intimate—the gap between the exuberant, rough-mannered, autocratic twenty-five-year-old and the lonely, weary, melancholy King being far too wide—William nevertheless was interested in Peter. Apart from being impressed by the Tsar's energy and curiosity, he could not help being flattered by Peter's admiration of him and the achievements of his career, and, as a lifelong builder of alliances, he was pleased by the Tsar's animosity against his own antagonist, Louis XIV. As for Peter, neither William's age nor his personality made friendship easy, but the Tsar continued to respect his Dutch hero.

After his talk with the King, Peter was introduced to the heir to the throne, the thirty-three-year-old Princess Anne, who would succeed William within four years. At William's persuasion, the Tsar stayed on to witness a ball, although, to preserve his incognito, he watched through a small window in the wall of the room. He was fascinated by the construction of a wind dial which had been installed in the main gallery of Kensington Palace. Through connecting rods with a weathervane on the roof, the dial indicated which way the wind was blowing. Later, Peter would install an identical device in his own small summer palace by the Neva in St. Petersburg.

It was also at this meeting that William persuaded Peter to sit for a portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller which contemporaries considered a remarkable likeness. Today, the original hangs in the King's Gallery of Kensington Palace, where its being painted was suggested almost 300 years ago.

Peter's one visit to Kensington Palace was the full extent of his ceremonial life in London. Stubbornly maintaining his incognito, he went about London as he pleased, frequently on foot even on wintry days. As in Holland, he visited workshops and factories, continually asking to be shown how things worked, even demanding drawings and specifications. He looked in on a watchmaker to buy a pocket watch and stayed to learn to dismantle, repair and reassemble the intricate mechanism. Impressed by the carpentry in English coffins, he ordered one shipped to Moscow to serve as a model. He bought a stuffed crocodile and a stuffed swordfish, outlandish creatures never seen in Russia. He made a single visit to a London theater, but the crowd stared more at him than at the stage and he retreated to hide behind his comrades. He met the man who had designed the yacht Royal Transport, being readied for him by the King, and was astonished to find the designer to be a young, hard-drinking English nobleman, very much a man after his own heart. Peregrine Osborne, Marquis of Carmarthen, was the son of Charles II’s great minister Danby, now the Duke of Leeds. He happened also to be a superb seaman and an original designer as well as a majestic drinker, it was Carmarthen who introduced Peter to his favorite drink, a cup of brandy laced with peppers. Together, the two went so often to a tavern in Great Tower Street that it was renamed the Czar of Muscovy. With Carmarthen, Peter met Laetitia Cross, a leading actress of the day. He took pleasure in her company, and, with the understanding that some reward would come her way, she moved in with him for the duration of his stay in England.

The sight in London that most attracted Peter, of course, was the forest of masts belonging to the ships moored in rows in the great merchant-fleet anchorage known as the Pool of London. In the Pool alone, Daniel Defoe one day counted no less than 2,000 ships. But Peter, anxious to begin his course in shipbuilding amidst the docks and shipyards of the lower Thames, was temporarily frustrated by ice on the river. As it happened, the winter of 1698 was exceptionally cold. The upper Thames was partly frozen, and people were able to walk from Southwark across to London. Piemen, jugglers and small boys plied their wares and played games on the ice, but it made travel by water impossible and delayed Peter's project.

For greater convenience and to escape the crowds that were now beginning to dog his excursions, he moved his lodgings to Deptford, staying at Sayes Court, a large, elegantly furnished house provided for him by the English government. The house belonged to John Evelyn, the celebrated essayist and diarist, and it was Evelyn's pride; he had spent forty-five years laying out its gardens, its bowling green, its gravel paths and groves of trees. To make room for Peter and his comrades, another tenant, Admiral Benbow, had been moved out, and the house had been especially redecorated. For Peter, its attractions were its size (it was large enough to hold his entire suite), the garden in which he could relax in privacy, and the door at the foot of the garden which opened directly onto the dockyard and the river.

·Unfortunately for Evelyn, the Russians cared little for his reputation or for his lifelong effort to create beauty. They vandalized his house. Even while they were still there, Evelyn's horrified steward wrote to his master:

There is a house full of people and right nasty. The Tsar lies next to the library and dines in the parlour next your study. He dines at ten o'clock and six at night, is very seldom at home a whole day, very often in the King's yard [the shipyard], or by water, dressed in several dresses. The King is expected here this day; the best parlour is pretty clean for him to be entertained in. The King pays for all he [the Tsar] has.

But it was not until the Russians had left at the end of their three-month stay and Evelyn came to see his once-beautiful home that the full extent of the damage became apparent. Appalled, Evelyn hurried off to the Royal Surveyor, Sir Christopher Wren, and the Royal Gardener, Mr. London, to ask them to estimate the cost of the repairs. They found floors and carpets so stained and smeared with ink and grease that new floors had to be installed. Tiles had been pulled from the Dutch stoves and brass door locks pried open. The paintwork was battered and filthy. Windows were broken, and more than fifty chairs—every one in the house—had simply disappeared, probably into the stoves. Featherbeds, sheets and canopies were ripped and torn as if by wild animals. Twenty pictures and portraits were torn, probably used for target practice. Outside, the garden was ruined. The lawn was trampled into mud and dust, "as if a regiment of soldiers in iron shoes had drilled on it." The magnificent holly hedge, 400 feet long, 9 feet high and 5 feet thick, had been flattened by the wheelbarrows rammed through it. The bowling green, the gravel paths, the bushes and trees, all were ravaged. Neighbors reported that the Russians had found three wheelbarrows, unknown in Russia, and had developed a game with one man, sometimes the Tsar, inside the wheelbarrow and another racing him into the hedges. Wren and his companions noted all this and made a recommendation which resulted in a recompense to Evelyn of 350 pounds and ninepence, an enormous sum for that day.

Not surprisingly in an age of religious struggle, the Protestant missionary spirit was awakened by the presence of the curious young monarch who meant to import Western technology into his backward kingdom. If shipbuilding techniques, why not religion? Rumors that Peter was not devoted to traditional Orthodoxy and was interested in other faiths opened broad visions in the heads of aggressive Protestants. Would it be possible to convert the young monarch and, through him, his primitive people? Could there at least be a union of the Anglican and Orthodox churches? The Archbishop of Canterbury was inspired by the prospect, and even King William lent an ear. On the command of the King and the Archbishop, an eminent English churchman, Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, was instructed to call upon the Tsar "and to offer him such information of our religion and constitution as he was willing to receive."

On February 15, Peter received Burnet and a formal delegation of Anglican churchmen. Peter liked Burnet and they met several times for dialogues lasting several hours, but Burnet, who had come to instruct and persuade, found the chances of conversion to be nil; Peter who was only the first of many Russians whose interest in importing Western technology was mistaken by naive Westerners for an opportunity also to export Western philosophy and ideas. His interest in Protestantism was purely clinical. Skeptical of all religions, including Orthodoxy, he was seeking, amidst the forms and doctrines of each, that which could be useful to him and his state. After their conversations, Burnet took the Tsar to visit the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace. Invited to attend services at St. Paul's, Peter refused because of the large crowds, but he did take Anglican communion in the Archbishop's private chapel before a breakfast at which the two had a lengthy discussion.

Long after the Tsar had returned to Russia, Burnet set down his impressions of the tall young Russian sovereign with whom he had talked so earnestly:

I waited often on him, and was ordered both by the King and the archbishop and bishops to attend upon him. I had good interpreters, so I had much free discourse with him. He is a man of very hot temper, soon inflamed, and very brutal in his passion; he raises his natural heat by drinking much brandy, which he rectified himself with great application. He is subject to convulsive motions all over his body, and his head seems to be affected with these. He wants not capacity, and has a larger measure of knowledge than might be expected from his education, which was very indifferent; a want of judgment with an instability of temper, appear in him too often and too evidently. He is mechanically turned, and seems designed by nature rather to be a ship-carpenter than a great prince. This was his chief study and exercise while he stayed here. He wrought much with his own hands, and made all about him work at the models of ships. He told me how he designed a great fleet at Azov, and with it to attack the Turkish empire; but he did not seem capable of conducting so great a design, though his conduct in his wars since this has discovered a greater genius in him than appeared at that 219 time. He was desirous to understand our doctrine, but he did not seem disposed to mend matters in Moscovy; he was, indeed, resolved to encourage learning, and to polish his people by sending some of them to travel in other countries, and to draw strangers to come and live among them. He seemed apprehensive still of his sister's intrigues. There is a mixture both of passion and severity in his temper. He is resolute but understands little of war, and seems not at all inquisitive that way. After I had seen him often, and had conversed much with him, I could not but adore the depth of the providence of God, that had raised up such a furious man to so absolute authority over so great a part of the world.

Peter's interest in church affairs extended beyond the established Church of England. Tales of his curiosity about Protestantism inspired all kinds of sects, fanatical and otherwise, to hope that they might gain a convert of supporter. Reformers, extremists, philanthropists and simple quacks approached the Tsar, hoping to use him as a means of introducing their particular beliefs into Peter's far-off country. Most of these Peter ignored. But he was fascinated by the Quakers. He went to several Quaker meetings and eventually met William Penn, to whom the huge proprietary colony of Pennsylvania had been granted by Charles II in exchange for cancellation of an enormous loan to the crown. Penn had actually spent only two years in his "holy experiment," a territory devoted to religious toleration in the New World, and now, during Peter's visit, he was preparing to depart again. Hearing that Peter had already attended a Quaker service, Penn went to Deptford to see the Tsar on April 3. They talked in Dutch, which Penn spoke, and Penn presented Peter with a number of his writings in that language. After Penn's visit, Peter continued to go to Quaker meetings in Deptford. Following the service as best he could, standing up, sitting down, observing long periods of silence, he constantly looked about to see what others were doing. The experience stayed with him. Sixteen years later, in the North German province of Holstein, he found a Quaker meetinghouse and attended with Menshikov, Dolgoruky and others. The Russians, except for Peter, understood nothing of the words being spoken, but they sat in silence and occasionally the Tsar leaned over and interpreted. When the service was over, Peter declared to his followers that "whoever could live according to such a doctrine would be happy."

During the same weeks that Peter was in conversation with English church leaders, he also consummated a business deal which, as he well knew, would sadden the hearts of his own Orthodox churchmen. Traditionally, the Orthodox Church forbade the use of that "ungodly herb," tobacco. In 1634, Peter's grandfather Tsar Michael had forbidden smoking or any other use of tobacco on pain of death; subsequently, the penalty was reduced and Russians caught smoking merely had their nostrils slit. Nevertheless, the influx of foreigners into Russia had spread the habit, and punishment was rare; Tsar Alexis had even licensed tobacco for a short period, making its sale a state monopoly. But the church and all conservative Russians still deeply disapproved. Peter, of course, ignored this disapproval; as a youth, he had been introduced to tobacco and was seen nightly smoking a long clay pipe with his Dutch and German friends in the German Suburb. Before departing Russia with the Great Embassy, Peter had issued a decree authorizing both the sale and the smoking of tobacco.

In England, whose colonies included the great tobacco-growing plantations of Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, this sudden potential of opening a .vast new market for tobacco caused great excitement. Already, tobacco merchants had petitioned the King to intercede with the Tsar on their behalf. As it happened, no one was more interested in this matter, or better positioned to do something about it, than Carmarthen, Peter's new comrade. When Carmarthen brought to him a proposal from a group of English merchants for a tobacco monopoly in Russia, Peter was instantly attracted. Not only did he see smoking as a Western habit whose wider use would help to loosen the iron grip of the Orthodox Church. There was an even greater immediate attraction: money. By this time, Peter and his Embassy desperately needed funds. The costs of supporting 250 Russians abroad, even with the subsidies received from the host countries, were enormous. In addition, Peter's agents in Holland were recruiting seamen, ships' officers, shipwrights and other personnel. They had to pay initial subscription fees, down payments of salaries and travel expenses. The agents were busy buying so many articles, instruments, machines and models that ten ships had to be chartered to carry this cargo along with the recruits back to Russia. The treasury of the Embassy was repeatedly drained, and Moscow was repeatedly called upon to send huge sums. But there was never enough.

This situation made Carmarthen's proposal irresistible. He offered to pay 28,000 English pounds in return for permission to import a million and a half pounds of tobacco into Russia free of customs duties and to sell it on the Russian market free of all restrictions. Most important from Peter's point of view, Carmarthen was prepared to pay cash in advance to Peter in London. The contract was signed on April 16, 1698. Peter's pleasure can be measured in Lefort's reply to the Tsar's jubilant announcement: "On your orders, we [in Holland] did not open your letter until we had drained three goblets, and after we read it we drank three more. ... In truth, I believe it's a fine stroke of business."

When not working at the dockyards, Peter hurried about London and its vicinity trying to see all the interesting places. He visited the Greenwich Naval Hospital, designed by Christopher Wren and called "one of the most sublime sights English architecture affords." Peter approved of William Ill's simple style of living in the red-brick, oak-paneled palace at Kensington, but the majestic hospital with its twin colonnades facing the Thames had an effect on him. Going to dine with the King after his visit to Greenwich, the Tsar could not help saying, "If I were to advise Your Majesty, it would be to move your court to the hospital and bring the patients to your palace." Peter saw the tombs of England's monarchs (and also the apple and oyster sellers) inside Westminster Abbey. He visited Windsor Castle and Hampton Court, but royal palaces were less interesting to him than functioning scientific or military institutions. At the Greenwich Observatory, he discussed mathematics with the Royal Astronomer. At the Woolwich Arsenal, England's main cannon foundry, Peter discovered in Master of the Ordnance Romney a fellow spirit with whom he could share his delight in artillery and fireworks. The Tower of London at that time served as arsenal, zoo, museum and site of the Royal Mint. Touring the museum of medieval armor, Peter was not shown the axe which, fifty years earlier, had beheaded Charles I. His hosts remembered that Peter's father, Tsar Alexis, hearing that the English people had beheaded their sovereign, had furiously stripped English merchants in Russia of all their privileges. Thus, the axe was kept hidden from Peter, "as it was feared that he would throw it into the Thames." For Peter, the most interesting part of the Tower was the mint. Struck by the excellence of English coinage, and the technique by which the coins were made, he went back repeatedly. (Unfortunately, the Warden of the Royal Mint, Sir Isaac Newton, lived and worked at Trinity College, Cambridge.) Peter was impressed by the reform of English coinage instituted by Newton and John Locke. To prevent the constant degrading of the coinage by people snipping little bits of silver off the edges, English coins had milled edges. Two years later, when Peter began to reform Russia's badly irregular coinage, the English system served as a model.

Throughout his stay in England, Peter was always on the lookout for qualified men for service in Russia. Aided in his recruiting by Carmarthen, he interviewed scores and finally persuaded about sixty Englishmen to follow him. Among them were Major Leonard van der Stamm, the master shipwright at Deptford; Captain John Perry, a hydraulic engineer to whom Peter assigned, responsibility for building the Volga-Don canal; and Professor Henry Farquharson, a mathematician from the University of Aberdeen who was to open a School of Mathematics and Navigation in Moscow. Peter also write to a friend in Russia that he had recruited two barbers "for purposes of future demands," a hint that had ominous portents for those in Moscow whose pride lay in the length of their beards.

Peter's feeling for William and his gratitude to the King grew even greater when the regal gift of the yacht Royal Transport was handed over to him on March 2. He sailed in her the following day and as often thereafter as he could. In addition, William ordered that Peter be shown everything he wished to see of the English fleet. The climax came when the Tsar was invited to a special review of the fleet and a mock engagement off Spithead near the Isle of Wight. A naval squadron consisting of the Royal William, the Victory and the Association took Peter and his suite on board in Portsmouth and carried them into The Solent off the Isle of Wight. There, Peter transferred to Admiral Mitchell's flagship, Humber. On exercise day, the fleet weighed anchor; the great ships set their sails and formed opposing lines of battle. Broadsides roared out, shrouding the fleets in smoke and flame just as they would in a real battle, but on this day no cannonballs flew. Nevertheless, as the great ships maneuvered through the smoke, turning in unison to attack each other, Peter was jubilant. He tried to see and note down everything: the scurrying of the seamen to dress the sails, the orders to the helmsmen, the number and caliber and serving of the guns, the signals from the flagship to her sisters in the line. It was a momentous day for a young man who, scarcely ten years before, had first seen a sailboat and learned to tack it back and forth on the narrow Yauza. When the ships returned at night to their anchorage, their guns thundered a twenty-one-gun salute and the seamen roared out cheers for the youthful monarch who dreamed of the day he would fly his own banner in the van of a Russian fleet.

William invited him to the Houses of Parliament. Not wishing to be stared at, Peter chose as his vantage point a window outside an upper gallery, and from there the Tsar observed the King on his throne surrounded by the English peerage on benches. This episode led to the remark by an anonymous observer which went around London, "Today, I have seen the rarest thing in the world: one monarch on the throne and another on the roof." Peter listened to the debate with an interpreter and then, to the Russians who were with him, declared that, while he could not accept the limitation by parliaments of the power of the kings, still "it is good to hear subjects speaking truthfully and openly to their king. This is what we must learn from the English!" While Peter was there, William gave his formal assent to a number of bills, including a land tax which it was estimated would produce 1.5 million pounds in revenue. When Peter expressed surprise that Parliament could raise so much by passage of a single bill, he was told that, the year before, Parliament had passed a bill which had collected three times as much.

As Peter's visit neared its end, his presence in London came to be accepted as almost normal. The imperial ambassador Hoffman wrote to his master in Vienna:

The court here is well contented with [Peter], for he now is not so afraid of people as he was at first. They accuse him of a certain stinginess only, for he has been in no way lavish. All the time here he went about in sailor's clothing. We shall see in" what dress he presents himself to Your Imperial Majesty. He saw the King very rarely, as he did not wish to change his manner of life, dining at eleven o'clock in the morning, supping at seven in the evening, going to bed early, and getting up at four o'clock, which very much astonishes those Englishmen who kept company with him. They say that he intends to civilize his subjects in the manner of other nations. But from his acts here, one cannot find any other intention than to make them sailors.

The ambassador's report was intended as a last-minute briefing for the Emperor, as Peter was expected to depart any day for Holland, and the next stop on his tour was Vienna. But the Tsar's departure was repeatedly postponed. He had come for only a short visit, but had found so much to see and do, not only at the Deptford shipyard but also at Woolwich and the mint, that he constantly delayed. This stirred anxiety in those members of the Embassy left behind in Amsterdam. They not only worried about the Tsar's whereabouts and intentions, but they had received news from Vienna that the Emperor was about to make a separate peace with their common enemy, the Turks. The ostensible purpose of the Great Embassy being to strengthen the alliance, news of its impending disintegration did not make the Russians happy. As these messages arrived and the pressures on him grew, Peter reluctantly decided that he must leave.

On April 18, Peter paid his farewell visit to the King. Relations between the two had chilled somewhat when Peter learned that William had had a hand in the forthcoming peace between the Emperor and the Sultan. For William, of course, it was essential to help disengage the Hapsburg empire from its war in the Balkans and turn it around to prepare against the only enemy William cared about: France. Nevertheless, the final meeting at Kensington Palace was amicable. The Tsar distributed 120 guineas among the

King's servants who had waited on him, which, according to one observer, "was more than they deserved, they being very rude to him." To Admiral Mitchell, his escort and translator, he gave forty sables and six pieces of damask, a handsome gift. It was on this occasion, too, that Peter supposedly took from his pocket a small object wrapped in brown paper which he gave to the King as a token of friendship and appreciation. William unwrapped it, the story goes, and found a magnificent uncut diamond. Another account says that it was a huge, rough ruby fit to be "set upon the top of the Imperial Crown of England."

On May 2, Peter reluctantly left London. He paid a final visit to the Tower and the mint on the day of his departure while his companions were waiting for him aboard the Royal Transport, and when the yacht moved down the river, Peter stopped and anchored at Woolwich so that he could go ashore and say goodbye to Romney at the arsenal. Under way once again, the Royal Transport reached Gravesend at dusk, where the Tsar anchored again. In the morning, accompanied by Carmarthen sailing in his own yacht, Peregrine, Peter made for Chatham, the naval harbor. There he transferred to the Peregrine and cruised through the port, admiring the giant, three-decked ships-of-the-line lying at anchor. With Carmarthen, he boarded three men-of-war, the Britannia, the Triumph, and the Association, and then was rowed ashore to visit the naval-stores depot.

The following morning, the Royal Transport weighed anchor and made for Margate, where the Thames estuary meets the sea. There, he found an English naval squadron, again commanded by Admiral Mitchell, waiting to escort him back to Holland. The crossing was stormy and exciting, more so than most of the Russians on board could have wished, but Peter relished the waves seething over the decks.*

Although he never returned to England, Peter had enjoyed his taste of English life. He found there much that he liked: informality, a practical, efficient monarch and government, good

*Sadly, Peter never sailed again on his splendid English yacht. She was loaded at Amsterdam with Peter's own collection of instruments and curiosities bought during his tour, and sent back to Archangel. There, on Peter's orders, she was met by Franz Timmerman, who was commanded to bring her through the network of rivers and lakes in northern Russia to Yaroslavl and thence down the Volga. One day, when his Volga-Don canal was finished, Peter hoped to bring her down the Don to Azov and sail her on the Black Sea. But the Royal Transport drew eight feet and Timmerman could not bring her even as far as the Volga. She returned to Archangel, where she remained for fifteen years. In 1715, when Russia had become a Baltic naval power, Peter ordered her refitted and sailed around the North Cape to join him in the Baltic. She entered the Baltic and was lost in a storm off the coast of Sweden.

drinking and good talk about ships, gunnery and fireworks. Although he was not intimate with William, the King had opened every door, he had given Peter access to his shipyards, mint and gun foundries, he had displayed his fleet, he had allowed the Russians to talk with everyone and make notes. Peter was grateful and carried away the highest respect not only for English ship design and workmanship, but for the island as a whole. In Russia, he once said to Perry that "if he had not come to England he had certainly been a bungler." Further, continued Perry, "His Majesty has often declared to his lords, when he has been a little merry, that he thinks it a much happier life to be an admiral in England than a tsar in Russia." "The English island," Peter said, "is the best and most beautiful in the world."

17

LEOPOLD AND AUGUSTUS

In Amsterdam, the Embassy was overjoyed to see the Tsar again; they had felt themselves abandoned as Peter's visit of weeks in England extended over four months. They had spent the winter traveling around the small country, gaining everywhere a formidable reputation as drinkers. They tried on ice skates, unknown in Russia—but, not realizing that the ice in Holland was thinner than the winter ice of Russia, they frequently fell through. When this happened, the Dutch were amazed that, rather than change out of their icy, dripping clothes, the Russians were content with another drink. But, despite their revels, the winter had not been wasted. Peter returned to find large piles of material, weapons, special instruments and naval stores waiting. More important, the Embassy had recruited 640 Dutchmen, among them Rear Admiral Cruys and other naval officers (eventually, Cruys persuaded 200 Dutch naval officers to come to Russia), seamen, engineers, technicians, shipwrights, physicians and other specialists. To carry them and the equipment purchased back to Russia, ten ships had been chartered.

On May 15, 1698, Peter and the Great Embassy left Amsterdam for Vienna, their route lying through Leipzig, Dresden and Prague. In Dresden, capital of the electoral state of Saxony and a city so rich in architecture and art treasures that it was called "the

Florence on the Elbe," Peter was received especially warmly. The Elector Augustus was now also King Augustus II of Poland, and, on Peter's arrival, he was away in his new kingdom, but he had left instructions that the Tsar, to whom in part he owed his new throne, be handsomely welcomed as a royal guest.

Peter's initial reaction to Dresden hospitality was hostile. As he entered the city, he saw people staring at him, not only because of his rank but also because of his unusual height. His sensitivity to these stares had grown, not diminished, during his months in the West, and he threatened to leave Dresden immediately unless they could be stopped. Prince Furstenberg, the Elector's representative and Peter's host, attempted to calm the Tsar. When, on the night of his arrival and despite the hour, Peter asked to visit the famous Dresden Kunstkammer Museum and the special private treasury known as the Green Vault, Furstenberg quickly agreed. After midnight, the Tsar, the Prince and the museum's curator entered the Elector's palace, where the museum was housed in seven rooms on the top floor. The Kunstkammer, or "cabinet of curiosities," had been founded more than a century before to gather and display both natural wonders and man-made objects of special interest. Its collection of elaborate clocks and mechanical instruments, mining and manufacturing tools, along with rare books, parade armor and portraits of notables, was open to all scholars and persons of good birth and was exactly the kind of thing to fascinate Peter. He resolved, one day, to create a similar Kunstkammer in Russia. The Green Vault, so named because its walls were painted the national color of Saxony, was a secret storehouse, accessible through a single door in the Elector's living quarters. Here the rulers of Saxony kept a collection of jewels and precious objects which were among the richest in Europe. Peter was absorbed by both collections and remained, examining one instrument or object after another, until dawn.

The following evening, Furstenberg gave a small private dinner that expanded into the kind of noisy, boisterous party the Russians loved. Trumpeters, oboists and drummers were called in to provide music. At Peter's request, five ladies were also invited, including the beautiful Countess Aurora von Konigsmark, mistress of the Elector and mother of the future great marshal of France, Maurice de Saxe. The party went on until three a.m. with Peter exuberantly taking the drumsticks and playing "with a perfection that far surpassed the drummers." After this night of drinking, music and dancing, Peter set off in a light-hearted mood for Prague and Vienna, and as soon as the Tsar was out of town, the relieved and weary Prince Furstenberg wrote to the Elector: "I thank God that all has gone off so well, for I feared that I could not fully please this fastidious gentleman."

Four miles north of the old city of Vienna rise the twin hills of the Kahlenberg and the Leopoldsberg; east of the city, the Danube flows southward toward Budapest; to the west lie the rolling meadows and forests of the Vienna Woods. Yet, for all its magnificent setting, Vienna did not compare in size with London, Amsterdam, Paris or even with Moscow. Primarily, this was because Vienna, unlike the other great cities of Europe, was not a great port or commercial trading center. Its sole function was to be the seat of the imperial House of Hapsburg, the crossroads and administrative center of the vast sweep of territory from the Baltic to Sicily which owed allegiance to the Emperor Leopold I. In fact, in Peter's time, the Emperor ruled two empires. The first was the old Holy Roman Empire, a loosely bound union of almost independent states in Germany and Italy, whose ties and ancient traditions went back through a thousand years to the empire of Charlemagne. The other empire, quite separate and distinct, was the collection of traditional Hapsburg lands in Central Europe— the Archduchy of Austria, the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Hungary and other territories in the Balkans recently conquered from the Turks.

It was the first empire, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which gave the Emperor his title and immense prestige and justified the enormous size and magnificence of his court. In fact, however, the title was hollow and the empire itself was almost wholly facade. The rulers of this congerie of disparate states, the hereditary electors,* margraves, landgraves, princes and dukes, determined for themselves the religion of their subjects, the size of their armies and whether, when war came, they would fight beside the Emperor, against him, or remain neutral. None of these great lords gave more than a passing thought to their ties to their imperial master when it came to matters of serious policy. They, or their representatives, sat in the Imperial Diet at Regensburg, originally the empire's legislative organ, now purely consultative and decorative. The Emperor could make no law without the Diet's consent, and the discussions never reached consent, as the envoys argued endlessly over precedence. When an emperor died, the Diet met and automatically elected the next head of the House of Hapsburg. This was traditional, and tradition was the single feature of the ancient empire which had not been allowed to die.

Despite the hollowness of his imperial title, the Emperor was

*The title "elector" was given to the seven Germanic princes who held the privilege of electing the Holy Roman Emperor.

not unimportant. The strength of the House of Hapsburg, its revenues, its army and its power, stemmed from the states and territories it really ruled: Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Hungary and new claims and conquests which stretched across the Carpathians into Translyvania and across the Alps to the Adriatic. There were also Hapsburg claims to the throne of Spain with all of Spain's possessions in Europe, including Spain itself, the Spanish Netherlands, and Naples, Sicily and Sardinia. This second empire looked to the south and east for dangers and opportunities. Lying as a barrier between Western Europe and the Balkans, it believed in its holy mission to defend Christianity against the advance of the Ottoman Empire. The Protestant princes to the north had no interest in the Emperor's fears or ambitions in the Balkans; they saw these matters as private enterprises of the House of Hapsburg, and if the Emperor wanted their support in any of them, he usually had to buy it.

Austria was the center and Vienna the heart of the Hapsburg world. It was a Catholic world, heavy with tradition and elaborate ceremony, actively guided by the Jesuits who were never far from the deliberations of the councils of state. Or from the elbow of the imperial personage in whom God, they assured him, had placed a special trust.

His Most Catholic Majesty Leopold I, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Archduke of Austria, King of Bohemia and King of Hungary, admitted no mortal man to be his equal except the Pope. In the eyes of the Hapsburg Emperor, His Most Christian Majesty the King of France was no more than an arriviste, an upstart of mediocre genealogy and odious pretensions. The Tsar of Muscovy was scarcely more notable than other Eastern princes who lived in tents.

Leopold was unshakably certain of his position. The House of Hapsburg was the oldest reigning dynasty in Europe. For 300 years, in unbroken succession, the family had worn the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, whose history and prerogatives traced back to Charlemagne. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War had diminished the Imperial power, but in name, the Emperor was still the preeminent secular ruler of Christendom. His actual power might have faded in comparison to that of the King of France, but a sense of superiority—shadowy, medieval, semi-ecclesiastical—still prevailed. To preserve that sense of rank was one of Leopold's principal concerns. He maintained a staff of industrious historians and librarians who had managed by their research to link the Emperor's genealogy back through innumerable heroes and saints to Noah.

The man who bore this heavy weight of genealogical responsibility was swarthy, of middling height, with the projecting lower jaw and protruding lower lip which traditionally marked (if not disfigured) the Hapsburgs. Although in 1698 he had already occupied the imperial throne for forty years and would sit on it seven years more, he had not been born to the crown. Instead, Leopold was a younger brother, bred for the church, who had been snatched from his theological studies only by the death of his older brother, Ferdinand. Elected emperor at eighteen, Leopold throughout his long reign preferred the quieter things: theology, the arts, court ceremony and the study of genealogy; he especially loved music and himself composed operas. He was not a warrior, although under him the empire was almost continually at war. When the Ottoman armies surrounded and besieged Vienna in 1683, the Emperor quietly departed, returning only after the Turks had been repelled and driven down the Danube. His character was melancholy, apathetic and obstinate. Yet, in his lethargy he somehow projected an austere dignity which was not without grandeur, part of which lay in his attitude toward himself. To be the emperor, he knew, was to stand at the summit of mankind.

Every detail of daily life at the imperial court was designed to proclaim that sublime rank. In the chambers and corridors of his ancient Viennese palace, the Hofburg, the Emperor was the object of a rigid protocol more akin to Byzantium than to Versailles. Normally, the Emperor wore Spanish court dress: black velvet with white point lace, a short cloak, his brimmed hat turned up at one side, the red stockings worn only by Hapsburg emperors, and red shoes. On ceremonial days—which were frequent—he appeared in almost Eastern splendor, covered with scarlet-and-gold brocade embroidered with diamonds, surrounded by his Knights of the Golden Fleece, each wearing a long cloak of crimson velvet embroidered with gold. Thus attired, on religious feast days the Emperor went on foot to mass, marching at the head of a long procession. Whenever the Emperor and his family passed, courtiers bowed low and dropped to one knee. If his name was mentioned, even when he was in another room, all who heard it performed a similar genuflection. When Their Majesties dined alone, their dishes passed through twenty-four hands before reaching the imperial table. Wine was poured by a steward who filled the imperial glass while on one knee.

The center of this stultifying ceremony was the Hofburg Palace, a confusing maze of buildings constructed over centuries, linked by corridors and dark staircases, tiny courtyards and grand hallways. Into this jumble of stone and masonry, which had none of the symmetry and elegance of Versailles, the Emperor, his court of 2,000 noblemen and 30,000 servants were crammed alongside numerous government offices, a museum and even a hospital. Except when on occasional visits to the Favorits Palace just outside the city, where he hunted stags, or the Laxenburg Palace twenty miles away, where he set his falcons on the herons, Leopold ruled his empire from the Hofburg.

In fact, the chaos of the Hofburg was symbolic of the chaos of the empire. The administration of the Hapsburg emperors was not effective. They could never weld together all the chanceries, councils, treasuries and other diverse organs of the Holy Roman Empire and the Hapsburg domains into a single cohesive structure of central government. Leopold himself, trained for theology, was an indecisive autocrat. Timid, apathetic, uncertain which course to take, he preferred to listen to advice, to mull endlessly over the contradictory recommendations of his advisors. A French diplomat described him as "a clock which always required rewinding." By the 1690's he was enveloped in a many-layered cocoon of committees, all quietly and vigorously warring with one another behind his back. Policy was made by default.

At heart, Leopold and after him his two sons, the Emperors Joseph I and Charles VI, did not believe that a chaotic administration was a fundamental defect. The three of them, over almost a century, shared the view that the administration of government was a minor matter, infinitely less important not only for their own souls but for the future of the Hapsburg House than belief in God and support of the Catholic Church. If God was satisfied with them, He would ensure that the House continued and prospered. This, then, was the basis of their political theory and their practice of government: that the throne and empire had been fixed on them by God, and that "Our House, its interests and its destiny, were being watched over and would be upheld by a power grander than any on earth."

During Leopold's long reign, despite the apathy of the Emperor and the stifling quality of his bureaucracy, the fortunes of the empire actually rose. This may have been due to the influence of God, as Leopold believed, but more immediately, in the last decades of his reign, Leopold's prospects and power rested on the shining sword of Prince Eugene Savoy. The slight, stooping Prince was a Field Marshal of the Holy Roman Empire, commander of the Imperial armies, and—with the Duke of Marlborough and King Charles XII of Sweden—one of the most famous and successful military commanders of his age.

Eugene was Italian and French by birth, his title stemming from a grandfather who was Duke of Savoy. He was born in Paris in 1663, the son of Olympia Mancini, one of the famous beauties of Louis XIV's court, and the Comte de Soissons. Because his face and frail body were so nondescript, his application to serve in the French army was rejected and he was designated for an ecclesiastical career; indeed, Louis XIV took to calling Eugene in public "Le Petit Abbe." The Sun King's gibes were to cost France dearly. At twenty Eugene made his way to the Emperor to ask for a command in the Imperial army. Leopold's somber court appealed to Eugene and his own personal intensity and lack of frivolity— qualities that had earned him mockery at Versailles—gained him favor in Vienna. Eugene's arrival coincided with the Turkish siege and, still only twenty, he took command of a dragoon regiment. In the years that followed, he gave up his desire for a principality in Italy and dedicated his life to the army. At twenty-six, he was a general of cavalry; at thirty-four, he was commander of the Imperial army in Hungary. There, on September 11, 1697, while Peter was at work in an Amsterdam shipyard, Eugene crushed the Sultan's main army, three times larger than his own, in a desperate battle at Zenta. The peace was brief. Soon he ws fighting the Emperor's enemies in the Low Countries, on the Rhine, in Italy and on the Danube. He participated in two of the Duke of Marlborough's greatest victories, at Blenheim and at Oudenard, modestly accepting the role of vice-commander. His military genius has been shaded by Marlborough's, but while Marlborough's reputation rests on ten years of command during the War of the Spanish Succession, Eugene was a soldier for fifty years, a commander-in-chief for thirty.

On behalf of their august potentate, the Emperor's counselors and advisors, historians and genealogists, fought tenaciously over matters of protocol. The Tsar of Muscovy, however vast the size of his domains, could not conceivably be received as the equal of God's personal steward, the Emperor. The matter was further complicated by the fact that, officially, the Tsar would not be present. Yet somehow some notice had to be taken of the tall young man whose incognito was Peter Mikhailov. Such weighty problems took time to resolve; it required four days to work out the details of the Embassy's entry into Vienna, and an entire month of negotiations to agree to the manner in which the Emperor would receive the ambassadors. Meanwhile, Peter was anxious to meet the Emperor personally. The Austrian court officials were adamant that a Tsar incognito could not be publicly received by His Imperial Majesty, but Lefort's persistence bore fruit in a private meeting.

The informal interview was held in the Favorits Palace,

Leopold's summer villa on the outskirts of the city. Peter, in keeping with his incognito, was taken through a small door in the garden and up a back spiral staircase into the audience chamber. He had been carefully briefed by Lefort as to the agreed-on protocol for the meeting: the two monarchs were to enter the long audience hall simultaneously from doors at opposite ends; walking slowly, they were to meet exactly halfway, at the fifth window. Unfortunately, Peter, on opening the door and seeing Leopold, forgot what he had been told and, bounding toward the Emperor in long, quick strides, reached Leopold by the third window. The Austrian courtiers gasped. Protocol had been upset! What would happen to Peter? What would happen to them? But as the two sovereigns drew apart into a window recess to talk, with only Lefort as their interpreter, the courtiers were relieved to see that the Tsar was treating their master with great respect and deference. The two made quite a contrast: the short, pale, fifty-eight-year-old Emperor with his narrow, gloomy face framed by a large wig and a thick mustache hanging over his pendulous lower lip; and the abnormally tall, twenty-six-year-old Tsar with his vigorous, imperious, sometimes jerky gestures. The meeting was actually only an exchange of compliments and lasted fifteen minutes. Afterward, Peter descended into the palace garden and cheerfully rowed himself around a lake in a little rowboat.

This first meeting set the tone for Peter's two-week stay in Vienna, his only visit to the imperial capital. Despite the annoying cluckings of the Austrian protocol officers, Peter remained in a good-natured and deferential mood. He called on the Empress and the imperial princesses and tried to be pleasant. He genially refused the allotment by the imperial court of 3,000 gulden a week for the Russian Embassy's expenses in Vienna. This sum, Peter protested, was far too much for his "dear brother" to pay, having just borne the burden of long wars; Peter reduced the sum by half. The Austrians, who had been fully informed as to Peter's character both in Moscow and throughout the tour, could scarcely believe that the subdued, modest figure before them was the man they had heard about. Foreign ambassadors spoke of his "delicate and polished manners." The Spanish ambassador wrote to Madrid, "Here he appears quite unlike the description of other courts and far more civilized, intelligent, with excellent manners and modest."

In one important quarter in Vienna, Peter's surprising amiability and curiosity raised high hopes. The Catholic Church, especially the Jesuit College of Vienna, was aware from the reports of the imperial ambassador in London of Peter's lack of attachment to doctrinaire Orthodoxy and his interest in other religions. As the Archbishop of Canterbury and other Protestants had begun to think of converting the Tsar to Protestantism, so the Catholics began to hope that the monarch and, after him, his realm might be brought home to the Mother Church. These hopes were embodied in the Emperor's personal advisor, Father Woolf, a Jesuit priest who spoke some Russian. On St. Peter's Day, after attending an Orthodox service conducted by his own Russian priest traveling with the Embassy, Peter attended mass at the Jesuit College. There he heard Father Woolf preach "that the keys would be bestowed a second time, upon a new Peter, that he might open another door." Soon after, Peter attended a second mass, celebrated this time by Cardinal Kollonitz, the Primate of Hungary, and then joined the Cardinal for a lunch in the college refectory. From their conversation, it became clear that Peter was not thinking of conversion and the rumors that he was planning to go to Rome to be accepted into the church by the Pope himself were false. He was going to Venice to study galley building; if he went to Rome at all, it would be as a tourist, not as an applicant. After their meeting, the Cardinal described his visitor.

The Tsar is a tall young man from twenty-eight to thirty years of age, with a dark complexion, proud and grave, and with an expressive countenance. His left eye, his left arm and left leg were injured by the poison given him during the life of his brother; but there remains of this now only a fixed look in his eye and a constant movement of his arm and leg. To hide this, he accompanies this involuntary motion with continual movements of his entire body, which by many people, in the countries which he has visited, have been attributed to natural causes, but really they are artificial. His wit is alert and quick; his manners, closer to civil than savage. The journey he has made has improved him greatly, and the difference from the beginning of his present travels and the present time is obvious, although his native coarseness still appears; chiefly in his relations with his followers, whom he holds in check with great severity. He has a knowledge of history and geography and he desires to know more about these subjects; but his strongest interest is in the sea and ships, on which he himself works manually.

In the course of Peter's visit, Leopold staged one of his famous masked balls of the Viennese court. The setting was a supposed country inn, with the Emperor and Empress as innkeepers, and the court and foreign ambassadors all dressed as peasants in native costume. Prince Eugene of Savoy was there. Peter was dressed for the evening as a Frisian peasant, and his partner drawn by lot, Fraulein Johanna von Thurn, was dressed as his Frisian mate. At dinner, all precedence was discarded and the Emperor and Empress sat where they liked at the table. During the toasts,

Leopold found a happy formula for toasting his distinguished guest who was not officially there. Rising to face the masked young visitor, the Emperor said, "I believe you know the Tsar of Russia. Let us drink to his health." The following morning, the cup that the Emperor had used for the toast arrived at Peter's door as a gift. It was inlaid with rock crystal and worth 2,000 florins. The Tsar's pleasure in the company of his supper partner was measured the following day when she received a gift of four pairs of sables and 250 ducats.

Returning this hospitality, on St. Peter's Day the Russian Embassy entertained its hosts by giving an all-night ball for one thousand guests. Fireworks lit by the Tsar's own hand, dancing, drinking and chases through the summer gardens brought a touch of the German Suburb to Vienna. At a state dinner given after the Emperor's reception of the Embassy, the health of the two consorts, the Empress and the Tsaritsa, was not drunk. This omission, arranged at the request of the Russians, was a sign of what was in store for Eudoxia when Peter returned to Moscow. During the dinner, when the talk turned to wine, Baron Konigsacker insisted that Lefort immediately taste six specimens he recommended. When the wine arrived and Lefort had tasted it, he asked that his tall friend standing as a servant behind his chair might taste it, too.

Despite all the public amiability, Peter's mission to Vienna was a diplomatic failure. The Great Embassy had come to engage Austria's interest in resuming a more vigorous war against the Turks. Instead, they found themselves struggling to prevent an Austrian acceptance of a Turkish offer of peace which was highly favorable to Austria but not to Russia—a peace with all combatants agreeing to establishing the current status quo, each one keeping the territory he had won. For the Hapsburg monarch, this was a favorable settlement: Hungary and parts of Transylvania would remain under Hapsburg control. The idea of peace was enormously tempting. Besides, the shadow of Louis loomed once again in the West. It was time to disengage in the East, accept the fruits of victory, regroup and turn to face the Sun King.

The only party not happy about the prospect of peace was Peter. Having renewed the war against Turkey himself in 1695 and 1696 with his campaigns against Azov, having captured that fortress and tasted the ambition to sail on the Black Sea, having moved mountains to build a fleet at Voronezh and come himself to Europe to learn shipbuilding and hire shipwrights, naval captains and seamen to build and man his Black Sea fleet, he could not permit

the war to end until he had at least acquired Kerch and Turkish acceptance of his right to sail on the Black Sea.

Peter expressed this demand personally to the imperial Foreign Minister, Count Kinsky, and through Kinsky to the Emperor. Understanding that the Austrians were determined to make peace, Peter concentrated on the terms of that peace. Primarily, he wanted to make certain the Emperor would insist that Turkey cede to Russia the fortress of Kerch, which commanded the junction of the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov. Without Kerch, Peter's new fleet could not gain entry into the Black Sea, but would be confined on the vast but essentially useless Sea of Azov. Kinsky replied that the peace congress, to which Russia would naturally be invited, had not yet begun. If Peter wanted Kerch, he had best seize it quickly before the treaty was signed; he doubted that the Turks could be forced to hand it over merely by diplomatic pressures at a conference table, "for the Turks are not accustomed to give up their fortresses without a fight." The Emperor promised at least that he would sign no treaty without the Tsar's full knowledge of its terms.

This was the best that could be done, and Peter was impatient to leave: Vienna was an inland city with no docks or ships, and his next stop was to be Venice, where he hoped to learn the secrets of the marvelously efficient Venetian war galleys. By July 15, everything was arranged, the Embassy's passports were ready and some members of the suite were already on the road to Venice. Peter himself had just come away from his farewell audience with the Emperor when, at the moment of departure, the latest post from Moscow arrived, bringing an urgent letter with disturbing news from Romodanovsky. Four regiments of Streltsy, upon being ordered to march from Azov to the Polish frontier, had revolted and were instead marching on Moscow. As Romodanovsky was writing, they were only sixty miles from the capital, and loyal troops under Shein and Patrick Gordon had gone out to block their path. Nothing was said of the cause or extent of the revolt, and there was no further news as to what had happened. The letter had been a month on the way. Peter realized that while he had been dancing in peasant costume at a masked ball, the Streltsy might have occupied the Kremlin, his sister Sophia seized the Russian throne and he himself been branded a traitor.

At once, he decided to abandon the rest of the tour, cancel the visit to Venice and return directly to Moscow to face whatever awaited him there. Hoping and trusting that his regents were still in power, he wrote to Romodanovsky:

I have received your letter in which your grace writes that the seed of Ivan Mikhailovich [Miloslavsky] is sprouting. I beg you to be severe; in no other way is it possible to put out the flame. Although we are sorry to give up our present profitable business, yet, for the sake of this, we shall be with you sooner than you think.

In terminating the Embassy, Peter decided to take with him the first two ambassdadors, Lefort and Golovin, to help in dealing with the situation in Moscow and leave the third, Voznitsyn, in Vienna to act as Russian representative at the coming peace negotiations with the Turks.

On July 19, Peter left Vienna on the road to Poland, astonishing the Austrians, who knew nothing of his news and expected to see him depart in the direction of Venice. He traveled day and night, stopping only to eat and change horses. He had reached Cracow when a messenger, forwarded along to him at a gallop by Voznitsyn, brought fresh and brighter news. Shein had met and subdued the rebels; 130 had been executed and 1,860 were prisoners. Peter was relieved, and considered turning around for his intended visit to Venice. But he was halfway home, he had been away for a year and a half and there was much he wanted to do in Moscow. He continued eastward, slowing his pace, proceeding in a leisurely fashion toward the town of Rawa in Galicia. Here, for the first time, the Tsar met an extraordinary figure in whose diplomatic and military machinations Peter and Russia were to become deeply involved. This was Augustus, Elector of Saxony and now also, thanks to the support of both the Emperor and the Tsar, King of Poland.

Poland, through whose territory the Tsar was journeying homeward, was the weakest and most vulnerable of all the great European states in Peter's day. In physical size and in population, it was a giant: Its frontiers sprawled from Silesia to the Ukraine, from the Baltic to the Carpathians; its population was eight million, one of the largest in Europe, yet, politically and militarily, Poland was insignificant. Indeed, the vast state remained intact only because its neighbors were too busy or too weak themselves to bother pulling it apart. For the full twenty years of the Great Northern War which was about to begin, Poland lay prostrate, its unhappy function being to provide a battleground for invading foreign armies. Before the military power of aggressive Sweden, whose entire empire counted only two and a half million subjects, giant Poland lay helpless.

A number of factors were responsible for Poland's impotence. The first was an absence of any real racial or religious cohesion. Only half of Poland's people were actually Polish, and this half tended to be Catholic. The other half—Lithuanians, Russians, Jews and Germans—were a mixture of Protestant, Russian Orthodox and Jewish faiths. Among these richly varied strains, political and religious antagonism flourished. The Lithuanians fought among themselves and united only in common hatred of the Poles. The Jews, who made up a large percentage of the town populations, tended to dominate trade and finance, thus incurring the fear and envy of the Poles. The Cossacks, whose nominal allegiance was to the Ukrainian Hetman, himself now a nominal subject of the Tsar, refused all orders from a Polish king.

If the racial and religious situation was confused, the political situation was chaotic. Poland was a republic which had a king. The king was an elective, not a hereditary, monarch, exercising only such power as the nobility chose to grant to him—which usually was none. The monarch therefore became little more than a state ornament. Thus, at a time when France was leading most European nations toward centralization of power and royal absolutism, Poland was headed in the opposite direction, toward political disintegration and anarchy. The true rulers of Poland were the great Polish and Lithuanian lords who ruled over immense territories where no central authority was permitted to penetrate. In Lithuania, the mighty Sapieha family, dreaming of the throne themselves, categorically defied all kings of Poland.

It was the polish and Lithuanian land-owning aristocrats who, in 1572, had insisted that the crown be made an elective office. It was they who at the end of the seventeenth century owned all the nation's wealth and exported flax, grain and timber from their vast estates down the Vistula to the Baltic. They kept all political power, not only electing their sovereign but imposing on him a formal pact, to be signed by the elected candidate before his coronation, setting forth the terms on which he could rule. The embodiment of their ideal was reached when the Diet, or Polish parliament, finally agreed that no bill could pass if a single member objected. Nor did king or Diet have any machinery for authorizing or collecting taxes. There was no systematic Polish foreign policy. "This unsettled nation [is] like the sea," complained an English diplomat. "It foams and roars . . . [but it] only moves when it is agitated by some superior power."

The Polish army operated on a similar basis. Its cavalry was always superbly brave and gorgeously equipped: diamonds flashed on the breast-plates and swords of the gallant horsemen. But discipline was nonexistent. At any moment, a Polish army in the field might be swollen or diminished by the arrival or departure of a great nobleman and his armed retainers. It was up to these gentlemen alone to decide whether and when they should participate in a campaign. If they wearied or were irked, they simply withdrew, no matter what the perils of their action to the other troops of the Polish army. At times, also, the Polish king would be at war, but the Polish republic, as represented by the Diet, would be at peace. It was in this kind of kaleidoscopic confusion with an ornamental king, a hamstrung parliament, an individualistic feudal army, that the vast, tumultuous Polish nation stumbled and lurched in the general direction of anarchy.

With such a system, Poland's sole hope of unity and order lay in a strong monarch somehow superimposing himself on the chaos. The choice, however, was not simply up to the Polish nobility. By this time, the election of a new Polish king who would hold even limited power over the vast nation was a European concern. Every monarch in Europe yearned to win the Polish crown for his own house, or at least for a prince favorable to his house. Peter of Russia, as Poland's eastern neighbor, was especially concerned. Fearing that a French candidate might win the throne, Peter had been prepared if necessary to invade Poland. To influence the election or be ready if the Frenchman won, Peter moved Russian troops to the Polish frontier. (It was a command to regiments of Streltsy to shift from Azov to the Polish border which had precipitated their revolt and thus recalled the Tsar from Vienna.) And on the other side of the continent, the Sun King desired to see the creation of a Poland friendly to France rising up behind the Hapsburg Emperor's back. Louis' candidate was Francois Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, a French Prince of the Blood, whose battlefield exploits, powerful charm and sexual ambivalence had made him the darling of the French court. Conti was not enthusiastic about accepting the royal title, hating to leave his friends and the delights of Versailles for the barbarian wastes of Eastern Europe. But the King was determined and opened his purse, sending three million gold pounds to buy the votes of as many members of the Diet as were necessary. The effort was successful, and with the support of most of the Polish nobility, including the Sapieha family of Lithuania, Conti was elected and sailed for Danzig with a powerful French naval squadron commanded by the famous admiral Jean Bart.

Conti arrived in Poland to find that the election had been overturned. The disappointed candidate, Augustus of Saxony, supported by the Tsar and the Emperor, had simply refused to accept the Diet's decision and had marched into Poland at the head of a Saxon army. Arriving in Warsaw before Conti, Augustus converted his personal religion to Catholicism, persuaded the Diet to change its mind and had himself crowned King of Poland on September 15, 1697. Conti quite happily returned to Versailles, and Augustus began a reign which lasted for thirty-six years.

Thus, Augustus had been on the Polish throne for less than a year when Peter passed through the country on his way back to Moscow. Augustus was also Elector of Saxony, although the union of Saxony and Poland was only through his own person. The two states lacked even a common frontier, being separated by the Hapsburg province of Silesia and the territories of Brandenburg on the Oder River. Saxony was Lutheran, Poland was predominantly Catholic. Augustus' power, like that of all Polish kings, was limited, but already he was eagerly seeking ways to improve this situation.

When Peter arrived at Rawa, where the new King was staying, he found in Augustus a young man physically exceptional like himself. Augustus was tall (except in the presence of Peter, whose height was abnormal) and powerfully built; he was called Augustus the Strong, and it was said that he could bend a horseshoe with his bare hands. At twenty-eight, he was bluff and hearty, and had red cheeks, blue eyes, a strong nose, a full mouth and exceptionally heavy and bushy black eyebrows. His wife, a Hohenzollern, had left him when he became a Catholic, but this mattered little to Augustus, whose sensuality and philandering were on a gargantuan scale. Even in a time when he had many competitors, Augustus' efforts were remarkable; he collected women, and from his enjoyment of his collection Augustus was reported to have left 354 bastards. One of his favorite mistresses was the beautiful Countess Aurora von Konigsmark, whom Peter had already met in Dresden; another, years later, would be the Countess Orzelska, who happened also to be his daughter.

Enjoying the flesh, Augustus also loved practical jokes which celebrated this taste. He gave Peter a gold box with a secret spring, ornamented by two portraits of another mistress. The portrait on the cover showed the lady in rich and formal dress, wearing an expression of proper dignity. The second picture, revealed when the spring was touched and the lid popped open, showed the same lady in a state of voluptuous, passionate disorder after she had yielded to the advances of her lover.*

*On another occasion, indulging this same humor, Augustus was escorting Frederick William of Prussia and his sixteen-year-old son. the future Frederick the Great, on a tour of his palace in Dresden. They entered a bedchamber and were admiring the ceiling when suddenly a curtain around the bed was lifted, revealing a naked woman on the bed. Horrified, the stern and prudish Frederick William rushed from the room, dragging his son after him. Augustus, roaring with laughter, apologized, but later during the visit he sent the same woman to the youthful Frederick to enjoy. Out of politeness, the young man took her, although his own preference was not for women.

In the bluff, hearty, fun-loving young Augustus, Peter recognized a kindred spirit. They spent four days at Rawa, dining, reviewing the Saxon infantry and cavalry, and drinking together in the evenings. Peter showed his affection by frequently embracing and kissing his new friend. "I cannot begin to describe to you the tenderness between the two sovereigns," wrote a member of Peter's suits. The impression made on Peter by Augustus was deep and lasting, and he proudly wore the royal arms of Poland, which Augustus had presented to him. On returning to Moscow, when receiving his own welcoming boyars and friends on the day after his return, he flaunted his new friendship before them. "I prize him [Augustus] more than the whole of you together," he announced, "and that not because of his royal pre-eminence over you, but merely because I like him."

The days at Rawa and Peter's new friendship had momentous results for Russia. It was during these days that Augustus, who had already profited from Peter's support in winning his crown, used the Tsar's enthusiastic friendship to press another of his own ambitious projects: a joint attack on Sweden. The Swedish King, Charles XI, had died, leaving the throne to his fifteen-year-old son. The moment seemed ripe for an attempt to wrest away the Baltic provinces which Sweden used to block Polish and Russian access to the Baltic Sea. Augustus was shrewd and deceitful; in time-, he was to earn a reputation for double-dealing second to none among European rulers, it was like him to propose that, to better ensure success, the attack be planned in secret and delivered by surprise.

Peter listened sympathetically to his boisterous and conniving new friend. He had his own reasons for being attracted to the scheme: in Vienna, he had been made to realize that the war in the south against Turkey was coming to an end. The door to the Black Sea was closing just as his own appetite for maritime adventure was growing. He had returned from Holland and England imbued with the spirit of ships, navies, trade and the sea. So it is not surprising that a proposal to break through to the Baltic, opening a direct maritime route to the West, appealed to him. Further, the Swedish provinces which would be attacked had once been Russian. They had fallen once as plums in one direction; so be it: Let them now be plucked by another hand. Peter nodded when Augustus spoke. Twenty-five years later, writing an introduction to the official Russian history of the Great Northern War, the Tsar confirmed that at this meeting at Rawa the initial agreement for an attack on Sweden had been made.

* * *

The Great Embassy was over. The first peacetime journey out of Russia by a Russian tsar had taken eighteen months, cost two and a half million roubles, introduced the carpenter Peter Mikhailov to electors, princes, kings and an emperor, and proved to Western Europe that Russians did not eat raw meat and wear only bearskins. What were the substantive results? In terms of its avowed, overt purpose, the reinvigoration and enlargement of the alliance against the Turks, the Embassy failed. Peace was coming in the East as Europe prepared for new and different wars. Wherever he went for help, in The Hague, in London, in Vienna, Peter found the looming shadow of Louis XIV. It was the Sun King and not the Sultan who frightened Europe. European diplomacy, money, ships and armies were being mobilized for the impending crisis when the throne of Spain would become vacant. Russia, left to make peace or fight the Turks alone, had no choice but to make peace.

In terms of practical, useful results, however, the Embassy was a considerable success. Peter and his ambassadors had succeeded in recruiting more than 800 technically skilled Europeans for Russian service, the bulk of them Dutchmen, but also Englishmen, Scots, Venetians, Germans and Greeks. Many of these men remained in Russia for years, made significant contributions to the modernization of the nation and left their names permanently inscribed in the history of Peter's reign.

More important was the profound and enduring impression that Western Europe made on Peter himself. He had traveled to the West in order to learn how to build ships, and this he had accomplished. But his curiosity had carried him into a wide range of new fields. He had probed into everything that caught his eye— had studied microscopes, barometers, wind dials, coins, cadavers and dental pliers, as well as ship construction and artillery. What he saw in the thriving cities and harbors of the West, what he learned from the scientists, inventors, merchants, tradesmen, engineers, printers, soldiers and sailors, confirmed his early belief, formed in the German Suburb, that his Russians were technologically backward—decades, perhaps centuries, behind the West.

Asking himself how this had happened and what could be done about it, Peter came to understand that the roots of Western technological achievement lay in the freeing of men's minds. He grasped that it had been the Renaissance and the Reformation, neither of which had ever come to Russia, which had broken the bonds of the medieval church and created an environment where independent philosophical and scientific inquiry as well as wide-ranging commercial enterprise could flourish. He knew that these bonds of religious orthodoxy still existed in Russia, reinforced by peasant folkways and traditions which had endured for centuries. Grimly, Peter resolved to break these bonds on his return.

But, curiously, Peter did not grasp—perhaps he did not wish to grasp—the political implications of this new view of man. He had not gone to the West to study "the art of government." Although in Protestant Europe he was surrounded by evidence of the new civil and political rights of individual men embodied in constitutions, bills of rights and parliaments, he did not return to Russia determined to share power with his people. On the contrary, he returned not only determined to change his country but also convinced that if Russia was to be transformed, it was he who must provide both the direction and the motive force. He would try to lead; but where education and persuasion were not enough, he would drive—and if necessary flog—the backward nation forward.

18

"THESE THINGS ARE IN YOUR WAY7

At first light on the morning of September 5, 1698, Moscow awoke to learn that the Tsar had returned. Peter had arrived the night before with Lefort and Golovin, made a brief visit to the Kremlin, stopped at the houses of several friends and then gone to spend the night in his wooden house at Preobrazhenskoe with Anna Mons. As the news spread quickly across the city, a crowd of boyars and officials flocked to Peter's door to welcome him home, hoping, says an observer, "to prove by the promptitude of their obsequiousness, the constancy of their loyalty." Peter received them all with enthusiastic pleasure. Those who threw themselves on the ground at his feet in the old Muscovite fashion, he "lifted up graciously from their groveling posture and embraced with a kiss, such as is due only among private friends."

That very day, even as one grandee was elbowing the next aside to come closer to the Tsar, the warmth of their welcome was put to an extraordinary test. After passing among them and exchanging embraces, Peter suddenly produced a long, sharp barber's razor and with his own hands began shaving off their beards. He began with Shein, the commander of the army, who was too astonished to resist. Next came Romodanovsky, whose deep loyalty to Peter surmounted even this affront to his Muscovite sensibility. The others were forced, one by one, to submit until every boyar present was beardless and none could laugh and point a shocked finger at the others. Only three were spared: the Patriarch, watching the proceedings with horror, in respect for his office; Prince Michael Cherkassky, because of his advanced age; and Tikhon Streshnev, in deference to his role as guardian of the Tsaritsa.

The scene was remarkable: at a stroke the political, military and social leaders of Russia were bodily transformed. Faces known and recognized for a lifetime suddenly vanished. New faces appeared. Chins, jaws, cheeks, mouths, lips, all hidden for years, emerged, giving their owners a wholly new look. It was comical, but the humor of it was mixed with nervousness and dread. For most Orthodox Russians, the beard was a fundamental symbol of religious belief and self-respect. It was an ornament given by God, worn by the prophets, the apostles and by Jesus himself. Ivan the Terrible expressed the traditional Muscovite feeling when he declared, "To shave the beard is a sin that the blood of all the martyrs cannot cleanse. It is to deface the image of man created by "God." Priests generally refused to bless men without beards; they were considered shameful and beyond the pale of Christendom. Yet, as more beardless foreign merchants, soldiers and engineers arrived in Moscow in the mid-seventeenth century, Peter's father, Tsar Alexis, had relaxed the rule, declaring that Russians might shave if they wished. Few did so, and even those drove the Patriarch Adrian to fresh condemnation: "God did not create men beardless, only cats and dogs. Shaving is not only foolishness and dishonor; it is a mortal sin." Such sentiments rang in the boyars' ears even as they obeyed the Tsar's command.

Peter, beardless himself, regarded beards as unnecessary, uncivilized and ridiculous. They made his country a subject of mirth and mockery in the West. They were a visible symbol of all he meant to change, and, typically, he attacked, wielding the razor himself. Thereafter, whenever Peter attended a banquet or ceremony, those who arrived with beards departed without them. Within a week of his return, he went to a banquet given by Shein and sent his court fool, Jacob Turgenev, around the room in the role of barber. The process was often uncomfortable; shaving long, thick beards with a dry razor left many gouges and cuts where the sharp blade came too close. But no one dared object; Peter was there Jo box the ears of any who showed reluctance.

Although the cutting of beards began in Peter's intimate circle to ridicule the old Russian way and to show that those who wished the Tsar's favor would thereafter appear beardless in his presence, the ban against beards soon became serious and general. By decree, all Russians except the clergy and the peasants were ordered to shave. To ensure that the order was carried out, officials were given the power to cut the beard off any man, no matter how important, whom they encountered. At first, horrified and desperate Russians bribed these officials to let them go, but as soon as they did, they would fall into the hands of another official. Before long, wearing a beard became too expensive a luxury.

Eventually those who insisted on keeping their beards were permitted to do so on paying an annual tax. Payment entitled the owner to a small bronze medallion with a picture of a beard on it and the words TAX PAID, which was worn on a chain around the neck to prove to any challengers that his beard was legal. The tax was graduated; peasants paid only two kopeks a year, wealthy merchants paid as much as a hundred roubles. Many were willing to pay this tax to keep their beards, but few who came near Peter were willing to risk his wrath with a chin that was not hairless. Finding men in his presence still bearded, Peter sometimes, "in a merry humor, pulled out their beards by the roots or took it off so roughly [with a razor] that some of the skin went with it."

Although Peter was merry about it, most Russians considered beard-cutting an act of aggression and humiliation. Some would rather give up anything than lose the beards which they had worn through life, expected to carry to the grave and thus arrive, proudly wearing them, in the next world. They could not resist; Peter's will was too strong. But they tried pathetically to atone for what they had been taught was a mortal sin. John Perry, the English engineer whom Peter signed up for service during his trip to London, described an aged Russian carpenter whom he met on the wharves of Voronezh.

About this time the Tsar came down to Voronezh where I was on service, and a great many of my men who had worn their beards all their lives were now obliged to part with them, amongst whom, just coming from the hands of the barber, was an old Russ carpenter ... a very good workman with his hatchet and whom I always had a friendship for. I jested a little with him . . . telling him that he was become a young man and asked him what he had done with his beard. ... He put his hand in his bosom and pulled it out and showed it to me; further telling me that when he came home, he would lay it up to have it put in his coffin and buried along with him, that he might be able to give an account of it to St. Nicholas, when he carpe to the other world, and that all his brothers [fellow workers] had taken the same care.*

Peter's mood on his return was cheerful and enthusiastic. He was happy to be back in the company of his friends and so eager to start making changes that he scarcely knew where to begin. Impulsively, he went one place, then rushed off to another. On his second day in Moscow, he reviewed his troops—and was immediately displeased. "Seeing at a glance how backward they were as compared with other soldiers," said Johann Korb, an Austrian diplomat,

he went himself through all the attitudes and movements of the manual exercises, teaching them by his own motions how they should endeavor to form their heavy, clumsy bodies. Tired at last with the uncouth horde, he went off with a bevy of boyars to a dinner which he had ordered at his Ambassador Lefort's. Salvos of artillery mingled with the shouts of the drinkers, and the pleasures of the table were protracted to a late hour of the evening. Then, taking advantage of the shades of night, attended by a very few of those in whom he reposes most confidence, he went to the Kremlin, where he indulged a father's affection in seeing his darling little son [the Tsarevich Alexis], kissed him thrice, and leaving many other pledges of endearment, returned to his wooden dwelling in Preobrazhenskoe, fleeing the sight of his wife, the Tsaritsa [Eudoxia], whom he dislikes with a loathing of old date.

A few days later, Peter celebrated the Russian New Year— which, according to the calendar of Old Muscovy, began September 1—with a huge banquet at General Shein's house. The guests included a large crowd of boyars, officers and others, among them a group of common sailors from the infant fleet. Peter particularly honored the sailors, spending much of the evening with them, halving apples and giving one part to a sailor while eating the other himself: He threw his arm around one sailor and called him "brother." Toast followed toast, and each lifting of the glasses provoked a salute of twenty-five guns.

*After Peter, beards returned very slowly to the upper levels of Russian society. Through the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, all public officials and officers and soldiers of the army were required to be shaved. In the 1860's and 1870's, under Alexander II, this rule was relaxed and many government ministers and Russian soldiers—with the exception of members of the Imperial Guard—again began to wear beards. All the tsars who followed Peter I were clean-shaven except the last two, Alexander III and Nicholas II, who both wore beards in order to manifest their strong Slavophile tastes.

Still another "sumptuous entertainment" took place two weeks after the Tsar's return, and although Peter arrived with "his gums swollen with toothache," the Austrian ambassador reported that he had never seen him happier. General Patrick Gordon arrived to present himself to the Tsar for the first time since Peter's return, excusing himself for the delay by saying that he had been at his country house and had been held back by bad weather and storms. The old soldier twice bowed low and was about to go on his knees to embrace the Tsar around the knees when Peter extended his hand and clasped it warmly.

Not long after Peter compelled his boyars to shave their beards, he also began to insist they change from traditional Russian clothing to Western dress. Some had already done so; Polish costume had appeared at court and was regularly worn by progressive figures such as Vasily Golitsyn. In 1681, Tsar Fedor had insisted that his courtiers shorten their long robes so as to permit them to walk. But most continued to wear the traditional Russian national costume: embroidered shirt, wide breeches tucked into floppy boots brilliantly colored in red or green with turned-up toes and gold trim, and on top of that a caftan reaching to the ground with a straight collar of velvet, satin or brocade and sleeves of exaggerated length and width. To go outdoors, another long garment was added, light in summer, fur-lined in winter, with high, square collar and even longer sleeves which fell to the bottom of the heels. Walking in procession in Moscow in their long, flowing robes and tall, fur-lined hats, a group of Russian boyars made an opulent, almost Oriental picture.

Peter detested this national dress because it was impractical. In his own active life, working in a shipyard, sailing, marching with his soldiers, the long, bulky robes got in the way and he could scarcely walk. Nor did he like the expressions of curiosity, amusement and contempt which he saw on Western faces when a group of Russians in national costumes walked through the streets of a Western town. Back in Moscow, he resolved on change. Among the most persistent wearers of the old dress was the stem Prince Romodanovsky. When Romodanovsky was told that Fedor Golovin, an ambassador of the Great Embassy, had taken off his Russian clothes in the West and put on fashionable foreign garments, Romodanovsky said, "I do not believe Golovin to be such a brainless ass as to despise the dress of his fatherland." Yet on October 30, when Peter ordered that Golovin and Lefort be received in state to acknowledge the Embassy's return, and that only those in Western dress be allowed to appear, Romodanovsky himself was obliged to conform.

That winter, in the course of a two-day banquet and celebration to dedicate Lefprt's new palace, Peter took a pair of long cutting shears and clipped the wide sleeves of the boyars around him at the table. "See," he said, "these things are in your way. You are safe nowhere with them. At one moment you upset a glass, then you forgetfully dip them in the sauce." He handed the sheared-off sleeves to the astonished guests, suggesting, "Get gaiters made of them."

A year later, in January 1700, Peter transformed persuasion into decree. With rolling drums in the streets and squares, it was proclaimed that all boyars, government officials and men of property, both in Moscow and in the provinces, were to abandon their long robes and provide themselves with Hungarian or German-style caftans. The following year, a new decree commanded men to wear a waistcoat, breeches, gaiters, boots and a hat in the French or German-style, and women to put on petticoats, skirts, bonnets and Western shoes. Later decrees prohibited the wearing of high Russian boots and long Russian knives. Models of the new approved costumes were hung at Moscow's gates and in public places in the city for people to observe and copy. All who arrived at the gates in traditional dress except peasants were permitted to enter only after paying a fine. Subsequently, Peter instructed the guards at the city gates to force to their knees all visitors arriving in long, traditional coats and then to cut off the coats at the point where the lowered garment touched the ground. "Many hundreds of coats were cut accordingly," says Perry, "and being done with good humor it occasioned mirth among the people and soon broke the custom of wearing long coats, especially in places near Moscow and those towns wherever the Tsar came."

Not surprisingly, Peter's sartorial transformation was much more readily accepted by women than by men. His sister Natalya and his widowed sister-in-law, Praskovaya, were the first to set the example, and many Russian noblewomen hurried to follow. Seeing great possibilities in foreign dress, anxious to be a la mode, they sent to the West for examples of the gowns, shoes and hats being worn at Versailles.

As time passed, subsequent decrees further extended and refined Peter's will that the new clothes be worn "for the glory and comeliness of the state and the military profession." Resistance was never so strong as that which had greeted his condemnation of beards; priests might still berate clean-shaven men, but the church did not rise to the defense of the traditional robes. Fashion has its own authority, and lesser men scurried to adopt the dress of their superiors. Within five years. Whitworth, the English ambassador, reported from Moscow that "in all this great city not a single person of importance is to be met dressed otherwise than in the German manner."

In the country, however, fashion still bowed to age-old habit. Those of the nobility, the bureaucracy and the merchants who fell under Peter's eye dressed as he desired, but other gentry living on their far-off estates still serenely wore their long robes. In a way, this first and most obvious of Peter's reforms on his return from the West was typical of what followed. In his impatience to apply Western customs to Russian society, he jettisoned Russian habits whose existence was based on common sense. It was true that the old Russian clothing was bulky and made walking difficult; limbs were certainly freer once the long robes and coats were cast off. But in the rigorous cold of Russian winter, the freer limbs were also more likely to be frostbitten. When the temperature sank to twenty or thirty below zero, the old Russian in his warm boots, his greatcoat rising above his ears and reaching down to the ground, with his bushy beard protecting his mouth and cheeks, could look with satisfaction at that poor Westernized fellow whose face was purple in the cold and whose knees, showing beneath his shortened coat, knocked together in a futile effort to keep warm.

Peter's ardent determination to rid himself quickly of all appurtenances and reminders of the old Muscovite customs and traditions had bleak results for his wife, Eudoxia. The autumn of his return from the West marked the final break between the twenty-six-year-old Tsar and the twenty-nine-year-old Tsaritsa.

Peter had long wished to end his marriage and to shed this sad and cloying woman whom he had never loved and whom he had been forced to marry. From the beginning, it had been no secret that Peter went out of his way to avoid his wife. She was simple and uneducated. She feared his enthusiasms and disliked his friends—particularly Lefort—and the foreigners who thronged into Peter's life. A good Orthodox woman who believed that foreigners were the source of heresy and contamination, she could not bear to see her husband adopting their clothes, their language, their habits and their ideas. Inevitably, by trying to come between her enthusiastic, headstrong husband the glittering life he had found with his new friends, Eudoxia only made her own position weaker. She also knew that Peter was unfaithful, that he kept Anna Mons in handsome style. Foolishly, she showed her jealousy openly, which angered Peter, while her own attempts to please him with letters or marks of affection merely wearied him. In short, he was bored with her, embarrassed by her and longed to be free of her.

While still in the West, dining, dancing and making conversation with the fascinating ladies he met everywhere, Peter resolved to be rid of his own helpless, uninteresting and possessive wife. He did not write a single line to Eudoxia during his eighteen months abroad, but his letters to his friends in Russia'contained broad hints of his intentions. From London he wrote to his uncle Lev Naryshkin and to Tikhon Streshnev, urging that they persuade his wife to take religious vows and become a nun. Once she took the veil, all earthly relationships, including marriage, were null and void. On returning to Amsterdam, Peter increased the pressure, asking Romodanovsky to intervene and use his influence on the reluctant Tsarita. Even the Patriarch was induced to work on Peter's behalf, although he tried to avoid the unwelcome task. By the time he reached Vienna, Peter had made up his mind. His refusal to offer a toast to the Empress, which would require him to drink the reciprocal toast that would be offered to the Tsarita, was a clear signal of his hardened purpose.

On returning to Moscow, Peter at first refused to see Eudoxia. Instead, he angrily asked Naryshkin and the others why his orders regarding her had not been carried out. They replied that in so delicate a matter the sovereign himself must handle the arrangements. Thus, after he had been in Moscow for several days, Peter summoned Eudoxia to meet him at Vinius' house. For four hours they argued, Peter insisting furiously that she must accept the veil and release him. Eudoxia, finding strength in desperation, steadfastly refused, pleading that her duty as a mother made it impossible for her to leave the world. Once incarcerated in a convent, she predicted (accurately, as it turned out), she would never see her son again. Therefore, she declared that she would never voluntarily abandon either the palace or her marriage.

Peter left the interview determined to have his way. First, Alexis, then eight and a half, was forcibly taken from his mother and put in the care of Peter's younger sister, Natalya, at Preobrazhenskoe. One morning soon after, a simple postal carriage, without ladies-in-waiting or servants, was sent to the palace. Eudoxia was bundled into it and the cart rattled off to the Pokrovsky Monastery in Suzdal. There, ten months later, Eudoxia's head was shaved and she was forced to take a new name as a nun, Helen. Later in Peter's life, she would reappear in a surprising way, but, for the moment, Peter's wish was accomplished: he at last was free.

In the months that followed Peter's return from the West, he imposed other changes on Russian life. Most were superficial and symbolic; like the cutting of beards and the trimming of clothes, they were harbingers of the deeper institutional reforms to come in the decades ahead. These early transformations really changed nothing fundamental in Russian society. Yet, to Russians they seemed very strange, for they had to do with the commonest ingredients of everyday life.

One of these changes had to do with the calendar. Since the earliest times, Russians had calculated the year not from the birth of Christ but from the moment when they believed the world had been created. Accordingly, by their reckoning, Peter returned from the West not in the year 1698 but in the year 7206. Similarly, Russians began the New Year not on January 1, but on September 1. This stemmed from their belief that the world was created in autumn when the grain and other fruits of the earth had ripened to perfection and were ready to pluck, rather than in the middle of winter when the earth was covered with snow. Traditionally, New Year's Day, September 1, was celebrated with great ceremony, with the tsar and the patriarch seated on two thrones in a courtyard of the Kremlin surrounded by crowds of boyars and people. Peter had suspended these rites as obsolete, but September 1 still remained the beginning of the New Year.

Anxious to bring both the year and New Year's Day into line with the West, Peter decreed in December 1699 that the next new year would begin on January 1 and that the coming year would be numbered 1700. In his decree, the Tsar stated frankly that the change was made in order to conform to Western practice.* But to blunt the argument of those who said that God could not have made the earth in the depth of winter, Peter invited them "to view the map of the globe, and, in a pleasant temper, gave them to understand that Russia was not all the world and that what was winter with them was, at the same time, always summer in those places beyond the equator." To celebrate the change and impress the new day on the Muscovites, Peter ordered special New Year's services held in all the churches on January 1. Further, he instructed that festive evergreen branches be used to decorate the doorposts in interiors of houses, and he commanded that all citizens of Moscow should "display their happiness by loudly congratulating" one another on the New Year. All houses were to be illuminated and open for feasting for seven days.

·In choosing to follow the Julian calendar then in use in England. Peter brought Russia into line with the West just before the West itself changed. In 1752, England adopted the Gregorian calendar, but Russia refused to change a second time, with the result that until the Revolution the Russian calendar was behind the West, eleven days in the eighteenth century, twelve in the nineteenth and thirteen in the twentieth. In 1918, the Soviet government finally accepted the Gregorian calendar, which now is standard throughout the world.

Peter also altered Russian money. He had returned ashamed of the haphazard, informal, almost Oriental monetary system in use within his realm. Up to that point, a substantial amount of the currency circulating in Russia consisted of foreign coins, usually German or Dutch, with an M stamped oh them to denote "Muscovy." The only Russian coins in general circulation were small oval bits of silver called kopeks, stamped on one side with an image of St. George and on the other with the title of the tsar. The quality of the silver and the size of the coins differed greatly, and to make change, Russians simply sliced them into pieces with a heavy blade. Peter, influenced by his visit to the Royal Mint in England, had come to understand that in order to promote a growth of trade, he must have an adequate supply of official money, issued and protected by the government. He therefore ordered the production of large, handsomely made copper coins which could be used as change for the existing kopeks. Subsequently, he coined gold and silver pieces in higher denominations up to the rouble, which equaled 100 kopeks. Within three years, this new coinage had reached such an impressive scale that nine million roubles' worth of specie had been issued and was circulating.

Another foreign idea was presented to Peter in an anonymous letter found one morning on the floor of a government office. Normally, unsigned missives contained denunciations of high officials, but this letter was a proposal that Russia adopt a system of using stamped paper, that all formal agreements, contracts, petitions and other documents be required to be written on official paper bearing the duty-paid mark of an eagle in the upper left-hand corner. The paper should be sold only by the government; the income would accrue to the state Treasury. Enormously pleased, Peter enacted the measure at once and instituted a search for the anonymous writer. He was found to be a serf named Alexis Kurbatov, who, as steward to Boris Sheremetev, had accompanied his master to Italy, where he had served the use of Italian stamped paper. Peter handsomely rewarded Kurbatov and gave him a new government post, where his duty was to find further ways of increasing government revenues.

It was Peter himself who carried home another Western practice which simultaneously broadened the sophistication of Russian society and saved the state land and money. The traditional Russian manner of rewarding important services to the tsar had been the bestowal of large estates or gifts of money. In the West, Peter discovered the thriftier device of awarding decorations— orders, crosses and stars. Imitating such foreign decorations as England's Order of the Garter and the Hapsburg Order of the

Golden Fleece, Peter created an exclusive order of Russian knighthood, the Order of St. Andrew, named after the patron saint of Russia. The new knights were distinguished by a broad light-blue ribbon worn diagonally across the chest and the cross of St. Andrew in black on white enamel. The first recipient was Fedor Golovin, Peter's faithful companion and ambassador on the Great Embassy and now, to all intents and purposes, the unofficial prime minister. The Tsar also named Mazeppa, Hetman of the Cossacks, and Boris Sheremetev, who was to succeed Shein as commander of the army. Twenty-five years later, at Peter's death, the Order of St. Andrew numbered thirty-eight members, twenty-four of them Russians and fourteen foreigners. This order remained the highest and most coveted of all the honors conferred by a Russian sovereign until the fall of the empire. Thus, for over two centuries, human nature being what it is, these pieces of colored ribbon and bits of silver and enamel became worth as much to Russian generals, admirals, ministers and other officials as thousands of acres of good Russian earth.

19

FIRE AND KNOUT

Once the beards were shaved and the first reunion toasts drunk, the smile faded from Peter's face. There was grimmer work to be done: it was time for a final reckoning with the Streltsy.

Ever since Sophia's downfall, the former elite troops of the old Muscovite armies had been deliberately humiliated. In Peter's sham battles at Preobrazhenskoe, the Streltsy regiments always made up the "enemy" whose role was always to lose. More recently, in real combat beneath the walls of Azov, the Streltsy had suffered heavy losses. They resented being made to dig like laborers, piling up earth for the siege works; they disliked being forced to obey the commands of foreign officers, and they grumbled at seeing their young Tsar so eager to follow the advice of these Westerners speaking incomprehensible tongues.

Unfortunately for the Streltsy, the two Azov campaigns had conclusively demonstrated to Peter how inferior in discipline and fighting quality they were to his own new regiments, and he announced his intention to model his army along Western lines.

After the capture of Azov, it was the new regiments which returned to Moscow with the Tsar to make a triumphal entry and be granted honors, while the Streltsy were left behind to rebuild the fortifications and to garrison the conquered town. This violated all precedents; the Streltsy's traditional place in peacetime was Moscow, where they guarded the Kremlin, kept their wives and families and ran profitable businesses on the side. Now, some of the soldiers had been away from home for almost two years, and this, too, was by design. Peter and his government wanted as few of them as possible in the capital, and the best way to keep them away was to assign them to permanent service on a distant frontier. Thus, wanting at one point to reinforce the Russian army on the Polish border, the government ordered 2,000 Streltsy of the regiments in Azov dispatched there. They were to be replaced in Azov by some of the Streltsy remaining in Moscow, while the Guards and other Western-style troops would remain in the capital to protect the government.

The Streltsy marched, but their discontent mounted. They were furious at having to walk from one distant outpost to another hundreds of miles away, and even angrier that they were not allowed to pass through Moscow to see their families. Along the route, some of the soldiers actually deserted to reappear in Moscow, presenting petitions for back pay and asking permission to remain in the capital. Their petitions were rejected and they were ordered to return to their regiments immediately or face punishment. They returned to their comrades, telling them how badly they had been received. They also brought the latest news and gossip of the Moscow streets, much of it centered on Peter and his long absence in the West. Even before his departure, his preference for foreigners and his elevation of foreign officers to high places in the state and army had angered the Streltsy. Now their anger was fueled by fresh rumors.' Peter was said to have become a German, to have given up the Orthodox faith, even to be dead.

As the Streltsy conferred excitedly among themselves, their personal grievances began to expand into a larger, political grievance against the Tsar their faith and their country were being subverted; the Tsar was no longer a tsar! A true tsar enthroned in the Kremlin, remote, appearing only in great processions covered with jewels and robes. This tall Peter who shouted and drank with carpenters and foreigners ail night in the German Suburb, who walked in triumphal processions in the wake of foreigners whom he had made generals and admirals, could not be a true tsar. If he was really the son of Alexis—and many doubted it—then he had been bewitched; and they pointed to his epileptic seizures as evidence that he was a child of the Devil. As all this boiled in their minds, the Streltsy realized their duty: to overthrow this changeling tsar, this false tsar, and re-establish the old traditional ways.

Just at this moment, a new decree arrived from Moscow: The companies were to disperse themselves into garrisons in towns between Moscow and the Polish-Lithuanian border, and the deserters who had come to Moscow were to be arrested and exiled. This decree was the catalyst. Two thousand Streltsy decided to march on Moscow. On June 9, at a dinner at the Austrian embassy in Moscow, Korb, the newly arrived secretary to the embassy, noted, "Today for the first time a vague rumor of the revolt of the Streltsy struck terror." People remembered the revolt sixteen years before, and now, fearing a repetition of that slaughter, those who could began leaving the capital.

In this atmosphere of panic, the Tsar's government met to face the danger. No one knew how many rebels there were, or how close they were to the city. The troops in Moscow were commanded by the boyar Alexis Shein, and at Shein's elbow, as he had been at Azov, was the old Scot, General Patrick Gordon. Shein agreed to accept the responsibility for suppressing the mutiny, but he asked that all members of the boyar council approve the decision unanimously and signify their approval by signing or setting their seals to the document. The boyars refused, probably in recognition that if the Streltsy should win, their signatures would doom them. Nevertheless, they agreed that it was essential to prevent the Streltsy from entering Moscow and inciting a larger rebellion. Whatever loyal troops could be found would be assembled and marched out to meet the Streltsy before they reached the city.

The two Guards regiments, the Preobrazhensky and the Semyonovsky, were ordered to prepare to march on an hour's notice. To stamp out any sparks of rebellion that might have spread to them, the order declared that those who refused to march against the traitors would be proclaimed traitors themselves. Gordon went among the troops, exhorting them and assuring them that there was no more glorious and noble combat than that undertaken to save the sovereign and the state against traitors. Four thousand loyal troops mustered and marched westward out of the city, Shein and Gordon riding at their head. Most important, Colonel de Grage, an Austrian artillery officer, was there with twenty-five field cannon.

The confrontation took place thirty miles northwest of Moscow near the Patriarch Nikon's famous New Jerusalem Monastery. Everything—numbers, leadership, artillery, even timing—favored the loyal forces. Had the Streltsy arrived only an hour earlier, they might have occupied the powerful monastery and been able to withstand a siege long enough to dishearten the loyal soldiers and persuade some of them to join the revolt; and the walled fortress would have been a tactical buttress to their position. As it was, the two sides met in open, rolling countryside.

Near the monastery ran a small stream. Shein and Gordon took up a commanding position on the eastern bank, blocking the road to Moscow. Soon afterward, the long lines of Streltsy carrying their muskets and halberds began to appear, and the vanguard started to ford the river. To discover whether there was any chance of ending the rebellion peaceably, Gordon walked down to the riverbank to talk to the mutineers. As the first of the Streltsy emerged from the water, he advised them, as an old soldier, that night was close and Moscow too far to reach that day; it would be better to camp for the night on the far side of the river, where there was plenty of room. There they could rest and decided what to do in the following day. The Streltsy, exhausted and uncertain, not having expected to have to fight before reaching Moscow but now seeing the government troops drawn up against them, accepted Gordon's advice and began to make camp. To Gordon the Streltsy spokesman, Sergeant Zorin, handed an unfinished petition which complained:

That they had been ordered to serve in different towns for a year at a time, and that, when they were in front of Azov, by the device of a heretic and foreigner, Fransko Lefort, in order to cause great harm to Orthodoxy, he, Fransko Lefort, had led the Moscow Streltsy under the wall at the wrong time, and by putting them in the most dangerous and bloody places many of them had been killed; that by his device a mine had been made under the trenches, and that by this mine he had also killed three hundred men and more.

The petition continued with other complaints, including "that they had heard that Germans are coming to Moscow to have their beards shaved and publicly smoke tobacco to the discredit of Orthodoxy." Meanwhile, as Gordon parleyed with the rebels, Shein's troops had quietly entrenched themselves on the commanding high ground on the eastern bank and De Grage had placed his cannon on the height, their muzzles pointing down across the stream at the Streltsy.

At dawn the following day, satisfied that his own position was as strong as he could make it, Gordon again went down to talk to the Streltsy, who demanded that their petition be read to the loyal army. Gordon refused; the petition was actually a call to arms against Tsar Peter and a condemnation of Peter's closest friends, especially Lefort. Instead, Gordon spoke of Peter's clemency. He urged the Streltsy to return peacefully and resume their garrison duties, as no good could come of mutiny. He promised that if they would present their requests peacefully and with proper expressions of loyalty, he would see that they received satisfaction for their grievances and pardon for their disobedience up to that point. Gordon failed. "I used all the rhetoric I was master of, but all in vain," he wrote. The Streltsy answered only that they would not go back to their posts "until they had been allowed to kiss their wives in Moscow and had received their arrears in pay."

Gordon reported this to Shein, then returned a third time with a final offer to pay their salaries and grant pardon. By this time, however, the Streltsy were restless and impatient. They warned Gordon, their former commander but also a foreigner, that he must leave immediately or get a bullet for his efforts. They shouted that they recognized no master and would take orders from no one, that they would not go back to their garrisons, that they must be admitted to Moscow, and that if their way was blocked, they would open the road with cold steel. Furious, Gordon returned to Shein, and the loyal troops prepared to fight. On the western bank, the Streltsy troops, too, formed ranks, knelt and asked the blessing of God. On both sides of the stream, countless signs of the cross were made as Russian soldiers prepared for battle against each other.

The first shots came on Shein's command. With a roar, smoke billowed out from the cannon muzzles, but no harm was done. De Grage's guns had fired powder but not shot; Shein had hoped that this display of force might awe the Streltsy into submission. Instead, the blank volley had the opposite effect. Hearing the noise, but seeing no damage among their ranks, the Streltsy were emboldened to think that they were the stronger party. Beating their drums and waving their banners, they advanced across the river. At this, Shein and Gordon ordered De Grage to bring his guns into action in earnest. The cannon roared again, this time sending ball and shot whistling into the lines of the Streltsy. Over and over, De Grage's twenty-five guns fired into the mass of men before them. Cannonballs volleyed into the lines, lopping off heads, arms and legs.

In an hour it was over. While the cannon still boomed, the Streltsy lay down on the ground to escape the fire, begging to surrender. From the loyal side, commands to throw down their arms were shouted. The Streltsy quickly obeyed, but even so, the artillery continued to fire, Gordon reasoning that if he silenced his guns, the Streltsy might gain courage and be persuaded to attack again before they could be properly disarmed.. And so the cowed and terrified Streltsy allowed themselves to be fettered and bound until they were truly harmless.

With the rebels in chains, Shein was merciless. On the spot, with the entire body of mutinous Streltsy in chains and under guard on the battlefield, he ordered an investigation of the rebellion. He wanted to know the cause, the instigators, the objectives. To a man, each Strelets whom he questioned admitted his own involvement and agreed that he himself deserved death. But, equally to a man, all refused to give any details as to their goals or to betray any of their fellows as instigators or leaders. Accordingly, in the pleasant countryside near the New Jerusalem Monastery, Shein ordered the Streltsy put to torture. Knout and fire did their work, and at last one soldier was persuaded to speak. Agreeing that he and all his fellows deserved death, he admitted that had the rebellion been successful, they had intended first to sack and burn the entire German Suburb and massacre all its inhabitants, then to enter Moscow, kill all who resisted, seize the leading boyars, kill some and exile others. Following this, they would announce to the people that the Tsar, who had gone abroad on the malicious advice of the foreigners, had died in the West and the Princess Sophia would be called upon to act as regent again until the Tsarevich Alexis, Peter's son, should reach his majority. To advise and support Sophia, Vasily Golitsyn would be recalled from exile.

Perhaps this was true or perhaps Shein had simply extracted by torture what he wished to hear. In any case, he was satisfied and, on the basis of this confession, ordered the executioners to begin their work. Gordon protested—not to save the lives of the condemned men, but to preserve them for more thorough interrogation in the future. Anticipating Peter's intense desire to get to the bottom of the mater on his return, he pleaded with Shein. But Shein was the commander and he insisted that immediate executions were necessary to make the proper impression on the rest of the Streltsy—and on the nation—as to how traitors were dealt with. One hundred and thirty were executed in the field and the rest, nearly 1,900, were brought back to Moscow in chains. There they were turned over to Romodanovsky, who distributed them in the cells of various fortresses and monasteries around the countryside to await Peter's return.

Peter, rushing home from Vienna, had been informed along the way of the easy victory over the Streltsy and been assured that "not one got away." Yet, despite the quick snuffing out of the revolt which had never seriously threatened his throne, the Tsar was profoundly disturbed. His first thought, after the anxiety and humiliation of having his army rebel while he was traveling abroad, was—exactly as Gordon had known it would be—to wonder how far the roots of the rebellion had spread and what high persons might have been involved. Peter doubted that the Streltsy had acted alone. Their demands and charges against his friends, himself and his way of life seemed too broad for simple soldiers. But who had instigated them? On whose behalf?

None of his boyars or officers could give him a satisfactory answer. They said that the Streltsy had been too strong under torture and that answers could not be forced out of them. Angry and suspicious, Peter ordered the Guards regiments to collect the hundreds of prisoners from cells around Moscow and bring them to Preobranzhenskoe. There, in the interrogation that followed, Peter resolved to discover whether, as he had written to Romoda-novsky, "the seed of the Miloslavskys had sprouted again." And even if this had not been a full-fledged plot to overthrow his government, he was determined to put an end to those "begetters of evil." Since his childhood, the Streltsy had opposed and threatened him—they had murdered his friends and relations, they had supported the claims of the usurper Sophia and they continued to scheme against him; only two weeks before his departure abroad, the plot of the Streltsy Colonel Tsykler had been discovered. Now, once again they had used violent language against his foreign friends and himself and had marched on Moscow intending to overthrow the state. Peter was weary of it all: the nuisance as well as the danger, the arrogant claims to special privilege and to fight only when and where they wished, the poor performance as soldiers, the fact that they were semi-medieval figures in a modern world. Once and for all, one way or another, he would be rid of them.

Interrogation meant questioning under torture. Torture in Russia in Peter's day was used for three purposes: to force men to speak; as punishment, even when no information was desired; and as a prelude to or refinement of death by execution. Traditionally, three general methods of torture were used in Russia: the batog, the knout and fire.

A batog was a small rod or stick about the thickness of a man's finger, commonly used to beat an offender for lesser crimes. The victim was spread on the floor, lying on his stomach, his back bared and his legs and arms extended. Two men applied batogs simultaneously to the bare back, one sitting or kneeling on the victim's head and arms, the other on his legs and feet. Facing each other, the two punishers wielded their sticks rhythmically in turn, "keeping time as smiths do at an anvil until their rods were broken in pieces and then they took fresh ones until they were ordered to stop." Laid on indiscriminately over a prolonged time with a weakened victim, the batogs could cause death, although this was not usually the case.

More serious punishment or interrogation called forth the knout, a savage but traditional method of inflicting pain in Russia. The knout was a thick, leather whip about three and a half feet long. A blow from the knout tore skin from the bare back of a victim and, when the lash fell repeatedly in the same place, could bite through to the bone. The degree of punishment was determined by the number of strokes inflicted; fifteen to twenty-five was considered standard; more than that often led to death.

Applying the knout was skilled work. The wielder, observed John Perry, applied "so many strokes on the bare back as are appointed by the judges, first making a step back and giving a spring forward at every stroke, which is laid on with such force that the blood flies at every stroke and leaves a weal behind as thick as a man's finger. And these [knout] masters as the Russians call them, are so exact in their work that they very rarely strike two strokes in the same place, but lay them on the whole length and breadth of a man's back, by the side of each other with great dexterity from the top of a man's shoulders down to the waistband of his breeches."

Normally, to receive the knout, the victim was lifted and spread across the back of another man, frequently some strong fellow selected by the knoutmaster from among the spectators. The victim's arms were tied over the shoulders of his stationary porter and his legs around the porter's knees. Then, one of the knoutmaster's assistants grabbed the victim by the hair, pulling his head out of the way of the rhythmic strokes of the lash that were falling on the outspread, heaving back.

If desired, the knout could be applied in an even more terrible way. The victim's hands were tied behind his back and a long rope was tied to his wrists and then passed over the branch of a tree or an overhead beam. Pulling down on the rope meant hoisting the victim into the air with his arms revolving backward the wrong way in their shoulder sockets. To make sure that the arms were pulled completely out of joint, a heavy log or other weight was sometimes tied to the victim's feet. With the victim already in agony, the knoutmaster then flailed the distended back with the designated number of strokes, whereupon the victim was lowered to the ground and his arms were wrenched back into joint again. In some cases, this torture would be repeated on a weekly basis until the victim confessed.

Torture by fire was common—sometimes alone, sometimes in combination with other tortures. In its simplest form, interrogation by fire meant that the victim's "hands and feet are tied and he is fixed on a long pole, as upon a spit, and he has his raw back roasted over the fire and he is examined and called upon to confess." In some cases, a man who had just been knouted was taken down and tied to this kind of pole, so that the back being roasted was already raw and bleeding from the whip. Or a man still suspended in the air after receiving the knout would have his bleeding back touched and probed with a red-hot iron.

In general, executions in Russia were similar to those in other countries. Offenders were burned to death, hanged or beheaded. Victims were burned in the middle of a pile of logs filled with straw. Beheading required the victim to place his head on a block and submit to the blow of an axe or sword. This easy, instant death was sometimes made harder by first lopping off the hands and feet. Executions of this kind were so common, wrote one Dutch traveler, "that if one is performed at one end of town, in the other they seldom know anything of it." Counterfeiters were punished by taking their false coins, melting them down and pouring the molten metal down their throats. Rapists were castrated.

Although public torture and execution were no novelty to any seventeenth-century European, what struck most visitors to Russia was the stoicism, "the unconquerable stubbornness" with which most Russians accepted these terrible agonies. They steadfastly resisted hideous pain, refusing to betray friends, and when condemned to death they went meekly and calmly to the gallows or block. An observer in Astrachan saw thirty rebels beheaded in less than half an hour. There was no noise or clamor. The condemned men simply went to the block and laid their heads in the pools of blood left by their predecessors. None even had his hands tied behind him.

This incredible hardiness and unconquerable endurance of pain astonished not only foreigners but also Peter himself. Once, after a man had been tortured four times by knout and fire, Peter approached him in sheer wonder and asked how he could stand such great pain. The man was happy to talk about it and revealed to Peter the existence of a torture society of which he was a member. He explained that nobody was admitted without first being tortured, and that thereafter promotion within the society rested on being able to accept higher grades of torture. To this bizarre group, the knout was nothing. "The sharpest pain of all," he explained to Peter, "is when a burning coal is placed in the ear; nor is it less painful when the head is shaved and extremely cold water is let fall slowly drop by drop upon it from a height."

More astonishing and even touching was the fact that sometimes the same Russians who could withstand the knout and fire and remain mute until death would break if handled with kindness. This happened with the man who told Peter of the torture society. He had refused to utter a word of confession although he had been tortured four times. Peter, seeing that he was invulnerable to pain, walked up to him and kissed him, saying, "it's no secret to me that you know about the plot against me. You have been punished enough. Now confess of your own accord out of the love you owe me as your sovereign. And I swear, by the God who has made me tsar, not only to completely pardon you, but in addition, as a special mark of my clemency, to make you a colonel." This unorthodox approach so unnerved and moved the prisoner that he took the Tsar in his arms and said, "For me, this is the greatest torture of all. There is no other way you could have made me speak." He told Peter everything, and the Tsar, true to the bargain, pardoned him and promoted him to colonel.

The seventeenth century, like all the centuries before and since, was a time of hideous cruelty. Torture was practiced in all countries and for a variety of crimes, particularly those against the sovereign or the state. Usually, since the sovereign was the state, any form of opposition from assassination down to the mildest grumbling against him was classified as treason and punished accordingly. But a man could also be tortured and killed for attending the .wrong church or for picking a pocket.

Throughout Europe, those who touched the person or the dignity of the king suffered the full fury of the law. In France, in 1613, the assassin of Henri IV was torn to pieces by four horses in the Place de 1'Hotel de Ville in front of a huge crowd of Parisians who brought their children and their picnic lunches. A sixty-year-old Frenchman had his tongue torn out and was sent to the galleys for insulting the Sun King. Ordinary criminals in France were beheaded, burned or broken alive on the wheel. In Italy, travelers complained of the public gallows: "We see so much human flesh along the highways that trips are disagreeable." In England, the "peine forte et dur" was applied to criminals: A board was placed on the victim's chest and, one by one, weights were added until breath and life were crushed out. The penalty for treason in England was to be hanged, drawn and quartered. In 1660, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary, "I went out to Charing Cross to see Major-General Harrison hanged, drawn and quartered, which was done there, he looking as cheerfully as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down and his head and heart shown to the people at which there were great shouts of joy."

Nor was cruel retribution restricted to political crimes. Witches were burned in England during Peter's lifetime and still were being hanged a century later. In 1692, six years before the Streltsy revolt, twenty young women and two dogs were hanged for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. Through most of the eighteenth century, Englishmen were executed for stealing five shillings, and women were hanged for stealing a handkerchief. In the Royal Navy, infractions of discipline were commonly punished with a cat-o'-nine-tails. These floggings, which often resulted in death, were not abolished until 1881.

All this is told to provide perspective. Few of us in in the twentieth century will wish to be hypocritically surprised at the barbarism of earlier times. Nations still execute traitors. Torture and mass executions still take place, both in war and in peace, made more efficient and more indiscriminate now by the instruments of modern technology. In our own time, the authorities of more than sixty nations, among them Germans, Russians, Frenchmen, Britons, Americans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Filipinos, Hungarians, Spaniards, Turks, Greeks, Brazilians, Chileans, Uruguayans, Paraguayans. Iranians, Iraqis, Ugandans and Indonesians, have tortured on behalf of the state. Few centuries can claim a more hellish achievement than Auschwitz. Today, in psychiatric hospitals, Soviet political dissidents are tortured with destructive drugs designed not only to break down resistance but to subvert personality. And only modern technology can provide a spectacle such as the hanging of fourteen Jews in Bagdad's Liberation Square before a crowd of half a million . . . and, for those who couldn't be present, hours of television close-ups of the dangling bodies.

In Peter's time, as in ours, torture was carried out to gather information, and public execution to deter further crimes. The fact that innocent men have confessed to escape further pain has never stopped torture, nor has the execution of criminals ever stopped crime. Undeniably, the state has a right to defend itself against people who break its laws, and perhaps even a duty to try to deter future infringements, but how far into repression and cruelty can a state or society descend before the means no longer justify the end? It is a question as old as political theory, and it will not be answered here. But it should be borne in mind when we read what Peter did.

At the Tsar's command, Prince Romodanovsky brought all the captured traitors to Preobrazhenskoe and constructed fourteen torture chambers to receive them. Six days a week (Sunday was a

day of rest), week after week, in what became an assembly line of torture, all the surviving prisoners, 1,714 men, were examined. Half of September and most of October were spent in lashing and burning the Streltsy with knout and flame. Those who had already confessed to one charge were re-interrogated on another. As soon as one rebel had revealed some new bit of information, all those who had already been questioned were dragged back in for re-examination on this point. Those who had lost their strength and almost their minds under torture were handed over to doctors to be restored by treatment so that they might be questioned further under new, excruciating tortures.

Major Karpakov, deeply implicated as one of the leaders of the rebellion, after being knouted and having his back roasted by fire, lost the power to speak and fainted. Worried that he might die prematurely, Romodanovsky put him in the care of Peter's personal physician, Dr. Carbonari. As soon as he was restored, he was again subjected to torture. A second officer who had also lost the power to speak was handed over to Dr. Carbonari for rehabilitation. By mistake, the doctor left his knife behind in the cell after working over the prisoner. The officer, unwilling that his life, which he knew was almost ended, be restored so that he could suffer more tortures, seized the knife and tried to cut his own throat. But he was already too weak and could not cut deeply enough. Before he could do himself fatal damage, his hand went limp and he fainted. He was discovered, partially cured and returned to torture.

All of Peter's principal friends and lieutenants were involved in the carnage. Men such as Romodanovsky, Boris Golitsyn, Shein, Streshnev, Peter Prozorovsky, Michael Cherkassky, Vladimir Dolgoruky, Ivan Troekurov, Fedor Shcherbatov and Peter's old tutor and Prince-Pope, Zotov, were chosen to participate, as a special mark of the Tsar's confidence. If the plot had spread and boyars were involved, Peter counted on these comrades to discover and faithfully report it. Peter himself, plagued by suspicion and fierce with anger, was often present and,-sometimes wielding his big, ivory-handled cane, personally questioned those who seemed most guilty.

But the Streltsy did not break easily, and their sheer endurance sometimes drove the Tsar to rage. "While one accomplice or rebel was being tied to a rack," wrote Korb,

his lamentations gave rise to a hope that truth might be pressed from him by torments; but no, for as soon as his body began to be stretched with the rope, besides the horrible cracking of his members which were being torn from their natural sockets, he remained mute, even when twenty strokes of the knout were superadded, as if the accumulation of his pain were too great to afflict the senses. All believed that the man must be crushed with excess of calamity to such a degree that he must have lost the power of moaning and of speech. So he was loosed from the infamous rack and rope, and then asked if he knew the persons present in the torture chamber. To the astonishment of all, he enumerated every one of them. But when they put a fresh question about the treason, once more he became utterly dumb, and did not break silence during a whole quarter of an hour, while he was roasted by a fire by the Tsar's command. The Tsar, tired at last of this exceedingly wicked stubbornness, furiously raised the stick which he happened to have in his hand, and thrust it so violently into his jaws— clenched in obstinate silence—to break mem open, and make him give tongue and speak. And these words too that fell from the raging man, "Confess, beast, confess!" loudly proclaimed how great was his wrath.

Although the interrogations were supposedly conducted in secret, all Moscow knew that something terrible was happening. Yet, Peter was anxious to hide the savage work, especially from foreigners; aware of the reaction that this wave of terror would produce in the Western courts he had just visited, he attempted to seal off his torture chambers from Western eyes and ears. Nevertheless, rumors provoked enormous curiosity. One group of Western diplomats ventured out to Preobrazhenskoe on horseback to see what they could learn. Passing three houses from which came appalling howls and groans, they stopped and dismounted in front of a fourth which emitted even more atrocious shrieks. Entering, they were startled to see the Tsar, Lev Naryshkin and Romodanovsky. As they retreated, Naryshkin asked them who they were and why they had come. Angrily, he ordered them to go to Romodanovsky's house so that the matter could be looked into. Mounting their horses, the diplomats refused, telling Naryshkin that if he had anything to say to them, he could come to their embassy and say it there. Russian soldiers appeared and a Guards officer attempted to drag one of the-diplomats out of his saddle. Desperately, the unwelcome visitors spurred their horses and galloped to safety past the soldiers running to block their way.

Eventually, reports of the horror reached such magnitude that the Patriarch took it upon himself to go to Peter to beg for mercy. He went carrying an image of the Blessed Virgin, reminding Peter of the humanity of all men and asking for the exercise of mercy. Peter, resenting the intrusion of spiritual authority on temporal matters, replied to the churchman with great feeling: "What are you doing with that image and what business is it of yours to come here? Leave immediately and put that image in a place where it may be venerated. Know that I reverence God and His Most Holy Mother more earnestly, perhaps, than you do. But it is the duty of my sovereign office, and a duty that I owe to God, to save my people from harm and to prosecute with public vengeance crimes that lead to the common ruin." In this case, Peter continued, justice and harshness were linked, the gangrene ran deep in the body politic and could be cut out only with iron and fire. Moscow, he said, would be saved not by pity but by cruelty.

Everyone fell within the sweep of the Tsar's wrath. Priests discovered to have prayed for the success of the rebellion were condemned to execution. The wife of a minor official, passing in front of a gibbet erected before the Kremlin, said of the men hanging there, "Alas! Who knows whether you were innocent or guilty?" She was overheard and denounced as one who expressed sympathy for condemned traitors, and she and her husband were arrested and examined. Able to prove that she was only expressing compassion for all humans who suffered, the couple escaped death, but was nevertheless exiled from Moscow.

Despite the wretched forced confessions, gasped between screams or torn from groaning, half-conscious men, Peter learned little more than Shein had already learned: that the Streltsy had meant to seize the capital, burn the German Suburb, kill the boyars and ask Sophia to rule them. If she refused, they would ask the eight-year-old Tsarevich Alexis and, as a last resort, Sophia's former lover, Prince Vasily Golitsyn, "for he had always been merciful to us." Peter did learn that no boyar or important member of the government or the nobility had been involved, but the most important questions were unanswered: Had there been a plot by important persons against his life and throne? And, most importantly, had Sophia known about or encouraged the uprising in advance?

Peter was deeply suspicious of his sister and could not believe that she was not always intriguing against him. To confirm his suspicions, a number of women, including wives of the Streltsy and all of Sophia's female attendants, were examined. Two chambermaids were brought to the torture rooms and stripped naked to the waist. One had already received several blows of the knout when Peter entered. He noticed that she was pregnant and for this reason absolved her from further torture, but both women were condemned to death.

Under torture, a Strelets, Vaska Alexeev, declared that two letters purporting to be from Sophia had been sent to the Streltsy camp and been read aloud to the soldiers. These letters supposedly urged the Streltsy to march on Moscow, seize the Kremlin and summon the Tsarevna to the throne. According to one account, the letters were smuggled out of Sophia's rooms inside loaves of bread given by Sophia to old beggar women. Other letters, less inflammatory, had been written by Sophia's sister Martha, informing Sophia that the Streltsy were marching on Moscow.

Peter went to Novodevichy himself to interrogate Sophia. There was no question of torture; according to one account, he alternated between weeping with her over the fate that had made them antagonists, and threatening her with death, using the example of Elizabeth I of England and Mary Queen of Scots. Sophia denied that she had ever written to the Streltsy. When he suggested that she might have reminded them that she could be called back to rule, she told him straightforwardly that on this matter they needed no letter from her; they would certainly remember that she had ruled the state for seven years. In the end, Peter learned nothing from her. He spared his sister's life, but decided that she must be more closely restricted. She was forced to shave her head and take religious vows, as the nun Susanna. He confined her permanently to Novodevichy, where she was guarded by one hundred soldiers and permitted to have no visitors. She lived in this fashion for another six years and died at forty-seven in 1704. Her sisters Martha and Catherine Miloslavskaya (also Peter's half-sisters) were politically exonerated, but Martha, too, was sent to a convent for the rest of her days.

The first executions of the condemned Streltsy took place on October 10 at Preobrazhenskoe. Behind the barracks, a bare field rose into a steep hill, and at the top the gallows were placed. A regiment of Guards was drawn up between the execution site and the large crowd of spectators, pushing and shoving, craning their necks to see. The Streltsy, many of whom could no longer walk, arrived in a procession of small carts, each containing two men seated back to back, each holding a lighted candle. Almost without exception, the condemned men were silent, but their wives and children, running beside the carts, filled the air with shrieks and calamitous sobbing. As the carts rumbled across the brook that separated the gallows from the crowd, the individual cries rose into a loud, collective wail.

When all the carts had arrived, Peter, wearing the green polish coat given him by Augustus, appeared with his boyars near the spot where the ambassadors of the Hapsburg empire, Poland and Denmark were watching from their carriages. As the sentence was being read, Peter shouted to the crowd to listen well. Then the guilty men began walking to the gallows, dragging logs tied to their feet to prevent escape. Each man tried to climb the gallows unaided, but some had to be helped. At the top, each made the sign of the cross in four directions and covered his own face with a piece of linen. Some put their heads in the nooses and jumped from the gallows, hoping to break their necks and find a quick end. In general, the Streltsy met death with great calm, following one another without any great sadness on their faces. Because the regular executioners were unable to handle so many, Peter ordered several military officers to mount the gallows and help with the work. That night, Korb reported, Peter went to supper at General Gordon's. He sat in gloomy silence, commenting only on the stubborn resistance of the men who had died.

This grim pageant was only the first of many similar scenes that autumn and winter. Every few days, several score or more were executed. Two hundred were hanged from the walls of the city on special beams extended out from the embrasures in the parapet, two Streltsy to each beam. At each gate to the city, six more bodies swung from gibbet, a reminder to all who entered of the fruits of treason. On October 11, 144 were hanged in Red Square, on beams projecting through the crenellations in the Kremlin wall. One hundred and nine were beheaded by axe and sword over an open trench at Preobrazhenskoe. Three brothers, among the most stubborn of the rebels, were executed in Red Square, two being broken on the wheel and left to die slowly while the third was beheaded before their eyes. The two survivors complained bitterly at the injustice of their brother being permitted to die so quickly and easily.

For some, there were special humiliations. For the regimental priests who had encouraged the Streltsy, a gibbet constructed in the shape of a cross was erected in front of St. Basil's Cathedral. The priests were hanged by the court jester, dressed for the occasion in clerical robes. To make the connection between the Streltsy and Sophia crystal clear, 196 were hanged from a huge square gallows erected near Novodevichy Convent, where the Tsarevna was imprisoned. Three, the supposed ringleaders, were strung up directly outside the window of Sophia's room, with one of the corpses holding a piece of paper representing the Streltsy petition asking her to rule. They remained dangling, near enough for her to touch, for the rest of the winter.

Not all the men of the four rebellious regiments were executed. Peter reduced the sentences of 500 soldiers under twenty years of age from death to branding on the right cheek and exile. Others had their noses or ears lopped off to mark them hideously as participants in treason. Throughout Peter's reign, noseless, earless, branded men, evidence of both the Tsar's wrath and his mercy, roamed\ the edges of his realm.

Korb reported that in his vengeful fury Peter forced a number of his favorites to act as executioners. On October 23, according to Korb, the boyars who constituted the council at which the Streltsy were condemned were summoned to Preobrazhenskoe and ordered to carry out executions themselves. To each boyar a Strelets was brought and an axe was given, with the command that he decapitate the man before him. Some took the axe with trembling hands, aimed poorly and struck without sufficient force. One boyar struck far too low, hitting his victim in the middle of the back and almost cutting him in half. With the creature writhing, screaming and bleeding in front of him, the boyar could not finish his task.

In this grisly work, two apparently distinguished themselves. Prince Romodanovsky, already renowned for his relentless prosecution of the investigation in the torture chambers, beheaded four Streltsy, according to Korb. Romodanovsky's grim passion, "surpassing all the rest in cruelty," perhaps had root in the murder of his father by the Streltsy in 1682. Alexander Menshikov, the Tsar's young favorite, eager to please, later boasted of having cut off twenty heads. Only the foreigners among the Tsar's intimates refused, saying that it was not the custom of their countries for men of their kind to act as executioners. Peter, Korb says, surveyed the whole proceeding from his saddle, frowning with displeasure when he saw a boyar, pale and trembling, reluctant to accept the axe.

Korb also says that Peter himself beheaded some of the Streltsy. The Austrian secretary declared that on the day of the first public executions at Preobrazhenskoe he was standing with a German major in Peter's army. Leaving Korb, the major pressed forward through the crowd and eventually returned to tell Korb that he had seen Peter personally decapitate five of the Streltsy. On another day later in the fall, Korb says, "it was reported by a number of persons that today again the Tsar had himself executed public vengeance upon some traitors." Most historians—Western and Russian, pre-Revolutionary and Soviet—have rejected this hearsay evidence. Those who have already found in Peter an excessive violence and brutality will have no difficulty imagining him personally wielding an executioner's axe. He did indeed become violent when he was angry, and he was enraged at these mutineers who, once again, had raised their swords against his throne; to him it was treason that was immoral, not its punishment. Those who do not wish to believe that the Tsar became an executioner can take solace in the fact that neither Korb nor his Austrian colleagues actually witnessed the event described; their evidence could not be used in a modern court.

If there is doubt on this point, there is none on the matter of Peter's responsibility for the mass tortures and death, or on the question of his presence in the torture chambers while flesh was being flayed or burned. To us this seems brutal and degrading; to Peter it seemed necessary. He was indignant, he was angry, and he wanted to hear the truth himself. "So great a distrust of his boyars had taken possession-of the Tsar's mind," says Korb, "that he was afraid to entrust them with the smallest part of this examination, preferring rather to devise the interrogatories and to examine the accused [himself]." Besides, Peter never hesitated to be a participant in the enterprises he commanded, whether on the battlefield, on shipboard or in the torture chamber. He had decreed the interrogation and destruction of the Streltsy; he would not sit back and wait for someone to bring him news that his command had been obeyed.

Yet, Peter was not a sadist. He did not enjoy seeing people tortured—he did not, for instance, set bears on people merely to see what would happen, as Ivan the Terrible had done. He tortured for practical reasons of state: to extract information. He executed as punishment for treason. To him these were natural, traditional and even moral actions. Few of his seventeenth-century contemporaries, Russian or European, would have argued this principle. In fact, at that moment in Russian history, what counted was not the morality of Peter's act but its effect. The destruction of the Streltsy inspired in the Russian people a belief in Peter's harsh, implacable will, and proclaimed his iron determination to tolerate no opposition to his rule. Thereafter, despite his Western clothes and tastes, his people knew that they had no choice except to follow. For beneath the Western clothes beat the heart of a Muscovite tsar.

This was part of Peter's plan. He did not destroy the Streltsy simply to wreak vengeance, or to expose one specific plot, but to make an example, to terrify, to force submission. The lesson of the Streltsy, burned in blood and fire, was one from which we today recoil, but it cemented Peter's reign. It gave him the power to work his reforms and—for better or worse—to revolutionize Russian society.

In the West from which Peter had so recently returned and where he hoped to build a new image of his country, the news was shocking. Even the common understanding that a sovereign could not tolerate treason was swept aside by reports of the scale of the Preobrazhenskoe tortures and executions. Everywhere, it seemed to confirm the beliefs of those who had said that Muscovy was an incorrigibly barbarous nation and its ruler a cruel Oriental tyrant. In England, Bishop Burnet recalled his appraisal of Peter: "How long he is to be the scourge of that nation, or of his neighbors, God only knows."

That Peter was aware of how the West would regard his actions was shown by his desire to conceal the tortures, if not the executions, from the foreign diplomats in Moscow. Subsequently, when Korb's diary was published in Vienna (it was printed in Latin, but translated into Russian for Peter's benefit), the Tsar reacted violently. It precipitated a serious diplomatic crisis until the Emperor Leopold I agreed to destroy all unsold copies. Even those copies that had been sold were pursued by the Tsar's agents, trying to buy back every one they could.

While the four regiments of Streltsy which had rebelled were being punished, the rest of the Streltsy, including the six regiments lately sent from Moscow to garrison Azov, had become dangerously restless and were threatening to join the Don Cossacks and march on Moscow. "There are boyars in Moscow, Germans in Azov, demons in the water and worms in the earth," was the way they expressed their unhappiness with the world around them. Then came the news of the total destruction of their comrades, and the Streltsy in Azov thought better of their intended subordination and remained at their posts.

Despite this success of his grim policy, Peter decided that he could no longer tolerate the Streltsy at all. Especially after this bloody repression, the hatred of the survivors would only increase and the state might once again be subjected to upheaval. Of the 2,000 Streltsy who had revolted, nearly 1,200 had been executed. Their widows and children were expelled from Moscow and people everywhere were forbidden to give them assistance except to employ mem as servants on estates far from the capital. The following spring, Peter disbanded the remaining sixteen Streltsy regiments. Their houses and lands in Moscow were confiscated and they were sent into exile in Siberia and other distant regions to become simple villagers. They were forbidden ever to take up arms again, and the local governors were warned against trying to recruit them for military service. Later, when the Great Northern War against Sweden demanded constant replenishments of manpower, Peter reversed this decision, and several regiments of former Streltsy were formed under close control. In 1708, after a final revolt of the Streltsy stationed in the distant city of Astrachan, the organization was permanently abolished.

Thus, at last Peter was done with the turbulent, domineering Muscovite soldier-tradesmen who had so influenced and terrorized his youth. The Streltsy were swept away, and with them the only serious armed opposition to his policies and the main obstacle to his reorganization of the army. They were replaced with his own creation, the military up-to-date and efficient Guards regiments, trained on the Western model and imbued with support from Peter's policies. Ironically, the Russian Guards officers, recruited almost solely from the families of land-owning gentry, quickly came to play the political role to which the Streltsy had unsuccessfully aspired. As long as the sovereign's will was as strong as Peter's, they were submissive and obedient. But when the sovereign was a woman (as happened four times within the century after Peter's death) or a child (as happened twice), and in moments of interregnum when there was no sovereign and the succession was in doubt, then the Guards themselves helped to choose who would rule. The Streltsy, had they still existed, might have permitted themselves a wry laugh at this turn of events. More likely, however, nervous lest the spirit of Peter might still be watching over them, they would have held their tongues in fearful silence.

20

AMONG FRIENDS

That autumn and winter, Russia first felt the full weight of Peter's will. The torture and execution of the Streltsy were its grimmest and most dramatic manifestation, but even as the torture fires were burning, frightened Muscovites and foreign observers began to discern a common thread in all his actions. The destruction of the Streltsy, the truncating of beards and sleeves, the changes in the calendar and the money, the incarceration of the Tsaritsa, the mockery of church rituals, the ship building at Voronezh—all were part of a single purpose: to destroy the old and bring in the new; to move the huge, inert mass of his countrymen toward a more modern, more Western way of life.

Although these blows at the Old Russia have been described separately, they were taking place at the same time. From days in the torture chambers at Preobrazhenskoe, Peter went directly to nights of festivity and a succession of feasts and entertainments. Almost every night during that fearful autumn and winter, Peter attended a banquet, a masquerade, a wedding, a christening, a reception for foreign ambassadors or a mock-religious ceremony with his Drunken Synod. He did this partly to drive out his anger at the rebellion and his gloom at the terrible work of retribution and partly because he was happy, after eighteen months in the West, to be home again with friends.

On many of these occasions, Anna Mons was present. Already Peter's mistress before he left with the Great Embassy, now—with Eudoxia out of the way—the lady who described herself as the Tsar's "loyal friend" stepped forward into public recognition: on his arm, she attended the christening of the son of the Danish ambassador; on her birthday, Peter came to dine at her mother's house. Her presence and that of a small but increasing number of other women broke a precedent that carousing evenings involving Russian males should be exclusively male. Nor were these banqueters exclusively Russian. In all of these activities, the ambassadors of Denmark, Poland, Austria and Brandenburg were included in Peter's company of favorites. Indeed, Peter gloried in their presence; they gave him a sense of the closeness of Western culture and they, more than his boyars, could understand his hopes and ambitions. Their presence was fortunate for history—their reports and diaries provide vivid descriptions of life at Peter's court.

The fullest and most colorful of these accounts is that of Johann-Georg Korb, secretary to a visiting Austrian ambassador. Not always reliable, often repeating hearsay, Korb was nevertheless an industrious reporter who recorded every sight he saw as well as every rumor he heard. His pages give a rich picture of Peter's life in the few years between his return from the West and his plunging into the great war which would dominate the rest of his life and reign.

The young Austrian diplomat arrived in Moscow in April 1698 when Peter was still in London. The entry of his ambassador into the Russian capital was conducted with great pomp, and the traditional formal banquet welcoming the embassy was opulent; in all, the guests counted at least 108 different dishes.

Peter received the embassy when he returned. The audience was held at Lefort's house.