Peter's reign really began in 1689, when he was seventeen years old. While still a lad, he manifested that passion for western arts and for warfare which proved to be his most prominent characteristics. He loved to slip away to the part of Moscow frequented by foreign merchants, to pick up a knowledge of German and Dutch, and learn something of European science and inventions. In a shed by the river he discovered a forgotten sailboat, which fired him with a desire to learn navigation and shipbuilding; and this half-rotten boat became the "grandfather of the Russian fleet." the formation of a company of soldiers equipped in European fashion and commanded by a German officer; and this proved the beginning of a new Russian army. In two expeditions (1695 and 1696), Azof (ä'zōf), on the Black Sea, was captured, and the value of the 1 66 Tsar's 1 young manifest.

PETER THE GREAT

'amusements' was made

508. Peter's journey of

instruction

But the Russian nobility, the Russian priesthood, the old Russian army, were hostile to change. To obtain that firsthand knowledge of the West which was necessary to overcome Muscovite inertia, Peter, with a large suite (in 1697 and 1698), made a "journey of instruction" to Germany, Holland, and England. In Holland he worked for some time in the shipyards, disguised as a common sailor. Wherever he went he refused honors, in order to visit workshops and laboratories. Anatomical and natural history collections were examined, as well as sawmills, paper mills, flour mills, printing offices, and the like. His constant utterance was, "I must see."

1 This is the better form of the title, though it is often written "Czar." Formerly it was supposed to be derived from the Latin Caesar (German, Kaiser, i.e. Emperor), but this view is now disputed.

On his way to Venice, Peter was recalled home by a revolt of the old Russian army (Streltsi), which had long played a part 509. Consimilar to that of the praetorian guard in Roman history. servative His native savagery burst out in fearful vengeance, and opposition broken the revolt was used to do away entirely with such dangerous troops. By refusing to appoint a successor to the last patriarch of Moscow (died in 1700), and by later committing the direction of the Russian Greek Church to a Holy Synod, Peter broke the power of the priesthood, and thus weakened a second center of blind conservatism. The nobles were gradually depressed, until (in 1711) the Tsar felt strong enough to forbid them for the future to hold their council, and so ended their political power. Thus army, church, and nobility alike were rendered powerless to oppose reform.

510. Reason

A series of "ukases," or decrees, appeared meanwhile which reformed Russia's institutions - central, provincial, and municipal; social, military, and educational. Western shipbuilders, engineers, and physicians were invited into the land, under promise of security, rewards, and religious toleration. Shaved faces and the short-cut sleeves of the West replaced at the Russian court the long beards and flowing sleeves of the East. In spite of all efforts, "Holy Moscow," the center of Russian conservatism, remained hostile to Peter's measures. Russia also needed a maritime capital. Since Archangel (on the for war with White Sea) was closed by ice for more than half the year, and Azof (on the Black Sea) was cut off from the Mediterranean by the Turks at Constantinople, a port on the Baltic was a necessity. But both shores of that sea were in the hands of Sweden. To gain the site for a Baltic port, Peter the Great embarked upon a war against the Swedish king, Charles XII, who had just ascended the throne as a boy of fifteen. Poland and Denmark joined in the attack. But the allies miscalculated the character of the young king, for Charles XII possessed exceptional ability and power, with a positive genius for war.

Sweden

Without waiting for attack, Charles took the offensive and invaded Denmark. Before her allies could come up, Denmark

the North

was forced to make peace (August, 1700). Then Charles turned to meet the Tsar, who was attacking the Swedish provinces on the Gulf of Finland. With 8000 disciplined 511. Bemen against the 60,000 still half-trained troops of Peter, ginning of Charles won a brilliant victory at Narva (November, ern War 1700). Poland was next invaded, and there for five years (1700) the war continued. Charles was completely successful here also; and Poland was obliged to accept a ruler of Charles's choice, and to withdraw from the Russian alliance.

Peter the Great, meanwhile, had conquered the Swedish provinces about the Gulf of Finland. There, amid the marshes and low-lying islands about the mouth of the river Neva, he 512. Foundbegan, in 1703, to build his new capital, St. Petersburg. ing of St. To deepen the channels and make ready the land for build- (1703) ing purposes, an army of peasants was set to work. The level of the islands was raised, and countless piles were driven into the swampy ground as supports for the heavy foundations of the buildings. Lack of provisions and shelter, with constant toil in the cold and wet, cost thousands of lives. Every cart entering the place, and every vessel sailing up the Neva, was forced to bring a specified quantity of building stones, while the construction of stone buildings in other parts of the empire was temporarily forbidden. To furnish inhabitants for the new city, thirty thousand peasants were transported thither at one stroke. The nobles also were required to maintain houses in the new capital proportionate to their means. To beautify the city, foreign workmen and artists were imported. Thus Peter obtained his coveted "window toward the West," and freed his successors from the trammels of conservative Moscow.

513. Charles

XII invades

In the spring of 1708 Charles XII invaded Russia, where he hoped to rival the exploits of Alexander the Great in Asia. The Russians refused battle (as they later did against Napoleon) and retired upon Moscow, with the Swedes in pursuit. The winter, the most severe for a century, passed (1708) with Moscow still untaken. Spring found Charles in the extreme south of Russia, with reënforcements and supplies cut off,

Russia

laying siege to the fortified city of Poltava. To the advice that he retreat while there was yet opportunity, he replied, "If an angel should descend from heaven and order me to depart from here, I would not go." When Peter arrived to relieve the city, the Swedes found themselves outnumbered two to one, and were defeated. Charles's army was almost entirely destroyed or captured, and he himself escaped with difficulty to Turkish soil.

With unbending obstinacy Charles XII stirred up the Sultan to war against Russia. The Russian army was entrapped by the 514. Death Turks, but Peter purchased peace by the return of Azof of Charles to Turkey. Charles XII was indignant at this peace, XII (1718) and behaved like a madman. At last he was expelled from Turkey, and with but two companions returned to Sweden. He found his outlying territories almost entirely lost, and the Swedish power in ruins. Four years later, while attempting the conquest of Norway, his adventurous life was ended in the siege of a petty fortress.

the North-
ern War
(1721)

The death of Charles XII made it easier to end the Northern War, and peace between Sweden and Russia was made in 1721. 515. End of The former government was restored in Poland. Most of Sweden's possessions in Germany (§ 434) were given to Prussia and Hanover. Russia secured the provinces about the Gulf of Finland, the lion's share of the booty. Sweden, whose power had been founded chiefly on the army created by Gustavus Adolphus, now sank to the position of a second-rate state; while Russia, whose power was based ultimately upon her vast territories and the numbers of her people, rose to the position of foremost power in the North.

after Peter

At the death of Peter the Great, in 1725, Russia had taken on the forms of a modern state. But the ancient government 516. Russia changed its form without changing its substance. Russia remained at bottom an oriental state, with a heritage of (1725-1796) manners and ideas borrowed mainly from Byzantine and Mongol civilization. For seventy years, excepting three brief intervals, the government was in the hands of women. It was

the Great

a time of palace revolutions, of struggles between native Russians and foreign favorites, and between oligarchical and absolutist factions. The Empress Elizabeth (1741-1762), daughter of Peter the Great, adopted a reactionary policy at home, but acted vigorously in foreign affairs. The immoral but energetic Catherine II (1762-1796) is accounted one of the chief founders of the Russian Empire. She extended the boundaries of her country in every direction, and fostered western civilization. Russia now reached to the heart of Asia. It was the only country of Europe that could increase indefinitely by absorbing barbarian lands.

B. THE RISE OF PRUSSIA

517. Union

burg and

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw also the rise to power of another northern state, - Prussia. Since 1415 the electorate of Brandenburg had been a possession of the house of Hohenzollern (hō-en-tsōl'ern), the family of of Branden the present German Emperor; but until the seven- Prussia teenth century there was nothing to show that this ter- (1618) ritory was destined to leadership among German states. first half of the seventeenth century, however, brought three events of importance in the growth of its power.

(1) Some small territories upon the Rhine were acquired by inheritance in 1609. These gave Brandenburg a footing in western Germany.

(2) In 1618 a large part of the region known as Prussia was acquired. This land had been conquered from the heathen Slavs in the thirteenth century by the Teutonic Knights (§ 163); but Poland had annexed its western half, and forced the Knights to hold East Prussia as a fief of the Polish crown. At the time of the Reformation the Grand Master of the Knights, who was a member of the Hohenzollern family, dissolved the order on Luther's advice, and made its territory a secular duchy. In 1618 his line became extinct, and the duchy fell, by previous arrangements, to the Brandenburg line of Hohenzollern. This