Peter the Great

“ And although Peter the Great is no longer with us, yet his spirit lives in our souls, and we, who had the felicity of being near this monarch, shall die faithful to him, and the ardent love we had for our earthly god will be buried together with us. ”

“ For more than half a century after the accession of the Romanoffs, there is little either in the genius or the deeds of any of the line calculated to draw our special attention. But towards the close of the seventeenth century there ascended the Russian throne a man whose capacity and energy and achievements instantly drew the gaze of his contemporaries, and who has elicited the admiration and wonder of all succeeding generations. This was Peter I., universally known as Peter the Great, one of the remarkable characters of history. ”

“ I remember that when very young I received a visit from the czar Peter the Great, Peter the First I mean to say. He was not deficient in sense, but yet behaved like a boor: he passed his time in running over the academies, libraries, and manufactories: I never saw such an ill-bred man. Imagine him embracing me at our first interview, and carrying me in his arms as one of my valets would have done. He was dirty, coarse, and ill-dressed. Well, all the Frenchmen ran after him; one would have supposed by their eagerness that they had never seen a regal countenance. ”

“ Peter was so fascinated by this brilliant and versatile aristocrat, so deeply interested in the psychology of a great Roman prelate, a prince of the Church, that he forgot everything except that he was a creative artist—and a great sitter, a man worthy of his best, was to be portrayed.
He gave his whole heart to his task, and he brought to it a new sense of values, born of suffering. When he had finished, you could see the cardinal's soul looking at you from the canvas. The smile Peter prayed to catch curves his lips, a smile that baffles and enchants. ”

“ But an observant contemporary woman has very justly declared with regard to Peter that he was both a very good and a very bad man. Without denying or diminishing the dark side of Peter the Great’s character, let us not forget the brighter side, which outweighed the dark and was able to attach people so strongly to him. If his wrath burst forth at times so terribly against those whom he regarded as the enemies of the country and of the general welfare, yet he attached to himself strongly, and was strongly attached to persons of opposite tendencies. ”

“ Peter knew that when he became a man he would be emperor of all Russia. He knew that among the populations of that immense country there were a great many wild and turbulent tribes, half savage in habits and character, that would never be controlled but by military force, and that the country, too, was surrounded by other nations that would sometimes, unless he was well prepared for them, assume a hostile attitude against his government, and perhaps make great aggressions upon his territories. ”

“ The man in whom the people recognised the incarnate spirit of evil was no other than Peter the Great.
From the Nonconformist point of view, Peter had very strong claims to be considered Antichrist. He had none of the staid, pious demeanour of the old Tsars, and showed no respect for many things which were venerated by the people. He ate, drank, and habitually associated with heretics, spoke their language, wore their costume, chose from among them his most intimate friends, and favoured them more than his own people. ”

“ The life, the travels, the actions of Peter the Great, as well as of his rival, Charles of Sweden, exhibit a surprising contrast to the manners which prevail amongst us, and which are, perhaps, rather too delicate ”

“ Dozitheus and Glebo, together with the other accomplices of these idle and superstitious intrigues, were put to the torture, as were likewise the confidants of the czarowitz's flight. His confessor, his preceptor, and the steward of his household, all died by the hands of the executioner.
Such then was the dear and fatal price at which Peter the Great purchased the happiness of his people, and such were the numberless obstacles he had to surmount in the midst of a long and dangerous war without doors, and an unnatural rebellion at home. ”

“ Many of these innovations, as being borrowed from the Romanists or the Lutherans of the West, had a religious significance for the people. The change introduced by Peter the Great in the ancient calendar, in the Slavonic alphabet and in the national costume seemed but a carrying out of those which Nikon had initiated. So natural was the parallel that the Old Believers held the one to be but the continuation of the other; and the notion took shape in a seditious legend, according to which Peter was the adulterous offspring of the patriarch. ”

“ Peter was not magnificent to-day; in his plain green uniform and short hair he looked like a European foot soldier and utterly out of place in this great hall hung with scarlet, carpeted with Eastern tapestries, and decorated with jasper and silver, malachite and lacquer. The silver throne stood on a dais under a crimson canopy, and on the steps of it sat Peter, his hands clasped round his knees. The boyars had gone with their breastplates and caftans, robes, and caps, and there remained only the Duke of Croy, the German who commanded the army, and Mentchikoff. ”

“ The theory that Peter the Great profited by his rude education in contact with nature and real human beings, instead of being reared in the artificial atmosphere of the imperial terem, may point with some pride to his energy, his promptness, his scorn of conventions ”

“ The sovereigns and great military commanders that have acquired the highest celebrity in history have always been remarkable for their tact and sagacity in discovering and bringing forward the right kind of talent for the successful accomplishment of their various designs.
When Peter first found himself nominally in possession of the supreme power, after the fall of the Princess Sophia, he was very young, and the administration of the government was really in the hands of different nobles and officers of state, who managed affairs in his name. ”

“ If we were to quote certain judgments passed by his contemporaries, it would be easy to understand the disgust with which the History of Peter the Great, by Voltaire, fills every sincere and virtuous man. Great qualities do not excuse great vices, especially in the case of Peter, who on many occasions proved by his conduct that he was capable of self-restraint, had he only chosen to exercise it. This czar, whose leading characteristics were a spirit of determination and an energetic will, can neither be excused for his debauches nor his cruelties. ”

“ She was an able sovereign, of German birth and education, and therefore more enlightened than her predecessors, but of scandalous morals, who ousted her feeble husband and usurped his authority. Although Peter the Great acquired large practical knowledge in the West and set a high value on European science, he was always a barbarian at heart, and he mocked the civilisation he mimicked. ”

“ Then Peter went to his father and mother and begged for their blessing that he might travel to the kingdom of Naples to learn there knightly feats, but especially to see the beauty of the King's daughter Magilene. So they dismissed Prince Peter with great sorrow, exhorting him to make friendship with good men only; then, giving him three golden rings with precious stones and a gold chain, they dismissed him in peace. ”

“ I brought with me books for work, but as yet I have done nothing but read and take notes from a history of Peter the Great, about which I should like some day to write an article for the Journal des Savants. The great man was a downright savage, who used to get horribly tipsy, and committed an error against good taste, concerning which I found you very severe when you used to study Greek literature. For all that, he was without question a man in advance of his age. ”

“ We must either suspect Peter the Great of having been mistaken, in his declaration at the crowning of the empress, when he acknowledges 'his obligations to her of having saved his army, which was reduced to twenty-two thousand men,' or accuse him of a falsity in his journal, wherein he says, that the day on which the above battle was fought, his army, exclusive of the succours he expected from the other side the Moldavian mountains, amounted to thirty-one thousand five hundred and fifty-four foot, and six thousand six hundred and ninety-two horse. ”

“ He made his clergy shave their faces, and the enemies of his innovations called him the antichrist. No man ever lived who impressed himself more indelibly upon a people than Peter the Great. His name is held in honor second only to the Divine. The relics of his handiwork are preserved with religious care. Every museum has some specimen of his genius and industry, and the lapse of a hundred and fifty years since these things were made by imperial fingers invests them with interest approaching reverential awe. ”

“ Nobody doubts or questions that the rise of Russia to its present proud and threatening position is chiefly owing to the genius and policy of Peter the Great. Peter was a descendant of a patriarch of the Greek Church in Russia, whose name was Romanoff, and who was his great-grandfather. His grandfather married a near relative of the Czar, and succeeded him by election. His father, Alexis, was an able man, and made war on the Turks. ”

“ But this tie is [Pg 256] weakened by the fact that Peter, an essentially practical and utilitarian genius, was not the man to become inspired with Hellenic poetry, and if the author introduces the Tsar into the society of Julian the Apostate and of Leonardo da Vinci, it is because Peter the Great was one of those indefatigable strugglers, who, to attain their ends, put themselves above the obligations of ordinary morality, one of those supermen, who hesitate at nothing in satisfying the instincts of their egoisms, of their dominating wills. ”

“ Peter, therefore, had no male heir. Alexis, however, had left a son Peter by Charlotte of Brunswick whom he married against his will. In 1723 the czar ordered Catherine to be crowned as Empress. He had established the right to select his successor but failed to do so, owing to his sudden death.
The following description of Peter the Great at the age of forty, is given by a Frenchman; "He was a very tall (p. 172) man, well made though rather thin, his face somewhat round, with a broad forehead, beautiful eyebrows, a short nose, thick at the end ”

“ Peter, the son of Alexis and grandson of Peter the Great, died before reaching his majority, and with his death the male line of the Romanoffs became extinct. The empress Anne, daughter of Ivan, half-brother of Peter the Great, then ascended the throne; during her reign the celebrated Ice Palace was erected. ”

“ Peter of Provence and the Fair Magalo ́na, the chief characters of a French romance so called. Peter comes into possession of Merlin’s wooden horse.
Peter the Great of Egypt, Mehemet Ali (1768-1848.
[193] Peter the Hermit, a gentleman of Amiens, who renounced the military life for the religious. He preached up the first crusade, and put himself at the head of 100,000 men, all of whom, except a few stragglers, perished at Nicea.
He is introduced by Tasso in Jerusalem Delivered (1575) ; and by Sir W. Scott in Count Robert of Paris, a novel laid in the time of Rufus. ”

“ And when Peter got to the palace he went into the kitchen with the deer, and said,—"Here I'm come with a little present for the King, if he won't despise it."
Then the King went out into the kitchen, and when he saw the fine plump reindeer, he was very glad.
"But, my dear friend," he said, "who in the world is it that sends me such a fine gift?"
"Oh!" said Peter, "who should send it but Lord Peter."
"Lord Peter! Lord Peter!" said the King. "Pray tell me where he lives;" for he thought it a shame not to know so great a man. But that was just what the lad wouldn't tell him ”

“ Upon the division of the Roman empire, it was next to impossible, but that sooner or later there must be two religions as well as two empires, and that the same schism should arise between the eastern and western Christians, as between the followers of Osman and the Persians.
It is this schism which certain doctors of the Sorbonne thought to crush all at once by means of a memorial which they presented to Peter the Great, and effect what Pope Leo XI. and his successors had in vain laboured for many ages to bring about, by legates, councils, and even money. ”

“ The revolutions and wars which Russia had afterwards to encounter against the Turks, and in which she proved victorious, the evacuating the three provinces in Persia, which cost Russia more to keep than they were worth, are events which do not concern Peter the Great, as they did not happen till several years after his death; it may suffice to observe, that he finished his military career by adding three provinces to his empire on the part next to Persia, after having just before added the same number on that side next to Sweden. ”

“ Since Peter, the great head of the Apostles, was manifestly invested not only with the keys of heaven to open to those who believe and to close to those who disbelieve the gospel, but he first had the charge to feed the sheep of the whole Catholic Church—to convert and confirm his spiritual brethren of the same order, as he received this dignity over all, given to him providentially by God Himself for our sakes incarnate. ”

“ So he died an archdeacon—not of Bath indeed, but of London; and his latest letters are pathetic protests to the pope that he has no revenue to support his title, and that the new precentor of St Paul's has ousted him from his stall which was the second in honour to that of the dean.
It is impossible to make a hero of Peter, but his story has much of human interest, and it runs in and out among the great events of a fascinating period of history. His letters indeed are indispensable to the historian; for again and again they take him behind the scenes. ”