CHAPTER XVII.

PETER THE GREAT AND HIS PUPILS. (1689-1730.)

THE reform period of Russian History began in the generation immediately preceding Peter the Great. His amiable and inquisitive father, Tsar Alexis, was peculiarly susceptible to new impressions. He also possessed, in a high degree, the royal gift of discerning genius, and the Patriarch Nikon, who renovated the Russian Church, and the enlightened boiars Athanasius Ordin-Nashchokin and Artemon Matvieeff, who first turned the Russian nation westwards, were the beloved friends and the directing counsellors of Alexis. Their great merit was to prepare a suitable atmosphere in Russia for the new ideas which were finding their way into the empire-the reforms which, under Theodore III, Alexis' eldest son and immediate successor (1676-82), took root in the soil and became substantial facts. By far the most important of these reforms was the abolition, at the suggestion of another enlightened boiar, Prince Vasili Vasilevich Galitsin, of the ancient and mischievous abuse miestnichestvo, or " family precedence," described in the preceding chapter. By a single stroke of his pen the hopeless invalid Theodore III had, in 1681, removed an abuse which, for centuries, had appeared unassailable. He was, indeed, as thorough and devoted a reformer as a man who was obliged to issue his orders from his litter or his bedchamber could possibly be. The mere fact that, on his very deathbed, he could so easily remove so deep-lying and far-reaching an abuse, is a striking testimony to the steady, if silent, advance of liberal ideas in Muscovite society, even since the death of Alexis.

This recollection never forsook Peter ; and there is a pretty general agreement that the convulsions from which he suffered so much in later years must be partly attributed to the effect of this violent shock on the very impiessionable child. From the day of his father's death to his tenth year, when he was first raised to the throne, Peter shared the miseries and the perils of the rest of his family. On the other hand, he had peculiar advantages. From his very cradle he must have been made acquainted with Western ideas, for his m other, the Tsaritsa Natalia, had been the favourite pupil of MatvieefF, though she does not seem to have been very intelligent. After the triumph of Sophia, Natalia was altogether excluded from the conduct of affairs, and lived for nine months out of the twelve at Preobrazhenskoe, on the outskirts of the capital. During this period Peter was rarely to be seen at Moscow, except when he and his semi-imbecile brother, Ivan V, had to undergo the ceremony of receiving foreign ambassadors at the Kremlin. The boy soon felt cramped and stifled in the dim and close semi-religious atmosphere of Natalia's terem, and escaped from it, as often as he could, into the dirty streets of Moscow. There was no one near him of sufficient character and authority to keep the passionate fiery nature within due bounds.

On May 14, the "sea-caravan" sailed from Voronezh, Peter, now captain, and commanding eight galleys of the flotilla from the galley Principium, built by his own hand. Nor was all this labour in vain. The new Russian fleet prevented the Turks from relieving Azoff by water; and in the daily fighting, the advantage was always with the besiegers. On July 29 the fortress surrendered. Its capture was one of those triumphs which strongly appeal to the popular imagination. It was the first victory ever won by the Muscovites over the terrible Turks. On October 11 the Muscovite army made its triumphal entry into the capital. The procession was headed by Admiral Lefort and Generalissimo Shein ; and behind their gilded sledges marched Captain Peter, with a pike across his shoulder.

Peter. Ivan was beyond Peter's vengeance ; but his corpse was dug up, dragged by swine to the foot of the block at Preobrazhenskoe, and defiled by the warm blood of the decapitated traitors. This is the earliest instance of the would-be regenerator's frequent relapses into savagery, under the overpowering stress of terror or hatred.

On March 21, 1697, the grand embassy, under the leadership of Lefort and Golovin, set out on its travels. Peter attached himself to it as a volunteer sailor, " Peter Mikhailoff," so as to find greater facilities for learning shipbuilding and other technical sciences. The details of this adventure are so familiar, that there is no need to recapitulate them here. Though Peter completed his technical education in the dockyards of Deptford and Saardam, and so far was the gainer by his expedition, the embassy itself failed, as it was bound to fail, in its main object of obtaining the help of the Western Powers against the Turk. All Europe, divided into two hostile camps, was anxiously awaiting the death of the childless Charles II of Spain ; and neither France nor the Grand Alliance pitted against her by William III was willing to plunge into the distant eastern War, with an armed conflict as to the Spanish Succession at their very doors. So far, indeed, were the allies from intervening in the Turkish War, that it was their earnest desire to bring about a peace between the Emperor and the Porte, in order that the forces of the Empire might be exclusively employed against France. For the same reason, the prospect of the prolongation of the Russo-Turkish War was by no means disagreeable to England and Holland, as thereby the Porte would be prevented from giving assistance to Louis XIV.

In Muscovy "severity" meant cruel severity; "severe" capital punishment pronounced against rebels meant breaking on the wheel, or impalement. Peter himself arrived secretly at Moscow on August 26, and, after spending a riotous evening at Lefort's house in the German settlement, had slept in his little wooden hut at Preobrazhenskoe. That very night he had determined to drown all contradictions in torrents of blood. The new era of enlightenment was to be inaugurated by a reign of terror.

Peter was well aware that behind the Strieltzy stood the sympathising masses of the Muscovite people, whom it was his mission to reform against their will. His foreign tour had more than ever convinced him of the inherent superiority of the foreigner; and, this superiority once admitted, imitation of the foreigner was, to his mind, inevitable. Any such imitation had, necessarily, to begin with externals ; and Peter, with characteristic insight and thoroughness, at once fell foul of the long beards and Oriental costumes which symbolised the archconservatism of Old Russia. Other enlightened Princes, Boris, Theodore III, and the first pseudo-Demetrius for instance, had, in some respects, anticipated him. But all their more or less tentative efforts had foundered against the tyranny of ancient custom, and the strong opposition of the clergy. The famous protopope Avvakum had refused to bless the son of the boiar Sheremebieff, because he presented himself in indecent guise-in other words with a shorn head, after the Polish fashion. Beardless officials had small chance of promotion. More than one Patriarch had excommunicated members of their flocks who shaved. Against this powerful superstition Peter struck with all his might on the day after his return. On August 27, 1698, the chief men of the Tsardom were assembled round his wooden hut at Preobrazhenskoe ; and Peter, emerging with a large pair of shears in his hand, deliberately clipped off the beards and moustaches of his chief boiars. After thus vindicating the claims of common-sense, he prudently condescended to a compromise. He decreed that after September 1 (the Old Russian New Year's Day), 1698, beards might still be worn, but a graduated tax was imposed upon their wearers. Thus the beard ceased to be an object of worship in Muscovy ; but the people were not provoked too far, and a new source of revenue had been found for the Treasury.

The terrible deeds of September and October, 1698, were not without an injurious effect on Peter himself, and, more than once, his nervous irritation exploded in tempests of frantic passion. Thus, at a banquet at Lefort's, on September 14, a dispute with General Shein over some trivial matter caused the Tsar to lose all control over himself. He rose from the table, drew his sword, fell furiously upon the company, and would have murdered them all on the spot, but for the soothing influence of his new friend, Alexander Danilovich MenshikofF. This extraordinary man was of so obscure an origin that it is doubtful whether his father was an ostler or a bargee. He first emerges into history as a vendor of meat-pies in the streets of Moscow. Lefort took him up and introduced him to Peter; and, on the death of Lefort, in 1699, MenshikofF succeeded him as prime favourite. Ignorant, brutal, grasping and corrupt, MenshikofF, nevertheless, well deserved the confidence of his master. After Peter, there was not a more alert, lucid, unprejudiced and versatile intellect than Menshikoff's in all Muscovy, while his energy was boundless and inexhaustible. He could drill a regiment, build a frigate, administer a province, and decapitate a rebel, with equal facility. During the Tsar's first foreign tour, MenshikofF worked by his side in the dockyards of Amsterdam, visited all the Dutch workshops, and at the same time acquired a thorough knowledge of colloquial Dutch and German.

Hitherto historians have regarded the great Northern War, of which an account is given in a later chapter, too exclusively from a military point of view ; yet, from the Russian standpoint, it was not so much an arena for the strife of heroes as, in the first place, a training-school for a backward young nation, and, in the second place, a means of multiplying the material resources of a nation as poor as she was backward. Peter the Great entered into the war with Sweden, in order that Russia might gain her proper place on the northern Mediterranean. The possession of an ice-free sea-board was essential to her national development ; the creation of a fleet followed, inevitably, upon the acquisition of such a sea-board ; and she could not hope to obtain her due share of the trade and commerce of the world till she possessed both.

But, in the meantime, Russia had to be educated so far as possible up to the European level, in order that she might be able to appreciate and utilise the hardly-won fruits of Western civilisation. And thus it was that, during the whole course of the great Northern War, the process of internal reformation proceeded slowly but unceasingly. The whole fabric of the State was gradually changing. Brand-new institutions, formed on Western models, were gradually growing up amidst the cumbrous, antiquated, worn-out machinery of old Muscovy, and new men, capable and audacious, brimful of new ideas, were being trained, under the eye of the great regenerator, to help him in his task, and to carry it on when he himself should have vanished from the scene. At first, indeed, the external forms of the administration remained much the same as before. The old dignities disappeared of their own accord ; for the new men, those nearest to Peter, did not require them. Between 1701 and 1703, the naval, artillery, mining, and coining Directories sprang into existence. The great drag on the wheels of the Government -a drag which grew more and more acute as the war proceeded-was its penury. The expense of the fixed embassies at foreign Courts (one of the earliest of the Petrine innovations) was a particularly severe strain upon the depleted treasury. Every expedient to increase the revenue was eagerly snatched at. Taxation was made universal. The sale of spirits became a government monopoly. A great impediment to commerce was the deplorable state of the currency. The only coins in circulation were the well-worn silver kopeks and half-kopeks, most of which were further deteriorated by bisection and trisection. In many places, goods were paid for by leather and other tokens. The currency was reformed by the coinage ukase of March, 1700, which established mints for the stamping and testing of gold, silver, and copper coins by qualified masters. Before 1700, only from 200,000 to 500,000 coins had been annually struck in Russia. In 1700 the number rose to 1,992,000, in 1701 to 2,559,000, and in 1702 to 4,534,000.

From the first, Peter did much to promote education, especially education of a practical sort. Schools of mathematics and navigation were established, about 1702, at Moscow, and in 1703 another school was founded there, at which geography, ethics, politics, Latin rhetoric, the Cartesian philosophy, dancing, and the elements of French and German were taught. Great efforts were made to provide cheap books for the new schools. The chief worker in this field was the Protestant Pole, Ilia Kopienski, who set up a press at Amsterdam and, having the privilege of printing all Russian books, issued a considerable number. In 1698, by Peter's special command, he printed an abridgment of Leo the Philosopher's Art of War, and in 1700 a version of JSsop, remarkable as being the first Russian translation from an ancient classical author. In 1703 the first Russian Gazette appeared, entitled News of military and other events worthy of knowledge and remembrance.

In 1700 died the Patriarch Adrian. His administration had, latterly, been so negligent, that his enemies accused him of sleeping away his time, and eating up his revenues. Adrian's dilapidations could be repaired only by a very energetic successor, but where was a Patriarch in sympathy with the reforming Tsar to be found ? An energetic but unfriendly Patriarch would be the natural leader of a whole army of malcontents ; he would be a most dangerous rival, a second Nikon. In January, 1701, therefore, the administration of the temporalities of the patriarchate was entrusted to a layman, Count Ivan Musin-Pushkin. His appointment was the first step towards a rigid inquisition into the government and revenues of the Russian monasteries, which resulted in the ukase of December, 1701, depriving the religious houses of the control of their estates, and making the monks the salaried officials of the State. The care of the spiritualities was confided to a Little Russian prelate, Stephen Yavorsky, with the title of Exarch of the Most Holy Patriarchal See, whom Peter now promoted to the archiépiscopal see of Riazan. The ignorant Great Russian clergy detested this more enlightened Little Russian interloper, and such pressure was brought to bear upon him that he hid himself in a monastery on the day appointed for his consecration, declaring that he could not accept his new dignity so long as his episcopal brethren accused him of simony, heresy and wine-bibbing. But Peter, well aware that the same people who repudiated Yavorsky called him (the Tsar) Antichrist, overruled Yavorsky's objections, and insisted on the consecration of a man whom he already rightly regarded as a fellow-worker.

After 1703 the reform movement necessarily proceeded more slowly. Peter, now constantly at war, had no time to give to domestic affairs. Yet never for a moment was the great work of progress suspended. In 1705, a ukase ordered the paving of Moscow. In 1706, the first modern hospital and medical training-school was built on the river Yanza, close to the German settlement at Moscow. In February, 1706, sanitary inspectors for Moscow were appointed, one for every ten houses. In 1707, a commission was appointed to devise the best means of dealing with the wholesale vagabondage and highway robbery which was the perennial curse of Muscovy. Peter had already done much to promote education ; in 1707, he proceeded a step further by introducing into Russia the so-called " civil script." Hitherto, the old Cyrillic alphabet of forty-eight letters (still used in liturgical books) served for all Russian books. Peter deleted eight of the more cumbersome letters, simplified the remainder, and sent to Holland to have the new alphabet cast into type. It was brought back to Russia in 1707 by the typographer Anton Dernei, and, with some few later modifications, has been in use ever since. This simplification of the old alphabet was the first step towards the composition of the modern Russian written language, and therefore a reform of capital importance for civilisation. The first three books printed in the new script appeared at Moscow in 1708. Peter himself corrected the proofs and supervised the translations of the earlier books, which included a history of Russia down to his own times, issued by his express command.

Absorbed as he was at this period by the Swedish and Turkish wars, which required his prolonged absence from Russia, Peter could not properly attend to the details of the domestic administration ; but, as it could no longer be neglected, he instituted (by the ukase of February 22, 1711) a supreme governing board to which he gave the name of the " Administrative Senate." It was to take the place of the Tsar during his absence, and to receive the implicit obedience due to himself. In a word, it was responsible for the whole burden of the administration. In order to facilitate the communications of the Senate with the governors and the fiscal functionaries, the office of Revisor General of Ukases was instituted in November, 1715. In 1717 Colleges or Departments of State were introduced. The idea of this administrative reform was first suggested to Peter by Leibniz. By the ukase of April 18, 1718, the " Colleges " were to be, in all points, exactly on the model of the Swedish " services" ; so that Peter may be said to have learnt the science of government as well as the art of war from his Scandinavian rivals. As finally constituted, these new public offices were nine in number, and corresponded roughly with the Ministries of Western Europe. The Presidents of the Colleges were the principal Senators, all of whom were Russians. Most of the Vice-Présidents were foreigners. Peter invariably acted on the patriotic principle, not always followed by his immediate successors, that natives should always fill the highest posts, and that no alien should occupy any place that a Russian was equally capable of filling.

Swedish Code. By the ukase of June 15, 1718, insolvent debtors were compelled to work off their debts in public institutions, at the rate of a rouble a month, during which time they were to be fed at the expense of the State like convicts. A new law of succession was also introduced. The old practice of partitioning real estate was abolished, and the custom of primogeniture introduced. Henceforth, however, younger sons were to be allowed to buy landed estates after seven years' civil or ten years' military service. By the ukase of January 16, 1721, all officers in the army, whatever their origin, and their children after them, were declared to be noble, and entitled to patents of nobility. But education had previously been declared to be the indispensable qualification for advancement in every branch of the service. Thus the famous ukase of January 20, 1714, ordered professors from the mathematical schools to go the round of the provinces, and teach the children of the gentry arithmetic. No gentleman was henceforth to marry unless he had first been properly educated. The Guard was to serve as a training-school for inferior officers, while the sons of eminent persons were to be sent abroad to learn the science of war from famous generals.

Now, as formerly, the poverty of the Government was its chief impediment. There was no money to pay shipbuilders ; yet ships had to be built, if the sea was to be held ; and the command of the sea was necessary for the growth of commerce, the increase of which would, eventually, recoup the Government its expenses. But, if trade is to be promoted, traders must be encouraged and taken care of. Peter fully realised this. In November, 1711, half a dozen mercantile experts were transferred from Moscow to St Petersburg, to advise and assist the Government in concluding a new commercial treaty with England and Holland. A further effort to promote trade and industry is seen in the institution of the glœvnuy magistrat, or chief magistracy (ukase of January 26, 1721)-a supreme local government board, subordinated to the Senate, consisting of the members of the St Petersburg civic authorities, half of whom were foreigners, the Tsar himself nominating the President. The " chief magistracy " was to appoint and superintend the magistrates in all the Russian towns, which were now divided into categories, according to wealth and population.

The needs of the Government compelled it to use forced labour, and recruit its artisans as well as its soldiers from the peasantry ; and the period of reform was too close to the old Muscovite period of peasant serfdom to admit of any amelioration in the general condition of the serfs as regards the State. Yet the Government did what it could to protect the serfs from "their worst enemies, those drunken and disorderly masters who deteriorate their estates, laying all sorts of unbearable burdens on their peasants, and beating and tormenting them so that they run away from their grievous burdens, for which cause waste lands multiply and the arrears of taxation increase." All such masters were to be placed under restraint as lunatics ; and their property was to be administered by their nearest relatives, or by the State. Moreover, by the ukase of April 21, 1721, proprietors were forbidden to sell their serfs separately ; they were only to be sold in families.

Villainous as the system was, it certainly brought much rascality to light. One of the most active and courageous of these delators was the Upper-fiscal Alexis Nestoroff', who, in 1711, reported to the Tsar that the Governor of Siberia, Prince Gagarin, was plundering the Treasury and had succeeded in monopolising the lucrative China trade. NestoroiF sent a whole chestful of incriminating documents to the Senate for investigation, and the Senate promptly destroyed them all. But the indefatigable Upper-fiscal set about collecting fresh evidence, and in 1717 he presented a still stronger case against Gagarin and his abettors. The case was ultimately transferred to a committee of the officers of the Guard, when it was proved conclusively that Gagarin had not only systematically corrupted all the Siberian officials to wink at his depredations, but that many of the Senators and heads of Colleges were his accomplices. Finally, Gagarin made a free and full confession of his crimes, and petitioned for leave to pass the rest of his days in a monastery. Peter sent him to the gallows instead.

The recrudescence of highway robbery led to the policing of the Russian towns, and civic guards were chosen from among the male inhabitants. The police were also to see that no wares unfit for food were exposed for sale, to examine and test all weights and measures, and to act as firemen. Science was promoted by the ukase of February, 1710, encouraging, by a system of rewards, the collection of natural objects. Especial attention was paid to geography ; and in 1719 the geodesists Evreimoff and Luzh were sent to survey Kamschatka, and decide the question whether north-east Asia and America were united or not. By this time St Petersburg was emerging from its scaffolding, and foreigners were beginning to speak well of it. Already it could boast some fine buildings. The imposing Nevsky Prospect, built entirely of stone by gangs of Swedish prisoners, was especially admired.

The strong and terrible reforming Tsar had triumphed over every obstacle-triumphed so thoroughly that any interruption of his work during his lifetime was inconceivable. But, in the midst of his triumph, the thought perpetually haunted him: "Will my work survive me?" His health was uncertain, his half-taught pupils were few and divided, the adversaries of his reforms were many and of one mind, and they believed, and believed rightly, that in the heir to the throne, the Tsarevich Alexis, they possessed a secret sympathiser who would, one day, reverse the whole policy of the Tsar-Antichrist and restore the old order of things.

Russian Church openly expressed their disapprobation of the Tsar's new and strange ways ; and, as a loyal son of the Church, the Tsarevich gladly listened to those who had the power to bind and loose. He even told his confessor, Yakoff Ignateff, whom he had promised to obey as "an angel and apostle of God," that he had wished for his father's death, and Ignateff encouraged him in such sentiments. }

After the marriage of Alexis to the Princess Sophia Charlotte of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel (October 25, 1711), Peter made a determined effort to tear his son away from what he conceived to be a life of indolent ease. Three weeks after his wedding, Alexis was hurried away by his father to Thorn to superintend the provisioning of the Russian troops in Poland. For the next twelve months he was kept constantly on the move. In April, 1712, a peremptory ukase ordered him off to the army in Pomerania; and, in the autumn of the same year, he was forced to accompany his father on a tour of inspection through Finland. On his return to the capital, Peter, in order to see what progress his son had made in mechanics, asked him to produce for inspection his latest drawings. His father's command threw Alexis into a state of panic ; and, to escape the ordeal of such an examination, he resorted to the abject expedient of disabling his right hand by a pistol shot. In no other way could the Tsarevich have offended his father so deeply. He had behaved like a cowardly recruit who mutilates himself to shirk military service, and, for a time, Peter washed his hands of his son.

Alexis had the great advantage of knowing that, in any case, the future belonged to him. Most of the magnates, all the higher clergy with a single exception, and the mass of the Russian nation were on his side. All he had to do was to sit still, keep out of his father's way as much as possible, and await the natural course of events. But Peter could not afford to leave anything to chance. All his life he had been working incessantly with a single object-the regeneration of Russia- in view. All that he now required from his successor was sympathy and goodwill. But what if that successor refused to tread in his father's footsteps, or, still worse, tried to destroy his father's work? By some such process of reasoning as this, must the idea of changing the succession to the throne, by setting aside Alexis, have first occurred to the mind of Peter.

Peter naturally expected that this final appeal would have led to a personal explanation, followed by reconciliation and an effort at amendment ; but again Alexis acted abjectly. He wrote a pitiful reply to his father, offering to renounce, on the grounds of sickness and general incompetence, the succession in favour of his infant half-brother Peter, born on the day after the Princess Charlotte's funeral, but only to die a few months later. Rage and mortification, and the effort to drown them in a debauch, brought on a serious attack of Peter's old malady, epilepsy. So ill was he that the Senators were hastily summoned and slept all night at the Palace, and the last sacraments were administered to the Tsar. Not until January 19, 1716, was he able to reply to his son's letter ; and he now offered Alexis the choice between amending his ways or becoming a monk. Alexis consulted his friends, who advised him to submit to the tonsure and await better times in a monastery. Hereupon Alexis wrote to his father for permission to become a monk, signing the letter " your slave and useless son Alexis." Still Peter did not despair. On the eve of his departure for the Pomeranian and Mecklenburg campaign he visited Alexis, who was ill at the time, and urged him to do nothing in a hurry. On August 26, 1716, he wrote to him from abroad commanding him, if he desired to remain Tsarevich, to join the army without delay.

Alexis at once saw a chance of escaping from his false position altogether. Accompanied by his mistress Afrosina, a Finnish peasant-girl, and four servants, he fled to Vienna and placed himself under the protection of his brother-in-law, the Emperor, who sent him for greater security to the fortress of St Elmo at Naples.

The unfortunate Tsarevich knew, instinctively, that he was fighting for his life. At first, however, relying on the Emperor's solemn promise of protection, he stood firm and refused to depart. But the most villainous expedients, remorselessly employed, compelled him at last to surrender. He promised to return to Russia with Tolstoi, but only on two conditions : his father was to allow him to marry Afrosina and retire into private life. To these terms Tolstoi agreed, and Peter himself solemnly confirmed them in a letter to his son in which he swore, "before God and His judgment seat," that, if Alexis came back, he should not be punished in the least, but be cherished as a son.

On January 31, 1718, Alexis reached Moscow. On February 19 the names of his accomplices were extorted from him. His wretched confederates, torn from their hiding-places and dragged to the torture-chamber, supplied the prosecution with evidence which would not be accepted in any modern Court of justice. On the conclusion of the "Moscow Process," as it was called, the most salient feature of which was the trial and condemnation of the ex-Tsaritsa Eudoxia for adultery, the impalement of her alleged paramour, and the degradation of many of her friends, including Dositheus, Bishop of Rostoff', there was a lull in the prosecution of the Tsarevich's affair. Alexis, on the supposition that something was now due to one who had unhesitatingly confessed everything required of him, bent all his efforts to obtain the fulfilment of his father's promise that he should marry Afrosina. The girl arrived at St Petersburg in April, 1718; but, instead of being taken to the arms of her lover, as she had expected, she was suddenly brought before the Tsar's inquisitors. As the mistress and confidante of Alexis, she was the chosen depository of his secrets; and those secrets the prosecution, which so far had failed to establish a charge of conspiracy, was determined to get hold of. The helpless woman's revelations did not amount to much, but were sufficient to destroy Alexis. He had told her that, when he was Tsar, he would order things very differently. He would live at Moscow and let St Petersburg remain a mere provincial town. He would have no ships, and keep the army solely for defensive purposes. He predicted that, on the death of his father, a civil war would break out between his own partisans and those of his little brother, in which he would ultimately prevail, because the Russian people would not endure the government of women.

But now a case for casuists arose ; and Peter himself was casuist enough to recognise that it was a case of unusual and peculiar difficulty. Even if Alexis deserved a thousand deaths, his father had sworn by the most solemn of oaths to pardon him and let him live in peace, if he returned to Russia ; and it was only on these conditions that Alexis (very foolishly, in the opinion of his friends) had placed himself once more in his father's hands. The question whether the enormity of the Tsarevich's crime absolved the Tsar from the oath which he had taken to spare the life of this prodigal son, was solemnly submitted to a grand council of prelates, senators, ministers, generals and other dignitaries, on June 13, 1718. Five days later, the clergy presented their memorial. It is a cautious, non-committal document, plainly inspired by fear, but unmistakably inclining to mercy, and finally leaving the matter entirely in the Tsar's hands. But the clergy entirely passed over the strongest, the most irrefragable argument in favour of Alexis, namely, the Tsar's solemn promise of forgiveness to his son, although Peter had explicitly exhorted them to relieve his conscience on this very point.

This shameful document, the outcome of mingled terror and obsequiousness, was signed by all the Senators and Ministers, and by three hundred persons of lesser degree. Two days later, June 26, 1718, the Tsarevich died in the Trubetskoi guard-house of the citadel of St Petersburg. The precise manner of his death is still something of an enigma, most of the existing documents relating to it being apocryphal ; but a careful examination and comparison of the only two extant contemporaneous and genuine Russian documents, seems to warrant the following conclusion. At eight o'clock in the morning of June 26,1718, the Tsar, accompanied by some of the chief dignitaries of the Empire, proceeded to the fortress ; and Alexis was produced and placed before them within a zastyenok (partition). His death-sentence was then, suddenly, read to him. The shock, acting on an enfeebled frame, and crushing the last hope of life with which the poor wretch had hugged himself in the midst of his awful sufferings, brought on a swoon which lasted some hours. On his recovery, he was carried into the close-adjoining Trubetskoi guard-room, where he died. Abominable, unnatural as was Peter's conduct to his unhappy son, there is no reason to suppose that he ever regretted it. He argued that a single worthless life stood in the way of the regeneration of Russia, and was therefore forfeit to the common weal.

But, however its foundations had been cemented, the Russian Empire was now an established and imposing fact. Its official birthday dates from October 22, 1721, when, after a solemn thanksgiving-service for the Peace of Nystad, in the Troitsa cathedral at St Petersburg, the Tsar proceeded to the Senate and was there acclaimed : " Father of the Fatherland, Peter the Great, and Emperor of All Russia." Some would have preferred to proclaim him Emperor of the East ; but Peter himself adopted the more patriotic title.

The relations between France and Russia had also become much more cordial than heretofore. It was a favourite ambition of the Tsar to marry his second surviving daughter, the Tsesarevna Elizabeth, to the young King of France, Louis XV. But Bourbon pride proved an insurmountable obstacle ; and equally abortive were the efforts of successive French Ministers to bring about a better understanding between Great Britain and Russia.

For some years after the termination of the War of the Spanish Succession Great Britain was, indisputably, the dominant Power of Europe. To prevent a renewal of the Anglo-Austrian alliance, and to isolate the Emperor, were now the chief aims of the French Ministers, especially in view of the break-up of the Austrian dominions in the event of the death of the sonless Charles VI, who, by the Pragmatic Sanction, had settled the succession on his daughter, Maria Theresa, now a child of eight. France, moreover, was anxious to keep Russia free from complications elsewhere ; so that her troops might be available against Maria Theresa at the proper time, and a reconciliation between Great Britain and Russia was considered at Versailles to be the best way of steadying and restraining Peter. But such a reconciliation was extremely difficult. George I had an ancient grudge against the Russian Emperor ; Peter's supposed friendship for the Jacobites was an additional obstacle. But Fleury, still at the height of his authority in France, believed himself capable of performing successfully the part of political peace-maker. He assured Prince Kurakin that the best thing for Russia at the present time was reconciliation with England ; indeed he made an Anglo-Russian reconciliation the condition precedent of a Franco-Russian alliance. Peter himself was anxious to come to terms with England ; but, on the other hand, he did not want to quarrel with the Tories; indeed, the extreme Tories, or Jacobites, now hailed him as their prospective deliverer, and expected more from him than from any other European potentate. In April, 1722, the Pretender's agent, Thomas Gordon, informed the Tsar that the English nation was ready to rise for its lawful King, if only they had 6000 men and arms for 20,000 more. In June of the same year, the Old Pretender wrote to Peter expressing his gratitude for the sympathy of his Imperial Majesty, and transmitting a plan for the invasion of England. But, as Peter would not embark on so vast an enterprise without the cooperation of France, and as France desired to unite England and Russia instead of dividing them, the Jacobite project never had the remotest chance of success, even if the Persian campaigns of Peter had not, at this very time, engrossed his attention. It should also not be forgotten that the Tsar had now obtained all he wanted in Europe ; for, from first to last, he had aimed solely at the conquest of the Baltic Provinces. During the last four years of his reign, his policy was predominantly Oriental.

These acquisitions and the subsequent intrigues of the Russian Government with the Armenians, with whom Russia now came into direct communication for the first time, seriously disturbed the Porte. In August, 1722, the Grand Vezir told the Russian ambassador, Nepluyeff, that Russia had better declare war against the Porte at once, and then they would know where they were. The whole of the Tsar's reign, he added, had been one uninterrupted war, in which he gave no rest to his neighbours. Subsequently NepluyefF reported to his Court that the Turks intended to conquer Persia and Georgia, and drive the Russians out of Daghestan. He earnestly advised the Emperor to be ready for war, as immense stores of ammunition were being constantly sent to Erzerum and Azoff from Stambul. Fortunately, Turkey was not ready for war, and the acquisition of the Caspian Provinces by Russia was a matter of comparative indifference to the Sultan. It was the spread of Russian influence in the Caucasus that he really feared. Still, throughout 1723, the aspect of affairs was very threatening. Peter regarded the Caspian provinces as indispensable ; and NepluyefF was instructed to inform the Porte that the Russian Emperor would allow no other Power to approach the Caspian Sea. The English Government used every expedient to induce the Porte to declare war, and even held out the hope of simultaneous cooperation on the part of Great Britain and Denmark. In the beginning of 1724 NepluyefF demanded his passports; but, on June 12, by the Treaty of Constantinople, a compromise was arrived at : Shemak was to belong to a vassal of the Porte ; but the region extending from Shemak to the Caspian was to be divided into three parts, two of which, adjacent to the Caspian, were to belong to Russia, while the third, stretching southwards from Derbent, was to be divided between Russia and Persia.

To keep a watchful eye upon defaulters and malingerers among the gentry, the office of Herald-master was instituted, in 1721. This functionary had to keep lists of all the landowners in the Empire, showing who were in the service of the State and who were not, and giving the fullest details as to their families and occupations. A third newly established functionary, the "Master of Petitions," had to examine all the petitions presented to the various departments of State and see that they received proper attention.

But it was of small avail to simplify and specialise the administration, and fence it about with safeguards, so long as the new institutions were infected by the fatal maladies of the old. The most inveterate of these maladies was the universal corruption for which Muscovy had always been notorious ; and Peter himself, though he cauterised it freely, could not wholly eradicate the evil. In the course of 1723 and 1724 he made terrible examples of two of his most confidential and meritorious servants, Vice-Chancellor Shafiroff and the Upper-fiscal Nestoroff.

Despite a constant if gradual increase in the revenue, the financial needs of the Government, owing to the expenses of the long war, were heavy, and led to all sorts of ingenious but oppressive fiscal experiments. It was even found necessary, at last, to cut down all official salaries by one-half. The difficulty of housing the soldiers properly led to the introduction of barracks into Russia. At the end of Peter's reign the army numbered 210,000 men, besides 109,000 irregulars. The fleet consisted of 48 ships of the line, with 787 galleys and smaller vessels, whose full complement of crews was 27,939 men. There was also a considerable increase in the mercantile marine, and native Russian merchants now began to appear in the principal non-Russian Baltic ports.

By the ukase of January 13, 1724, the foundations were laid of an Academy of Sciences, which was to be a university, a gymnasium, and an elementary school at the same time. The tolls levied on merchandise in the towns of Narva, Dorpat, Reval, and Arenberg were set apart for its maintenance. The Academy also relieved the Synod of the duty of translating and circulating books. After the death of its first President, the Metropolitan Yavorsky, the office of President of the Synod was abolished, but it received a civil assessor in the person of the "Upper procurator of the Synod," May 22, 1722. Another official, the Proto-inquisitor, or, " Chief-fiscal in spiritual matters," was to exercise the same supervision over the Synod as " the Procurator General " already exercised over the Senate.

Towards the end of the reign, the question of the succession to the throne caused the Emperor some anxiety. The rightful heir in the natural order of primogeniture was Grand Duke Peter, a child of six ; but Peter decided to pass him over because, as the son of the Tsarevich Alexis, any acknowledgment of his rights would, infallibly, have excited the hopes of those people who had sympathised with his father, and the fears of those who had had a hand in the murder of Alexis. Who, then, was to succeed the reigning Emperor ? His own daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, were still mere children, and his nieces, the daughters of his brother Ivan, had married foreign princes and were living abroad. The Tsaritsa Catharine alone remained. About 1702 he had picked up Martha Skovronskaya at MenshikoiPs house. She had been first his mistress, then, after her conversion to Orthodoxy under the name of Catharine Aleksyevna, his wife. He now resolved to secure the throne for her also. That curious document, the ustajf, or ordinance, of 1712, heralded this unheard-of innovation. Time-honoured custom had hitherto reckoned primogeniture in the male line as the best title to the Russian Crown; in the ustajfoî 1722 Peter denounced primogeniture in general as a stupid, dangerous, and even unspiritual practice. He concluded by declaring the succession to the Russian Empire to be, in future, absolutely dependent on the will of the reigning sovereign.

In the course of the same summer the state of Peter's health caused grave anxiety. His labours and his excesses had already undermined his splendid constitution ; and, though not yet fifty-three years of age, he was already an old man. On October 3 he had another very violent attack of his paroxysms. Yet in the same month, ignoring the advice of his physicians, he undertook a long and fatiguing tour of inspection of the latest of his great public works, the Ladoga canals, proceeding thence to inspect the iron-works at Olonets, where he dug out a piece of iron ore, 1201bs. in weight. In the beginning of November, at Lakhta, perceiving a boat full of soldiers on a sand-bank, in imminent danger of being drowned, he plunged into the water to render them assistance and was immersed to his girdle for a considerable time. He reached St Petersburg too ill ever to rally again, though he showed himself in public so late as January 16, 1725. After a long and most painful agony, he died at six o'clock on the evening of the 27th. All that could be deciphered of his last message, painfully scrawled with pen and ink on a piece of paper, were the words "otdaite vsef" (forgive everything!).

Thus the Hanoverian Alliance found itself confronted by an Austro-Russo-Spanish League, and both began forthwith to compete for the support of the rest of Europe. Denmark acceded to the Hanoverian Alliance by the Treaty of Copenhagen (April 16, 1727), concluded for four years, whereby both England and France promised to assist her against Russia, and assure her the tranquil possession of Schleswig. Sweden took the same course, despite all the efforts to the contrary of the Russian ambassadors Michael BestuzhefF and Vasily Dolgoruki.

The one great administrative innovation of Catharine I was the formation of the Supreme Privy Council. The idea was Osterman's. It was not, as the French ambassador Campredon supposed, a move in the direction of limited monarchy, by associating the leading magnates in the Government, after the model of an English Cabinet Council, but rather an attempt to strengthen the executive, by concentrating affairs in the hands of a few persons, instead of leaving them, as heretofore, to the care of a turbulent and distracted Senate. After much deliberation between the Empress and her advisers, the ukase of March 9, 1726, established the Supreme Privy Council. It was to consist of not less than six, and not more than nine members, under the presidency of the sovereign. No ukases were in future to be issued, till they had received the approbation of the Council. The control of the War Office, the Admiralty, and the Foreign Office was transferred from the Senate to the Council; and, subsequently, the Council received authority to revise the work of all the other departments of State; even the election of Senators was subject to its approval.

Early on May 17, the members of the Imperial Family, the Supreme Privy Council, the High Senate, the Holy Synod, and the chief officers of the Guard, assembled at the Palace to hear the will of the late Empress read. Although it was supposed to have been signed by her, it is doubtful whether she ever saw it ; but it so exactly expressed the wishes of the nation that its authenticity was never questioned. It declared the Grand Duke Peter Aleksyevich her successor. Durin» his minority, the Government was to be in the hands of a Regency composed of the Supreme Privy Council, the Duke and Duchess of Holstein, and the Tsesarevna Elizabeth.

During the first four months of the new reign, the Government was entirely in the hands of Menshikoff, who, despite frequent acts of tyranny, on the whole acquitted himself well of his enormous responsibilities. It is true that old enemies or troublesome rivals were, with small compunction, removed to a safe distance. But, on the other hand, Menshikoff tried to attach to himself all able officials who were not over-ambitious and to win over such members of the old boiar families as were not too exacting in their demands. Foreign affairs were left entirely in the hands of Osterman. The chair in the Supreme Privy Council vacated by Tolstoi was given to Prince Vasily Lukich Dolgoruki ; and Menshikoff's old colleagues were not a little disgusted to find that his new friend, Prince Demetrius Galitsin, had as much to say in the Council as themselves. All the Dolgorukis and Galitsins were arch-conservatives and deeply attached to the family of the new Emperor. At the same time, the Emperor's grandmother, the Tsaritsa Eudoxia, was released from her prison at Schlüsselburg. In the beginning of August, the Duke and Duchess of Holstein were requested to quit Russia, and the Tsesarevna Elizabeth was kept in the background.

Tyrannous as it was, there can be little doubt as to the vigour and economical efficiency of the administration of Menshikoff. The humane and conciliatory policy of the last reign was continued. Peter Fs export duty of 37 per cent, on hemp and linen yarn was reduced to 5 per cent. ; a commission for enquiring into the state of commerce was appointed by Osterman ; the trade in Siberian furs was made absolutely free. As a first step towards softening the barbarous customs of the day the ukase of July 21,1727, ordered the immediate removal and destruction of the stone columns and iron hooks on which the heads and limbs of executed criminals had hitherto been exposed in the great square of St Petersburg.

The chief domestic event of the period was the death of the Grand Duchess Natalia on December 7, 1728, The influence of the Dolgorukis over Peter II was, henceforth, uncontested ; and they now bent all their efforts to bring about Peter's marriage with Catharine, daughter of Alexis Dolgoruki. They were actually betrothed, with the greatest solemnity, on December 11, 1729, and the wedding was fixed for January 30, 1730, when the whole design was frustrated by the death of Peter II from small-pox on the morning of what was to have been his wedding-day.

On February 21 the Council was relieved of much anxiety by the arrival of a courier from Mittau, with the articles signed by the new Empress, who had further added beneath her signature the words, "I hereby promise to observe everything herein contained unreservedly." Her obsequious alacrity on this occasion was due to the fact that she had been warned by Paul Yaguzhinsky of the secret machinations of the Council, and had resolved to take back her word on the first opportunity. Meanwhile, Galitsin's public announcement of his audacious political innovation had been received with chilling silence, and only by the use of the most extreme measures were "the Republican gentlemen," as Rondeau called the Galitsin faction, able to keep the capital quiet till the arrival of the Empress.