Part 5 (1/2)
The reigns of Mikhail and of his son Alexis and his grandson Feodor were to be reigns of preparation and reform. Of course there were turbulent uprisings and foreign wars, and perils on the frontiers near the Baltic and the Black seas. But Russia was gaining in ascendency while Poland, from whom she had narrowly escaped, was fast declining.
The European rulers began to see advantages for themselves from Russian alliances. Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden and champion of Protestantism, made an eloquent appeal to the Tsar to join him against Catholic Poland--”Was not the Romish Church their common enemy?--and were they not neighbors?--and when your neighbor's house is afire, is it not the part of wisdom and prudence to help to put it out?” Poland suffered a serious blow when a large body of Cossacks, who were her va.s.sals, and her chief arm of defense in the Southeast, in 1681 transferred themselves bodily to Russia.
The Cossacks were a Slavonic people, with no doubt a plentiful infusion of Asiatic blood, and their name in the Tatar language meant Freebooters. They had long dwelt about the Don and the Dnieper, in what is known as Little Russia, a free and rugged community which was recruited by Russians after the Tatar invasion and Polish conquest, by oppressed peasants after the creation of serfdom, and by adventurers and fugitives from justice at all times. It was a military organization, and its Const.i.tution was a pure democracy. Freedom and independence were their first necessity. Their Hetman, or chief, held office for one year only, and anyone might attain to that position.
Their horsemans.h.i.+p was unrivaled--they were fearless and enduring, and stood ready to sell their services to the Khan of Tatary, the King of Poland, or to the Tsar of Russia. In fact, they were the Northmen of the South and East, and are now--the Rough-Riders of Russia.
They had long ago divided into two bands, the ”Cossacks of the Dnieper,” loosely bound to Poland, and the ”Cossacks of the Don,”
owning the sovereignty of Russia. The services of these fearless adventurers were invaluable as a protection from Turks and Tatars; and, as we have seen in the matter of Siberia, they sometimes brought back prizes which offset their misdoings. The King of Poland unwisely attempted to proselyte his Cossacks of the Dnieper, sent Jesuit missionaries among them, and then concluded to break their spirit by severities and make of them obedient loyal Catholic subjects. He might as well have tried to chain the winds. They offered to the Tsar their allegiance in return for his protection, and in 1681 all of the Cossacks, of the Dnieper as well as the Don, were gathered under Russian sovereignty. It was this event which, in the long struggle with Poland, turned the scales at last in favor of Russia.
One of the most important occurrences in this reign was the attempt of the Patriarch Nikon to establish an authority in the East similar to that of the Pope in the West--and in many ways to Latinize the Church.
This attempt to place the Tsar under spiritual authority was put down by a popular revolt--followed by stricter orthodox methods in a sect known as the _Raskolniks_.
Mikhail died in 1645, and was succeeded by his son Alexis. The new Tsar sent an envoy to Charles the First of England to announce his succession. He arrived with his letter to the King at an inopportune time. He was on trial for his life. The Russian could not comprehend such a condition, and haughtily refused to treat with anyone but the King. He was received with much ceremony by the House of Lords, and then to their consternation arose and said: ”I have come from my sovereign charged with an important message to your King--Charles the First. It is long since I came, and I have not been permitted to see him nor to deliver the letter from my master.” The embarra.s.sed English _boyars_ replied that they would give their reasons for this by letter.
When the Tsar was informed by Charles II. of the execution of his father, sternly inflicted by his people, he could not comprehend such a condition. He at once forbade English merchants to live in any of his cities except Archangel, and sent money and presents to the exiled son.
An interest attaches to the marriage of Alexis with Natalia, his second wife. He was dining with one of his _boyars_ and was attracted by a young girl, who was serving him. She was motherless, and had been adopted by her uncle the _boyar_. The Tsar said to his friend soon after: ”I have found a husband for your Natalia.” The husband was Alexis himself, and Natalia became the mother of Peter the Great. She was the first Princess who ever drew aside the curtains of her litter and permitted the people to look upon her face. Thrown much into the society of Europeans in her uncle's home, she was imbued with European ideas. It was no doubt she who first instilled the leaven of reform into the mind of her infant son Peter.
One of the most important features of this reign was the development of the fanatical sect known as _Raskolniks_. They are the dissenters or non-conformists of Russia. Their existence dates from the time of the Patriarch _Nikon_--and what they considered his sacrilegious innovations. But as early as 1476 there were the first stirrings of this movement when some daring and advanced innovators began to sing ”O Lord, have mercy,” instead of ”Lord, have Mercy,” and to say ”Alleluia”
twice instead of three times, to the peril of their souls! But it was in the reign of Alexis that signs of falling away from the faith spoken of in the Apocalypse were unmistakable. Foreign heretics who shaved their chins and smoked the accursed weed were tolerated in Holy Moscow.
”The number of the Beast” indicated the year 1666. It was evident that the end of the world was at hand! Such was the beginning of the _Raskolniks_, who now number 10,000,000 souls--a conservative Slavonic element which has been a difficult one to deal with.
Upon the death of Alexis, in 1676, his eldest son Feodor succeeded him.
It is only necessary to mention one significant act in his short reign--the destruction of the Books of Pedigrees. The question of precedence among the great families was the source of endless disputes, and no man would accept a position inferior to any held by his ancestors, nor would serve under a man with an ancestry inferior to his own. Feodor asked that the Books of Pedigrees be sent to him for examination, and then had them every one thrown into the fire and burned. This must have been his last act, for his death and this holocaust of ancestral claims both occurred in the year 1682.
CHAPTER XIV
PETER STUDIES EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
A history of Russia _navely_ designates one of its chapters ”The Period of Troubles”! When was there not a period of troubles in this land? The historian wearies, and doubtless the reader too, of such prolonged disorder and calamity. But a chapter telling of peace and tranquillity would have to be invented. The particular sort of trouble that developed upon the death of Feodor was of a new variety. Alexis had left two families of children, one by his first wife and the other by Natalia. There is not time to tell of all the steps by which Sophia, daughter of the first marriage, came to be the power behind the throne upon which sat her feeble brother Ivan, and her half-brother Peter, aged ten years. Sophia was an ambitious, strong-willed, strong-minded woman, who dared to emanc.i.p.ate herself from the tyranny of Russian custom.
The _terem_, of which we hear so much, was the part of the palace sacred to the Tsaritsa and the Princesses--upon whose faces no man ever looked. If a physician were needed he might feel the pulse and the temperature through a piece of gauze--but see the face never. It is said that two n.o.bles who one day accidentally met Natalia coming from her chapel were deprived of rank in consequence.
But the _terem_, with ”its twenty-seven locks,” was not going to confine the sister of Peter. She met the eyes of men in public; studied them well, too; and then selected the instruments for her designs of effacing Peter and his mother, and herself becoming sovereign indeed. A rumor was circulated that the imbecile Ivan (who was alive) had been strangled by Natalia's family. In the tumult which followed one of her brothers, Peter's uncle, was torn from Natalia's arms and cut to pieces. But this was only one small incident in the horrid tragedy. Then, after discovering that the Prince was not dead, the bloodstains in the palace were washed up, and the two brothers were placed upon the throne under the Regency of Sophia. But while she was outraging the feelings of the people by her contempt for ancient customs, and while her friends.h.i.+p with her Minister, Prince Galitsuin, was becoming a public scandal, Sophia was at the same time being defeated in a campaign against the Turks at the Crimea; and her popularity was gone.
In the meantime Peter was growing. With no training, no education, he was in his own disorderly, undisciplined fas.h.i.+on struggling up into manhood under the tutelage of a quick, strong intelligence, a hungry desire to know, and a hot, imperious temper. His first toys were drums and swords, and he first studied history from colored German prints; and as he grew older never wearied of reading about Ivan the Terrible.
His delight was to go out upon the streets of Moscow and pick up strange bits of information from foreign adventurers about the habits and customs of their countries. He played at soldiers with his boy companions, and after finding how they did such things in Germany and in England, drilled his troops after the European fas.h.i.+on. But it was when he first saw a boat so built that it could go with or against the wind, that his strongest instinct was awakened. He would not rest until he had learned how to make and then to manage it. When this strange, pa.s.sionate, self-willed boy was seventeen years old, he realized that his sister was scheming for the ruin of himself and his mother. In the rupture that followed, the people deserted Sophia and flocked about Peter. He placed his sister in a monastery, where, after fifteen years of fruitless intrigue and conspiracy, she was to die.
Then, conjointly with his unfortunate brother, he commenced his reign (1689).
If Sophia had freed herself from the customary seclusion of Princesses, Peter emanc.i.p.ated himself from the usual proprieties of the palace.
Both were scandalous. One had harangued soldiers and walked with her veil lifted, the other was swinging an ax like a carpenter, rowing like a Cossack, or fighting mimic battles with his grooms, who not infrequently knocked him down. In 1693 he gratified one great thirst and longing. With a large suite he went up to Archangel--and for the first time a Tsar looked out upon the sea! He ate and drank with the foreign merchants, and took deep draughts of the stimulating air from the west. He established a dock-yard, and while his first s.h.i.+p was building made perilous trips upon that unknown ocean from which Russia had all its life been shut out! His s.h.i.+p was the first to bear a Russian flag into foreign waters, and now Peter had taken the first step toward learning how to build a navy, but he had no place yet to use one. So he turned his nimble activities toward the Black Sea. He had only to capture Azof in the Crimea from the Turks, and he would have a sea for his navy--and then might easily make the navy for his sea! So he went down, carrying his soldiers and his new European tactics--in which no one believed--gathered up his Cossacks, and the attack was made, first with utter failure--all on account of the new tactics--and then at last came overwhelming success; and a triumphant return (1676) to Moscow under arches and garlands of flowers. Three thousand Russian families were sent to colonize Azof, which was guarded by some regiments of the _Streltsui_ and by Cossacks--and now there must be a navy.
There must be nine s.h.i.+ps of the line, and twenty frigates carrying fifty guns, and bombs.h.i.+ps, and fires.h.i.+ps. That would require a great deal of money. It was then that the utility of the system of serfdom became apparent. The prelates and monasteries were taxed--_one vessel to every eighty thousand serfs_!--according to their wealth all the orders of n.o.bility to bear their portion in the same way, and the peasants toiled on, never dreaming that _they_ were building a great navy for the great Tsar. Peter then sent fifty young n.o.bles of the court to Venice, England, and the Netherlands to learn the arts of s.h.i.+pbuilding and seamans.h.i.+p and gunnery. But how could he be sure of the knowledge and the science of these idle youths--unless he himself owned it and knew better than they? The time had come for his long-indulged dream of visiting the Western kingdoms.
But while there were rejoicings at the victory over the Turks, there was a feeling of universal disgust at the new order of things; with the militia (the _Streltsui_) because foreigners were preferred to them and because they were subjected to an unaccustomed discipline; with the n.o.bles because their children were sent into foreign lands among heretics to learn trades like mechanics; and with the landowners and clergy because the cost of equipping a great fleet fell upon them. All cla.s.ses were ripe for a revolt.
Sophia, from her cloister, was in correspondence with her agents, and a conspiracy ripened to overthrow Peter and his reforms. As the Tsar was one evening sitting down to an entertainment with a large party of ladies and gentlemen, word was brought that someone desired to see him privately upon an important matter. He promptly excused himself and was taken in a sledge to the appointed place. There he graciously sat down to supper with a number of gentlemen, as if perfectly ignorant of their plans. Suddenly his guard arrived, entered the house, and arrested the entire party, after which Peter returned in the best of humor to his interrupted banquet, quite as if nothing had happened.
The next day the prisoners under torture revealed the plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate him and then lay it to the foreigners, this to be followed, by a general ma.s.sacre of Europeans--men, women, and children. The ringleaders were first dismembered, then beheaded--their legs and arms being displayed in conspicuous places in the city, and the rest of the conspirators, excepting his sister Sophia, were sent to Siberia.