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Desire for a navy.

to make Russia a maritime power, and he thought that from these two countries he could learn useful lessons. There was something very far-sighted in this desire, for in the whole of his dominions there was only one port, Archangel, and that was in a sea which was inaccessible for half the year. The Russian navy had to be created from the very beginning, for there was not, as yet, a single ship. Moreover, owing to an accident which he had suffered when a child, he had a great distaste, almost amounting to a nervous horror, of water. But he conquered this so completely that, in a storm, he once was able by his calmness to quiet the terrified seamen. 'Fear not! Who ever heard of a Czar being lost at sea?'

Holland.

arts of shipbuilding and navigation. in Holland he passed on to London.

England.

He visited Holland first, and there, in the dockyards of Zaandam, he worked with his own hands as a ship's carpenter. He lived as the other workmen, and worked very hard. Thus he learnt the After nine months At first he lived in a house in Norfolk Street which overlooked the Thames. He was anxious to see everything in England, but he did not wish to be seen himself. At the theatre he witnessed the play from the very back of his box, screened from public gaze by his attendants. He looked down upon a sitting of the House of Lords through a small window, where the king and the lords saw him and burst out laughing. When he went to the king's palace, he was admitted at a back door. He 'went privately to Oxford, but, being soon discovered, he immediately came back to London without viewing those curiosities he intended.' He moved from London to Deptford, where he occupied the house of John Evelyn, an English gentleman of letters, who has left a diary that gives considerable insight into the social life of

his day. He says that the Czar and his people were ́right_nasty'in their habits. At Deptford Peter spent his time as at Zaandam. But neither in England nor in Holland did he confine himself to the work of a ship's carpenter. He was making inquiries about State matters, about laws and law courts, about religious matters. He was inducing Englishmen, Scotchmen, Dutchmen, to settle in Russia, and take their skill with them. He visited Sweden and Brandenburg, and returned to his dominions after an absence of about a year and a half.

The most significant of all Peter's reforms was the removal of the capital. The traveller from Moscow to the shores of the Baltic sets his face west

New capital.

ward. Peter was looking to the west for his model, and wished Russia to be European and no longer Asiatic. The old associations of Moscow drove him from it the connexion with Europe enticed him to the Baltic. But it well illustrates the power of Peter over. his subjects that he could make them quit their old capital. For the Russians loved Moscow with peculiar love. They call it still 'the City of God,' they reverence it as their Holy Mother.' At the first sight of its towers and pinnacles the Russian pilgrim falls upon his knees in awe. Yet, notwithstanding this affection and the consequent opposition of nobles, citizens, and priests, Peter carried out his plan. Nor was he even deterred by the physical difficulty of his task. The ground on which Petersburg is built was a marshy swamp. The city had to be built on piles, like a Dutch city. Thousands, it is said, lost their lives during the building, but Peter did not hesitate, and Petersburg, called after his own name, stands as a monument of his firmness.

The alteration of the calendar also was another of Peter's reforms. The Russians

Change in calendar.

hitherto had dated from the creation, but he adopted

the system in use in the rest of Europe. It is to be noted that the Russians still reckon by the old style.

Abolishes

Peter the Great was a reformer in ecclesiastical as well as in political matters. He abolished the Patriarchate, thus making the union of Church Patriarchate. and State complete. Hitherto the Patriarch had power over the Church as despotic as that of the Czar over the State. Henceforth there was to be but one head. On the death of the last Patriarch he kept the see unfilled; and when the priests, disconsolate at seeing the vacant chair, asked him to appoint another, he said I will be your Patriarch.'

Even the fashions of Europe were to be imitated by his subjects. The habit of shaving the beard, the

Fashions.

smoking of tobacco, the very shape of dresses, the bringing the women out of seclusion, all There was

of these he forced upon his reluctant people. so much resistance to the fashion of shaving that at length a tax was imposed upon those who wished to retain their beards, and a medal, bearing a head ornamented with beard and whiskers, was given as a token that the tax had been paid. Tobacco-smoking was not unknown in Russia before, having been introduced by English merchants at Archangel. The chief opposition to it was raised by the priests, on the ground that ' not that which goeth into a man but that which cometh out of a man defileth him.' Patterns of dresses were hung up at the entrance to a town, and the inhabitants were to be punished if their clothes were not cut in accordance with the Government pattern. But the social change which did most mischief was his determination that the women were to be drawn from their Oriental seclusion, a change for which they were wholly unprepared, and which, coming suddenly, could only do them harm.

The Tchin,

a bureau

cracy.

The most important of his domestic reforms was the institution of the Tchin. From early times there has been a powerful hereditary nobility in Russia. A custom had almost grown into a law that no man whose ancestor had held a higher place than the ancestor of another man could serve under him without a stain upon his honour. The inconvenience of such a custom is manifest. Peter's predecessor had caused all the nobles to bring the records of their genealogies as if to compare them, and had then publicly burnt them. This was a severe blow to the principle of hereditary nobility; but Peter substituted for it an official nobility, called the Tchin, publishing a table of fourteen degrees, civil and military, by which all questions of rank were to be decided, the lower grades being duly subordinate to the higher. Thus he substituted what is called a Bureaucracy for an Aristocracy.

He put it

The

Strelitzes.

On his return from his first journey Peter found a formidable conspiracy against his authority. down with great severity, actually assisting with his own hands at the execution of the conspirators. A corps of troops called the Strelitzes, holding a position of great importance in the State somewhat analogous to that of the Prætorians at Rome, formed the centre of this conspiracy. Peter abolished

the corps.

With the help of artisans from Holland and England he created a navy. When a child he delighted in a little boat which he saw upon the river that flows through Moscow. He made that little boat the germ of the Russian navy. He christened it 'the Little Grandsire,' and had it removed to Petersburg.

Charles XII.
A.D. 1697.

Section III.-Charles XII.

OF the States which formed the North-Eastern State System, there is no doubt that at the end of the seventeenth century Sweden was the most powerful. Its very power, and the fact that the power was of recent growth, excited the animosity of its neighbours; and when, in 1697, Charles XII. succeeded his father, at the early age of fifteen, they thought that they saw their opportunity. Each one of the neighbours wanted some part of the Swedish dominions. The Czar

Peter wanted the Baltic Provinces, without His enemies. which it would be impossible for him to keep up intercourse with Western Europe. Frederick Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, wanted to rescue the Provinces of Livonia and West Prussia, which had formerly belonged to Poland, but had been wrested from her by the Swedes. Frederick, King of Denmark, wanted Holstein. The Duke of Holstein was brother-in-law of Charles of Sweden, as well as his boon companion; in spirit similar to Charles, he had been his associate in every mad exploit. Holstein, as was natural, stood under the protection of Sweden, although not part of the dominions of Charles. These three neighbours formed a league; from different quarters they were to make a simultaneous attack on Sweden.

According to his father's will, Charles was to remain for some time under a regency. But the States met and declared him no longer a minor, although Beginning of his reign. he was only fifteen. Until the arrival of the news of the triple league which had been formed against him, he was contented to allow the Council of Regency to govern for him. He sat at the council table-some say

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