Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  The sight in London that most attracted Peter, of course, was the forest of masts belonging to the ships moored in rows in the great merchant-fleet anchorage known as the Pool of London. In the Pool alone, Daniel Defoe one day counted no less than 2,000 ships. But Peter, anxious to begin his course in shipbuilding amidst the docks and shipyards of the lower Thames, was temporarily frustrated by ice on the river. As it happened, the winter of 1698 was exceptionally cold. The upper Thames was partly frozen, and people were able to walk from Southwark across to London. Piemen, jugglers and small boys plied their wares and played games on the ice, but it made travel by water impossible and delayed Peter's project.

  For greater convenience and to escape the crowds that were now beginning to dog his excursions, he moved his lodgings to Deptford, staying at Sayes Court, a large, elegantly furnished house provided for him by the English government. The house belonged to John Evelyn, the celebrated essayist and diarist, and it was Evelyn's pride; he had spent forty-five years laying out its gardens, its bowling green, its gravel paths and groves of trees. To make room for Peter and his comrades, another tenant, Admiral Benbow, had been moved out, and the house had been especially redecorated. For Peter, its attractions were its size (it was large enough to hold his entire suite), the garden in which he could relax in privacy, and the door at the foot of the garden which opened directly onto the dockyard and the river.

  ·Unfortunately for Evelyn, the Russians cared little for his reputation or for his lifelong effort to create beauty. They vandalized his house. Even while they were still there, Evelyn's horrified steward wrote to his master:

  There is a house full of people and right nasty. The Tsar lies next to the library and dines in the parlour next your study. He dines at ten o'clock and six at night, is very seldom at home a whole day, very often in the King's yard [the shipyard], or by water, dressed in several dresses. The King is expected here this day; the best parlour is pretty clean for him to be entertained in. The King pays for all he [the Tsar] has.

  But it was not until the Russians had left at the end of their three-month stay and Evelyn came to see his once-beautiful home that the full extent of the damage became apparent. Appalled, Evelyn hurried off to the Royal Surveyor, Sir Christopher Wren, and the Royal Gardener, Mr. London, to ask them to estimate the cost of the repairs. They found floors and carpets so stained and smeared with ink and grease that new floors had to be installed. Tiles had been pulled from the Dutch stoves and brass door locks pried open. The paintwork was battered and filthy. Windows were broken, and more than fifty chairs—every one in the house—had simply disappeared, probably into the stoves. Featherbeds, sheets and canopies were ripped and torn as if by wild animals. Twenty pictures and portraits were torn, probably used for target practice. Outside, the garden was ruined. The lawn was trampled into mud and dust, "as if a regiment of soldiers in iron shoes had drilled on it." The magnificent holly hedge, 400 feet long, 9 feet high and 5 feet thick, had been flattened by the wheelbarrows rammed through it. The bowling green, the gravel paths, the bushes and trees, all were ravaged. Neighbors reported that the Russians had found three wheelbarrows, unknown in Russia, and had developed a game with one man, sometimes the Tsar, inside the wheelbarrow and another racing him into the hedges. Wren and his companions noted all this and made a recommendation which resulted in a recompense to Evelyn of 350 pounds and ninepence, an enormous sum for that day.

  Not surprisingly in an age of religious struggle, the Protestant missionary spirit was awakened by the presence of the curious young monarch who meant to import Western technology into his backward kingdom. If shipbuilding techniques, why not religion? Rumors that Peter was not devoted to traditional Orthodoxy and was interested in other faiths opened broad visions in the heads of aggressive Protestants. Would it be possible to convert the young monarch and, through him, his primitive people? Could there at least be a union of the Anglican and Orthodox churches? The Archbishop of Canterbury was inspired by the prospect, and even King William lent an ear. On the command of the King and the Archbishop, an eminent English churchman, Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, was instructed to call upon the Tsar "and to offer him such information of our religion and constitution as he was willing to receive."

  On February 15, Peter received Burnet and a formal delegation of Anglican churchmen. Peter liked Burnet and they met several times for dialogues lasting several hours, but Burnet, who had come to instruct and persuade, found the chances of conversion to be nil; Peter who was only the first of many Russians whose interest in importing Western technology was mistaken by naive Westerners for an opportunity also to export Western philosophy and ideas. His interest in Protestantism was purely clinical. Skeptical of all religions, including Orthodoxy, he was seeking, amidst the forms and doctrines of each, that which could be useful to him and his state. After their conversations, Burnet took the Tsar to visit the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace. Invited to attend services at St. Paul's, Peter refused because of the large crowds, but he did take Anglican communion in the Archbishop's private chapel before a breakfast at which the two had a lengthy discussion.

  Long after the Tsar had returned to Russia, Burnet set down his impressions of the tall young Russian sovereign with whom he had talked so earnestly:

  I waited often on him, and was ordered both by the King and the archbishop and bishops to attend upon him. I had good interpreters, so I had much free discourse with him. He is a man of very hot temper, soon inflamed, and very brutal in his passion; he raises his natural heat by drinking much brandy, which he rectified himself with great application. He is subject to convulsive motions all over his body, and his head seems to be affected with these. He wants not capacity, and has a larger measure of knowledge than might be expected from his education, which was very indifferent; a want of judgment with an instability of temper, appear in him too often and too evidently. He is mechanically turned, and seems designed by nature rather to be a ship-carpenter than a great prince. This was his chief study and exercise while he stayed here. He wrought much with his own hands, and made all about him work at the models of ships. He told me how he designed a great fleet at Azov, and with it to attack the Turkish empire; but he did not seem capable of conducting so great a design, though his conduct in his wars since this has discovered a greater genius in him than appeared at that 219 time. He was desirous to understand our doctrine, but he did not seem disposed to mend matters in Moscovy; he was, indeed, resolved to encourage learning, and to polish his people by sending some of them to travel in other countries, and to draw strangers to come and live among them. He seemed apprehensive still of his sister's intrigues. There is a mixture both of passion and severity in his temper. He is resolute but understands little of war, and seems not at all inquisitive that way. After I had seen him often, and had conversed much with him, I could not but adore the depth of the providence of God, that had raised up such a furious man to so absolute authority over so great a part of the world.

  Peter's interest in church affairs extended beyond the established Church of England. Tales of his curiosity about Protestantism inspired all kinds of sects, fanatical and otherwise, to hope that they might gain a convert of supporter. Reformers, extremists, philanthropists and simple quacks approached the Tsar, hoping to use him as a means of introducing their particular beliefs into Peter's far-off country. Most of these Peter ignored. But he was fascinated by the Quakers. He went to several Quaker meetings and eventually met William Penn, to whom the huge proprietary colony of Pennsylvania had been granted by Charles II in exchange for cancellation of an enormous loan to the crown. Penn had actually spent only two years in his "holy experiment," a territory devoted to religious toleration in the New World, and now, during Peter's visit, he was preparing to depart again. Hearing that Peter had already attended a Quaker service, Penn went to Deptford to see the Tsar on April 3. They talked in Dutch, which Penn spoke, and Penn presented Peter with a number of his writings in that language. Afte
r Penn's visit, Peter continued to go to Quaker meetings in Deptford. Following the service as best he could, standing up, sitting down, observing long periods of silence, he constantly looked about to see what others were doing. The experience stayed with him. Sixteen years later, in the North German province of Holstein, he found a Quaker meetinghouse and attended with Menshikov, Dolgoruky and others. The Russians, except for Peter, understood nothing of the words being spoken, but they sat in silence and occasionally the Tsar leaned over and interpreted. When the service was over, Peter declared to his followers that "whoever could live according to such a doctrine would be happy."

  During the same weeks that Peter was in conversation with English church leaders, he also consummated a business deal which, as he well knew, would sadden the hearts of his own Orthodox churchmen. Traditionally, the Orthodox Church forbade the use of that "ungodly herb," tobacco. In 1634, Peter's grandfather Tsar Michael had forbidden smoking or any other use of tobacco on pain of death; subsequently, the penalty was reduced and Russians caught smoking merely had their nostrils slit. Nevertheless, the influx of foreigners into Russia had spread the habit, and punishment was rare; Tsar Alexis had even licensed tobacco for a short period, making its sale a state monopoly. But the church and all conservative Russians still deeply disapproved. Peter, of course, ignored this disapproval; as a youth, he had been introduced to tobacco and was seen nightly smoking a long clay pipe with his Dutch and German friends in the German Suburb. Before departing Russia with the Great Embassy, Peter had issued a decree authorizing both the sale and the smoking of tobacco.

  In England, whose colonies included the great tobacco-growing plantations of Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, this sudden potential of opening a .vast new market for tobacco caused great excitement. Already, tobacco merchants had petitioned the King to intercede with the Tsar on their behalf. As it happened, no one was more interested in this matter, or better positioned to do something about it, than Carmarthen, Peter's new comrade. When Carmarthen brought to him a proposal from a group of English merchants for a tobacco monopoly in Russia, Peter was instantly attracted. Not only did he see smoking as a Western habit whose wider use would help to loosen the iron grip of the Orthodox Church. There was an even greater immediate attraction: money. By this time, Peter and his Embassy desperately needed funds. The costs of supporting 250 Russians abroad, even with the subsidies received from the host countries, were enormous. In addition, Peter's agents in Holland were recruiting seamen, ships' officers, shipwrights and other personnel. They had to pay initial subscription fees, down payments of salaries and travel expenses. The agents were busy buying so many articles, instruments, machines and models that ten ships had to be chartered to carry this cargo along with the recruits back to Russia. The treasury of the Embassy was repeatedly drained, and Moscow was repeatedly called upon to send huge sums. But there was never enough.

  This situation made Carmarthen's proposal irresistible. He offered to pay 28,000 English pounds in return for permission to import a million and a half pounds of tobacco into Russia free of customs duties and to sell it on the Russian market free of all restrictions. Most important from Peter's point of view, Carmarthen was prepared to pay cash in advance to Peter in London. The contract was signed on April 16, 1698. Peter's pleasure can be measured in Lefort's reply to the Tsar's jubilant announcement: "On your orders, we [in Holland] did not open your letter until we had drained three goblets, and after we read it we drank three more. ... In truth, I believe it's a fine stroke of business."

  When not working at the dockyards, Peter hurried about London and its vicinity trying to see all the interesting places. He visited the Greenwich Naval Hospital, designed by Christopher Wren and called "one of the most sublime sights English architecture affords." Peter approved of William Ill's simple style of living in the red-brick, oak-paneled palace at Kensington, but the majestic hospital with its twin colonnades facing the Thames had an effect on him. Going to dine with the King after his visit to Greenwich, the Tsar could not help saying, "If I were to advise Your Majesty, it would be to move your court to the hospital and bring the patients to your palace." Peter saw the tombs of England's monarchs (and also the apple and oyster sellers) inside Westminster Abbey. He visited Windsor Castle and Hampton Court, but royal palaces were less interesting to him than functioning scientific or military institutions. At the Greenwich Observatory, he discussed mathematics with the Royal Astronomer. At the Woolwich Arsenal, England's main cannon foundry, Peter discovered in Master of the Ordnance Romney a fellow spirit with whom he could share his delight in artillery and fireworks. The Tower of London at that time served as arsenal, zoo, museum and site of the Royal Mint. Touring the museum of medieval armor, Peter was not shown the axe which, fifty years earlier, had beheaded Charles I. His hosts remembered that Peter's father, Tsar Alexis, hearing that the English people had beheaded their sovereign, had furiously stripped English merchants in Russia of all their privileges. Thus, the axe was kept hidden from Peter, "as it was feared that he would throw it into the Thames." For Peter, the most interesting part of the Tower was the mint. Struck by the excellence of English coinage, and the technique by which the coins were made, he went back repeatedly. (Unfortunately, the Warden of the Royal Mint, Sir Isaac Newton, lived and worked at Trinity College, Cambridge.) Peter was impressed by the reform of English coinage instituted by Newton and John Locke. To prevent the constant degrading of the coinage by people snipping little bits of silver off the edges, English coins had milled edges. Two years later, when Peter began to reform Russia's badly irregular coinage, the English system served as a model.

  Throughout his stay in England, Peter was always on the lookout for qualified men for service in Russia. Aided in his recruiting by Carmarthen, he interviewed scores and finally persuaded about sixty Englishmen to follow him. Among them were Major Leonard van der Stamm, the master shipwright at Deptford; Captain John Perry, a hydraulic engineer to whom Peter assigned, responsibility for building the Volga-Don canal; and Professor Henry Farquharson, a mathematician from the University of Aberdeen who was to open a School of Mathematics and Navigation in Moscow. Peter also write to a friend in Russia that he had recruited two barbers "for purposes of future demands," a hint that had ominous portents for those in Moscow whose pride lay in the length of their beards.

  Peter's feeling for William and his gratitude to the King grew even greater when the regal gift of the yacht Royal Transport was handed over to him on March 2. He sailed in her the following day and as often thereafter as he could. In addition, William ordered that Peter be shown everything he wished to see of the English fleet. The climax came when the Tsar was invited to a special review of the fleet and a mock engagement off Spithead near the Isle of Wight. A naval squadron consisting of the Royal William, the Victory and the Association took Peter and his suite on board in Portsmouth and carried them into The Solent off the Isle of Wight. There, Peter transferred to Admiral Mitchell's flagship, Humber. On exercise day, the fleet weighed anchor; the great ships set their sails and formed opposing lines of battle. Broadsides roared out, shrouding the fleets in smoke and flame just as they would in a real battle, but on this day no cannonballs flew. Nevertheless, as the great ships maneuvered through the smoke, turning in unison to attack each other, Peter was jubilant. He tried to see and note down everything: the scurrying of the seamen to dress the sails, the orders to the helmsmen, the number and caliber and serving of the guns, the signals from the flagship to her sisters in the line. It was a momentous day for a young man who, scarcely ten years before, had first seen a sailboat and learned to tack it back and forth on the narrow Yauza. When the ships returned at night to their anchorage, their guns thundered a twenty-one-gun salute and the seamen roared out cheers for the youthful monarch who dreamed of the day he would fly his own banner in the van of a Russian fleet.

  William invited him to the Houses of Parliament. Not wishing to be stared at, Peter chose as his vantage point a window outsi
de an upper gallery, and from there the Tsar observed the King on his throne surrounded by the English peerage on benches. This episode led to the remark by an anonymous observer which went around London, "Today, I have seen the rarest thing in the world: one monarch on the throne and another on the roof." Peter listened to the debate with an interpreter and then, to the Russians who were with him, declared that, while he could not accept the limitation by parliaments of the power of the kings, still "it is good to hear subjects speaking truthfully and openly to their king. This is what we must learn from the English!" While Peter was there, William gave his formal assent to a number of bills, including a land tax which it was estimated would produce 1.5 million pounds in revenue. When Peter expressed surprise that Parliament could raise so much by passage of a single bill, he was told that, the year before, Parliament had passed a bill which had collected three times as much.

  As Peter's visit neared its end, his presence in London came to be accepted as almost normal. The imperial ambassador Hoffman wrote to his master in Vienna:

  The court here is well contented with [Peter], for he now is not so afraid of people as he was at first. They accuse him of a certain stinginess only, for he has been in no way lavish. All the time here he went about in sailor's clothing. We shall see in" what dress he presents himself to Your Imperial Majesty. He saw the King very rarely, as he did not wish to change his manner of life, dining at eleven o'clock in the morning, supping at seven in the evening, going to bed early, and getting up at four o'clock, which very much astonishes those Englishmen who kept company with him. They say that he intends to civilize his subjects in the manner of other nations. But from his acts here, one cannot find any other intention than to make them sailors.