Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  Not that the robbers, when caught, were dealt with lightly. They went in batches to the rack and gallows; on a single day, seventy were hung. Still it did not stop their colleagues. For them, crime was a way of life and disobedience to the law so deeply ingrained that attempts to enforce it often aroused an indignant fury in those accustomed to breaking it. For example, although brandy was a state monopoly whose sale in private was strictly forbidden, it was being sold in a private house. Fifty soldiers were sent to seize the contraband. A battle took place, and three soldiers were killed. Far from being daunted or thinking of flight, the private brandy makers threatened even fiercer vengeance should the attempt at seizure be repeated.

  In fact, the police and soldiers charged with enforcing the laws were themselves scarcely law-abiding. Korb observed that

  soldiers in Muscovy are in the habit of tormenting their prisoners in every way at their fancy, without respect of person or the matter of which they are accused. The soldiers are guilty of bruising them with their muskets and with sticks, and with thrusting them into the most beastly holes, especially the wealthy, whom they unblushing-ly say they will not cease from tormenting until they have paid a certain sum. Let a prisoner go willingly or unwillingly to jail, he is beaten all the same.

  At one point in April 1699, the price of foodstuffs in Moscow rose precipitously. Investigation revealed that the soldiers, having been ordered to cart the bodies of the executed Streltsy out of the city before the spring thaw, had been commandeering peasant carts arriving in the city with wheat, oats and other grains, forcing the peasants to unload the food and reload their carts with bodies to carry away and bury, while the soldiers kept the food to eat or sell themselves. Faced with these thefts, the peasants had stopped bringing food into the city, and the prices of what was already there soared astronomically.

  With the coming of milder weather, the foreign envoys were often invited to visit the lovely, blooming countryside outside Moscow. Korb and his ambassador were asked to a banquet at the estate of Peter's uncle Lev Naryshkin. "The rare profusion of viands," Korb said,

  the costliness of the gold and silver plate, the variety and exquisiteness of the beverages, bespoke plainly the close blood relationship to the Tsar. After dinner there was an archery match. Nobody was excused because of the sport being strange to him or for his want of skill. A sheet of paper stuck on the ground was the target. The host perforated it several times amidst general applause. As the rain drove us from this pleasant exercise, we returned to the apartments. Naryshkin saluted the Lord Envoy by taking him by the hand to his wife's chambers to salute and be saluted. There is no higher mark of honor among the Russians than to be invited by the husband to embrace his wife and to receive the compliment of a sip of brandy from her hand.

  On another occasion, the envoy saw the Tsar's menagerie, containing "a colossal white bear, leopards, lynxes, and many other animals that are kept merely for the pleasure of looking at them." Still later, he visited the famous New Jerusalem Monastery built by Nikon. "We saw its huge walls and the cells of the monks. A stream glides past it with wide, open fields around, affording a charming view. We amused ourselves delightfully, boating and enticing the unwary fish into the nets, a diversion all the more pleasant when we knew we should have them for supper."

  The ambassadors were invited to the Tsar's estate at Ismailovo.. It was July, a time of great heat in Moscow, and they found the estate "laid out most agreeably, surrounded by a grove of trees, not thickly planted but growing to a prodigious height, and affording an admirable refuge beneath the cool shade of their lofty spreading branches from the burning heat of summer." Musicians were present "to aid the gentle whisperings of the woods and winds with sweeter harmonies."

  Korb's visit, tied to that of his ambassador, lasted fifteen months. In July 1699, they departed after lavish ceremonies. Peter distributed gifts, including numerous sable furs, to the envoy and his entire suite. By Peter's order, a magnificent procession was staged, and the ambassador rode in Peter's personal state carriage, with trappings of gold and silver and gems encrusting the doors and ceiling. Then the coach and the other carriages carrying the Austrian embassy were escorted out of the city by the squadrons of Peter's new cavalry and detachments of his new Western infantry.

  21

  VORONEZH AND THE SOUTHERN FLEET

  From the hour of his return to Moscow, Peter had longed to see his ships being built at Voronezh. Even while the tortures continued at Preobrazhenskoe, while he and his friends drank through the gloomy autumn and winter nights, the Tsar desired to be on the Don, joining the Western shipwrights whom he had recruited and who even now were beginning to work in the shipyards on the riverbank.

  He had made a first visit late in October. Many of the boyars, anxious to remain in the Tsar's good graces by staying close to his person, followed him south. Prince Cherkassky, the respected elder whose beard had been spared, was left behind as Prefect of Moscow, but soon discovered that his authority was not unique. Typically, Peter had confided the government not to one but to several. Before leaving, he had also said, to Gordon, "To you I commit everything." And to Romodanovsky, "Meanwhile, I commit all my affairs to your loyalty." It was Peter's maxim of absentee government: By dividing power among many and confusing all as to what power each had, they would remain in constant dissent and confusion. The system was not likely to promote efficient government in his absence, but it would prevent a single regent from ever challenging his power. With the causes of the Streltsy revolt still undetermined, this was Peter's first consideration.

  At Voronezh, in the shipyards sprawling along the banks of the broad and shallow river, Peter found the carpenters sawing and hammering, akd he found many problems. There were shortages and great wastage of both men and materials. In haste to comply with the Tsar's commands, the shipwrights were using unseasoned timber, which would rot quickly in the water.* On arriving from Holland, Vice Admiral Cruys inspected the vessels and ordered many hauled out to be rebuilt and strengthened. The foreign shipwrights, each following his own designs without guidance or control from above, quarreled frequently. The Dutch shipwrights, commanded by Peter's orders from London to work only under the supervision of others, were sullen and sluggish. The Russian artisans were in no better mood. Summoned by decree to Voronezh to learn shipbuilding, they understood that if they showed aptitude, they would be sent to the West to perfect their skills. Accordingly, many preferred to do just enough work to get by, hoping somehow to be allowed to return home.

  The worst problems and the greatest sufferings were among the mass of unskilled laborers. Thousands of men had been drafted— peasants and serfs who had never seen a boat bigger than a barge or a body of water wider than a river. They came carrying their own hatchets and axes, sometimes bringing their own horses, to cut and trim the trees and float them down the rivers to Voronezh. Living conditions were primitive, disease spread quickly and death was common. Many ran away, and eventually the shipyards had to be surrounded by a fence and guards. If caught, deserters were beaten and returned to work.

  Although outwardly Peter was optimistic, the slowness of the work, the sickness, death and desertion of the workers, made him gloomy and despondent. Three days after arriving, on November 2, 1698, he wrote to Vinius, "Thank God we have found our fleet in excellent condition. Only a cloud of doubt covers my mind whether we shall ever taste these fruits, which, like dates, those who plant never succeed in harvesting." Later, he wrote, "Here, by God's help, is great preparation. But we only wait for that blessed day when the great cloud of doubt over us shall be driven away. We have begun a ship here which will carry sixty guns."

  Despite Peter's worries, the work moved forward although the shipyards were without machinery of any kind and all work was done with hand tools. Gangs of men and teams of horses moved the tree trunks, trimmed them to logs and pulled them through the yard and into position over pits in the earth. Then, with some men beneath the log and others leaning or sitting
on it to steady it, the long planks or curved frame timbers were sawed or hewn out. There was tremendous waste, as very few planks were obtained from a single log. Once the rough board was obtained, it was turned over to more skillful artisans who worked with hatchets,

  *The problem of using green timber was not restricted to Russian ships. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the average life of British navy ships was only about ten years, due to the use of unseasoned timber.

  hammers, mauls, augers and chisels to create the exact shapes needed. The heaviest, strongest pieces went into the keels, laid just above the earth. Then came the ribs curving out and up to be fastened together. Finally, along the sides came the heavy planks that would keep out the sea. And then work could begin on decks, interiors and all the special structures that would make the ship both a place of habitation and a machine of work.

  Through the winter, ignoring the cold, Peter labored with his men. He walked through the shipyards, stepping over logs covered with snow, past the ships standing silent in the stocks, past the workers huddled around outdoor fires trying to warm their hands and bodies, past the foundry with its huge bellows driving air into the furnaces where anchors and metal fitting were being cast. He was indefatigable, pouring out his energy, commanding, cajoling, persuading. The Venetians building die galleys complained that they were working so hard they had no time to go to confession. But the fleet continued to grow. When Peter arrived in the autumn, he found twenty ships already launched and anchored in the stream. Every week, as the winter progressed, another five or six went into the water, or waited ready to be launched when the ice melted.

  Not content with his overall supervision, Peter himself designed and began to build, solely with Russian labor, a fifty-gun ship called the Predestination. He laid the keel himself and worked on it steadily, along with the boyars who accompanied him. The Predestination was a handsome, three-masted ship, 130 feet long, and working on it provided Peter with the happy sensation of having tools in his hands and with the knowledge that one of the ships which would eventually sail the Black Sea would be his own creation.

  It was in March during his second trip to Voronezh that the Tsar was stunned by a personal blow: the death of Francis Lefort. Both times Peter went to work on his ships that winter, Lefort remained in Moscow. At forty-three, his great strength and hearty enthusiasm seemed intact. As First Ambassador of the Great Embassy, he had survived eighteen months of ceremonial banquets in the West, and his prodigious drinking capacity had not deserted him during the feasts and roaring entertainments of the fall and winter in Moscow. He still seemed gay and in high spirits when he saw Peter off for Voronezh.

  But in the days before his death, while Lefort went on with his frantic life, a strange story was heard. One night when he was away from his house, sleeping with another woman, his wife heard a terrible noise in her husband's bedroom. Knowing that Lefort was not there, but "supposing that her husband might have changed his mind and come home in a great fury, she sent someone to ascertain the cause. The person came back, saying that he could see nobody in the room." Nevertheless, the uproar went on, and, if one is to believe the wife—the story is told by Korb—"the next morning all the chairs, tables and seats were scattered, topsy-turvy all about, besides which deep groans were constantly heard all through the night."

  Soon afterward Lefort gave a banquet for two foreign diplomats, the ambassadors of Denmark and Brandenburg, who were departing to visit Voronezh at Peter's invitation. The evening was a great success, and the ambassadors stayed late. Finally, the heat in the room grew overpowering, and the host led his guests, reeling, out into the frozen winter air to drink under the stars without coats or wraps. The following day, Lefort began to shiver. A fever mounted rapidly and he became delirious, raving and shouting for music and wine. His terrified wife suggested sending for the Protestant Pastor Stumpf, but Lefort shouted that he wanted no one to come near him. Stumpf came anyway. "When the pastor was admitted to see him," writes Korb,

  and was admonishing him to be converted to God, they say he only told him "not to talk much." To his wife, who in his last moments asked his pardon for her past faults if she had committed any, he blandly replied, "1 never had anything to reproach thee with; I always honored and loved thee." . . . He commended his domestics and their services, desiring that their wages should be paid in full.

  Lefort lived for another week, solaced on his deathbed by the music of an orchestra which had been brought to play for him. Finally, at three in the morning, he died. Golovin immediately sealed the house and gave the keys to Lefort's relatives, at the same time urgently dispatching a courier to Peter at Voronezh.

  When Peter heard the news, the hatchet fell from his grasp, he sat down on a log and, hiding his face in his hands, he wept. In a voice hoarse with sobbing and grief, he said, "Now I am alone without one trusty man. He alone was faithful to me. Whom can I confide in now?"

  The Tsar returned immediately to Moscow, and the funeral was held on March 21. Peter took charge of the funeral arrangements himself: The Swiss was to have a state funeral grander than any in Russia except that for a tsar or a patriarch. The foreign ambassadors were invited and the boyars commanded to be present. They were instructed to assemble at Lefort's house at eight in the morning to carry the body to the church, but many

  were late and there were other delays and not until noon was the procession formed. Meanwhile, inside the house, Peter had observed the Western custom of laying out a sumptuous cold dinner for the guests. The boyars, surprised and pleased to find this feast before them, hurled themselves upon it. Korb described the scene:

  The tables were laid out, groaning under viands, and drinking cups in long array, and bowls with every description of wine. Mulled wine was served to those who preferred it. The Russians—for everybody of any rank or office had by the tsar's orders to be present—sat at a table ravenously devouring the viands which were cold. There was a great variety of fish, cheese, butter, caviar and so forth.

  Boyar Sheremetev, refined by much travel and dressed in the German fashion, wearing his Cross of Malta at his breast, thought it beneath his propriety to give himself up to voracity with the rest. The Tsar coming in showed many tokens of grief; fixed sorrow was in his face. To the ambassadors who paid their becoming court, bowing to the ground according to custom, the monarch replied with exquisite politeness. When Lev Naryshkin left his seat, and hastened to meet the Tsar, he received indeed his salutations graciously, but remained absent without answering for a little while, until, recollecting himself, he bent to embrace him. When the moment for removing the body came, the grief and former affection of the Tsar and some others was manifest to everybody, for the Tsar shed tears most abundantly, and in the sight of all the vast crowd of people who were assembled, he gave the last kiss to the corpse.

  . . . Thus the body was conducted to the Reformed Church, where Pastor Stumpf preached a short sermon. On leaving the temple, the boyars and the rest of their countrymen disturbed the order of the procession, forcing their way with inept arrogance up to the very body. The foreign ambassadors, pretending however to take no notice of the haughty pretensions, suffered every one of the Muscovites to go on before them, even those whose humble lot and condition [did not merit this]. As they came to the cemetery, the Tsar noticed that the order was changed; that his subjects who previously had followed the ambassadors now preceded them; therefore he called young Lefort [Francis Lefort's nephew] to him and inquired: "Who disturbed the order? Why have those that followed, just now gone foremost?" And as Lefort remained prostrate without giving any answer, the Tsar commanded him to speak. And when he said that it was the Russians who had violently inverted the order, the Tsar, greatly in wrath, said: "They are dogs, not my boyars."

  Sheremetev, on the contrary—and to his prudence it may be attributed—still continued to accompany the ambassadors, although all the Russians had gone on before. In the cemetery itself and on the highway there were cannon drawn
up, which shook the 288 air with a triple discharge, and each regiment also delivered a triple volley of musketry. One of the artillerymen, remaining stupidly before the cannon's mouth, had his head carried off by the shot. The Tsar went back with his troops to the house of Lefort and all followed him. Everybody that had attended the mourning was presented with a gold ring, on which was engraved the date of the death and a death's head. The Tsar having gone out for a minute, all the boyars were hastening with anxious speed to go home. They had already gone down some steps when, meeting the Tsar returning face to face, they came back into the room. The haste of the boyars to get away gave rise to a suspicion that they were glad of the death, and it put the Tsar in such a passion that he wrathfully addressed them in the following terms. "Ho! You are made merry at his death! It is a grand victory for you that he is dead. Why can't you all wait? 1 suppose the greatness of your joy will not allow you to keep up this forced appearance and the feigned sorrow of your faces."

  The death of this Western friend left an enormous gap in Peter's personal life. The jovial Swiss had steered his young friend and master through the early years. Lefort, the mighty reveler, had taught the youth to drink, to dance, to shoot a bow and arrow. He had found him a mistress and invented new, outrageous burlesques to amuse him. He had accompanied him on the first military campaign at Azov. He had persuaded Peter to go to the West and then personally led the Great Embassy whose ranks included Peter Mikhailov, and the long journey had inspired Peter's effort to bring back to Russia the technology and manners of Europe. Then, almost on the eve of Peter's greatest challenge, the twenty-year war with Sweden which would convert the high-strung, enthusiastic young Tsar into the great conquering Emperor, Lefort died.

  Peter understood what he had lost. All his life, he was surrounded by men trying to turn their rank and power in the state to their own personal profit. Lefort was different. Although his proximity to the sovereign had given him many opportunities to make himself rich by becoming a channel for favors and bribes, Lefort died penniless. There was so little money, in fact, that before Peter's return from Voronezh the family had to beg from Prince Golitsyn the money to buy the elegant suit in which Lefort was to be interred.