Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  Peter's visiting was conducted at a headlong pace. Only when he had a bout of fever and was forced to cancel a dinner with the Regent did the Tsar briefly slow down. The poor Marshal de Tesse and the eight French bodyguards did their best to keep up, often with no success. Peter's combination of curiosity and impetuosity, along with his dislain for majesty, astonished the French. Every action was precipitous. He wanted to be free to go from place to place in the city without ceremony; therefore, he often took a rented carriage or even a hackney cab instead of waiting for the royal carriage assigned to him. More than once, a French visitor who called on a member of the Russian party at the Hotel Lesdiguieres came to the door to find his carriage gone. The Tsar, striding out of the house, would jump into the first carriage he saw and calmly drive away. Often, he escaped in this manner from the Marshal do Tesse and his soldiers.

  Inside the Hotel Lesdiguieres, Verton, one of the royal maitres d'hotel assigned to running the Tsar's kitchen and table, was doing his best to feed Peter and his Russians. Verton was a man of spirit, good cheer and self-possession, and before long Peter and all his party liked him enormously. Through Verton and others, stories filtered out as to what went on at this Russian table in the French capital. Wrote Saint-Simon:

  What he [Peter] drinks and eats in two regular meals is incredible, without adding what he swallowed of beer, lemonade and other drinks between meals. As for his suite, they drank even more: a bottle or two of beer at least, and sometimes more of wine, and liquors after the end of the meal. This was normal for every meal. He ate at eleven o'clock in the morning, and eight o'clock at night.

  Peter's relations with the Regent were excellent, in part because it amused Philippe to make himself agreeable. One night, the two men went together to the Opera, where they sat alone in the front row of the royal box in full view of the audience. During the performance, Peter became thirsty and asked for a glass of beer. A large goblet was brought on a saucer, and the Regent stood up, took it and himself presented it to the Tsar. Peter accepted the glass with a smile and a nod, drank the beer and put the goblet back on the saucer. Then Philippe, still standing, placed a napkin on a plate and presented it to the Tsar. Peter, still without rising, used it to dry his mouth and mustache and replaced it. Throughout the performance, with the Regent of France acting like a servant, the audience watched in fascination..During the fourth act, Peter wearied and left the box to go to supper, declining Philippe's offer to escort him and insisting that his host remain until the end.

  Everywhere, the Tsar was received with respect. Most members of the royal family and ranking aristocracy were excited by his presence among them and determined to meet him, among them the current first lady of France, "Madame," the Regent's mother, a bosomy, gossipy German lady of sixty-five. The Regent brought the Tsar to her one day after first showing his guest the palace and gardens at St. Cloud. "Madame" received her visitor at the Palais Royal, where she lived with her son, and the lady was charmed. "Received a great visit today, that of my hero, the Tsar," she wrote. "I find that he has very good manners . . . and is not in the least affected. He has much judgement. He speaks bad German, but still makes himself understood without trouble and talks very freely. He is polite toward everyone and is much liked."

  Not to be outdone by her grandmother, the Regent's scandalous daughter, the Duchesse de Berri, sent her compliments to Peter and asked whether he would visit her. Peter agreed and came to the Luxembourg Palace and afterward walked in the Luxembourg Gardens. But disputes over etiquette prevented him from seeing some of the great ladies of Paris. Several Princes of the Blood refused to call on Peter unless he promised to return the calls and meet their wives. Peter found this petty and absurd and simply refused. He preferred, in any case, to visit people of merit rather than people of blood.

  On May 24, two weeks after his first visit to the Tuileries, Peter returned to visit the King. He arrived at an early hour before the boy was awake, so Marshal de Villeroy took him to see the French crown jewels. Peter found them more numerous and more beautiful than he had expected, although he said he did not know much about jewels. In fact, he told Villeroy, he was not much interested in objects, no matter how beautiful or valuable, which had no practical utility. From there, he went to see the King, who was just coming to find him in Marshal de Villeroy's apartments. This was purposely done so that their meeting would be not a formal visit but seemingly by chance. Meeting Peter in an office, the King held in his hand a roll of paper which he gave to the Tsar, telling him that it was a map of his dominions. Louis' politeness charmed Peter, who treated the boy with a skillful blend of affection and royal respect.

  Villeroy, writing to Madame de Maintenon, had the same impression: "I cannot express to you the dignity, the grace and the politeness with which the King received the visit of the Tsar. But I must tell you that this Prince, said to be barbarous, is not so at all. He displayed sentiments of grandeur and generosity which we never expected."

  That night, Peter drove to Versailles, where the royal apartments had been prepared for him. His Russian companions, given rooms nearby, had brought from Paris a collection of young women, who were installed in the former chambers of the puritanical Madame de Maintenon. Reported Saint-Simon: "Blouin, Governor of Versailles, was extremely scandalized to see thus profaned this temple of prudery."

  In the morning, the Tsar rose early. His escort at Versailles, the Due d'Antin, going to find him, discovered that the Tsar had already walked among the clipped hedges and stylized flower beds of the palace gardens and was at that moment rowing a boat on the Grand Canal. That day, Peter inspected all of Versailles, including the great fountains which had been the Sun King's special pride, and the pink marble Trianon. Regarding the great palace itself with its small central chateau of Louis XIII and the monumental wings added by Louis XIV, Peter declared that it seemed to him "a pigeon with the wings of an eagle." Leaving Versailles, he returned to Paris in time to see the Whitsunday procession the following morning. Tesse took him to Notre Dame, where, beneath the great rose windows of the cathedral, Peter observed a mass being celebrated by Cardinal de Noailles.

  A visit to Fontainebleau, the other majestic royal chateau outside Paris, was less successful. The Tsar's host, the Comte de Toulouse, one of Louis XIV's legitimized bastards by Madame de Montespan, urged him to go on a stag hunt, and Peter agreed. For Frenchmen of blood, the chase was the noblest of outdoor sports. They swept through the forests with sword or spear in hand, their horses hurtling fallen trees and streams at a mad gallop, following the sounds of the baying dogs and hunting horns, until the pursued stag or wolf or wild boar turned at bay and was pulled down in a bloody melee among the moss and ferns of the virgin forest. Peter had no stomach for this kind of thing, and, unused to be breakneck pace of the riders, he nearly fell off. He returned to the chateau angry and humiliated, swearing that he did not understand the sport, did not like it and found it too violent. He refused to dine with the Count, instead eating only with three members of his Russian suite. Soon after, he left Fontainebleau.

  Returning to Paris by boat down the Seine, he glided past the lovely chateau of Choisy and asked to visit it. By chance, he met its owner, the Princesse de Conti, one of the Princesses of the Blood whom etiquette had barred from meeting him before. Arriving in Paris, Peter was so pleased to be once more on the water that, instead of disembarking on the eastern edge of the city and returning directly to the Hotel Lesdiguieres, he ordered the boatmen to continue downstream so that he could float under all the five bridges of Paris.

  On June 3, Peter returned to Versailles to sleep in the Trianon and to spend several nights at Marly, the country pavilion which Louis XIV had built to escape the ponderous etiquette of Versailles. While staying there, Peter drove to St. Cyr to visit Louis XIV's widow, Madame de Maintenon, in the convent she had established, and to which she had retired after the King's death. Everyone was surprised when the Tsar expressed a wish to see her. "She has much merit," he explai
ned. "She has rendered great service to the King and nation."

  Not surprisingly, the elderly woman was enormously flattered at the prospect of a visit from the man about whom all Paris was talking. "The Tsar . . . seems to me a very great man since he has inquired about me," she wrote before his visit. To conceal her age and put on her best appearance, she received the Tsar at twilight, sitting in her bed with all the curtains drawn except one which let in a single shaft of light. When Peter entered, he went straight to the windows and dramatically opened the curtains to let in the light. Then, he pulled back the curtains around her canopy bed, sat down at the end of the bed and silently looked at her. According to Saint-Simon (who was not present), the silence continued with neither saying a word until Peter rose and left. "I know that she must have been greatly astonished and even more humiliated, but the Sun King is no more," Saint-Simon wrote. From a sister to the convent, there is a kinder version, according to which Peter asked Madame what her illness was. "Old age," she replied. She then asked him why he had come to see her. "I came to see everything of note that France contains," he answered. At this, it was reported, a ray of her former beauty lighted up her face.

  It was not until the very end of Peter's visit to Paris that Saint-Simon met the Tsar in person:

  I entered the garden where the Tsar was walking. The Marshal de Tess6, who saw me from afar, came to me, expecting to present me to the Tsar. I begged him not to do it and not to notice me in his presence because I wished to observe him at my leisure . . . and get a good look at him, which I would not be able to do if I was known. . . . With this precaution, I satisfied my curiosity completely at my leisure. 1 found him rather affable, but behaving always as if he were everywhere the master. He walked into an office where D'Antin showed him different maps and several documents on which he asked several questions. It was there that I saw the tic of which I have spoken. I asked Tess6 if this happened often; he said several times a day, especially when he did not take care to control it.

  After six weeks in Paris, the visit was now coming to a close. He revisited the Observatory, climbed the tower of Notre Dame and went to a hospital to watch a cataract operation. In the Champs-Elysees, he sat on horseback and reviewed two regiments of the elite Maison du Roi, both cavalry and musketeers, but the heat and dust and enormous crowd were so great that Peter, who loved soldiers, scarcely looked at them and left the review early.

  There was a round of farewell cards. On Friday, June 18, the Regent came early to the Hotel Lesdiguieres to bid the Tsar goodbye. Once again, he spoke privately to Peter with only Kurakin present to interpret. The Tsar returned for a third visit to the Tuileries to take his leave of Louis XV. The visit was informal, as Peter had insisted it be. Once again, Saint-Simon was charmed: "One could not show more spirit, more grace and tenderness for the King than the Tsar displayed on all these occasions, and the next day when the King went to the Hotel Lesdiguieres to wish the Tsar a good trip, once again everything passed with great charm and gentleness."

  On all sides, the visit was now acclaimed a triumph. Saint-Simon, who had seen the Sun King on his throne, described the lasting impression the Tsar had made:

  This was a monarch who compelled admiration for his extreme curiosity about everything that had any bearing on his views of government, commerce, education, police methods, etc. His interests embraced each detail capable of practical application and disdained nothing. His intelligence was most marked; in his appreciation of merit, he showed great perception and a most lively understanding, everywhere displaying extensive knowledge and a lively flow of ideas. In character, he was an extraordinary combination: he assumed majesty at its most regal, most proud, most unbending; yet, once his supremacy had been granted, his demeanor was infinitely gracious and full of discriminating courtesy. Everywhere and at all times he was the master, but with degrees of familiarity according to a person's rank. He had a friendly approach which one associated with freedom, but he was not exempt from a strong imprint of his country's past. Thus his manners were abrupt, even violent, his wishes unpredictable, brooking no delay and no opposition. His table manners were crude, and those of his staff still less elegant. He was determined to be free and independent in all that he wished to do or see. . . .

  One might go on forever describing this truly great man with his remarkable character and rare variety of extraordinary talents. They will make him a monarch worthy of profound admiration for countless years, despite the large flaws in his own education and his country's lack of culture and civilization. Such was the reputation he gained everywhere in France, where he was considered a veritable prodigy.

  On Sunday afternoon, June 20, Peter left Paris quietly and unescorted. Traveling eastward through France, he stopped at Rheims, where he visited the cathedral and was shown the missal on which for centuries the kings of France had sworn their coronation oaths. To the astonishment of the French priests present, Peter was able to read to them the mysterious characters with which the missal was inscribed. The language was old church Slavonic; in all probability, the missal had been brought to France in the eleventh century by the Kievan princess Anna Yaroslavna, who married King Louis I and became Queen of France.*

  Although Peter left Shafirov, Dolgoruky and Tolstoy behind in Paris to negotiate with the French, the visit bore no diplomatic fruit beyond a meaningless treaty of friendship. The Regent was interested in the Tsar's proposal of an alliance between France and Russia, but the Abbe Dubois remained actively hostile to the idea. By now, the antagonism between King George I of England and Tsar Peter was too great to permit a treaty with both; Dubois chose England over Russia. Indeed, the hopelessness of Peter's case was later confirmed by Tesse, who revealed that throughout the negotiations with the Russians, Dubois had secretly disclosed everything to the English. "The government," Tesse later admitted, "had no intention other than to amuse the Tsar as long as he stayed without concluding anything." With the idea of an alliance discarded, the marriage which was to have been its seal was also dropped. Peter's daughter Elizabeth remained in Russia to rule as empress for twenty years, and Louis XV eventually married the daughter of Charles XII's puppet King of Poland, Stanislaus Leszezynski.

  As he traveled again through the French countryside, Peter remarked, as he had on his way to Paris, on the poverty of the French peasants. The comparison between the luxury he found in the capital and what he saw outside surprised him and he wondered aloud to his friends how long this system could last.

  From Rheims, Peter went slowly down the Meuse by boat, first to Namur and Liege and then to the health resort of Spa. This region, now part of Belgium, was then divided between Holland and the Hapsburg Empire, and along the route both Dutch and imperial officials in the river towns competed to pay him honor. Peter remained at Spa for five weeks, drinking the waters and taking a cure. Catherine still waited for him in Amsterdam, and his letters to her suggest his impatience and fatigue:

  Yesterday, I received your letter of the 11th in which you write of the illness of our daughters [Anne and Elizabeth both had smallpox] and that the first, thank God, is getting better while the other has taken to her bed. about which Alexander Danilovich also writes

  * It required some sacrifice for a princess of Kiev to leave her native city, then at the height of its civilization, to marry into the cruder culture of France. The relative levels of their cultures are suggested by the fact that Anna could read and write and signed her name to the marriage document, whereas Louis I could only scrawl an X.

  me. But your changed style has made me very sad, as the bringer of this letter will tell you. For your letter was very differently written from usual. God grant we can hear the same about Anushka as about Lisenka. When you write for me to come quickly and that you are very lonesome, I believe you. The bringer of this will tell you how lonely I am without you and I can say that except those days when I was in Versailles and Marly twelve days ago, I have had no great pleasure. But here I must stay some days and when I finish dr
inking the water I will start that very day, for there are only seven hours by land and five days by water. God grant to see you in joy which I wish from all my heart.

  P.S. I received this morning the glad news that Anushka is better and therefore began to drink the water more joyously.

  Soon after, he wrote again:

  I congratulate you on this triumphal day of the Russian resurrection [it was the anniversary of Poltava], only I am sorry that we celebrate apart, as well as tomorrow's day of the Holy Apostle, the name day of your old man [Peter himself] and the boy [their son Peter Petrovich]. God grant that these days pass quickly and that I can be with you sooner. The water, thank God, acts well and I hope to finish the cure in a week from St. Peter's day. Today I put on for the first time your camisole and drank your health, but only very little, because it is forbidden.

  P.S. [after acknowledging a letter and two bottles of vodka] You write that you sent little because I drank litte at the waters, which is true. I do not drink altogether more than five times a day and spirits only once or twice, and.not always, partly because it is strong, and partly because it is scarce. I think it is very tiresome that we are so near and cannot see each other. God grant soon. On finishing this, I drink once again to your health.