Thorough albeit endless biography of Peter the Great, with bonus extensive background on 16th and 17th century geopolitics across Europe and Asia Minor. Extremely useful despite its length.
If you can make it through this 900-page book you'll become a minor expert on Peter, but more importantly you'll have good context on the major European leaders of Peter's era: Charles XII of Sweden, Louis XIV of France, William of Orange, Augustus II of Poland and Saxony, Leopold I of the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick I of Prussia and more. These were the giants (and runts, depending) who shaped European history--and because history rhymes, their actions can help explain and even predict what's happening in Europe today.
For a blatant example: we all know that Hitler would have done well to better note Napoleon's catastrophic war with Russia. But Napoleon would have done well to better note Charles II of Sweden's similarly catastrophic war with Russia a century earlier. Sweden made all the same mistakes: Russia absorbed and endured all the initial defeats, lured its enemies deep into its territory, then crushed them. We are at risk of similar mistakes with NATO's foolish proxy war with Russia today. No one knows their history--certainly not our modern statesrunts.
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Peter was a highly capable leader, with one tremendous exception: he planned his own succession poorly (the Marcus Aurelius problem). Your responsibilities don't stop at leading your people and improving your nation: you have to set things up for after you leave the stage. Peter's indifference to his son as he grew up, and their ultimate break, is a tremendous blemish on his resume as Tsar.
This book is not particularly well-written. The author indulges in wordy Michener-esque descriptions, most of which should be cut or tightened. The book is repetitive at times--see for example where the author twice describes the complex relationship between the Ottoman Empire and Russia. And at certain points in the book there are enough typos to make the reader wonder how the copyeditor kept his job:
Two last thoughts, one very serious, one not so serious. Note the often changing suzerainty arrangements that smaller-tier states would make with dominant states in Peter's day in order to ensure survival. States might agree to vassalage with the Ottoman Empire but then switch to Russia as geopolitical or military circumstances warranted. This is something many countries in Europe and Asia ought to be thinking about right now as the US/NATO Clown World declines in military, economic and demographic power relative to BRICSIA. Let's say you were running South Korea, Pakistan, Colombia, or even Japan: you're essentially in vassalage to the USA today, but look twenty years down the road. Should you switch suzerains? To whom? And when? As we see in this book with various examples[*], this is often a life-or-death decision, for a country and its leaders.
Finally, it's hilarious how every period has its own idealized image of its heroes and historical figures. See the 1980 edition of this book where Peter has flowing 1980's hair, a cleft chin and a bit of a porn mustache. Then compare that to a well-known portrait actually painted during his life.
Here's how 1980s America wanted Peter to look:
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Footnote:
[*] As a cautionary and all-too-typical example, see what happened to the now-nonexistent nation of Walachia--and worse, see what happened to its king and both his sons--when it made the mistake of switching vassalage from Turkey to Russia. (See Chapter 42, page 583 below.)
Notes:
Part One: Old Muscovy
Chapter 1: Old Muscovy
3ff Extended discussion here of the ambiance and environment of late 17th century Moscow; comparing it to the more technologically advanced Western European states; this is a James Michener-esque introduction, unfortunately. Physical description of the Kremlin, the city, the various Orthodox churches, many designed by Italian architects.
9ff Background on Peter's father, Tsar Alexis (1629-1676); on the Tsar as a semi-divine figure; a "father" to the people, totally autocratic; on the boyars, the nobility of this civilization; Alexis as a spartan, religiously sincere man, his one weakness, if you could call it that, was falconry.
13 Interesting footnote here about how when the English parliamentarians cut off King Charles I's head, Tsar Alexis was so shocked and outraged he expelled all English merchants from Russia [it was appalling to him that a people would treat their sovereign this way]; he also supported King Charles II with money during his exile.
13 Note also that Russia only had about 8 million people across all of the tremendous amount of land it had, it's astounding; the country were harried by Poland from the west, Tatars from the Crimean, etc.
16ff On the nature of the Russian people, what the weather was like over the course of the year, the mud, etc.
Chapter 2: Peter's Childhood
18ff On Alexis's wife who bore him 13 children (before the 14th killed her), but only two sons survived, both of whom were frail; Alexis then remarried a much younger woman, Natalya, the foster daughter of a relatively minor noble; she gives birth to Peter; extended discussion here of several various succession dramas and power plays among various families related to the Tsarina prior to Alexis's era; on the enormous dangers to any family that fell out of power: they are typically imprisoned or executed by the next regime, etc.
26ff 1676: Alexis dies suddenly at age 47; Peter is only three and Fedor, his son to Alexis' first wife, a semi-invalid, was chosen successor; thus power swung back to Fedor's mother's family against Natalia's foster father's family, who was promptly sent to prison in Siberia. Details here on Peter's childhood and education, also on Fedor's reign; he was married twice but failed to produce an heir. Note here also that Fedor died shortly thereafter; the author cites as his only real action at Tsar to be the elimination of precedence: the policy by which boyar sons would inherit the jobs of their fathers; this was replaced with a system based more on merit, and it was a threat to a lot of the hereditary nobility families; this policy change played a role in a later struggle for succession between Ivan under Sophia and Peter. [We also learn that later the boyars who were threatened and lost power based on the elimination of this precedence-based system would support Peter thinking he was oppositional to Ivan and so he would have more support of the nobility than he otherwise would.]
30 On the unusual choice of Peter and Ivan, half brothers, to be rulers together under the regency of Tsaritsa Natalya, Peter's mother; on the "let the people decide!" discussion where the crowd massed outside the palace was asked, and Peter was chosen.
Chapter 3: "A Maiden of Great Intelligence"
31ff On Sofia, oldest surviving daughter of Alexis with his first wife; on her skillful power play to become regent backed by the nobility; her extended conflict with the palace guard, the Streltsy; extended discussion here at the role of women in this era, how typically they're not educated, they're cloistered, no one sees them out and about at the elite/nobility level, etc. Typically someone like Sophia would have been put into a "terem," basically religious cloister; also Fedor dies unexpectedly, leading to a succession drama; Sophia puts forth the idea that Ivan should be Tsar, even though he's very infirm, as he is the direct heir to Alexis.
Chapter 4: The Revolt of the Streltsy
38ff Discussion here of the Streltsy, the pikemen and musketeers who guarded the Kremlin, Russia's first professional soldiers; on the dramas here that happened that caused them to revolt and mutiny, it isn't clear who or what produced this revolt exactly, probably opponents of Natalia and Peter's part of the family among the nobility; they were under the impression that Ivan had been murdered; on the famous scene of Natalia holding the hands of both her stepson Ivan and son Peter, appearing at the top of the stairs calming the mutinous soldiers; but then they were roused up yet again later and went through the Kremlin itself killing almost everyone they saw, including Natalia's father and her brother.
50ff Sophia comes to power as regent over Ivan and Peter; Ivan was honestly not even at all interested in power.
53 "In rapid and bewildering succession, a Tsar had died; a ten-year-old boy, the minor child of a second wife, had been elected in his place; a savage military revolt had overthrown this election and spattered the young Tsar and his mother with the blood of their own family; and then, with all the jeweled panoply of state, the boy was crowned jointly with a frail and helpless older half-brother. Through all the horror, although he had been elected Tsar, he was powerless to intervene. The Streltsy revolt marked Peter for life." Later he would come to dislike Moscow so much that he would found another city, St. Petersburg.
Chapter 5: The Great Schism
54 Discussion here of the Old Believers vs. the reform movement of the Orthodox Church in Russia, on the two opposing leaders of this movement, Patriarch Nikon, who wanted reforms and unification of the various liturgies and traditions that had developed over the various regions of Russia, and Archpriest Avvakum, who was the conservative/fundamentalist in this debate, wanting to leave things as they were and protect things from change; to settle the dispute Nikon even brought an important Abbott from Aleppo, Macarius, who was accompanied by Paul of Aleppo. [See his book The Travels of Macarius in the To Read section at the bottom of this post.]
62 Another aspect of the dispute hinged on the nature of church and state power; Nikon believed the church was above the state, this was a bridge too far as far as the Tsar was concerned and Nikon was condemned to exile even though he had a successfully put in place most of his other reforms; ultimately his legacy was the opposite of what he intended: patriarchs would never wield as much power ever again, and what was left was a great schism between Old Believers and reformers that never healed. Avvakum, who had been banished to Siberia, was recalled, but ultimately was martyred by fire, as well as thousands of other old believers in the years to come, as efforts to enforce modernized beliefs drove the old believers more fiercely into their beliefs such that they were willing to die for them. [Action-reaction: force stiffens and robustifies the thing being forced.]
66 Very interesting to think here about how the Old Believers actually fled the entire Moscow region and spread throughout a very lightly populated Russian territory: this sounds like how Protestant dissenters left Europe and came to the New World and this laid the foundation for future prosperity for the USA: they were industrious, hard-working, etc. The Old Believers ended up taming much of the wilderness of Russia afterwards. So it's interesting to kind of see what a schism can do: it can actually further national power by causing people to separate and spread out over territory that you wouldn't otherwise control or develop.
Chapter 6: Peter's Games
67ff On Peter's size and vitality, even as a young boy; on the mini-military school that he set up, initially as a place where he could play war games with friends and children of other nobles; eventually other nobles realized it would be good to have their sons around Peter, and he actually developed a kind of quasi-military from this in the long run. On his exposure to certain Dutch carpenters and tutors; on his lack of formal education [more of a "no-school" education: he was directed by his own curiosity and didn't have much literacy or much of a liberal education, but he ended up learning a ton about shipbuilding, carpentry, ballistics, how to use a sextant, etc.; he also fell in love with boats: there's a discussion here of a specific ship that he chanced to find and how he learned to sail and how this chance boat discovery would eventually change Russia significantly in the long run.
78ff on Peter's failed marriage to Eudoxia Loupkhina; at age 20 she was 3 years older than Peter, she was a traditional Russian woman, not curious about the things he was curious about, he considered her boring; she had two sons,"the eldest was the Tsarevich Alexis, whose tragic life would torment Peter" and another son who died at age 1.
Chapter 7: The Regency of Sophia
81ff On a brewing drama of succession as Sophia became regent at age 25, but by age 32 she was stripped of her power; a discussion of how she was moderately pretty, not grotesque as portrayed by a French diplomat in Russia at the time who described her in such an awful way that it couldn't possibly be true, but this propagandized description of her lived on for some reason; she installed her own lieutenants and power structure around herself after becoming regent; on her relationship with Vasily Golitsyn: she became his mistress while he was a major player in directing certain modernizations and westernizations in Russia that were not well received at the time; also a sidebar here on a dispute between Russia and Poland about giving up Kiev to Polish control; this was resolved by Russia agreeing to assist Poland and Austria in their war with the Ottoman Empire by joining a coalition and attacking the Muslim-Tatar Khan of the Crimea [which actually has second-order reverberations to this day because Russia took away troops from defending a border dispute with China in the Far East that Russia and China did not resolve until 2008!]; note that the Crimean Tatars were a vassal state of the Ottoman empire and for years had been attacking Cossack Russian settlements and selling Russian people into slavery.
89ff Fascinating here that Golitsyn himself was actually chosen to lead this military attack a thousand miles south of Moscow--an interesting example of skin in the game. There was never actually any military encounter, he led 100,000 men south, but the Tatars burned all the territory as they were advancing and they had to cease moving forward and retreat, losing some 45,000 men and never engaging or even seeing the enemy; Golitsyn framed the military venture as a success, that they "scared away" the Tatars. He led yet another attack that fared even worse, and again he represented as a victory back home, but this time something different happened: Peter refused to greet him when he returned. Golitsyn was already unpopular to begin with, and this started to grow resentment in opposition to Sophia's rule.
Chapter 8: Sophia Overthrown
98ff August 17th, 1689: escalation of tensions, based on an what appeared to be an imminent attack on Peter; Peter fled to a holy monastery outside Moscow: in terms of optics, it looked like Sophia had somehow threatened or attempted to usurp the throne from a properly chosen Tsar. Gradually more and more Streltsy defect to Peter's side, even the Patriarch Joachim goes over to Peter's side; Peter is pretty savvy about how he escalates things here; eventually it becomes clear that Peter won out, Golitsyn ends up stripped of title and property and exiled to Siberia; Peter executes many of Sophia's supporters; Sophia herself exiled to a convent; interesting sidebar here where the "anti-westernizers" supported Peter against Sophia, but ironically with her removal this led to an enormous tilt westward under Peter; on Sophia's reign as a competent caretaker government, which also set the stage for other female leaders in the coming years.
Chapter 9: Gordon, LeFort and the Jolly Company
112ff On reckoning Peter's beginning of power to be when he seized power from Sofia the regent in 1689, or reckonit it later, at age 22, when he took an interest in affairs of state; on Peter's interest in foreigners.
118ff On Patrick Gordon, a Scot who served as a mercenary for years before becoming a military advisor to Peter; he arrived to Russia and befriended Peter despite their age difference (he was in his 50s, Peter in his 20s); on Francis LeFort a Swiss who loved Russia. On the "Jolly Company," Peter's gaggle of foreign and domestic partying friends basically. [This part of Peter's life is disappointing and frankly gross, he's an autocrat of a huge country with lots of problems, and yet he spends years playing at fireworks, war games, gags, parties, massive drinking with his buds, etc. Imagine if he took his responsibility seriously from day one, what more he could have built.]
Chapter 10: Archangel
129ff Discussion of Peter's time spent at Archangel, a port city on the White Sea in the Arctic; it's frozen in six months of the year; on his plans to build and sail ships in defiance of his mother who didn't want him ever to be at sea. 1694: His mother dies suddenly age 42, her death kind of takes away even what little restraints were on him, and now he does whatever he wants at this point, ignoring Kremlin ritual, ceremonies and expectations, etc.; anecdotes about his sailing experiences, including surviving a severe gale; on his largest war games ever with tens of thousands of soldiers, etc.
Chapter 11: Azov
139ff On Peter's nervous affliction when he's under stress: he has sort of a seizure or a tic of his head and neck; Peter reinitiates the conflict with the Crimean Tatars, a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire as part of his commitment to Poland and Austria against Turkey; Peter decides to attack the fort at Azov: this time, however, instead of marching across the steppe he moves via rivers using barges for transport. The attack was largely a flop, and even more embarrassingly Peter returned to Moscow framing it as a victory just like Golitsyn had!
148ff On Peter's need to establish an entire shipbuilding infrastructure: training shipwrights to build ships then transporting them downriver to the Azov Sea to make another attempt at Crimea the following year. [This really puts in context with the United States is done by offshoring out its own shipbuilding industry to the point where we don't make large ships anymore--basically we've outsourced the industry to Korea and China. We've likely lost the institutional memory and institutional skill to do this stuff, and it takes a generation, maybe more, to get it back.]
149 Co-Tsar Ivan dies suddenly, age 29. Discussion of how well Peter and Ivan got along, even sharing many of the burdens of rule as Ivan took care of many of the state ceremony responsibilities, freeing Peter to travel and conduct shipbuilding, etc. Peter now is sole Tsar.
152ff Description of a second siege of the following year which was successful, they took over the Azov fortress, decided to recolonize it through forced relocation of Russian serfs to the region [I wonder if today's WEF/neo-feudalism model will ever involve forced relations like this?]; and then Peter launches grand plans to build a full navy, build a harbor in the region, relocates tens of thousands of laborers to do the job, and then furthermore sends hundreds of Russians overseas to Western Europe to study seamanship, navigation and shipbuilding; then rumors going around that the Tsar himself would go as well, traveling incognito. [Worth noting here some of the direct extraction techniques used to fund all this stuff: first of all large noble landowners and churches were each required to fund a certain number of ships; cities likewise were required to fund a ship, and some of the communities that complained it got it even worse: Peter then raised their requirements in response forcing them to fund even more ships; in some cases Peter confiscated people's lands. It's an interesting direct use and application of force to take people's stuff, rather than through the more collective extraction of money via taxation, which is then allocated via the political system.] [Also note the direct use of force to repopulate regions with your own people: this may help explain some of the things Russia did after the Soviet takeover, the state had no problem just deciding to repopulate or depopulate ethnic groups in and out of regions as the state saw fit.]
Part Two: The Great Embassy
Chapter 12: The Great Embassy to Western Europe
161ff A discussion of Peter's outreach to Western Europe; also an extremely long, multipage discussion of Louis XIV, his nature, his country [the author justifies this likely unnecessary tangent because Louis XIV was such a dominant figure in Western Europe at the time]; on the tremendous technology gap between an isolated Russia an internationalized Western Europe, dominant in literature, technology, etc.; also on the international colonization activity of Western Europe all over the world [once again the reader gets the impression that our fascination with Peter the Great is due to his fascination with our civilization, in other words it feeds our own sense of superiority somehow].
172 See for example this masturbatory sentence: "Into this modern seventeenth century world, with all its radiance and energies and all its ills, those few Russians who traveled abroad emerged blinking like creatures of the dark led into the light."
173ff On the disastrous past Russian Embassy to France under regent Sophia, where everything that could go wrong went wrong, producing friction between France and Russia; also note French support of the Ottoman Empire during Peter's day was why Peter did not travel to Paris until after Louie XIV's death.
Chapter 13: "It Is Impossible to Describe Him"
176ff The embassy departs Moscow in 1697; also a minor rebellion occurred shortly after Peter left, but was quickly put down; interesting blurb here on the fact that they brought sable furs for paying expenses when "gold, silver or bills on Amsterdam would not suffice." The first stage was Riga, then under Swedish control; it did not go well as Peter was measuring and studying the ramparts of the fortress of that city which was specifically built to resist Russian attack; furthermore it had been besieged by Peter's own father 40 years earlier. 13 years later, in 1710, Peter used this rude reception as a justification to besiege the city.
179ff Interesting blurb here on Frederick III, leader of the German electoral state of Brandenburg; on Frederick's plans to create a kingdom known as Prussia where he would transform himself into Frederick 1 King of Prussia, but it would need to be done at the expense of Sweden which controlled much of the territory along the coast of North Germany; interesting here how he tries to get Peter to sign a treaty for this purpose although Peter did not want to provoke the Swedes while he was at war with Turkey. An interesting political side-drama that went on under the surface of the major conflicts on the continent in this era.
182ff Cute story here about Peter and his shyness and uncomfortableness around Sophia, Electress of Hanover and Sophia Charlotte, Electress of Brandenburg; he hid his face in his hands and muttered "I don't know what to say," but the ladies put him at ease. Sophia later wrote in a detailed description of him including this faint praise: "it could be wished that his manners were a little less rustic."
Chapter 14: Peter in Holland
185ff On Holland, its place in the world at the time; on shipping and the Dutch East India Company; on Peter's attempt to learn shipbuilding in the shipyards of Zander: he was thwarted by too many people knowing who he was and harrying him there; he leaves for Amsterdam. He manages to arrange work inside the East India Company's shipyards so he can work with some degree of privacy; on the various subdomains of shipbuilding he learned, as well as other scientific domains he was involved in during his time there.
Chapter 15: The Prince of Orange
197ff Background here on Holland's prosperity, its conflicts with Spain in the 16th century as well as various conflicts with England and France in the 17th century; on William, Prince of Orange; it's interesting that his family came from the hereditary principality of Orange near Avignon in France, but yet the House of Orange furnished the Dutch Republic with its elected leaders; also half of his ancestors were Stuarts from England and his grandfather was King Charles I. During a crisis when Holland was under the attack of Louis XIV's armies, the people appointed William Stadtholder of Holland and Captain General of the army for life.
200ff Overwhelmed by the French army, the Dutch under William fell back to Amsterdam, cut the dykes, flooded the land and waited, while working diplomatic channels to bring other states to their aid against Louis XIV's power and ambition. Later William married into the British royal family and then was invited by Protestant leadership in England to replace the English Catholic King, King James, who basically fled the throne (James' own children defected to William's side); William and his wife Mary were made joint sovereigns in 1688; this was later referred to as The Glorious Revolution.
204 "In essence, a trade had been made: Parliament accepted William's war in order to protect the Protestant religion and assert its supremacy; William accepted Parliament's supremacy in order to keep England's support in fighting Louis."
204ff Comments here on William's dislike of England and the English people, his dislike of the English weather; on him being one of the first people to really think about the general interest of Europe as a collective, in this case controlling France's dominance of the continent. Then a brief discussion of the War of the Spanish Succession, which happened after King Carlos II of Spain died without an heir, this was a war between Holland and France. Note that William had a horseriding accident and died at the declaration of this war, which Holland won, preserving its freedom.
206ff On Peter's interactions with William, which were mostly private and none recorded; his diplomatic efforts to bring Holland into some sort of alliance against the Turks, which they were unwilling to do; on Peter's shipbuilding learnings during his time in Holland, as well as his frustration but he never learned naval architecture principles there (the Dutch didn't build ships in a way that could be easily systematized and brought back to Russia in the form of written principles), thus he decides to go to England next.
Chapter 16: Peter in England
211ff More Michener-esque descriptions of England and London at the time that Peter was there in 1698; Peter's interactions with William of Orange; the Russians literally trash one of the houses and gardens that they stayed at while they were in England.
216 Good example of the author's occasional leaden writing here, describing a portrait of Peter painted in England. "Today, the original hangs in the King's Gallery of Kensington Palace, where its being painted was suggested 300 years ago."
218ff On Peter's "clinical" curiosity about various religions, triggering certain religious figures to try to persuade him, convert him, or convert Russians in general to various sects of Protestantism. The only sect that caught even the slightest interest from Peter were the Quakers, he even met with William Penn.
220ff Peter authorizes the sale and smoking of tobacco in Russia, upsetting conservative Church figures, as his grandfather Tsar Michael banned tobacco use on pain of death. Peter then sells a monopoly supply agreement to sell tobacco in Russia free of duties to a group of English merchants: this funded the bankrupt Treasury which had been repeatedly drained because of the Embassy's travels.
Chapter 17: Leopold and Augustus
226ff On his return back Peter visited Saxony, ruled by Elector Augustus who also was King of Poland; he visited Vienna, the center of the Hapsburg Empire under Leopold I. On Leopold's arrogant and apathetic personality, although in his meetings with Peter where they got on better than expected; note also Peter behaved better than expected given his sometimes poor behavior elsewhere in Europe; also a brief blurb about the military leadership of Prince Eugene Savoy who helps led the Habsburg Empire and the Holy Roman Empire into conflict against the Turks.
236ff Peter returns home first to try to capture access to the Black Sea against the Turks before they sign a peace deal with Austria; also he receives news that the Streltsy had rebelled again, although it was quickly subdued.
237 On the Great Northern war (which was about to begin) that would pull Poland apart in pieces divided up among all of its neighbors, especially Sweden. On various sources of Poland's impotence: no racial or religious cohesion, most of Poland's people were not Polish but a mix of Lithuanians, Russians, Jews, Germans, etc.; also Poland had a confused political situation: it was a republic which had an elected king but the king had very little actual power. It was not a centralized and stable state like France for example.
239ff On France's Louis XIV wanting to put one of his own French nobles on the Polish monarchy, the Prince de Conti, but Augustus had ridden in before he Conti could arrive and basically took over; on Augustus' friendship with Peter and then Peter's return home.
Chapter 18: "These Things Are In Your Way"
243ff On Peter's return: interesting thoughts here on how he started shaving off people's beards, how there was a tax charge for people with a beard; basically here Peter is trying to impose Westernized cultural norms on Russia including clean-shaven faces and western clothes. [What's interesting here is the techniques he used to bully and force people to adopt these new norms: cultures have a lot of inertia to them and new ones need to be imposed either financially or through access to the halls of power: Peter would fine people for wearing Russian robes and having beards, he wouldn't let anyone in to important banquets and power gatherings if they weren't dressed and shaved appropriately, etc.] Note also that changing his culture's dress was easier than dealing with the beards. "Fashion has its own authority, and lesser men scurried to adopt the dress of their superiors."
249ff Peter has his final break with his wife Eudoxia, he forces her to go into a nunnery. "Later in Peter's life, she would reappear in a surprising way..." [see below, 714ff]
251ff 1699: Peter also forces adoption of the Julian calendar, moving Russia's first day of the year from September 1st to January 1st. Note that in 1752 England moved to the Gregorian calendar and Russia didn't adopt this until 1918. He also upgraded Russian money and coinage.
Chapter 19: Fire and Knout
253ff On Peter's efforts to upgrade Russia's military; dealing with the often rebellious Streltsy; the author backs up a little bit to the later Streltsy rebellion that occurred while Peter was in Western Europe; there's a brief battle handled by Gordon where the rebellious Streltsy were obliterated, the survivors were chained, tortured, then either imprisoned for later interrogation or executed.
259ff Discussion here of three primary methods of torture used in russia: the batog (a thin stick used to beat lesser offenders), the knout (a type of whip that could tear skin off of people when used), and fire (often people would be turned on a spit, and sometimes after already having been knouted). Discussion also of the hardiness and pain endurance Russians tended to have: a story here of [it sure feels apocryphal story] one man who had been tortured four times by knout and fire was approached by Peter "in sheer wonder" asking how he could stand it: the man was happy to talk about it, it turned out he was part of a torture society. Peter ended up treating him with kindness, offering him to be fully pardoned and become a colonel, and the man instantly confessed to everything; kind of a trite discussion here about how torture was done everywhere at this time in history, the author lectures the reader on how today we just do it more efficiently, then he lists states that have tortured, even bringing up the Holocaust, etc., then telling us to keep all this in mind "when we read what Peter did."
265ff Note also that Peter got directly involved with the torture personally and even took part. Peter also forced his half-sister Sophia and his half-sister Martha into convents under guard for the rest of their lives out of paranoia that they were part of the Streltsy uprising.
270 On how the West was scandalized by Peter's bloody reprisals on the Streltsy; on their ultimate abolishment as a military force in Russia shortly after a 1708 revolt in a distant city, Astrachan.
Chapter 20: Among Friends
272ff Liberally quoting long passages from the journals of Johann-Georg Korb, a secretary to an Austrian ambassador: we learn about Peter's moodiness, his rage, his mood swings, etc. On the winding down of the torture and execution of the various Streltsy rebels.
Chapter 21: Voronezh and the Southern Fleet
284ff Peter discovers that the fleet-building activity in the shipyards is going slower than expected with tremendous waste; then he has two tremendous setbacks: LeFort dies, leaving Peter without a true intimate in his court; then six months later Gordon dies, Peter's most able soldier.
291ff Using the Russian fleet to intimidate the Turks into letting him pass into the Black Sea; establishing an ambassadorship with the Sultan in Constantinople--obtaining basically international recognition of Russia as a significant country as a result; on the wrap-up of the war of Western Europe with the Ottoman Empire: Russia signs of 30-year truce with Turkey with limited access to the Black Sea. Also some forward-looking references here about the Great Northern War with Sweden and Charles the XII, King of Sweden, invading Russia.
Part Three: The Great Northern War
Chapter 22: Mistress of the North
299ff Another Michener-esque description of the Baltic, followed by a discussion of Sweden "at the peak of its imperial power," exporting silver, copper and iron to all of Europe.
302 Interesting footnote here on Sweden's "legendary" Queen Christina who assumed power at 18 in 1644 but 10 years later abdicated after secretly converting to Catholicism, handing the throne to her cousin who became King Charles X, grandfather of Charles XII.
303ff The seeds of the Great Northern War between Russia and Sweden, a centuries-old conflict over the land accessing the Gulf of Finland; Sweden an enemy of the then-city states Moscow and Novgorod since the 13th century. Peter wanted access to Northern Europe via the Baltic coast and didn't want to pay heavy duties to Swedish cargo handlers. Also on Johann Reinhold von Patkul, a patriot without a country, a member of the old Livonian nobility, who were descendants of the Germanic Teutonic knights who held Livonia, Estonia and Courland in the 16th century, but then dissolved after defeats against Russia under Ivan the Terrible; Livonia then fell into Poland's hands, which forced the Polish language and Catholicism on the region, and so Livonia fought to become a Swedish province. Shortly after that Charles XI double-crossed Livonia and started taking away the land of the nobles in Livonia as part of his "reduction" policy to weaken the aristocracy of Sweden; Patkul was part of the Livonian emissaries who protested this, he dreamed of bringing independence to Livonia or of at least restoring power to the nobility.
306ff On Patkul bringing Denmark into this conflict, as Denmark never accepted the the loss of territory it used to hold in southern Sweden; Patkul also brought Poland into the dispute under the King Augustus [recall Poland's decentralized system with an elected king], and also Russia under Peter was brought in as an additional ally against the Swedes.
308ff Peter basically drafting serfs from various territories, as well as recruiting freedmen for pay from Moscow [worth noting here how fragile Peter was to the loss of Gordon here; how any leader has to have back-up leaders behind his key lieutenants who can take their place if he loses them or they die off]. Also Peter conflicted due to threats from Constantinople at the same time he's supposed to march against Sweden, finally he concludes a peace with Turkey and then marches on Sweden; also note this interesting example of doubletalk where he promises the Swedish ambassador that "should Poland take Riga I will tear it from her hands." [Something that is "literally" true but certainly not true in the way the Swedish ambassador would understand it.] Finally some foreshadowing about how this war went very poorly for Russia at first but then later they scrambled back and in desperation gained the advantage. [Sounds rather familiar thinking about Russia's various wars with France and Germany.]
Chapter 23: Let the Cannon Decide
312ff Discussion of the nature of war in this era, how it was seasonal, how it followed certain etiquette, fought mostly by mercenary soldiers who could and would change sides without any problem; discussion of sieges and castle defense, commentary on that era's most famous siege and defense expert, Louis XIV's Louis de Vauban, undefeated in terms of fortress design and sieges. "A town defended by Vauban is a town impregnable; a town besieged by Vauban is a town taken." --Louis XIV
317ff On maneuver warfare, Sweden's Charles XII and his willingness to break the seasonal tradition of warfare in part because Swedes didn't mind winter so much; on various advancements in field artillery; discussion of infantry weapons beginning with pikemen, then eclipsed by muskets and then the solution which combined the two: the bayonet. Then on improvements on musketry from the matchlock to the flintlock; on the evolving use of cavalry, etc.
Chapter 24: Charles XII
323ff On the life of Charles XII: obstinate, smart, curious; he became king at age 14 when his father, King Charles XI died at 42 of cancer of the stomach; initially regents were appointed as per Swedish tradition, the following year he became crowned King of Sweden, many of the things he did early on shocked the elite of Sweden as he took absolute power;, he also continued his father's policy of reduction, disappointing the nobility.
330ff On Denmark, Poland and Russia ganging up on Sweden; on Charles's character here and his will to fight them off one by one; he quickly finishes Denmark, arranging a naval alliance with Holland and England and quickly seizes Copenhagen, forcing the Danish King to terms, doing so nearly bloodlessly.
Chapter 25: Narva
335ff Augustus, seeing how Denmark was forced out of the alliance so quickly, places Poland's army into winter quarters to see what will develop; Sweden finds itself in conflict with Russia because Russia had attacked the Baltic region, starting with the fortress at Narva, with plans to take Riga later. While he was besieging it, Sweden quickly came into the region.
340ff On Peter's departure from the army the night before the battle of Narva; he wanted to go to Novgorod to understand Augustus' withdrawal from the conflict; some have represented this as an act of cowardice; also the Russian army had no expectation that Sweden would immediately attack after a long march; also the Russian army was behind its own fortifications, it felt more secure than it should have.
343ff "Small and exhausted armies did not normally attempt to storm fortified lines manned by a force four times as large..." The siege here involved 10,000 Swedes advancing on 40,000 strongly entrenched Russians. Du Croy, the commander of the Russian army, was shocked that Sweden was about to storm his position with no preparatory activity at all. They quickly reached the wall and poured into the Russian fortification area. Du Croy quickly surrendered, feeling "safer under Swedish guard than in command of his own undisciplined and terrified troops." [This is actually a very interesting engagement because it still wasn't over even when it was over: there was one division of the Russians that was still in force even after most of the Russian army here had surrendered, and the number of Swedes to guard everyone and control the situation was very small compared to the number of Russians, thus any "surrender" could easily flip back. There was a lot of luck involved in this battle that went totally Sweden's way.]
351 "A victory so easily won helped persuade Charles that he was unconquerable... Narva also instilled in Charles a dangerous contempt for Peter and for Russia... Years later, in the summer dust of the Ukraine, the King of Sweden would pay dearly for these moments of exaltation on the snow covered battlefield of Narva."
Chapter 26: "We Must Not Lose Our Heads"
351ff Peter learns of the disaster, realizes there's nothing stopping Charles from marching all the way to Moscow. "One of Peter's qualities was that when confronted with disaster he did not despair. Failure only spurred him forward; obstacles served as challenges to stimulate new effort." [It's interesting to see a repeated pattern with Russia where they lose, badly, at first but then crush their enemies in the long run. Note also what Peter himself wrote about this particular loss against the Swedes, "That we lived through this disaster, or rather this good fortune, forced us to be industrious, laborious and experienced."]
354ff On Peter's efforts to professionalize the army, to develop an artillery industry, casting cannons, finding new ore sources, etc.; also sending diplomats to look for support among other European nations, these diplomats were mostly laughed in their faces after Russia's embarrassing defeat to Sweden; note also Europe was preoccupied with the brewing War of Spanish Succession.
358ff Charles considers invading Russia further but then starts losing men to disease in the field; he decides to wheel around and attack the Saxons as well as attack the Russian soldiers in Riga; his regard for Russian soldiers, low already, goes even lower after four Russian regiments panicked and fled before the Swedes even approached. However Charles decides to defeat Augustus of Poland/Saxony first before turning to Russia; it ended up taking him more than six years: he wanted total vengeance against Augustus who he saw as a dishonorable, treacherous backstabber.
361ff Russia actually has some military success in Poland and Livonia against fixed garrisons there; also an interesting discussion here of the thousands of civilian prisoners that were taken in Livonia. Ironically Patkul, who was trying to liberate his people, ended up indirectly causing devastation to his homeland: many of these civilian prisoners were bought and sold as serfs; note also that one of these serfs was an illiterate 17-year-old Lithuanian peasant girl who the Russian military leader Sheremetev kept in his house: here name was Martha Skavronskaya, and she would eventually become Catherine I. The author does a neat little bit of foreshadowing here.
362ff Various discussions of back and forth naval battles between Russia and Sweden as Russia inexorably began controlling more and more of the territory Sweden had taken, including a naval engagement that Peter himself took part in.
Chapter 27: The Founding of St. Petersburg
367ff Peter begins building ramparts and raising one of the islands on the Neva River to construct the first fort of St. Petersburg despite attacks from the Swedish Navy and army over the years, eventually building this fortress into a port and then into a real city in the years to come; on the conscription of both skilled and serf labor to raise the city; on the death toll from scurvy, dysentery, malaria etc. The death toll could have been some 25,000, thus the expression that Petersburg was "a city built on bones."
374ff Other methods Peter uses to force people to move to St. Petersburg, including banning stone masonry throughout the empire, which forces all the stonemasons to come to St Petersburg to work [this is Mr. Burns-level evil genius right there], also forcing hundreds of noblemen and their families--including some of his own family--to live in St. Petersburg, requiring them to build large homes at their own expense; this also brought a merchant class along to supply these people--at high prices.
376ff On fire, flooding; even wolves would harry people in and around the city from time to time; the original Finnish inhabitants basically were forced out/replaced by disease, thus St. Petersburg is yet another depressing example of population replacement; note also that Sweden laughed at Peter's efforts to build a city there, but what he was actually doing was splitting the Swedish power structure in half by taking over the mouth of the Neva River permanently.
Chapter 28: Menshikov and Catherine
380ff On the emergence of two people who were the closest companions of Peter's life: Alexander Menshikov and Martha Skavronskaya. "Both rose from obscurity; they met each other before she met Peter; they rose together, he from stable boy to mighty prince, she from orphaned peasant girl to be crowned as empress, Peter's heir and successor as Russia's sovereign. Both survived the giant Tsar who had created them, but not for long. After Peter died, the Empress Catherine quickly followed, and then the ambitious stable boy who had scaled the heights toppled dizzyingly back to earth." [The author can on occasion sing out with a good sentence.] On Menshikov rising from obscure origins, probably from Lithuania; he spent his childhood as a stable boy in Peter's military camp, he understood the value of proximity to Peter, and was the one of the first boys to enroll as a play soldier in his youthful military company. Later appointed as a personal orderly to the Tsar, he was also a prototype of what Peter wanted to create in Russia: a man fully Russian, but knowing his carpentry and his shipbuilding, speaking some Dutch and some German, and having "a surface polish of polite society." After the deaths of Lefort and Gordon, Peter needs somebody to be a close friend, and Menshikov ended up being the guy.
385ff Origins of Martha Skavronskaya: even more obscure origins than Menshikov, she was taken in by a Livonian Lutheran family then later became a servant of Sheremetev after he had conquered the region; the family initially went to Moscow to serve as translators, Martha came with them and was a servant girl in his house, later Menshikov took her into his house, possibly bought her; at this point she had converted to Orthodox Christianity and took the Russian name of Ekatarina. Then Peter took her as his mistress as his relationship with Anna Mons was breaking apart. Peter and Martha/Ekatarina have son in 1704 named Peter, a second son in 1705 named Paul, and a daughter, Catherine, in 1706.
389ff Peter secretly marries Catherine who had already born in three children (she ultimately bore him 12 in total but only two lived to adulthood); keeping the marriage secret from the Russian people and even his ministers. Then later in 1712 married her publicly, making her Tsaritsa. Further comments here on how she was very close to him, she never forgot her origins, always deferred to foreign aristocrats, and then some quotes pulled from some of their letters back and forth. It's cute, he really liked her and she him.
Chapter 29: The Hand of the Autocrat
395ff Discussion of the fact that Peter traveled more than any other tsar ever; he was much less remote than the typical tsar culturally; and then a discussion of travel in Russia which was brutal, much like everywhere else in Europe; in overland travel it would sometimes take a day to go five miles; contrasting this with sleigh travel in the winter in Russia where Peter could cover 100 miles in a day by changing horses.
401ff Peter constantly looking for more and more tax revenue, creating a revenue service of men whose job was to come up for new ways for the Tsar to make money, basically; also on his administrative changes: having the country broken up into eight giant governorships, creating a new ministry of the Navy, ministry of mines, etc., and putting various lieutenants in control of these organizations.
403ff Other less harsh changes Peter put into place: forbidding arranged marriages where the spouses didn't know each other; requiring six weeks before an engagement and the ability to refuse; also on various changes to the education system; also translating printed works into Russian; changing the level of deference required to the Tsar, like no longer requiring people falling to their knees in the presence of the Tsar, also people were no longer required to remove their hats as they walked by the Kremlin [!], etc.
406ff Many of the serfs would run away, often to the South to the land of the Cossacks; this is also where most of the rebellions happened; three rebellions occur during Peter's war with Charles XII of Sweden: the revolt at Astrachan, the uprising of the Bashkirs, and the rebellion of the Cossacks under Bulavin.
Chapter 30: Polish Quagmire
411ff Peter re-seizes Dorpat and Narva, the two fortresses that Sweden had captured from him several years earlier. Also note the blurb here on the commander of the Swedish fortress at Narva, Arvid Horn, who refused to surrender under standard siege etiquette, ultimately bringing about a total slaughter as the Russians overwhelmed the fortress and rampaged through it.
416ff On the battle between Sweden and Russia at Grodno; discussion of the fractious leadership of the Russian army, although note the increased professionalization of the Russian line soldiers; also Charles made a winter attack that was unexpected, the siege was followed by the Russians escaping into the country.
421ff Charles's final move in his long war against Augustus in Poland: he decides "to invade Saxony itself, to strike down Augustus inside his own hereditary dominion." Eventually the electors in the government of Saxony decide to force Augustus to give up the throne of Poland and renounce his alliance with Russia; also, through a series of delays and bad coincidences Patkul is captured, handed over to the Swedes, broken on the wheel (something that appalled all of Europe because he was a member of the diplomatic elite, and this simply was not done), and then beheaded.
Chapter 31: Charles in Saxony
428ff More discussion of Charles and his vibe; also comments on the Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill, who went to meet him to ascertain his situation and his goals; England was trying to maintain a balance of power against France on the Continent at the time. On Charles' fatalism and unconcern for his own safety: "I shall fall by no other bullet than that which is destined for me, and when it comes, no prudence will help me." On his near absolute indifference towards women.
435ff Now with Augustus abdicating and Poland no longer Sweden's enemy, Charles marches on Russia; on Peter's attempts to negotiate this threat away diplomatically: appealing to England, the Netherlands and France, all unsuccessfully; Charles decides, instead of attacking the Baltics to recoup his lost territory, to strike directly at Moscow in 1707. "To take an army from deep in Germany in the heart of Europe eastward more than a thousand miles to Moscow required an audacity equal to Hannibal's or Alexander's." [Note that this will turn out about as well as Napoleon's or Hitler's deep forays into Russia...]
Chapter 32: The Great Road to Moscow
443 "That Charles meant to march across Poland and invade Russia was no surprise to Peter... As early as January 1707, the Tsar had given orders to create a belt of devastation so that an advancing army would have difficulty living off the land. Into Western Poland which would be first to see the advancing Swedes, rode Cossacks and Kalmucks with instructions to lay waste the countryside. Polish towns were burned, bridges were broken and destroyed. Rawicz, which had been Charles's headquarters in 1705, was razed and its wells poisoned by the corpses of Poles who resisted." [This is the unfortunate curse of living in a country with broad plains which sits at the crossroads between historical enemies. You get fucked in both directions, all the time.]
448ff Stories of Charles's approach through Poland; on his attempts to flank the Russians, and also anecdotes about very cruel (but probably all-too-typical) techniques used by the Swedish army to take fodder and supplies from peasants in the region: "a child would be taken, and before its mother's eyes, a rope would be fixed around its neck. Then a Swedish officer would ask one last time whether the mother would reveal the family cache of food. If she refused, the child was hanged. Usually, the peasants broke down and talked, although this meant starvation for all of them." Also discussions here of reprisal executions of peasants, stuff that most people would assume is unique to World War II, but most likely was common to any and all wars. Also an attack and counter-attack, both bold strokes, from both Charles and Peter in Grodno and Lithuania where the two monarchs happened to be in the same town at the same time. There was a small battle a day later but then the Russians left the region and the Swedes had to settle down for the winter. This is more or less the end of the Polish campaign; then Charles goes back to getting ready to go on the move and Peter basically burns out a gigantic region of his own country, including depopulating the entire town of Dorpat so that Charles's army would have no sustenance whatsoever.
Chapter 33: Golovchin and Lesnaya
458ff The Swedes engage the Russian army at Golovchin, it turns out to be a Swedish victory but also they realize that the Russians were now changed adversaries, fighting far better than before. More importantly the Russians were easily able to refresh their forces, resupply their men, etc., whereas the Swedes could not replace any of their lost men and had much more difficulty with resupply because of the great distance between them and their power base in Poland. [Sound familiar?]
462ff 1708: One of Charles's generals in Riga, Lewenhaupt, was delayed in bringing a huge array of supplies and extra men to reinforce Charles's army; Charles then decides to move south to Severia, a region in Russia that hadn't been torched by Peter; this turned out to be "fateful in the life of Charles XII. ...he was on the brink of a series of disasters which for him would end in ruin."
Chapter 34: Mazeppa
472ff This chapter discusses the Ukrainian Cossack leader who had been loyal to Moscow for 21 years, and how he betrayed the Tsar and allied himself with Charles right in the middle of this string of successes that Peter had against the Swedish army. Ivan Stepanovich Mazeppa was now 63, a shrewd and calculating leader who dreamed of independence for the Cossacks. He assumed that Sweden would defeat Peter's armies and thus opened secret channels with Sweden to try to plan ahead for his people, seeking at least that Sweden not fight in Ukrainian territory and potentially also grant independence to the Ukraine; but when Charles started moving south into Ukraine's territory Mazeppa had to make a choice as "two powerful monarchs, both with large armies, were moving in his direction. He was pledged to both. If, in this final moment of choice, he chose the wrong side, he was lost."
482ff There was a race to the city of Baturin, the ancient stronghold of the Cossacks, but the Tsar's troops under Menshikov got there first and slaughtered almost all the inhabitants and burned the city to the ground, destroying all the food and ammunition that was to be used by Charles after Mazeppa had switched sides. "It was a brutal stroke, a summary punishment which Cossacks understood, demonstrating to them where the greatest power to punish lay."
Chapter 35: The Worst Winter Within Memory
484ff Discussion of the difficult winter conditions in Russia which disproportionately harmed Charles's army; on various engagements in and around Russia where the Russian army was skirmishing and feinting and then melting away into the wilderness, chipping away at the Swedish army over time. Eventually it was obvious that Charles needed reinforcements to be able to do anything further in Russia.
492ff Charles attempts to seek alliances with other Cossack groups, with the Khan of the Crimean Tatars, and with the Sultan of Turkey even, nothing really came of any of these efforts.
Chapter 36: The Gathering of Forces
496ff Various engagements in and around the fortress town of Poltava which Charles decided to siege. Peter arrives with even more soldiers and takes command.
501ff Shortly before this engagement Charles was inspecting his men in their positions at the bank of the Petrovka River, and was shot through the length of his foot; he had it amputated by one of his surgeons, suppressing all signs of pain; but also he knew that the fact he was seriously injured would be a huge huge threat to morale because he had never been touched, despite putting himself into the thick of countless battles. Unfortunately the wound festered rather than healed, and he became severely ill; Peter learned that Charles was wounded and then decided immediately to move his entire army aggressively across the river. The two armies sat facing each other when Charles learned that his expected reinforcements from Poland weren't coming after all. Despite this "Charles decided on battle." Peter knew something like this might be coming and so he threw up different layers of fortifications all over the region to cut off any movements or escape that the Swedes might take.
Chapter 37: Poltava
510ff On a fatal communication problem between Charles' rival lieutenants: Rehnskjold and Lewenhaupt; who Charles had delegated responsibilities to during his injury and recovery. They couldn't stand each other and Rehnskjold never communicated the next day's battle plan to his co-leader.
518 "Before the main battle of Poltava had begun, six battalions, one third of the Swedish infantry, had been annihilated to no purpose. The disaster can be blamed on Roos for persisting too long [he spent significant amount of time and men handling Russian fortifications when he should have just marched right through them to join the main army], or on Rehnskjold for not trusting his officers and briefing them more thoroughly before battle began. But the real fault was that the brain of the Swedish army [Charles] was missing."
519ff The Swedish army is forced to retreat; once it begins doing so the Russians pour forth to attack them with massive numerical superiority. The two armies square off and then Rehnskjold orders Lewenhaupt--despite being totally outnumbered--to attack a point in the Russian lines; this scene looks a lot like Pickett's charge, except unlike Pickett's men they actually break through. But then no supporting forces come to help them roll up the two sides once they've achieved the breakthrough, in fact the cavalry that was supposed to arrive was being shot to pieces by Russian artillery; Peter saw this and sent his infantry into the gap and was able to break the Swedish line that had penetrated his line.
523 Peter was "conspicuous" in this part of the battle and miraculously was not wounded, but he was hit three times."One musketball knocked his hat off, another lodged in his saddle, while the third actually struck him in the chest but was deflected by an ancient silver icon which he wore on a chain around his neck." [It's astonishing how much luck--outlandishly lucky luck--sometimes plays into things.]
Chapter 38: Surrender by the River
527ff On the ultimate significance of the battle of Poltava, in Peter's own words: "...the final stone in the foundation of St Petersburg had been laid." In the author's words: "in a single morning, the Battle of Poltava terminated the Swedish invasion of Russia and permanently shifted the political axis of Europe... Poltava was the first thunderous announcement to the world that a new Russia was being born."
528ff Charles and what remained of his army fled South to the lands of the Tatars, looking for sanctuary from the Khan. Ultimately most of Charles' army surrendered, only a tiny fraction made it across into the Sultan's territory.
Chapter 39: The Fruits of Poltava
534ff Peter and his team celebrate their victories; Europe hurries "to adjust to the Tsar's new influence." Interesting quote here from Leibniz and how he saw Peter's victory as a glorious turning point of history, he was also likely seeking patronage there. Even Louis XIV signals that he "would be glad to make an alliance with the Tsar." Augustus marches from Saxony back into Poland and retakes power.
542ff Interesting blurb here about the Swedish soldiers and officers that were captured: most were forced to live in Russia somewhere, many offered roles in the Russian army with their same rank, many actually learned new trades, formed schools and educated Russians to a higher educational standard than they would otherwise get; interesting how they were integrated into Russian culture and added to it.
544ff Comments on the capture of buffer territory around St. Petersburg; on the recapture of Riga which Peter decided to keep for Russia rather than give to Augustus in Poland. On clearing Swedish influence out of Livonia and Estonia.
Part Four: On the European Stage
Chapter 40: The Sultan's World
549ff On the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire deciding to make war with the Tsar after he had already conquered Sweden [this is the Russo-Ottoman War of 1710-1711, also known as the Pruth River Campaign]; Peter's over-optimism; a betrayal from one of Peter's Balkan Christian allies which led to "near-catastrophic results for Russia." Details and background here about the Ottoman Empire, a distributed empire with sub-pashas and amirs distributed throughout the territory, paying tribute in money or horseman or ships to defend Constantinople; the 16th century was the zenith for the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566). Discussion here of the Janissaries, the Ottoman military caste; discussion of the Sultan's 5,000 servants, including servants literally called the Pickle Server and the Assistants to the Chief Turban Folder [I bet that was a hard job]; his "harim"/harem, guarded by eunichs, who were castrated by Coptic Christians (because Islam forbade castration); on the Ottoman Empire's decline under increasingly debauched sultans; the state administered by Grand Viziers; on the Ottoman Empire's military peak when it nearly conquered Vienna, but was beaten back from a general alliance of European states.
558 Interesting trivia factoid here about when Venetian forces were bombarding the Parthenon in their effort to capture the Peloponnesus in 1687, one of its shells hit the Parthenon where the Turks were storing powder and this blew up the building, which had been largely intact at the time.
Chapter 41: Liberator of the Balkan Christians
559ff On the Ottoman Empire's disdain for Russia, not even dealing with it directly but via their vassals the Crimean Tatars, who even extracted tribute from the Tsar; on the Crimean khans who would periodically "harvest" Russia and Ukraine for slaves and cattle; review/repeat commentary here of Russia's agreement to attack the Ottoman Empire at the behest of Poland, Austria and Venice in the years right before Peter came of age and took power. Then comments on Peter Tolstoy, Peter the Great's ambassador in Constantinople and how he helped prevent Turkey from capitalizing on its advantages while Russia was at war with Sweden: Tolstoy used a mix of bribery and intrigue (when he wasn't kept under house arrest and ill-treated by the Turks).
568ff On escalating and aggressive demands from the Tsar to the sultan to kick Charles out of Turkey; this inflamed tensions and caused the Turks to go to war against Russia again in 1711, marching into Ukraine with some 200,000 men; Peter formulated a game plan to proceed through Bulgaria and liberate Christian Moldavians and Walachians, both vassal states of the Ottoman Empire; this would also keep the conflict away from the Ukraine which was already devastated by Swedish invasions.
Chapter 42: Fifty Blows on the Pruth
572ff On Walachia under Constantine Brancovo, wily and flexible, who switched suzerainty agreements from Turkey to Russia with Peter; likewise the Prince of Moldavia, Demetrius Cantemir, likewise sensing a shift in fortunes under Turkish control, worked out a side deal with Russia as well: both countries were going to assist a Russian invasion and both furnished troops in return for a promise to become independent states under Russian protection. [Fascinating to think of the game theory and the decisions under uncertainty you have to make when you change vassalage to a new suzerain: God help you if you choose wrong: you as king and your entire nation might be wiped out as your old suzerain punishes you for it.] Peter's armies are worn down after marching all the way to this region and then Brancovo switches sides, re-committing to the Turks.
577ff After the first engagement Peter finds himself surrounded by overwhelming numbers of Turkish forces. It was sudden and it was due to the same thing that happened to Charles XII: too much pride, too much overconfidence, combined with venturing way too far into enemy territory. He actually sent Sherimetev to offer surrender terms but found that the Turkish grand vizier was a "hesitant warrior" who was also facing a potential conflict with Habsburg Austria; at the same time some of Russia's cavalry had captured another city and much of the Turkish supplies there. The surrender offer came right when the vizier's advisors were urging a final attack against the Russians. The terms requested by the Turkish side were much milder than Peter expected, "it was a deliverance." Peter was incredibly lucky here: this whole thing could easily have resulted in both Peter and Catherine's capture or even death and the destruction of the entire Russian army.
581ff even Charles arrives at the Turkish camp to try to persuade them to attack the Russians or at least to lend some Turkish troops to him to attack the Russians, he was unable to persuade the Vizier; Peter's comment here was "they had the bird in their hand there, but it will not happen again."
583 Moldavia was ravaged by the Tatars, and Cantemir ran away with the Russians and became the Russian ambassador to England and France. Brancovo of Walachia was arrested, sent to Constantinople and then beheaded in 1714, along with his two sons. [Again, when a vassal chooses a suzerain, he must choose correctly! Otherwise it is concave downside all the way.]
584ff Peter delays in reducing the fortifications of Azov per his agreement with the peace treaty with Turkey; Charles stirs up some gossip and drama in Constantinople against the Russians, this helped lead to the replacement of the grand vizier, then Russia's failure to surrender the territory they had promised to Turkey was used a pretext for a new war, although there was no real fighting: it ended quietly when Peter finally surrendered Azov and Tagonrog. Then Turkey actually declared war a third and a fourth time in the next two years, but pashas and viziers came and went and finally the last declaration was ended with the Treaty of Adrianople. In the longer run this entire conflict taught Peter that he had been too impetuous, but it also planted a seed, as the author phrases it "a hardy seed": the idea that "Russia would act as Orthodox champion of the Balkan Slavs." Peter also lost all his life's work of trying to get access to the Black Sea here: "Not until the time of Catherine the Great would Russia conquer the Crimea..,and finally achieve what Peter had begun." Finally, Peter said this in his appraisal of what happened with this conflict with the Turks: "My 'good fortune' consisted in having received only fifty blows when I was condemned to receive a hundred."
Chapter 43: The German Campaign and Frederick William
587ff Peter is now able to travel across Poland and Germany after Sweden's defeat; Peter taken ill and taking the waters in Carlsbad; Peter returning to St. Petersburg and formally marrying Catherine in 1712; discussion of the politics and peace overtures between Russian and Sweden: peace was logical and Peter wanted it but Charles was sort of delusionally interested in recapturing his lost territory and rebuilding his army; also there was a unified attack on Swedish territory in Germany and Denmark by Saxon, Polish, Danish and Russian troops. Also Peter meets King Frederick I of Prussia, as well as his successor, King Frederick William I.
594ff On the rise of the Kingdom of Prussia in North Germany, the house of Hohenzollern, descended from the Teutonic knights; Frederick extracted a true kingship from the emperor in Vienna, and his son set about maximizing Prussia's military power. On Frederick's illness, likely porphyria; his violent rages; his frugal, humble court and kingdom; on his obsession with giants: tall people he would use as sort of toy soldiers/grenadiers [weird!]; on the unhappiness of his wife Queen Sophia Dorothea; on his son Frederick, who would be later known as Frederick the Great, succeeding to his father's throne at age 28 in 1740, and astonishing all of Europe by invading Silesia and provoking war with the Hapsburg Empire in a brilliant military campaign.
599ff Back now to Peter in 1712; Sweden scraping together another small field army to attack and recover Swedish Pomerania; on Sweden's defeat and eventual surrender, leaving Sweden with still less territory on the continent.
Chapter 44: The Coast of Finland
601ff On Peter's near-bloodless and brilliant campaign in Finland using the new Russian Baltic fleet; on the radical shift in warship design during Peter's reign, including the 1690s development of the "ship of the line," which replaced ship to ship duels with two rows of warships on parallel courses pounding each other with heavy artillery. On the fact that Peter had been building ships of the line at home but he won the Finnish campaign using galleys: hybrid ships 80-100 feet long with oarsmen; Peter used these for amphibious landings, conquering most of southern Finland easily, including the city that later would be Helsinki; then on engagement against Swedish ships of the line where the galleys were able to attack them easily at a time of no wind.
Chapter 45: The Kalabalik
611ff The name of this chapter is the Turkish word for tumult, and it refers to a weird pseudo-battle that happened to try to capture Charles and extract him from Turkey, alive, take him to Poland and then through various pretexts abandon him there in Augustus's hands. The scene is pretty hilarious actually, because the Turks had overwhelming force but weren't really trying to kill anyone. Finally they succeed in capturing Charles. He was taken to Adrianople, but once the Sultan learned of the plan he deposed both the Khan and the Seraskier (commander in chief), and then three months later the Ottoman Empire embarked on a brief fourth war with Russia. [!]
618ff "Meanwhile, in Europe, events had been moving swiftly." The treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1713 ending the twelve-year War of the Spanish Succession; Peter finally gave up Azov, took his troops out of Poland and had a long term peace with Turkey as they signed the treaty of Adrianople in 1713. Charles then decides to return home rapidly on horseback, traveling incognito. Using horseback and fast coaches overnight he traveled 1,296 miles in 14 days [!!], reaching Swedish Pomerania in a famous ride that "seized the imagination of Europe." He was attacked in the city of Stralsund by a combined Danish, Prussian and Saxon army, the city fell and the King left in a small open boat making it offshore to return to Sweden, after fifteen years of campaigning, the king of Sweden actually set foot in his own country again.
Chapter 46: Venice of the North
622ff More details here on St. Petersburg and its growth; on Peter bringing in the French architect Jean-Baptiste Alexandre le Blond to develop a canal system and design aspects of the city. He ended up dying of smallpox after less than three months in Russia but he laid the plans for Peterhof; description here of the modest but beautiful French-style palace.
Chapter 47: An Ambassador Reports
633ff Eyewitness picture of Peter's Court from Hanover ambassador Friederich Christian Weber; various examples of Russian Court culture; anecdotes here guards treating Weber poorly unless he was dressed ostentatiously and had footmen walking with him; other examples of different nobles treating him rudely but then apologizing once they saw his close relationship with the Tsar; on the unbelievably heavy drinking in Russian culture; also a blurb here about people blackening their teeth (!) although this custom was fading quickly by 1721 in Russia when Weber was writing [see related mentions of this in Shimazaki Toson's wonderful book Before the Dawn]. Comments also on the strange (Russian as well as pan-European) custom of collecting giants and dwarfs, something that sounds totally strange to a modern reader's ear.
Chapter 48: The Second Journey West
643ff On the second trip Peter makes to the West, 1716-1717. Peter, now 44, is a real monarch in the eyes of the West.
646ff Peter starts marrying family members into continental European nobility; also the Holy Roman Empire and the German states start to realize that Russia is filling the power vacuum left by Sweden's decline. Peter takes part in a group invasion of Sweden in 1716 involving Danish troops, English shipping and some of the German states as well; ultimately Peter unilaterally called it off due to delays, shocking the English and Danish leadership.
653ff Peter and Catherine head towards Amsterdam, Peter for the second time, Catherine at this point is very pregnant, she traveled separately and more slowly than Peter; eventually giving birth to a son who died a day later.
Chapter 49: "The King Is a Mighty Man..."
655 Discussion here of Louis XIV who late in his reign lost his son and heir, then lost his grandson and his grandson's wife who Louis doted on, both to measles, and then the next heir, his great-grandson, died of measles as well, and then finally one other great-grandson survived measles, and see this striking quote: "he, too, had measles, but he survived the disease because his governess locked the doors and would not permit the doctors to touch him with their bleedings and emetics." [Good example here of what Nassim Taleb would call "grandmother's wisdom": they see right through all the "advanced" medical treatments and they can tell where the harm really comes from...]
656ff On Philippe, Duke d'Orleans, who was regent when Louis XV took the throne; Philippe kept a peaceful policy--in contrast with Louis XIV who was constantly at war and impoverished his country as a result. Philippe's foreign policy was based on peace, including even friendship with England; as the author puts it, it was an "entirely new diplomatic landscape in Europe"; Also, Northern Germany, threatened by Russia; England begins putting more ships in the North Sea to protect British trade in the Baltics; France, after long supporting Sweden was ready for a change. Previously, Sweden was for France a counterbalance against Austria; now France might go looking to Russia for an alliance when before they were enemies and so on. The geopolitical balance across Europe was changing.
658ff Peter plans a state visit to France, note that all expenses are paid by the host country for these kinds of things; on his entry at Calais and his trip to Paris, including his meeting with a seven-year-old King Louis XV who he swept up into his arms and hugged and kissed.
Chapter 50: A Visitor in Paris
664ff Comments on 1717-era Paris: the third largest city in Europe with only half a million citizens, smaller than London or Amsterdam; on Peter's six-week visit to the city and all the things he did, on his positive reception from the French people. Diplomatically, however, nothing resulted from this visit whatsoever.
Chapter 51: The Education of an Heir
677ff Peter returns home to find "maladministration" in his government: corruption, petty bickering, etc; also on the conflicts between Peter and his son Alexis; note that Alexis was a bit of a political football in the sense that he was a child of Peter's first wife and represented the old guard/the old aristocratic families as well as the old Orthodox clergy, all of whom may have seen Alexis coming to power as a chance for them to return to power; Peter decides that Alexis should have a western wife and a western education, and thus him sent to Dresden under the protection of Augustus of Saxony's family. Also he was set up to marry Charlotte, a princess of the House of Hanover in Germany, the author says "neither was desperately unhappy with the other"--note too shabby in the era of arranged aristocratic marriages.
685ff Alexis drinking, treating Charlotte abusively, then apologizing the next day etc.; Alexis takes a Finnish mistress captured during the war with Sweden, keeping her openly in his own house [in a lot of ways you can see a replication of his father's treatment towards his mother Eudoxia here]. She later dies shortly after her pregnancy for their second child, a son, Peter; ironically shortly after Charlotte's death Peter himself had another son by Catherine, also named Peter, giving him two potential heirs who would bypass Alexis; ultimately (and ironically) Catherine's son Peter lived only to be three and a half whereas Alexis's son Peter became Tsar Peter II.
Chapter 52: A Paternal Ultimatum
688ff Alexis, now 25, the exact opposite of his father: he is intellectual, physically lazy, quiet and contemplative; he lacks Peter's "titanic energy" and is "spectacularly ill-suited" to be the son and heir of Peter the Great; also on Alexis's fear of his father.
692ff The author quotes in full a letter from Peter to Alexis here, essentially threatening to cut him out of the succession unless he could change his personality and his priorities; [the letter is not at all persuasive in any way: I can imagine myself reading it and experiencing my own reactance to it. If you want to persuade someone of something, that persuasion has to speak to them, not to you!] Peter then sends another letter to his son Alexis with an ultimatum: either transform himself into the son Peter demands him to be and become heir to the throne, or enter a monastery and renounce the world. After more back and forth between the two of them, Alexis ultimately decides to flee Russia.
Chapter 53: Flight of the Tsarevich
700ff On Alexis's arrival to Austria, the Imperial Court in Vienna, in 1716, essentially seeking asylum from the Hapsburg emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who happened to be Peter's brother-in-law, Emperor Charles VI. They end up housing him more or less incognito in the castle of Ehrenberg. When Peter learns about this he is overcome with anger and shame, but also concern, because this could trigger and encourage dissident elements in Russia who could overturn all of Peter's reforms; Charles VI is in a difficult position here; then Alexis moves to Naples which had recently come under the Habsburg crown through the Treaty of Utrecht. Alexis also not looking particularly manly here as when he gets word that his father learned where he was, he breaks into hysterics and runs from room to room weeping and wailing.
706ff Peter sends two of his best men, including Tolstoy, to persuade Alexis to come back to Russia by whatever means necessary, including lying to him. Psychologically work on him until he is persuaded to return.
Chapter 54: The Future on Trial
711ff Peter formally denounces Alexis publicly in a formal conclave in the Kremlin. Alexis is officially disinherited and Peter Petrovich, Catherine's son, officially named heir to the throne. This seemed to end the trauma but "the terrible drama was only beginning." Peter required Alexis to name all the accomplices who knew that he was leaving the country (Peter wanted to know how far any threat to his rules had progressed, and he wanted to know if anyone had secretly sided with his son, because Alexis obviously could not have fled Russia without assistance. Alexis names names, and Peter seals off St Petersburg and captures the people involved. What follows here is a purge with a widening and widening net. On one level it looks paranoid and insane, but if you think back to Peter's experience with the Streltsy rebellion, it seems more true to form.
714ff Peter holds hearings and trials; on the torture and execution of various figures involved, including the bishop who knew about Alexis's flight; Alexis's mother Eudoxia was put in prison for a few years as well, although her lover, Glebov, was broken on the wheel and executed. Many other people were made example of: some had their noses sliced off and were knouted, many other examples. Alexis was kept near the Tsar in St. Petersburg; but then when Alexis's mistress Afrosina finally arrived to St. Petersburg to join Alexis, Peter arrested and interrogated her, and she basically betrayed Alexis without torture even being needed, and enough information about Alexis's traitorous behavior came out that a huge hearing was held to try Alexis; Peter had him knouted [!], he confessed, and then had a fit of apoplexy and died shortly after. Note that Alexis and Peter exchanged forgiveness at the end; there was also controversy about what actually happened with Alexis' death, with rumors going around about the "official" explanation [remember the first rule of modernity: the one thing you know is not true is the official explanation!], ultimately, however, Alexis confessed both to treason and to wishing his father dead [in other words lèse-majesté] and it left Peter basically no choice but to execute him, in some ways it was fortunate that Alexis died ahead of this.
728ff Note the author's own commentaries on this delicate family and political situation: he talks about "the sovereign on the throne" and "the sovereign in waiting" as two sovereigns with sometimes vastly different goals, and in the case of Alexis and Peter, in natural conflict because of their personality differences. Peter knew that what he had done to build up Russia could be easily undone by his son.
Chapter 55: Charles's Last Offensive
730ff Charles, now 34 and much wiser and humble but still warlike, still wanting to take the war with Russia to a finish; note also that Sweden was nearly out of men at this point: there were no laborers to work the fields, old men and young boys were doing all of the work throughout society, taxes were extremely high, etc.; also comments here on how men were impressed, dragged right out of church, out of the fields and instantly put into military service [this looks disturbingly like Ukraine nowadays!]. Also on Charles' advisor, Baron Georg Heinrich von Goertz, a sort of stateless man, an international adventurer who was like a mini-Talleyrand: Goertz helped Charles scrape still more resources out of his country and people; Goertz "was much-maligned and eventually ill-fated" per the author. Very interesting, however, how Goertz plays off the various members of the anti-Sweden coalition by negotiating with the Tsar directly, but then making sure word about these talks gets back to Denmark, the German states as well as England's King George; suddenly all of these countries became very willing to come to the table to negotiate with Sweden as well; thus Goertz put together a sort of coalition against the Tsar, in part thanks to the nervousness throughout Europe about the recent rise of Russian power. Sweden and Russia sat down at a negotiating table in 1718, although note this also was the period when Peter was struggling with his relationship with his son Alexis.
738ff Intransigence from Sweden, thanks to Charles XII and his unrealistic demands (despite his weak hand here) very little happened from these various talks. Next, Goertz is arrested and Charles XII is killed while besieging a town in Norway, causing the Swedish army to collapse and withdraw instantly. "[Charles] had been away [from Sweden] so long and was responsible for so many burdens of war that the general population did not mourn."
Chapter 56: King George Enters the Baltic
743ff Aftermath of Charles' death: Charles' younger sister Ulrika Eleonora comes to power over the other claimant who was Charles' nephew (the son of his older sister); Goertz was the most drastically affected by the King's death, he was arrested and tried under a trumped-up, made-up charge of "having alienated the late King's affection from his people." Basically he was the scapegoat for all of Charles's warmongering and heavy taxation over the years. It was a kangaroo court and he was doomed.
745 Note the blatant typos on this page; the book has a lot of typos, in the hundreds at least--way more than is appropriate for a formally published book.
745ff Discussion here in a footnote on Goertz and the similarities he had "the other great international adventurer of the age," Patkul, and how "both died in degradation under a Swedish axe." Also, then with the death of both Charles and Goertz, the key to ending the Great Northern War fell into "George's [George I] pudgy hands." [Nice turn of phrase!] Further comments here on George: he disliked his English subjects; he never learned English; he hated his own son, the Prince of Wales; he saw England as a tool to further his Continental aims to expand territory at the expense of the waning Sweden. Note also that George wanted to reduce Russia's power as well, so he conceived an alliance that would contain Russia, tempting away Russia's allies one by one through bribes or pressure to make a separate peace with Sweden; Russia more or less recognizes that they're being sort of double-crossed by English deceit, also Russia engages in coastal raiding of Sweden in the meantime with quite a bit of success. "Ten years before, Charles XII had been fighting one thousand miles away in the heat and dust of the Ukraine. Now, Peter's Cossack horseman rode within sight of the steeples of the capital of Sweden."
Chapter 57: Victory
754ff Now the British fleet remains in the Baltic, trying to enforce a lousy peace agreement between Russia and Sweden; Russia didn't cooperate and continued to raid coastal Sweden and evade both Swedish and British military ships while retaining normal trade with English merchants [oh, how history rhymes...]. British involvement in this drama ended with the bursting of the South Sea bubble in 1720 and with the rise of Sir Robert Walpole, "a Whig to his eyebrows," who believed in avoiding war and encouraging trade. England disengages from this drama while Sweden signaled it was ready to reopen negotiations with Russia. After 21 years of war a peace deal is signed, and Russia retains most of the territories that they had seized.
Part Five: The New Russia
Chapter 58: In the Service of the State
765ff Interesting meta-discussion here about the duties and responsibilities of the Tsar, framed in a quoted dinner conversation between Peter and his friends and lieutenants; the group converses about Peter's father Tsar Alexis, and the various achievements during Peter's father's reign. The first duty is the administration of the country and dispensation of justice; the second duty is the organization of the army; third duty is the building up of fleet and making treaties and determining relationships with foreign countries. "In the years after Poltava, Peter turned his attention from organizing armies and building fleets to a basic remodeling of the structure of civil and church administration, to modernizing and changing the economic and social patterns of the nation, and even to rechanneling the age-old trade routes of the Russia he had inherited. It was in the second half of his reign, the years between 1711 and 1725, that the fundamental Petrine reforms were fashioned."
768ff Problems with the Russian Senate; Peter's creation of a Procurator General to liaison with the Senate; then he began to experiment with the European system of ministries to handle the executive machinery of the state. Peter battles the Russian cultural predilection for bribery and corruption, he also tries to throw off the hereditary or nobility-based promotion system for various important state jobs and instead tries to promote by merit; most people in Russia basically saw the state "as a cow to be milked" [sadly, most everyone everywhere today sees the state as a cow to be milked!].
775ff Intriguing comments here on how Peter created lists of all the nobility in an effort to identify who and where everybody actually was; also by forcing people throughout Russia to send their sons to St. Petersburg to work and shipbuilding or whatever other industry. [It's interesting as well as disturbing to think about this as a government control mechanism; you can't do anything to control your people or dictate what they do unless you know who everybody is and where they are; also you have to include threats that if you don't list yourself/identify yourself you can be arrested, executed, have your land taken or whatever. An innocent interpretation of this would be to call it a reasonable identification system that helps makes sure everybody performs their proper service for the state; a less innocent interpretation would consider identification/location like this as a gigantic step talking you most of the way toward totalitarianism.]
781ff On various acts of corruption by the major leaders under Peter, including Sheremetev, Menshikov (who was the worst), Gargarin, etc.; on Peter's creation of a bureau of official informers, called "fiscals," who would track down, report and basically spy on citizens in order to find corruption; the heartily hated leader of this institution, Nesterov, was ultimately executed for corruption himself; then a long discussion here of Menshikov and the different things he tried to get away with: theft, extortion, other corruptions over the many years that he was Peter's right hand man. The degree of corruption is astounding: see for example this quote: "Does Your Majesty wish to live alone in the empire without any subjects? For we all steal. Some take a little, some take a great deal, but all of us take something." See also this quote from the "admiring contemporary" Ivan Pososhkov: "The great monarch works hard and accomplishes nothing. The Tsar pulls uphill alone with the strength of 10, but millions pull downhill."
Chapter 59: Commerce by Decree
790ff On Peter trying to grow Russia's industry, using a combination of encouragement and force; state-owned and privately-owned mining industries seem to do the best; Russia became a large iron and copper producer very quickly; see also Russia's shortage of hard currency, Peter passes laws forbidding the export of gold and silver, etc.
796ff On Peter's failed efforts to create a merchant marine so Russia could transport its own goods for export; on efforts to build canals to link up the major rivers in Russia to help get merchandise from the Caspian Sea to the major cities; comments also on Peter's attempt to raise tax revenues using a house tax and then replacing it with a "soul tax," basically a tax copied from France, levied on each person.
802 Interesting comments here on the history of serfdom in Russia: note that in the mid-16th century when Ivan the Terrible conquered Kazan and Astrachan, this opened huge amounts of rural territory previously inhabited by nomads, and hundreds of thousands of peasants abandoned their nobles to move there, leaving entire villages uninhabited in Russia; this led to laws in the 1550s forbidding peasants to leave their land. By Peter's time 95% of Russia's people were serfs: some were state peasants and others belonged to private landlords. See also Peter's 1722 decree "that serfs could not leave a landowner's estate without his written permission" which "was the origin of the internal-passport system which continues in use in the Soviet Union today."
Chapter 60: Supreme Under God
803ff Discussion of Peter's beliefs in God, on how he was more like an 18th century secular rationalist rather than a 17th century devout mystical [this is a useful paradigm, it reminds me of Rod Dreher's medieval/enchanted vs the modern/materialist view of God and religion in his book Living in Wonder]; Peter cared far more about trade and national prosperity than interpretations of scripture, but he was pragmatic believer in God. Note also he was far more tolerant of other Christian sects than typical in Orthodox Russia. He was also highly tolerant of the Orthodox Old Believers. "It is foolish to make them martyrs. They are unworthy of the honor and would not in this way be of use to the state." It turned out the Old Believers were hard workers in the mines and forges in their remote regions. Note that Peter's tolerance of them faded over time as they took on a flavor of political opposition. Also another major exception was Peter's intolerance of Jesuits: he kicked them out of the country.
810ff On the patriarch Adrian (Adrian followed into office after patriarch Nikon) and Adrian's sudden death in 1700; Peter didn't replace him with a permanent successor, but rather installed an "interim" patriarch who therefore would be less powerful, choosing Steven Yavorsky, later to be followed by Feofan Prokopovich, a man that Peter could control even more effectively; Prokopovich was more of an administrator and reformer (even a propagandist) than a cleric, and he concurred completely with Peter's plan to modernize and secularize the Russian Church; also discussion here on Peter's 1721 ecclesiastical regulations, which were inspired by Peter's travels around Europe where he learned the governance structures of various Protestant denominations like synods or assemblies; this was of course much different from one central church figure like a pope or patriarch; Peter and Prokopovich also drafted and enacted rules for the education of priests, what they had to study; the new regulations also abolished the patriarchate, replacing it with the holy governing synod, which was more of a bureaucratic institution organized along the lines of the ministries of the civil government. Note that this completely eliminated the patriarch as a potential political or spiritual rival of the Tsar. It was now more or less yet another branch of the government. Note also that this change, a radical and huge one, met with hardly any opposition from the people; this was in stark contrast from the relatively superficial changes Peter had made years earlier to church ritual, dress and dogma in the church, as well as when he imposed the whole beard shaving thing. [It's interesting how something major can be done behind the scenes, while something minor can't be done because it's visible and appears more major than it is. The governance changes of the church didn't directly touch the daily churchgoer at all, and therefore they don't think about it or even notice it, thus there was no resistance to it. I guess the takeaway here is: if you want to enforce changes, make sure they aren't that visible to the masses...]
Chapter 61: The Emperor in St. Petersburg
816ff Long discussion here on Peter's habits, his minimalism, his work habits, what he liked to eat, what he liked to wear for clothing, his preference for simple homes, his relative modesty and dislike for "magnificence of ornament" and ceremonial protocol; on his short temper and terrifying outbursts on anyone, great or small, and his failed attempts to control his temper.
826ff Discussion of Catherine, her love of luxury, in contrast with Peter; on their daughters Elizabeth and Anne; their education.
830ff On Peter's efforts to install a salon culture in Russia in imitation of Paris, various anecdotes of what happened at some of these assemblies. Also on Peter's efforts to acculturate Russia, building museums, theaters, his book collections, his founding of the Academy of Science which still exists today.
Chapter 62: Along the Caspian
840ff Shortly after the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War between Sweden and Russia, Peter marches his army into the Caucusus against Persia. On his failed efforts to develop trade and a close relationship with China; on claiming the huge Kamchatka peninsula and the Kurile Islands for Russia. Also: "In 1724, shortly before he died, Peter summoned a Danish-born captain in his fleet, Vitus Bering, and assigned him the task of leading an expedition to the periphery of the Eurasian continent a thousand miles beyond Kamchatka, to determine whether Eurasia and North America were joined by land. Bering found the strait, fifty-three miles wide and only 144 feet deep, which subsequently was named after him." Note in the years to follow Russian explorers and settlers crossed the strait, putting up a string of Russian forts and trading posts along the Alaskan coast and even as far as San Francisco; Alaska was sold by Tsar Alexander II for $7 million in 1867.
844ff Peter sends one of his men to observe the Persians; he's placed under house arrest as the Persians accurately recognize this as a probe for weaknesses; although the Russians discover that Persia is in a state of decay such that "the Shah's Caspian provinces must be ripe for plucking." After taking Derbemt Peter withdrew, running low on supplies. Peter then becomes ill of "strangury and stone"; then the following year he sends a military expedition and captures Baku and forces the Shah to cede Derbent and other regions of the Eastern Caucusus to Russia.
Chapter 63: Twilight
853ff On Peter's attempts to marry his daughters into European nobility: he fails to marry Elizabeth off into the French nobility thanks to the objections of George I of England, which had found a new entente/friendship with France. Note that Elizabeth never officially married and later became Empress of Russia; Peter's other daughter Anne married the nephew of Charles XII who was in Russia as the head of a sort of exiled Swedish court; she later gave birth to Peter III who became emperor after Elizabeth. Anne died after his birth. Also Peter III was overthrown by supporters of his own German wife who was then crowned Catherine II and known as Catherine the Great, this family occupied the Russian monarchy until its end in 1917.
858ff Peter decrees that the Tsar can have absolute power to designate his or her successor, which set the stage for his wife Catherine to take power. And then he formally crowns Catherine as empress, which was seen as much more "sensational act" [again the thing that's visible isn't really the power play it appears to be, the real power play happens out of sight!]; a whole description here of her coronation.
861ff Interesting discussion here about channels of access to Catherine and Peter: on William Mons (who was the younger brother of Peter's mistress Anna Mons from 25 years earlier) who somehow contrived a sort of monopoly on access to Catherine, and thus could present messages, petitions and appeals favorably or unfavorably to her, and he peddled that influence and access in exchange for bribes.
865ff Peter, now each 52, is an old man and infirm. His strangury and stone worsens, he develops an infection in the bladder and/or intestines, rallies, then died months later, in 1725, age 52.
Epilogue
870ff Speculation on what exactly killed Peter; discussion of the succession which settled quickly in favor of Catherine; the guard's regiment supported her, but effectively Menshikov was the real ruler. "Catherine's reign was brief." She died about two years after her accession, and Peter II took over afterwards, ironically he was the hope of the old nobility and the traditionalists but his rule was engineered also by Menshikov, Menshikov further arranged Peter II engagement to his daughter Maria, he was 11 and she was 16. [!] Peter's daughter Anne dies shortly after giving birth to Peter III; Meshikov then falls ill and loses some of his grip on power, and then is squeezed out by the emperor [the author doesn't explain what happened here all that well, but it looks like Peter II chose a new regent and everyone basically turned on Menshikov after this: his wealth was confiscated, he was exiled to Siberia in 1728, and he died the following year.
876ff Peter II, once he takes power, moves the center of Russian life back to Moscow; Peter then dies of smallpox in 1730 after just 3 years in power; then an extremely complicated succession plan follows here: the daughter of Ivan IV (Peter's half brother and co-Tsar from way back), Anne takes over, but she then dies in 1740; this leaves the throne to the grandson of her older sister Catherine, Ivan VI, who inherited the throne at age 2 months; but he was dethroned by Elizabeth at age 15 months old and held as a state prisoner in secret for the remaining 22 years of his life. Elizabeth's reign lasted 21 years until 1762, followed by the brief reign of Peter III, and then the 34-year reign of Catherine the great, Peter III's wife, who actually overthrew him to take power. [!]
877 Comment here on Peter the Great's overturning of laws of succession and giving every sovereign the power to designate his or her own heir "led to an anomaly in Russian history: Since the distant days of the Kievan state, no woman had reigned in Russia; after his death in 1725 four empresses reigned almost continuously for the next seventy-one years." Catherine's son Paul--who hated his mother--reversed Peter the great's decree on succession, reestablishing hereditary primogeniture.
878ff On the near-cult-like veneration of Peter for the remainder of the 18th century; Pushkin's "immortal poem" The Bronze Horseman; on the historical/historiographical debate between Slavophiles and Westernizers in Russia; on how Soviet historians have struggled with "what to do" with Peter: framing him as irrelevant (because individuals play no part in historical evolution per Marxism), or as an exploitative autocrat, or as a national hero defending Russia against her external enemies.
To Read:
Paul of Aleppo: The Travels of Macarius
Marjorie Bowen: William Prince of Orange
***Ragnild M. Hatton: Charles XII of Sweden
***R. Nisbet Bain: Charles XII and the Collapse of the Swedish Empire
Voltaire: A History of the Russian Empire Under Peter the Great
Vasily O. Kluchevsky: Peter the Great (trans. Liliana Archibald)
Alexander Pushkin: The Bronze Horseman (poem)