Peter the Great (32 page)
To govern Russia in his absence, Peter established a three-man regency council. The first two were his uncle Lev Naryshkin and Prince Boris Golitsyn, both faithful and trusted older men who had advised his mother during the years of exile at Preobrazhenskoe and who had guided his party during the final crisis with Sophia. The third regent was Prince Peter Prozorovsky, the Tsar's treasurer, who suffered from the strange malady of being unwilling to touch the hand of another person or even to open a door least he contaminate himself. Nominally subordinate to these three men, but in fact the real viceroy of Russia during Peter's absence, was Prince Fedor Romodanovsky, the Governor-General of Moscow, commander of the four regiments of the Guard and Prince-Caesar of the Jolly Company. Given supreme jurisdiction in all civil and military cases and charged with maintaining order, Romodanovsky was sternly commanded to deal in the severest manner with any flickerings of discontent or rebellion. Alexis Shein, the generalissimo of the successful Azov expedition, was left in command of Azov, while Boris Sheremetev, leaving on his own private three-year journey to Rome, was replaced on the Dnieper frontier by Prince Jacob Dolgoruky.
On the eve of the Embassy's departure, Peter was happily
celebrating at !a banquet at Lefort's mansion when a messenger brought disquieting news. As Gordon wrote in his diary, "A merry night has been spoiled by an accident of discovering treason against his Majesty." Three men—a colonel of the Streltsy, Ivan Tsykler, and two boyars—were seized and accused of plotting against Peter's life. The evidence was thin. Tsykler had been one of the first of Sophia's officers to go to Troitsky and cast in his lot with Peter. For this switch of alliance he had expected great rewards, and had been disappointed; now, he was being sent to serve in the garrison at Azov. Disgruntled, he may have expressed his discontent too publicly. The two boyars involved were outspoken men who were representative of a rising tide of complaint about the style and direction of Peter's rule: The Tsar had deserted his wife and the Kremlin; he maintained his shameful relations with foreigners in the German Suburb; he had lowered the dignity of the throne by walking in the Azov victory parade behind the carriage of the Swiss Lefort; now he was abandoning them to spend many months with foreigners in the West.
Unfortunately, their grumbling touched a raw nerve in Peter's character: Once again, the Streltsy were mixed up in charges of treason. His fear and loathing of them boiled forth. The three men were bloodily executed on Red Square, losing first their arms and legs to the axe, and then their heads. In addition, Peter's fear that their dissent might be only the pr
elude to an attempted Miloslavs
ky restoration stirred him to a lurid act of contempt against that family. The coffin of Ivan Miloslavsky, who had been dead for fourteen years, was placed on a sledge, yoked to a team of swine and dragged into Red Square. There, the coffin was opened beneath the execution block, so that the blood of the newly condemned men would spatter the face of the corpse.
Five days after this barbaric scene in Moscow, the Great Embassy set out to study the civilization and technology of the West. On March 20, 1697, the Embassy departed for Novgorod and Pskov in a long procession of sledges and baggage wagons. Among the bulky carts were gorgeous costumes of silk and brocade sewn with pearls and jewels for use by Lefort and the other ambassadors in formal audiences, a large consignment of sable furs to be used to cover expenses where gold, silver or bills on Amsterdam would not suffice, an immense supply of honey, salmon and other smoked fish, and Peter's personal drum.
Crossing the Russian frontier, the Great Embassy entered the Swedish-held Baltic province of Livonia (whose territory was generally that of modern Latvia). Unfortunately, the Swedish governor of Riga, Eric Dahlberg, was completely unprepared for so large a group and especially for the distinguished visitor concealed in its ranks. For this, the Russian Governor of Pskov, the Russian town nearest the frontier, was partly at fault. He had been ordered to make arrangements, but in his letter to Dahlberg he neglected to mention either the size of the visiting Embassy or, more importantly, what august personage would be traveling incognito along with it. Dahlberg had replied with a formal letter of welcome, saying he would do everything possible "with neighborly friendliness." He pointed out, however, that his reception would necessarily be pinched because of a disastrous harvest that had brought the province to the brink of famine. To make matters worse, in addition to inadequate advance warning, there was a missed connection. Dahlberg sent carriages with an escort of cavalry to the frontier to bring the Tsar's ambassadors into Riga in diplomatic style. Because the important members of the Embassy, Peter included, were traveling ahead of the main party, they missed this welcome. Just outside Riga, when the carriages and escort finally caught up with the ambassadors, the Swedes offered a second reception and staged a military parade to make amends.
Had this been the only mishap and had Peter been able to pass through Riga quickly and cross the River Dvina* as intended, all might still have been well. But he arrived in early spring just as the ice was breaking in the river, which flowed beneath the city walls. There was no bridge, and the large ice floes in the river made crossing by boat impossible. For seven days, Peter and the Russian party were forced to wait in the city for the ice to melt.
Although impatient and anxious to leave, Peter initially was pleased by the honor done to his ambassadors. Every time they came or went from the citadel, a salute of twenty-four guns roared out.
Riga, the capital of Livonia, was a Protestant Baltic city of tall, thin church spires, gabled roofs, cobbled streets and thriving independent merchants, totally different from Pskov and Russia not far away. Riga was also a major citadel and a powerful anchor of the Swedish Baltic empire, and, with this in mind, the Swedish hosts were nervous about these Russian visitors and - especially about the presence of the inquisitive twenty-four-year-old Tsar. Predictably, Peter was determined to study the city's fortifications. Riga was a modern fortress, carefully constructed on the latest Western lines by Swedish military engineers. As such, it was far more powerful and thus more interesting to Peter than the old-style fortifications of simple walls and towers which characterized all Russian fortresses, including the Kremlin, and which Peter had
*The river emptying into the White Sea at Archangel is also called Dvina, The Archangel Dvina is often called the North Dvina and the river at Riga, the West Dvina.
faced and conquered at Azov. Here was stone-fa
ced bastions and palisaded cont
e
r
scarpes built after the model of the French master Vauban. To Peter, it was a rare opportunity and he meant to make the most of it. He climbed over the ramparts, made pencil sketches, measured the depth and width of the moats, and studied the angles of fire of the cannon at the embrasures.
Peter regarded his own activity as that of a student studying a modem fortress in the abstract, but the Swedes understandably saw it somewhat differently. To them, Peter was a monarch and military commander whose father's army had besieged this city only forty years before. The fortress which Peter was examining and measuring with such care had been erected specifically to protect the city from the Russians and to prevent Russian penetration to the Baltic coast. Thus, the sight of the tall young man standing on their ramparts working with his sketch pad and measuring tapes was unnerving. In addition, there was the problem of Peter's incognito. One day, a Swedish sentry, observing the foreigner copying details into a notebook, ordered him away. Peter ignored the sentry and persisted in his activity. Raising his musket, the Swedish soldier threatened to fire. Peter was outraged, regarding this not so much as an insult to rank as a breach of hospitality. Lefort, as First Ambassador, protested to Dahlberg. The Swedish Governor, whatever his private feelings at this reconnaissance of his fortifications, apologized and assured the ambassador that no discourtesy had been intended. Lefort accepted the explanation and agreed that the soldier should not be punished for doing his duty.
Nevertheless, relations between the Swedish hosts and Russian guests continued to deteriorate. Dahlberg was in a difficult position. The Russian Great Embassy was not officially accredited to the Swedish court. In addition, the fact that the Tsar was present did not wish his presence acknowledged created thorny protocol problems. Dahlberg, therefore, was formally polite, doing what protocol demanded for important ambassadors of a neighboring monarch, but nothing more. No entertainment was planned; there were no banquets, no fireworks, no amusements of the sort Peter enjoyed. The stiff, cold Swedish commander simply withdrew and—it seemed to the Russians—ignored them. Also, as the Embassy was not bound for Sweden itself, but only in transit through Swedish territory, the normal diplomatic procedure by which the host country paid the expenses of diplomatic visitors was not observed. The Russians were left to pay for their own food, lodgings, horses and fodder, and for these the ambassadors paid a price inflated by famine and the desire of Riga merchants to extract as much as they could from the visitors.
In addition to feeling these grievances, Peter was increasingly irritated by the crowds that came to stare at him. When finally, after a week, the ice was sufficiently melted so that they could cross the river, Dahlberg attempted to send his visitors off in style. Boats carrying the royal yellow-and-blue flag of Sweden ferried the Russian Embassy across the river while, from the fortress, cannon thundered in salute. But it was too late. In Peter's mind, Riga was a city of meanness, inhospitality and insults. As he traveled around Europe, Riga suffered further by contrast. In most of the other cities Peter visited, the reigning sovereign was there to greet him, and even though Peter insisted on his incognito, these electors, kings and even the Austrian Emperor always found a way to meet him privately, to entertain him lavishly and to pay his bills.
Peter's antagonism toward Riga rankled deeply. Three years later, needing excuses for beginning the Great Northern War against Sweden, he cited his rude reception by Riga. And thirteen years later, in 1710, when Russian troops surrounded the city and began the siege that led to its capture and incorporation for over two centuries into the Russian empire, Peter himself was present to fire the first three shells into the city. "Thus," he wrote to Menshikov, "the Lord God has enabled us to see the beginning of our revenge on this accursed place."
Once across the Dvina, Peter entered the Duchy of Courland, whose capital, Mitau, was thirty miles south of Riga. Nominally a fief to the Polish kingdom, Courland was sufficiently distant from Warsaw to maintain a practical autonomy, and with Poland now disintegrating, the Duke of Courland was almost his own master. Here, there was no question of making the mistake that Dahlberg had made in Riga. The Tsar was the Tsar; the incognito would be respected, but everyone would know
who
was incognito. Thus, although his duchy was poor, Duke Frederick Casimir honored the Embassy with lavish entertainment. "Open tables were kept everywhere with trumpets and music attended by feasting and excessive drinking as if His Tsarish Majesty had been another Bacchus. I have not yet seen such hard drinkers," wrote one of the Duke's ministers. Lefort's drinking was especially notable. "It never overcomes him, but he always continues master of his reason." The Russians, it was whispered by the foreigners among them, were really no more than "baptized bears."
Knowing that the Tsar loved the water, the Duke of Courland arranged to charter a yacht so that his guest could make the next stage of his journey by sea. Peter's destination was Konigsberg, then a town in the large and powerful North German electoral state of Brandenburg. On hand in the town to welcome the Tsar was the Elector himself, Frederick III. A member of the ambitious House of Hohenzollem, Frederick had expansive plans for himself and his domains. His dream was to transform his electorate into a powerful kingdom to be known as Prussia, and to transform himself into Frederick I, King of Prussia. The title could be granted by the Hapsburg Emperor in Vienna, but the real augmentation of power could come only at the expense of Sweden, whose fortresses and territories were spread along the coast of North Germany. Frederick was anxious for Russian support as a counterweight to Sweden. And here, as if in answer to his need, came the Tsar himself, intending to pass through the territory of Brandenburg. Naturally, Frederick was in Konigsberg to greet him.
Peter, traveling by sea, slipped into Konigsberg and came ashore at night. He took a modest lodging and made a private visit to the Elector. The first conversation lasted an hour and a half while the two rulers discussed ships, gunnery and navigation. Thereafter, Frederick took Peter hunting near his country house, and together they watched a fight between two bears. Peter astonished his hosts by playing loudly on the trumpet and drum, and his curiosity, liveliness and readiness to be pleased made a favorable impression.
Eleven days later, the horseman and wagons of the Russian Great Embassy arrived by road, and Peter watched from a window to see how they were received. Frederick granted them a handsome expense allowance for their visit and served a magnificent welcoming dinner, followed by fireworks. Peter along with the other young noblemen of the Embassy attended in a scarlet coat with gold buttons. Later, Frederick confessed that he had had to struggle to keep a straight face when, as dictated by protocol, he had asked the ambassadors for news of the Tsar and whether they had left him in excellent health.
In their negotiations, Frederick was anxious to reconfirm an old alliance which Tsar Alexis had made with Brandenburg against Sweden, but Peter, still at war with Turkey, was unwilling to do anything which might provoke the Swedes. Finally, in talks aboard the Elector's yacht, the two monarchs agreed on a new treaty, promising generally to help each other against their mutual enemies. Frederick also asked the Tsar to assist in his campaign to promote himself to king. Peter agreed to treat the Elector's ambassadors in Moscow at the same level as that accorded to his own ambassadors in Brandenburg; this was vague, but it was something that Frederick could use in making his case to the Emperor in Vienna.