Peter the Great (71 page)

—Altona, November 23, 1716

Petrushka has cut his fourth tooth; God grant he cut all so well, and that we may see him grow up, thus rewarding us for our former grief over his brothers.

Two years later, Catherine writes to Peter about this same son.

—July 24, 1718

I and the children, thank God, are in good health. Although on my way back to Petersburg, Petrushka was a little weak with his last teeth, yet now with God's help he is quite well and has cut three back teeth. I beg you. little father, for protection against Petrushka, for he has no little quarrel with me about you; namely, because 394 when I tell him that Papa has gone away he does not like it, but he likes it better and becomes glad when I say that Papa is here.

—Reval, August 1, 1718

Thanks, my friend, for the figs, which came safely. I have had myself shorn here and send you my shorn locks, though I know they will not be received.

In July, 1723, only eighteen months before he died, Peter wrote again from Reval, where he had built himself a small white stucco house and Catherine an ornate pink palace.

The garden planted only two years ago has grown beyond belief, for the only big trees which you saw have in some places stretched their branches across the walk. . . . The chestnuts all have fine crowns. The house is being plastered outside, but is ready within and, in one word, we have hardly anywhere such a handsome house. I send you some strawberries which ripened before our arrival, as well as cherries. I am quite astonished that things are so early here, when it is in the same latitude as Petersburg.

It is reassuring to read these letters. Not many parts of Peter's life were as unblemished and happy as his relationship with Catherine. Through these letters, we have the satisfaction of knowing that a man whose childhood was stained with horror, whose public life was filled with struggle, and whose family life saw the appalling tragedy of the Tsarevich Alexis, did at least have some moments of felicity. In Catherine, Peter found an island amidst the storms.

29

THE HAND OF THE AUTOCRAT

In
the early years of war—indeed, throughout his reign—Peter was constantly on the move. Nine years passed between the battles of Narva and Poltava; during this time, the Tsar was never more than three months in a single place. Now in Moscow, now in St. Petersburg, now in Voronezh; then on to Poland, Lithuania and Livonia, Peter traveled incessantly, everywhere inspecting, organizing, encouraging, criticizing, commanding. Even in his beloved Petersburg, he hurried back and forth between houses in different parts of the city. If he stayed under one roof for more than a week, be became restless. He ordered his carriage—he would go to see how a ship was building, how a canal was proceeding, what was being accomplished with the new harbor at Petersburg or Kronstadt. Traveling back and forth over the immense distances of his empire, the Tsar broke every precedent before the eyes of his astonished people. The time-honored image of a distant sovereign, crowned, enthroned and immobile in the white-walled Kremlin, bore no resemblance to this black-eyed, beardless giant dressed in a green German coat, black three-cornered hat and high, mud spattered boots, stepping down from his carriage into the muddy streets of a Russian town, demanding beer for his thirst, a bed for the night and fresh horses for the morning.

Overland travel in this time was a trial for the spirit and a torment for the body. Russian roads were little more than rutted tracks across meadows or through forests. Rivers were crossed by dilapidated bridges, crude ferries or shallow fords. The human beings one encountered were impoverished, frightened and sometimes hostile. In winter, wolves prowled nearby. Because of mud and potholes, carriages moved slowly and often broke down; over some stretches, five miles was all that could be covered in a day. Inns were rare and travelers looked for beds in private houses. Horses—even when the driver carried an official order that they must be provided—were difficult to find, and usually could be used over a distance of no more than ten miles, after which they had to be unharnessed and returned to their owner while the traveler and his driver searched for fresh animals. Under such conditions, a journey was often interrupted by long, unexpected delays. When St. Petersburg was rising, Peter ordered a new road, 500 miles long, between the new city and the old capital of Moscow. The trip between the two cities took four to five weeks. Later in his reign, the Tsar demanded a straighter road, along the line of the present railroad, which would have shortened the distance by 100 miles. Eighty miles of this new highway had been completed with the project was abandoned. The lakes, swamps and forests in the area of Novgorod made an impenetrable barrier.

In fairness, the condition of Russian roads was not unique in the early eighteenth century. In 1703, it took fourteen hours to travel from London to Windsor, a distance of twenty-five miles. Daniel Defoe, writing in 1724, declared of his country's highways, "It is a prostitution of the language to call them turnpikes." One was "vile, a narrow causeway cut into ruts"; others were "execrably broke into holes . . . sufficient to dislocate one's bones." Although stagecoaches were being introduced into Western

Europe and larger cities had famous and comfortable travelers' inns like the Golden Bull in Vienna, land journeys still were difficult. To cross the Alps'from Vienna to Venice during the winter, passengers had to descend from their carriages and go part of the way on foot across the snow.

The difference between Russia and Western Europe lay less in the frightful, pocked surface of the roads than in the wildness and vastness of the surrounding country. Early in April 1718, Friedrich Weber, the Hanoverian minister to Russia, set out from Moscow to St. Petersburg: "We had over twenty open rivers to pass, where there were neither bridges nor ferries," he wrote. "We were obliged to make floats for ourselves as well as we were able, the country people who were not accustomed to see travelers that way, being fled, upon our coming, with their children and horses into the woods. In all my lifetime I never had a more troublesome journey, and even some of our company who had traveled over a great part of the world protested that they never underwent the like fatigues before."

Because of the difficulty of traveling by road, Russians looked forward eagerly to the alternatives of travel by water or across the snow. The great rivers of Russia were always primary avenues of internal trade. Boats and barges carried grain, timber and flax on the broad waters of the Volga, the Don, the Dnieper, the Dvina and, later, the Neva. Travelers to and from Europe often elected to journey by sea. Before the Baltic was opened to them, Russian ambassadors sailed for Western Europe from Archangel, preferring the icebergs and storms of the Arctic Ocean to the discomforts of overland travel.

But in Peter's Russia, the most popular means of travel was by sled in winter. First, the frost froze the autumn mud and hardened the roads; then the falling snow covered everything with a smooth, slippery surface over which a horse could pull a sled at twice the speed of a carriage in summer. Rivers and lakes, frozen hard as steel, made easy highways between the towns and villages. "Travel by sled is certainly the most commodious and swiftest traveling in the world either for passengers or for goods," wrote John Perry. "The sleds, being light and conveniently made, and with little labor to the horses, slide smooth and easy over the snow and ice." It cost only one quarter as much to move goods on runners as on wheels. Therefore, through the autumn Russian merchants piled up their goods, awaiting the coming of winter to transport them to market. Once the blanket of snow had fallen, the sleds were loaded and every day several thousands arrived in Moscow, both horses and drivers wreathed in steaming breath, the mingle with the city's crowds.

Out in the country, the main roads were marked by high posts painted red and long avenues of trees planted on both sides of the road. "These posts and trees are useful," observed a Dutch traveler, "because in winter it would be difficult to find the way without them, all being covered with snow." Every twelve or fifteen miles, an inn had been built, at Peter's command, to provide shelter for travelers.

Noblemen and important persons traveled in closed sleds which were in fact small carriages painted red, green and gold, mounted on runners rather than wheels, and drawn by two, four or six horses. If the journey was long, the carriage-sleigh became a moving cocoon from which the traveler emerged only at the journey's end. As Weber described such travel:

It would be impossible for a traveler to bear the immense cold in Russia, were it not for the convenient contrivance of their sleds. The upper part of the sled is so closely shut and covered that not the least air can enter. On both- sides are small windows and two shelves to hold provisions and books taken along for pastime. Overhead hangs a lantem with wax candles to be lighted when night comes. In the lower part of the sled lies the bedding with which the traveler is covered night and day, having at his feet warm stones, or a pewter case filled with warm water to keep the sled warm and to preserve the adjoining box in which wine and brandy are kept against the frost. Notwithstanding all such precautions, the strongest liquors very often freeze and are spoiled. In this movable apartment a man is carried along night and day without stepping out, except in case of necessity.

In this kind of sled, Peter, by frequent changing of horses, sometimes covered as much as one hundred miles a day.

Carriage, horseback, sled, river barge and boat—these were the means by which Peter traveled across Russia. "He has," wrote Perry, "traveled twenty times more than ever any prince in the world did before him." Despite his restlessness, he did not travel for the love of travel; instead, it was his method of governing. Always, he wanted to see what was happening and whether his orders were being carried out. Accordingly, he came, inspected, issued new orders and moved on. Riding in carriages—bouncing on inadequate springs—across roads filled with holes and ruts, his body never at ease, his backbone constantly swaying against the seat, his head bumping the leather walls when he dozed, his arms and elbows jostling against his companions, the grating noise of the wheels, the shouts of the coachmen—this was Peter's life, hour after hour, day after day, week after week. No wonder he traveled by water whenever he could. What a relief it must have been to glide along by barge or yacht, standing quietly on deck and watching villages, fields and forests slip past.

* * *

Peter's constant movement made administration of his government confused and difficult. The Tsar was rarely in his capital. Many of the laws of Russia were decrees written by his hand on brown paper either in his carriage or in the inn or house in which he passed the night. Whenever he set himself to work seriously at civic administration, either the war or an urgent desire to see his ships pulled him away. Meanwhile, in Moscow, the nominal seat of government until Poltava, the bureaucracy of the central government lumbered along, and gradually a number of changes in the structure of government were made. The old official hierarchy of boyars and lesser nobles was fading in importance; the men closest to Peter—Menshikov, for example—had not been made boyars at all. Menshikov was a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire and bore that title in Russia. Peter's other companions were given the Western titles of Count and Baron; indeed, boyars like Sheremetev and Golovin now preferred to be called Count Sheremetev and Count Golovin. Government officials received new Western bureaucratic titles, such as chancellor, vice chancellor and privy councilor.

Along with the titles, the men who held them were changing. When Fedor Golovin, who had succeeded Lefort as General-Admiral and also served as Chancellor (Foreign Minister), died of fever in 1706 at the age of fifty-five, the Tsar divided his titles and duties among three men: Fedor Apraxin who became General-Admiral, Gavril Golovkin who took over the foreign ministry and was appointed Chancellor after Poltava, and Peter Shafirov who became Vice Chancellor. Apraxin was well connected: he was descended from an old boyar family and he was also the brother of the Tsaritsa Martha, Tsar Fedor's wife. He was a bluff, hearty, blue-eyed man, enormously proud, who accepted insults from no one, not even the Tsar. Apraxin served Peter in many ways: as a general, a governor, a senator, but his real love—rare among Peter's subjects—was the navy. He became the first Russian admiral and commanded the new fleet at its first major victory, the Battle of Hango.

Golovkin was a more prudent, calculating man, but he too served Peter faithfully all his life. The son of a high official of Tsar Alexis, he was a page at court and became, at seventeen, one of five-year-old Peter's gentlemen of the bedchamber. At the Battle of Narva, Golovkin displayed great bravery and was awarded the Order of St. Andrew. Most correspondence to and from Russian diplomats abroad was addressed to him and signed by him (although Peter often read and corrected the outgoing instructions.) Golovkin's portrait shows a handsome, intelligent face, encased in an elegant wig; it cannot show the personal stinginess for which he was widely famous.

The most interesting of these three senior lieutenants was Peter Shafirov, raised from obscurity to become, in 1710, Russia's first baron. Shafirov was from a Jewish family that lived in the Polish frontier region around Smolensk, but his father had converted to Orthodoxy and found work as a translator in the Russian foreign office.* Peter Shafirov followed the same path, serving as a translator for Fedor Golovin whom he accompanied on the Great Embassy. His knowledge of Western languages included Latin and his skill at drafting diplomatic documents brought him promotion to private secretary in 1704, director of the foreign office under Golovkin in 1706, the Vice Chancellorship in 1709, then a barony, and the Order of St. Andrew in 1719. Shafirov was a large, double-chinned man with a contented smile and wise and watchful eyes. Over the years, Shafirov's relationship with Golovkin degenerated into mutual hatred, although Peter, needing both men, forced each to remain at his post. Foreign diplomats respected Shafirov. "It is true, he had a very hot temper," said one, "but one could always rely fully upon his word."