Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  * Anne's marriage was celebrated a year later in St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, her nineteen-year-old bridegroom drank himself into illness during the celebrations and died on the journey home. Anne remained Duchess of Courland until 1730 when she was summoned to St. Petersburg to become Empress Anne of Russia.

  Two days later, the victory celebration began. Beneath classical Roman arches trotted squadrons of Russian cavalry and horse-drawn artillery, followed by the foot soldiers of the Guards, the Preobrazhensky Regiment in battle-green coats, and the Semyonovsky Regiment in blue. Then came Peter, his sword drawn, riding an English horse given to him by Augustus, and wearing the same colonel's uniform he had worn at Poltava. As he passed, women threw flowers. Behind the Russian leaders were 300 captured Swedish battle flags, reversed and trailing in the dirt, then the defeated generals walking in single file, led by Field Marshal Rehnskjold and Count Piper, and finally long columns of soldiers—more than 17,000—marching as prisoners through the snowy Moscow streets. The following day, Peter attended a Te Deum mass in the Assumption Cathedral. The crowd was enormous, and the Tsar stood in the middle of the church pressed on all sides by people.

  The formal announcement of victory and the presentation of awards took place with Romodanovsky on the throne. One by one, the two field marshals, Sheremetev and Menshikov, followed by Peter as a colonel promoted to lieutenant general, approached the throne and reported their victories to the seated Mock-Tsar. Sheremetev described and was given credit for the victory at Poltava and Menshikov for the capture of the Swedes at Perevoluchna. Peter described and was given credit only for his victory at Lesnaya. On hearing their reports, Romodanovsky thanked them formally and confirmed their previously announced promotions and rewards. When Rehnskjold, Piper and the other Swedish generals were brought in, they were astonished to see on the throne, not the tall man who had been their host at dinner after the battle and had led them through the streets of Moscow, but a round-shouldered, older man whom they didn't recognize. A row of tall screens on one side of the hall was removed, revealing tables set with silver plate and candelabra. Hundreds of candles were lighted to dispel the winter gloom, and the crowd swarmed to take seats, regardless of rank. Romodanovsky sat on a dais attended by the two Field Marshals, Chancellor Golovkin and the Tsar. The Swedish generals had a separate table. Each time a toast was proposed, the master of ceremonies, standing behind Peter's armchair, fired a pistol shot out the window as a signal to the artillery and musketeers outside. A few minutes later, as glasses were raised, the walls shook with the thunder of the cannon. The day ended with a brilliant fireworks display which, according to the Danish ambassador, was far superior to one he had witnessed in London which "had cost seventy thousand pounds sterling."

  The Swedish prisoners—those taken at Poltava and the much larger number captured at Perevoluchna—had finally reached their destination, Moscow, not as conquerors but as part of a triumphal procession led by the Tsar. The senior generals were treated with courtesy; several were allowed to return to Stockholm carrying terms of peace proposed by Peter and an offer to exchange prisoners of war. Young Prince Max of Wurttemberg was released unconditionally, but died of fever on his way home; Peter gave him a military funeral and sent his body back to his mother in Stuttgart. Those Swedish officers who were willing, Peter enrolled in his own army. Once they had taken the required qath of allegiance, he awarded them the same rank they had held in the Swedish army and gave them command of Russian squadrons, battalions and regiments. None was asked to serve against his own king or compatriots in the Great Northern War. Instead, they were posted to garrisons in the south or east, where they patrolled the frontiers, holding the line against incursions by the Kuban Tatars, the Kazaks and other Asiatic peoples. The rest of the officers were dispersed as internees into all corners of Russia. At first, they were allowed considerable freedom of movement, but some who had been given permission to return on parole to Sweden never came back, and a few who had entered Russian service used their Russian rank to escape. After this abuse of trust, the rest were severly restricted.

  As the years passed, these Swedish officers, scattered through all the provinces of the Russian empire, often lived in want, as they had no money. The Swedish common soldiers received small allowances from their government at home, but nothing was sent to the officers. Of the 2,000 officers, only 200 received money from their families; the rest were obliged to learn a trade in order to feed themselves. In time, these former warriors, hitherto knowledgeable only in the art of soldiering, developed an astonishing number of talents. In Siberia alone, a thousand Swedish officers turned themselves into painters, goldsmiths, silversmiths, turners, joiners, tailors, shoemakers, makers of playing cards, snuffboxes and excellent gold and silver, brocade. Others became musicians, innkeepers and one a traveling puppeteer. Some who were unable to learn a trade became woodsmen. Still others set up schools, teaching the children of their fellow prisoners (some had summoned their wives from Sweden to join them; others had married Russian women). These children were better educated than most in Russia, learning mathematics, Latin, Dutch and French as well as Swedish. Soon, Russians in the neighborhood were sending their own children to the foreign schoolmasters. Some of the officers embraced the Russian religion and joined the Orthodox Church, while others held fast to their Protestant religion and built their own churches in the wilderness. Although Siberia generally was a bleak and joyless landscape, the Russian governor, Prince Matthew Gagarin, had a reputation for generosity, and Swedish officers living under his jurisdiction praised his warm and forgiving nature. In time, as the Westernizing of the state administration developed, Peter needed skilled administrators and bureaucrats. A number of former Swedish officers were offered positions and came to St. Petersburg to work in the newly established Colleges (Ministries) of War, the Admiralty, Justice, Finance and Mines.

  The common Swedish soldiers, over 15,000 of them, were treated more severely. They, too, were offered a chance to enter Peter's service (an entire regiment of 600 Swedish dragoons served under a German colonel against the Kuban Tatars). But many refused and were sent to do forced labor. Some worked in the mines in the Urals and others were employed in the dockyards or on the fortifications of St. Petersburg. Although records were kept of the whereabouts of interned officers, none were kept of the common soldiers. Many were in towns or on the estates of the Russian nobility, and married and settled down to life in the Russian church and Russian society. When peace finally came in 1721, twelve years after Poltava, and the Swedish prisoners were allowed to go home, only about 5,000 of Charles' proud grenadiers, the remnant of an army of 40,000, could be found to return to the towns and villages of their native Sweden.

  In the spring of 1710, Peter plucked the military fruits of Poltava. Russian armies, unopposed by any Swedish army in the field, swept irresistibly through Sweden's Baltic Provinces. While Sheremetev with 30,000 men beseiged Riga to the south, Peter sent General-Admiral Fedor Apraxin, newly made a Count and a Privy Councilor, with 18,000 men to besiege Vyborg in the north. This town at the head of the Karelian Isthmus, seventy-five miles northwest of St. Petersburg, was an important fortress and an assembly point for Swedish offensive threats against St. Petersburg. A Russian attempt on Vyborg from the land side in 1706 had failed, but now there was something new in Peter's favor. His growing Baltic fleet, consisting of frigates and numerous galleys, the latter craft propelled by a combination of sails and oars and ideally suited for maneuvering in the rocky waters of the Finnish coast, was available both to transport men and supplies and to keep Swedish naval squadrons at bay. As soon as the Neva was clear of ice, in April, Russian ships sailed from Kronstadt with Vice Admiral Cruys in command and Peter, in his new rank as rear admiral, as Cruys' deputy. The ships made their way through the ice floes in the Gulf of Finland and arrived off Vyborg to find Apraxin's besieging army cold and hungry. The fleet brought provisions and reinforcements, raising Apraxin's strength to 23,000. Peter, after stud
ying the siege plans and instructing Apraxin to take the town no matter what the cost, returned to St. Petersburg in a small vessel, narrowly escaping capture by a Swedish warship.

  During the following month, in St. Petersburg, the Tsar again was ill. At the beginning of June, learning that the siege of Vyborg was nearing an end, he wrote to Apraxin, "I hear that you intend making the assault today. If this has already been ordered, God aid you. But if it is not fixed for today, then put it off till Sunday or Monday when I can get there, for this is the last day that I take medicine and tomorrow I shall be free."

  On June 13, 1710, Vyborg with its garrison of 154 officers and 3,726 men fell to Apraxin. Peter arrived just in time to witness the surrender. The subsequent clearing and permanent occupation of Kexholm and all the Karelian Isthmus provided a northern buffer one hundred miles thick for St. Petersburg, meaning that Peter's "holy paradise" would no longer be sujected to surprise attacks by Swedish armies from the north. Relieved and happy, the Tsar wrote from Vyborg to Sheremetev, "And thus through the taking of this town, final safety has been gained for St. Petersburg." To Catherine, he wrote, "Now, by God's help, it is a strong cushion for St. Petersburg."*

  All the Swedish citadels on the southern coast of the upper

  *Through the years, Russians have continued to try to protect St. Petersburg, now Leningrad, from threats from this direction. For 109 years, while Finland was an Imperial Russian grand duchy, the threat was nonexistent, but in 1918, Finland gained independence and Vyborg and Karelia were attached to the new state. The Soviet government felt keenly the naked exposure of Leningrad, its second largest city, now only twenty miles from the Finnish frontier, and desired, as Peter had, a larger "cushion." In 1940, the Soviet Union attacked Finland primarily to regain this buffer territory. At first, the "Winter War" went badly for the Soviets. The Finns fought gallantly and attracted the admiration of the West. The Soviet army, its officer corps riddled by Stalin's purges, was stopped in its tracks. Eventually, sheer weight of numbers had an effect and the Red Army ground its way through the Finnish Mannerheim Line. The peace which followed established a new frontier in approximately the same place as in Peter's day. This extra buffer helped save Leningrad during the 900-day siege of the city between 1941 and 1943 by the Nazi and Finnish armies.

  Baltic surrendered during the summer of 1710. On July 10, the great city of Riga with its garrison of 4,500 fell to Sheremetev after an eight-month siege. The city had been pounded by 8,000 Russian mortar shells and the garrison was decimated by hunger and disease which Peter called "the wrath of God." Although Peter's agreement with Augustus had assigned Livonia and Riga to Poland, Peter now decided that the city and the province had been bought with Russian blood at Poltava at a time when Augustus was no longer King of Poland and a Russian ally. The Tsar therefore determined to keep them. Of these territories, he was to become a tolerant overlord. Although requiring an oath of allegiance from the Baltic nobility and Riga merchants, he promised to respect all of their former privileges, rights, customs, possessions and immunities. The churches were to remain Lutheran, and German was to remain the language of provincial administration. For many years, the essential problem in these provinces was simple survival, the war having reduced the land and towns to a semi-desert, but the nobility and gentry were not displeased to exchange a Swedish master for a Russian one.

  Three months after the fall of Riga, Reval—the last of the fruits of Poltava—capitulated. Peter was overjoyed. "The last town has surrendered and Livonia and Estonia are entirely cleared of the enemy," he wrote. "In a word, the enemy does not now possess a single town on the left side of the Baltic, not even an inch of land. It is now incumbent upon us to pray the Lord God for a good peace."

  Part Four

  ON THE EUROPEAN STAGE

  THE SULTAN'S WORLD

  It was extraordinarily fortunate for Peter that while he was tsar Russia never had to fight two enemies simultaneously. Poland, Moscow's traditional enemy, had been transformed into an ally by the treaty of 1686. The war with Turkey, reignited by Peter's two campaigns to seize Azov, had been suspended by a thirty-year armistice signed in August 1700, after which Peter could join Poland and Denmark in an attack on Sweden. Through the perilous years before Poltava when Charles XII seemed invincible and a Turkish-Swedish alliance would have sealed Russia's fate, the Sultan kept the peace. Only after Poltava, when the Swedish army had disintegrated into a column of prisoners, did the Ottoman Empire ponderously decide to make war on the Tsar. Even then, because of over-optimism on Peter's part and betrayal by one of his new Balkan Christian allies, this campaign had near-catastrophic results for Russia.

  The Ottoman Empire, every hectare conquered by the sword, stretched over three continents. The sweep of the sultan's rule was greater than that of a Roman emperor. It embraced the whole of southeastern Europe. It stretched westward across the entire coast of Africa to the Moroccan border. It touched the shores of the Caspian Sea, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The Black Sea was an Ottoman lake. Great cities as distant and as different as Algiers, Cairo, Bagdad, Jerusalem, Athens and Belgrade were ruled from Constantinople. Twenty-one modern nations have.been created from the former territories of the Ottoman Empire.*

  Within this immense sweep of mountains, deserts, rivers and fertile valleys lived some twenty-five million people, a huge number in that day, almost twice the population of any European empire or kingdom except France. The empire was Moslem; it

  *Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Albania, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Aden, Kuwait, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Tunisia, Algeria, Cyprus, not to mention huge stretches of the Soviet Ukraine, Crimea, the Caucasus, Armenia and George.

  surrounded, in the heart of Arabia, the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, whose sacred shrines it was the sultan's personal responsibility as caliph to protect. Among the Moslem peoples, the Ottoman Turks were the dominant minority, but there were also Arabs, Kurds, Crimean Tatars, Circassians, Bosnians and Albanians. The sultan also ruled over millions of Christian subjects: Greeks, Serbs, Hungarians, Bulgars, Walachians and Moldavians.

  Almost necessarily, the political bonds that tied such a polyglot of peoples and religions were flexible and loose. From Constantinople, the sultan ruled, but his rule was administered locally by a bevy of pashas, princes, viceroys, beys, khans and emirs, some of them autonomous in all but name. The Christian princes of the rich Balkan provinces of Walachia and Moldavia, lying between the Danube and the Carpathians (present-day Romania), were personally chosen by the sultan, but once in office, their allegiance was manifested solely by payment of annual tribute. Every year, wagons loaded with gold and other tax monies arrived from the north before the gates of Sublime Porte in Constantinople. The Tatar Khan of the Crimea ruled his peninsula as an absolute lord from his capital, Bakhchisarai, owing only the duty to bring himself and 20,000 to 30,000 horsemen when summoned to the sultan's wars. Twelve hundred miles to the west, the Barbary states of Tripoli, Tunis and Algeria obliged their Ottoman master in war by diverting their fast corsair ships, normally engaged in lucrative peacetime piracy against all nations, to attack the fleets of the great Christian naval powers, Venice and Genoa.

  In the sixteenth century, under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566), the Ottoman Empire had reached its zenith. This was a golden age for Constantinople, when great wealth poured into the city, a dozen beautiful imperial mosques were built and sparkling pleasure palaces sprang up along the shores of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. Suleiman himself was a patron of literature, the arts and science; he loved music, poetry and philosophy. But first he was a warrior. Along the great military road that led north to Belgrade, Buda and finally Vienna, the Ottoman armies marched, leaving mosques and minarets scattered across the Balkan hills and valleys. Outraged by these visible signs of Moslem occupation, the Christian kingdoms of the West saw the Turks as oppressors of the Greeks and other Christian peoples of the East. But the Ottoman
Empire, more generous in this respect than most Western kingdoms, tolerated religions other than its own. The Sultan formally recognized the Greek Church and acknowledged the jurisdiction of its patriarch and archbishops, and Orthodox monasteries retained their property. The Turks preferred to rule through local political institutions, and in return for tribute, Christian provinces were permitted their own systems of government, rank and class structure.

  In a curious way, the Ottoman Turks paid the highest compliment to their Christian subjects: They recruited them to fill the ranks of their own central imperial administration and to form the special regiments of the sultan's guard, the Janissaries. In the subject Balkan provinces, conversion to the Moslem faith was the key to success for bright young Christian boys who were sent—at first by force—to Moslem schools, and given a rigorous education designed to purge every memory of mother, father, brothers and sisters, and to eradicate every trace of the Christian religion. Their only allegiance was to the Koran and the sultan, and they became a corps of fearless and devoted followers, available for any service. The most intelligent might serve as pages in the palace or apprentices in the civil service and might rise to the very top of the imperial administration. Many distinguished men followed this path, and the mighty Ottoman Empire was often administered by men who had been born as Christians.