Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  Although Peter tried to cast off his unhappiness at losing a son and thought for the moment that he was getting better, little Paul's death seemed to aggravate his fever and he remained in bed for another month. Catherine found him there when she arrived in Amsterdam. Because of this illness, Peter did not meet the stolid Hanoverian who had become England's King. When George I passed through Holland to board his ship for England, Peter sent Tolstoy and Kurakin to call on him, but the Russian envoys were not received. Later, George I apologized, saying that he had been already on board the ship and had had to sail with the tide.

  When he began to feel better, Peter enjoyed his stay in Holland. Catherine was with him, and he devoted himself to revisiting and showing her the places where he had been happy as a young man. He returned to Zaandam with Catherine and saw again the East India Company wharf where he had built a frigate. He journeyed to Utrecht, the Hague, Leyden and Rotterdam. And in the spring, if his plans worked out, he would at last visit Paris and see the city renowned throughout the world for its culture, its elegant society and its architectural splendor.

  49

  "THE KING IS A MIGHTY MAN

  The France which Peter proposed to visit in 1717 was like a vast, intricately complex system of orbiting spheres whose sun, once the source of warmth, life and meaning for the whole, was now extinct. On September 1, 1715, Louis XIV, the Sun King, died at the age of seventy-six, after a reign which had lasted seventy-two years. For thirty-five of those years, Louis' reign had run parallel to that of Peter, the other great monarch of the time. But Louis and Peter were of different generations, and as Peter's influence and Russia's power had grown, the Sun King's glory had begun to fade.

  Louis' last years were blighted by domestic tragedy; his only surviving legitimate child, his heir, the colorless Grand Dauphin, who was terrified of his father, died in 1711. The new Dauphin, the dead man's son and the King's grandson, was the Due de Bourgogne, a handsome, charming, intelligent young man who embodied France's hopes for the future. His beautiful wife, Marie Adelaide of Savoy, was almost more brilliant than he. Brought as a child bride to Versailles, she grew up in the presence of the aging King, who doted on her. It was said that of all the women he had ever loved, he never loved any as much as his grandson's bride. Suddenly, in 1712, both the new Dauphin and his gay young wife were gone, dead of measles within a week of each other, he at thirty, she at twenty-seven. Their eldest son, Louis' great-grandson, became the next Dauphin. Within a few days, he died of the same disease.

  There remained to the seventy-five-year-old King only one great-grandson, a pink-cheeked child of two, the last surviving infant in the direct line. 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. This new little Dauphin remained miraculously alive and lived to rule France for fifty-nine years as Louis XV. On his deathbed, Louis XIV called for his great-grandson and heir who by then was five. Face to face, these two Bourbons who between them ruled

  France for 131 years regarded each other. Then the Sun King said, "My child, you will one day be a great king. Do not imitate me in my taste for war. Always relate your actions to God and make your subjects honor Him. It breaks my heart to leave them in such a state."

  On the sun King's death, Versailles was quickly deserted. The great rooms were stripped of furniture, the magnificent court was dissolved. The new King lived in the Tuileries in Paris, and sometimes strollers in the garden could see him, a chubby, pink-cheeked boy with long, curling hair, long eyelashes and a lengthening Bourbon nose.

  The ruling power in France had passed into the hands of a regent—Louis XIV's nephew, Philippe, Due d'Orleans, who was the First Prince of the Blood and the direct heir to the throne after the boy King. In 1717, Philippe was forty-two, small, robust and a heroic womanizer: noblewomen, girls from the opera, girls from the street. He savored whores especially and liked to try out new girls as soon as they arrived in Paris. He cared not a whit whether the women were beautiful or ugly. His mother admitted, "He is quite crazy about women. Provided they are good-tempered, indelicate, great eaters and drinkers, he troubles little about their looks." Once when she said something to Philippe about this last point, he countered amiably, "Bah, Maman, at night all cats are gray."

  The Regent's private suppers at the Palais Royal were the talk of France. Behind barricaded doors, he and his friends lay on couches and dined with women from the opera ballet who wore flimsy, transparent dresses and later danced naked. The Regent not only cared nothing for convention; he delighted in shocking it. His language at the table was so gross that his wife refused to invite anyone to dinner. He scorned religion and once brought a book by Rabelais to mass and read from it ostentatiously during the service. His wife, a daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, bore him eight children and spent most of her time locked in her room, suffering from migraines.

  Under the circumstances, many in France feared for the life of the young King Louis XV. For if something happened to the boy, the Regent would become king. In fact, these fears were groundless. Philippe d'Orleans, for all his grossness, had many good qualities. He was humane and compassionate as well as sensual, and his sins did not include personal envy or ambition. He had great charm of voice and smile, and when he wished, his manners and gestures were graceful and eloquent. He was fascinated by science and art. His suite in the Palais Royal was hung with Titians and Van Dycks, and he wrote chamber music which still is played today. He was completely devoted to the small boy placed in his charge, and desired only to protect the throne until the King reached his majority. He began work at six a.m., no matter how hard he had debauched the night before. None of his co-hedonists, male or female, had the slightest effect on his decisions or policy. He saw clearly the desperate state of poverty to which his glorious uncle's martial adventures had reduced his country. During the eight years of Philippe's regency, except for a fracas with Spain, French soldiers stayed in their barracks. Philippe's foreign policy was based on peace. Even more incredible to all of Europe, the cornerstone of this new French policy was friendship with England.

  Shortly before Peter's visit to Paris, the pattern of many years in Western Europe had been broken by a series of dramatic events. The fall of the Whig ministry in England had stripped Marlborough of his power, and the Anglo-Dutch invasion of northern France had ground to an inconclusive halt. The new Tory ministry was anxious for peace, and the exhausted, aging Sun King had been happy to agree. Peace was signed in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht, and the great War of the Spanish Succession, which had engulfed all the kingdoms and empires of Western Europe, ended. Soon after, the Sun King himself was gone. In England, too, a royal death occurred. Queen Anne died, leaving no Protestant Stuart heir, all sixteen of her children having died in infancy or childhood. In order to ensure the Protestant succession, as agreed by Parliament in advance, the Elector of Hanover, George Louis, ascended the throne of England as King George I while retaining his rule over Hanover.

  Taken as a whole, these events created an entirely new diplomatic landscape in Europe. With peace among themselves, the nations of the West could devote more attention to what, for them, had^ been a secondary threater: the War in the North. England, which had emerged from the War of the Spanish Succession virtually unchallenged in its supremacy at sea, was concerned that the growing power of Russia in the Baltic might affect British trade in that area, and powerful British naval squadrons began to appear in that northern sea. Hanover was also hostile to Peter, fearing the Tsar's new presence in northern Germany. Three times the King-Elector refused Peter's overtures for a meeting, demanding first that all Russian troops be evacuated from Germany.

  Meanwhile, the foreign policy of France had done a revolutionary flip-flop. Instead of hostility to England and support for the Catholic Jacobites, France, under the regency of Philippe, sought friendship with England and guaranteed the rights of the Protestant Hanover
ian dynasty. France's long support of Sweden also seemed ready for change. For years, the Sun King had subsidized the Swedes and used them as a counterpoise to keep the Austrian emperor distracted in Germany. Now, with the Swedes defeated and driven completely out of Germany, and with the power of the Hapsburg Emperor greatly enhanced, France needed a new ally in the East. Peter's Russia, which had soared to prominence within the past decade, was a natural possibility. Through diplomatic channels, various hints and overtures began to pass. And Peter was eager to listen. Although throughout his reign France had opposed him in Poland and in Constantinople, he knew that the structure of Europe was changing. An alliance or an understanding with France would be a balance to his increasingly difficult relations with Hanover and England. Even more, he saw France's help as a possible way of ending the Northern War. France was still paying monthly subsidies to Sweden; if these could be cut off and France's diplomatic support of Sweden withdrawn, Peter felt that he might at last persuade an isolated Charles XII that Sweden must make peace.

  Peter's proposal to France, when it came, was a bold one: that France take Russia instead of Sweden as her ally in the East. In addition, Peter suggested that he could bring Prussia and Poland into the arrangement. Aware that France's treaties with England and Holland would be a stumbling block, Peter argued that the new alliance would not threaten the earlier one. Specifically, he proposed that, in return for Russian guarantees of the Treaty of Utrecht, France halt its subsidies to Sweden and instead pay to Russia 25,000 crowns a month for the duration of the Northern War—which, with France behind him, he hoped would be short. Finally, Peter proposed a personal link between the two nations. To seal the alliance and to mark Russia's emergence as a great power, he would marry his eight-year-old daughter Elizabeth to the seven-year-old King of France, Louis XV.

  Such proposals were not unattractive to the Regent of France, but to the decisive power in French foreign policy, the Abbe Guillaume Dubois, they were unwelcome. The new alliance with England was his handiwork, and he feared that any arrangement with Russia would throw the whole thing off balance. In a letter to the Regent advising against the Russian proposal, Dubois said, "If, in establishing the Tsar, you chase the English and the Dutch from the Baltic Sea, you will be eternally odious to these two nations." Further, Dubois warned, the Regent might be sacrificing England and Holland in return for only a short-term relationship with Russia. "The Tsar has chronic maladies," he pointed out, and deciding that he might accomplish more by seeing the Regent in person, decided to go to Paris. Besides, he had seen Amsterdam, London, Berlin and Vienna, but never Paris. Through Kurakin, his ambassador in Holland, he informed the Regent that he would like to make a visit.

  There could be no question of refusing, although the Regent and is advisors had misgivings. Following diplomatic custom, the host country paid the expenses of the guest, and for the Tsar and his suite, this expense would be enormous. Further, Peter had a reputation as an impetuous monarch, sensitive to insult and quick to anger, and the men of his suite were said to be of similar character. Nevertheless, the Regent made ready; the Tsar was to be received as a grand European monarch. A cavalcade of carriages, horses, wagons and royal servants under the command of Monsieur de Liboy, a gentleman of the King's household, was sent to Calais to escort the Russian guests to Paris. Liboy was to honor Peter, wait upon him and pay all his expenses. In Paris, meanwhile, the apartments of the Sun King's mother, Anne of Austria, in the Louvre were prepared for the guest. At the same time, Kurakin, knowing Peter's tastes, suggested that his master might be happier in a smaller, more private place. Accordingly, a handsome private mansion, the Hotel Lesdiguieres, was also prepared. On the chance that the Tsar would choose it, the hotel was handsomely furnished from the royal collection. Magnificent armchairs, polished desks and inlaid tables were carried there from the Louvre. Cooks, servants and fifty soldiers were assigned to provide the Tsar with nourishment, comfort and security.

  Meanwhile, Peter and his party of sixty-one persons, including Golovkin, Shafirov, Peter Tolstoy, Vasily Dolgoruky, Buturlin, Osterman and Yaguzhinsky, traveled slowly through the Low Countries. As was his custom, the Tsar stopped often to visit towns, examine curiosities and study the people and their way of life. Although he had again adopted the partial facade of traveling incognito to minimize the time wasted in official ceremonies, he was pleased to hear church bells rung and cannon fired in his honor as he passed by. Catherine accompanied him as far as Rotterdam; to simplify the journey, she would wait at The Hague while he visited France. He felt that her presence would demand additional time-consuming ceremonies which by himself he could avoid.

  From Rotterdam, Peter traveled by boat to Breda and up the

  Shceldt to Antwerp, where he climbed the cathedral tower to gaze out over the city. In Brussels, he wrote to Catherine: "I wish to send you lace for fontange and engagements [that is, lace ribbons to be clustered in the hair and across the bodice—the latest style in Paris], for the best lace in all Europe is made here, but they make it to order only. Therefore, send the pattern and what name or arms you wish worked on it." From Brussels, Peter moved on to Ghent, Bruges, Ostend and Dunquerque, finally reaching the French frontier at Calais, where he rested for nine days to observe the last week of Lent and to celebrate Russian Easter.

  At Calais, the Russian travelers met Liboy and the French welcoming escort. For Liboy, this first exposure to the Russian character was traumatic. The guests complained about the carriages to which they were assigned, and they spent freely, every ecue of which had to be paid by Liboy. In desperation, he urged Paris that the Tsar and his suite be put on a fixed daily allowance, not to be exceeded, allowing them to argue among themselves how the sum would be spent.

  Liboy had been ordered to report to Paris on the habits of the visitors and to ascertain the purpose of their visit. He found it impossible to understand Peter, who, instead of doing anything serious, seemed only to be idly amusing himself, ambling along, examining things which, in Liboy's eyes, were irrelevant. "This littl court," he wrote of the Russian party of twenty-two persons of rank and thirty-nine orderlies, "is very changeable and irresolute and from the throne to the stable, very subject to anger." The Tsar, he reported, "is of very great stature, a little stooped, with the habit of holding his head down. He is dark and there is a fierceness in his expression. He appears to have a lively mind and a ready understanding, with a certain grandeur, in his movements, but with little restraint." Elaborating in a subsequent report, Liboy continued:

  In the Tsar, one does indeed find seeds of virtue, but they are wild and very mixed with failings. I believe that he lacks most of all uniformity and constancy of purpose and that he has not arrived at that point where one can rely on what would be concluded with him. I admit that Prince Kurakin is polite; he appears to be intelligent and to desire to arrange everything to our mutual satisfaction. I do not know if it is by temperament or through fear of the Tsar, who appears, as I have said, very hard to please and quick-tempered. Prince Dolgoruky appears a gentleman and to be much esteemed by the Tsar; the only inconvenience is that he understands absolutely no language but Russian. In this respect allow me to remark that the term "Muscovite" or even "Muscovy" is deeply offensive to all this court.

  The Tsar rises very early, dines about ten o'clock, sups about seven and retires before nine. He drinks liquors before meals, beer and wine in the afternoon, sups very little and sometimes not at all. I have not been able to perceive any sort of council or conference for serious business, unless they discuss affairs while tippling, the Tsar deciding alone and promptly whatever is presented. This prince varies on all occasions his amusements and walks and is extraordinarily quick, impatient and very hard to please. ... He likes especially to see the water. He lives in the great apartments and sleeps in some out-of-the-way room if there by any.

  To counsel the French mais d'hotel and chefs who would be preparing food for the Russian visitor, Liboy forwarded specific recommendations:<
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  The Tsar has a head cook who prepares two or three dishes for him every day and who uses for this purpose enough wine and meat to serve a table of eight.

  He is served both a meat and a Lenten dinner on Fridays and Saturdays.

  He likes sharp sauces, brown and hard bread, and green peas. He eats many sweet oranges and apples and pears. He generally drinks light beer and dark vin de nuits without liquor.

  In the morning he drinks aniseed water [kummel], liquors before meals, beer and wine in the afternoon. All of them fairly cold.

  He eats no sweetmeats and does not drink sweetened liquors at his meals.

  On May 4, Peter left Calais on the road to Paris, characteristically refusing to follow and expected route. A formal reception had been prepared for him at Amiens; he skirted the city. At Beauvais, where he saw the nave of the largest cathedral in France, still unfinished since the thirteenth century, he spumed a banquet which was offered. "I am a soldier," he told the Bishop of Beauvais, "and when I find bread and water I am content." Peter was exaggerating; he still liked wine, although he preferred his favorite Hungarian Tokay to the French varieties. "Thanks to the Hungarian wine, which here is a great rarity," he wrote to Catherine from Calais. "But there is only one bottle of vodka left. I don't know what to do."

  At noon on May 7, at Beaumont-sur-Oise, twenty-five miles northeast of Paris, Peter found the marshal de Tesse waiting for him with a procession of royal carriages and an escort of red-coated cavalry, of the Maison de Roi. Tesse, standing beside the Tsar's carriage, made a deep, low bow, flourishing his hat, as Peter stepped out. Peter greatly admired the Marshal's carriage and chose to ride in it as he entered the capital through the Porte St.