Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  Winter scarcely slowed Peter's incessant activity. On days when Jefferyes was writing to London that "one can hardly put one's nose out of doors without running the risk of losing it in the cold," Peter, Catherine and members of the court drove forty miles to the village of Dudderoff, where—reported the startled ambassador— they enjoyed "the diversion of what they call the catat, or the driving in sledges full speed down a steep mountain." Another winter sport, ice-boating, attracted the Tsar even more. "In winter when both the river Neva and . . . [the Gulf] are frozen over, then he has his boats . . . ingeniously fixed for sailing upon the ice," wrote Perry. "Every day when there is a gale of wind, he sails and plies to windward upon the ice, with Jack-Ensign and Pennant flying in the same manner as upon the water."

  During the summer months, Peter delighted in opening the Summer Garden for receptions and celebrations. The anniversary of the Battle of Poltava on June 28 was always memorable: the Preobrazhensky Guards in their bottle-green uniforms and the Semyonovsky Guards in dark blue were massed in ranks in an adjacent field, and Peter himself handed wooden breakers of wine and beer to his soldiers to toast the victory. Catherine and then-daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, dressed in elegant gowns, with jewels and pearls in their hair, stood in the center of the garden receiving guests, surrounded by the court and by LeBlond's bubbling fountains and cascades. Nearby, like two stiff little wax dolls, stood Peter's two grandchildren, Peter and Natalya, the orphaned son and daughter of the Tsarevich Alexis. Having paid their respects, the guests sat down around wooden tables placed among the groves, none of them happier than the bearded bishops and other clergy devotedly drinking their fill.

  On one of these occasions, gaiety turned to alarm, especially among the foreigners and some of the ladies, when they observed six brawny Guardsmen advancing toward them carrying huge buckets of corn brandy to be consumed in serious toasting. Guards having been posted at all the gates to prevent anyone from leaving, a stampede began in the direction of the river, where several galleys had been moored. The bishops, however, made no attempt to flee, but sat at their tables, smelling of radishes and onions, their faces wreathed in smiles, drinking toast after toast. Later, the Tsaritsa and the Princesses led the company in dancing on the decks of the galleys, and fireworks lit up the sky over the river. Some continued dancing and drinking into morning, but many simply sank down where they were in the garden and drifted into sleep.

  Members of the imperial family as well as those who had faithfully served the Emperor were buried with pomp. A number of Peter's older lieutenants had fallen. Romodanovsky died in 1717, and his offices passed to his son. Sheremetve followed in 1719 at sixty-seven, a few years after marrying a cultured young widow who had lived in England. Jacob Dolgoruky died in 1720 at eighty-one. To old and loyal foreigners who had spent many years—in some cases, most of their adult lives—in his service, Peter responded with special generosity. While still in service, they received estates; when they retired, they received pensions, which were continued for their widows or orphaned children. Nor would Peter permit the reduction of an official's income when he went into retirement. When one aging foreigner retired after thirty years' service, the College of Financial Control proposed a pension equal to half his salary. Peter was distressed. "What?" he asked. "Shall a man who has spent his youth in my service be exposed to poverty in his old age? No, give him the whole of his pay as long as he lives, without requiring anything from him, since he is unable to serve. But take his advice in whatever relates to his profession and profit from his experience. Who would sacrifice the most valuable years of his life if he knew that he was doomed to poverty in his old age and that he to whom his youth was devoted would neglect him when he was worn out?"

  For a man as impatient and charged with energy as Peter, relaxation was difficult. "What do you do at home?" he once asked those around him. "I don't know how to stay at home with nothing to do." He eschewed the favorite sport of many monarchs by refusing to hunt. Although his father had spent every free moment hunting with falcons, and the royalty of France reveled in the pursuit of stags through forests, Peter disliked such sports. "Hunt, gentlemen," he said one day in reply to an invitation to join a hunting party near Moscow, "hunt as much as you please, and make war on wild beasts. For my part, I cannot amuse myself that way while I have enemies to encounter abroad and constant and refractory subjects to deal with at home." Peter's favorite game was chess and, so that he could play at any time or place with anyone, he carried with him a folding leather chessboard with black and white squares. He did not object to gambling and played a Dutch card game for money, but mainly to enjoy the comradeship and conversation of the sea captains and shipbuilders who were his fellow players. Among his soldiers or the sailors of his fleet, he made a strict rule: No man's loss could amount to more than a rouble. As Peter saw it, serious gamblers had no taste for anything really useful and thought of nothing but devising ways of fleecing each other.

  Peter relaxed best when he was working with his hands: wielding a hatchet at the" Admiralty shipyard, bent over his lathe turning objects in wood or ivory, or hammering out iron bars next to a forge. The Emperor enjoyed visiting iron foundries—he liked the pumping of the bellows, the glowing of the metal in the fires, the clang of hammers on the anvils—and he had learned the basic skills of the blacksmith's trade. Once he spent a month working in the forges of a master blacksmith named Werner Muller. Peter worked hard, forging 720 pounds of iron bars in a single day, and when he asked for his pay, Muller lavishly overpaid him. Peter refused the excess, accepting only the wage of an average smith, then taking the sum to a shop where he bought a pair of shoes. Afterward, he showed his new shoes proudly to everyone saying, "I have earned them by the sweat of my brow with a hammer and an anvil."

  As always, Peter's greatest pleasure was to be on the water. Even when he was ashore, he had a standing arrangement that upon the firing of three cannon shots from the Peter and Paul Fortress, all ships in the river between the fortress and the Winter Palace were obliged to exercise their crews by running up sails, hoisting anchors and tacking to and fro. The Tsar, standing at a window of the Winter Palace, observed all this activity with a keen eye and much pleasure. In summer, he spent as much time as possible on board a boat or ship. He relished general boating excursions on the Neva, which he announced by having special flags hung at street intersections throughout the city. On the appointed day, all citizens who owned boats assembled on the river in front of the fortress. On Peter's signal, the flotilla set off downstream with the Tsar in the van, standing at the tiller of his own boat. Many of the noblemen brought musicians, and the peals of trumpets and oboes sounded across the water. Near the mouth of the river, boats usually turned into a small canal which led to Catherine's little country palace, Ekaterinhof. Here, the guests moved to tables placed under the orchard trees and quenched their thirst drinking glasses of Tokay wine.

  Peter's joy was to sail on the Gulf of Finland between St. Petersburg and Kronstadt. In fine weather, out on the water, with the deep blue of the sky above him, the bright sun beating down, the gentle murmur of the waves slapping against the side of the boat and his own hand on the tiller, the Tsar was at peace. Sailing alone, he had a fine view of the coastline, of wooded hills climbing back from the water and, on the crest, the summer palaces beginning to rise. Returning across the gulf to Petersburg, he saw first the river mouth and surrounding forests; then, rising above the treetops, the spires and steeples of the churches, covered with tin and brass and, occasionally, with gilt, then the palaces and buildings along the embankments. After such a day, Peter always stepped ashore and returned to everyday life with a reluctant sigh.

  As much as Peter loved simplicity, Catherine loved luxury. During the later years, Peter established for his wife a brilliant court that offered a striking contrast to his own style of living. The Tsaritsa was fond of dresses and jewels, perhaps to drown in glitter the memories of her humble origins. Catherine's household included p
ages in green uniforms faced with red and trimmed with gold lace and a private orchestra in green uniforms. The Empress' favorite companion, surprisingly, was Matrena Balk, a sister of Anna Mons, Peter's German mistress in the years before he met Catherine. Her court also included a daughter of the Pastor Gluck, who had sheltered Catherine as an orphan; Barbara Arseneeva, sister of Darya Arseneeva, who was Menshikov's wife and Catherine's early friend; Anisya Tolstoya, who had known Catherine since she first met Peter; Princess Cantemir of Moldavia; Countess Osterman, wife of the Vice Chancellor; Countess Anna Golovkina, daughter of the Chancellor, who became the second wife of Yaguzhinsky; the daughter of Anthony Devier, the Police Commissioner of St. Petersburg; and Marie Hamilton, a relation of the Scottish wife of Andrei Matveev.

  The most outspoken of these ladies was Catherine's inseparable friend, the old Princess Anastasia Golitsyna, who accompanied the Tsaritsa to Copenhagen and Amsterdam, was implicated in the affair of the Tsarevich Alexis and publicly whipped, and soon after regained her position at court. One of her letters to the Tsar from Reval in 1714 gives a glimpse of Catherine's court:

  Sire: I desire your presence here quickly. If Your Majesty delays, really, Sire, my life will be hard. The Tsaritsa is never willing to go to sleep before three o'clock in the morning and I have to sit constantly by her while Kyrilovna dozes as she stands by the bed. The lady Tsaritsa deigns to say, "Aunt, are you dozing?" and she replies, "No, I am not dozing. I am looking at my slippers," while Marie Hamilton walks about the room with a mattress which she spreads in the middle of the floor, arid Matrena Balk walks through the rooms and scolds everybody. With your presence,.I shall get freedom from bedroom service.

  In April 1719, fate dealt Peter and Catherine a devastating blow. The death of the Tsarevich Alexis had clarified, albeit grimly, the problem of the succession. There remained two young males in Peter's line: Peter Petrovich, his son by Catherine; and Peter Alexeevich, his grandson, the son of Alexis and Princess Charlotte. But the uncle, Peter Petrovich, was never as healthy as his nephew, who was four weeks older. The child was the apple of his parents' eyes, and careful efforts were made with his health and education. He appeared from time to time at court celebrations riding a tiny pony, but he was backward and often ill. In every aspect of childhood development, he fell further and further behind his active, aggressive nephew, the little Grand Duke Peter Alexeevich.

  In February 1718, when Peter Petrovich was two, Alexis was stripped of the succession, and the nobility and clergy of Russia swore allegiance to Peter's and Catherine's little son as heir to the throne. Fourteen months later, this little boy, only three and a half, followed his half-brother Alexis to the grave.

  The death of this favorite child, in whom Peter had placed his hopes for the future of the dynasty, overwhelmed him. He rammed his head against a wall so hard that he went into a convulsion; then for three days and nights, he shut himself up in his room and refused to come out or even to speak to anyone through the door. During all this time, he remained stretched on his couch without eating. The business of government came to a halt, the war with Sweden was ignored, messages and letters went unanswered. Catherine, overcoming her own grief, became alarmed at her husband's obsessive despondency and knocked at his door and called to him, but no answer came, and she retired, weeping, to beg for help from Prince Jacob Dolgoruky. The aged First Senator calmed the frightened Tsaritsa and summoned the entire Senate to meet outside Peter's door. Dolgoruky knocked. There was no answer. Knocking again, Dolgoruky called out to the Tsar that he was there with the entire Senate, that the country needed its Tsar, and that if Peter did not open the door immediately, he would be obliged to break it down and carry the sovereign away by force as the only means of saving the crown.

  The door opened and a pale and haggard Peter stood before them. "What is the matter?" he asked. "Why do you come to disturb my repose?"

  "Because your retirement and your excessive and useless sorrow are the cause of the disorder that prevails in the country," replied Dolgoruky.

  Peter bowed his head. "You are right," he said, and went with them to Catherine. He embraced her gently and said, "We have afflicted ourselves too long. Let us no longer murmur against the will of God."

  The death of little Peter Petrovich left Peter and Catherine with

  three children living, all daughters. In 1721, Anne and Elizabeth were thirteen and twelve respectively, and Natalya was three. The two older girls already were attracting favorable notice from foreign diplomats, always on the lookout for a useful match. "Princess Anne," said Bergholz, whose master, the Duke of Holstein, was eventually to marry this daughter, "is a brunette and as pretty as an angel with a charming complexion, arms and a figure very much like her father and rather tall for a girl, even a little inclined to be thin and not as lively as her younger sister Elizabeth, who was dressed like her. The dresses of the two princesses were without gold or silver, of pretty, two-colored material, their heads ornamented with pearls and precious stones in the latest French fashion, in a way which would have done honor to the best French hairdresser."

  Three years later, when Anne was sixteen, her charms were praised by Baron Mardefelt, the Prussian minister and a skillful painter of miniatures who had done portraits on ivory of all members of the Russian imperial family. Of Anne, he wrote: "I do not believe that there is today in Europe a Princess who can dispute the palm with her majestic beauty. She is taller in figure than any lady in her court, but her waist is so slender, so graceful, her features so perfect, that the antique sculptors would have had nothing left to desire. Her bearing is without affectation, equable, serene. Above all amusements, she prefers the reading of historical and philosophical works."

  As for Elizabeth at fifteen, "She is a beauty the like of which I have never seen," said the Spanish ambassador, the Duke of Liria. "An amazing complexion, glowing eyes, a perfect mouth, a throat and bosom of rare whiteness. She is tall in stature and her temperament is very lively. One senses in her a great deal of intelligence and affability, but also a certain ambition."

  Both Anne and Elizabeth were receiving the education of European princesses, which consisted mainly of languages, manners and dancing. They already spoke High Dutch and were becoming fluent in French. When Peter asked their tutors why French was necessary, whether the German language was not broad enough to enable one to express oneself fully, the tutors replied that it was, but that all civilized men, including Germans, wished to learn French. Anne, the more apt pupil, apparently learned a little Italian and Swedish also. To display her progress, she wrote to her father and mother in German while they were abroad. To one of these letters, Catherine replied in 1721:

  As I know from the letters of your tutor, as well as of M. Devier, you, my heart, are learning with diligence. I am very glad and send you as a present, to stimulate you to do better, a diamond ring.

  Choose one of them for yourself, whichever pleases you, and give the other to your dear sister, Elizabeth, and kiss her for me. I send you also a box of fresh oranges and lemons which have just come from the ships. Pick out some dozens and send them as from yourself to the Serene Prince [Menshikov] and to the Admiral [Apraxin].

  Many years later, the Empress Elizabeth recalled the keen interest her father had taken in the education of his daughters. He came frequently to their rooms, she said, to see how they were passing their time, and "he often required an account of what I had learned in the course of the day. When he was satisfied, he gave me commendations accompanied by a kiss and sometimes by a present." Elizabeth also remembered how greatly Peter regretted the neglect of his own formal education. "My father often repeated on this subject," she said, "that he would have given one of his fingers that his education had not been neglected. Not a day passed in which he did not feel his deficiency."

  The third daughter, little Princess Natalya Petrovna, bom in 1718, did not live to begin serious schooling. In appearance, she was a blend of her two parents, with a wide face, black hair curled
on her forehead in imitation of her mother, black eyes and a little red rosebud mouth. But she died in 1725. Of the twelve children of Catherine and Peter, six boys and six girls, only Anne and Elizabeth lived beyond the age of seven.

  One of the great characters of Russian society at this time was the gouty old Tsaritsa Praskovaya, the widow, of Peter's half-brother and co-tsar, Ivan V. A widow since 1696, Praskovaya was always fiercely loyal to Peter and had given him two of her three daughters, Anne and Catherine, to marry off to European princelings in furtherance of the Tsar's foreign policy. Although she much preferred her own country villa, the Ismailovsky Palace in the rolling meadowland outside Moscow, she dutifully moved to Petersburg. Carried to banquets and balls in her chair, she was always seated at the side of the Tsaritsa Catherine, from which vantage she observed and commented acidly on whatever was happening. Her desire to please the Tsar extended even to traveling with him to Olonets to take the iron waters, although most of those around her felt that she left these cures in poorer health than when she arrived. As Praskovaya grew older, she became irascible and quarrelled often with her older daughters, both of whom returned to Russia; Catherine, the gay and lively Duchess of Mecklenburg, returned for good in 1722, and Anne, Duchess of Courland, traveled home frequently for visits until her permanent return in 1730, when she was crowned as Empress Anne. After one ferocious argument, Praskovaya placed her formal curse on Anne and withdrew it only in the final moments before she died.