13
“IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DESCRIBE HIM”
As chief of the Great Embassy, with the rank of First Ambassador, Peter named Lefort, now titled Governor-General of Novgorod as well as General-Admiral. Lefort’s two fellow ambassadors both were Russian: Fedor Golovin, the Governor-General of Siberia, and Prokofy Voznitsyn, Governor of Bolkhov. Golovin was one of Russia’s first professional diplomats. At the age of thirty-seven, he had negotiated for Sophia the Treaty of Nerchinsk with China, and since Peter’s assumption of power he had become one of the Tsar’s close companions and most useful servants. Conduct of foreign affairs was entrusted to him, and eventually he was granted the title of General-Admiral. In 1702, he was created a Count of the Holy Roman Empire and became, in effect, Peter’s prime minister. Voznitsyn also had previous diplomatic experience, having served on missions to Constantinople, Persia, Venice and Poland.
Chosen to escort the ambassadors were twenty noblemen and thirty-five young Russian “volunteers” who, like those dispatched in previous months, were going to England, Holland and Venice to learn shipbuilding, navigation and other nautical sciences. Many of the noblemen and “volunteers” were Peter’s comrades from the play regiments at Preobrazhenskoe, his boatbuilding days at Pereslavl, the visits to Archangel and the campaigns against Azov. Prominent among these were his childhood friend Andrei Matveev and the brash young Alexander Menshikov. To complete the Embassy, there were chamberlains, priests, secretaries, interpreters, musicians (including six trumpeters), singers, cooks, coachmen, seventy soldiers and four dwarfs, bringing the total above 250. And somewhere in the ranks was a tall young man, brown-haired, dark-eyed, with a wart on the right side of his face, whom the others addressed simply as Peter Mikhailov. For members of the Embassy to address him as anything else, to reveal that he was the Tsar or even to mention that the Tsar was present with the Embassy, was punishable by death.
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 lest 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 prelude to an attempted Miloslavsky 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 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 faced and conquered at Azov. Here were stone-faced bastions and palisaded contrescarpes 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 modern 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 but 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 of 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 Königsberg, 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 Hohenzollern, 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 Königsberg to greet him.
Peter, traveling by sea, slipped into Königsberg 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 horsemen 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.
Although anxious to leave for Holland, Peter lingered in Königsberg until the situation in Poland became clearer. In June 1696, when Jan Sobieski died, the Polish throne became vacant, and two contenders, Augustus, Elector of Saxony, and the Bourbon Prince de Conti, the nominee of Louis XIV, were competing for it. Russia, Austria and most of the German states were firmly opposed to Conti’s election. A French king on the Polish throne meant an immediate end to Polish participation in the war against Turkey, a Franco-Polish alliance and the extension of French power into Eastern Europe. To prevent this, Peter was prepared to fight, and he moved Russian troops to the Polish border. With the issue still cloudy, the two parties still maneuvering and the Diet still not prepared to vote, Peter decided to wait in Königsberg before proceeding westward. While he waited, Peter examined things in Königsberg which interested him. With Colonel Streltner von Sternfeld, chief engineer of the army of Brandenburg and an expert in the science of artillery, Peter studied both the theory and the practice of ballistics. He fired cannon of various sizes at targets while Von Sternfeld corrected his aim and explained his mistakes. When Peter left, Von Sternfeld made out a certificate attesting to the knowledge and skill of his pupil Peter Mikhailov.
Unfortunately, in Königsberg as in Riga, Peter got into trouble. This time, his hasty temper rather than his curiosity was responsible. On his Name Day, more important than a birthday to all Russians, Peter had counted on a visit from Frederick, and had planned his own fireworks display for the Elector’s benefit. But Frederick, not realizing the significance of the day, had left Königsberg to meet the Duke of Courland, delegating several of his ministers to represent him at the Tsar’s celebration. Peter was hurt and publicly humiliated when Frederick failed to appear, and showed his pique openly to the representatives, saying loudly in Dutch to Lefort, “The Elector is very good, but his ministers are the devil.” Thinking he saw one of the ministers smile at his words, Peter flew into a rage, rushed at the Brandenburger, cried, “Get out! Get out!” and pushed him out of the room. After his anger cooled, he wrote a letter to his “dearest friend” Frederick. The letter was an apology, but into it crept the nature of his complaint. On departure, Peter made further amends by sending Frederick a large ruby.
In mid-August, after Peter had spent seven weeks in Königsberg, the news came that Augustus of Saxony had arrived in Warsaw and been elected King of Poland. Peter was pleased by this outcome and anxious to leave immediately by sea for Holland, but the presence of a squadron of French warships in the Baltic forced him to change his plans; he had no wish to wind up an involuntary guest aboard a vessel flying the great white fleur-de-lis banner of the King of France. Disappointed, he took the only path open to him: by land, across the German electoral states of Brandenburg and Hanover.
Peter’s disappointment at not being able to travel by ship was compounded by a new problem he now faced in traveling by land: all along his route, people wanted to see him. The long delay in Königsberg had provided ample time for news of his presence with the Embassy to spread across Europe, and everywhere there was great excitement and curiosity: For the first time, a Muscovite tsar, the ruler of a dimly perceived, exotic land, was traveling in Europe, where he might be seen, examined and marveled at. The Tsar was upset by attentions of this kind.
Having left Königsberg in secret, he urged his coachman to hurry, hoping to avoid notice and detection. He passed through Berlin quickly, sitting far back in a corner of the coach to avoid recognition. This speed and reclusiveness carried him rapidly across North Germany, but he was not to avoid an encounter with two redoubtable ladies who had laid plans to waylay him. These were Sophia, the widowed Electress of Hanover, and her daughter Sophia Charlotte, Electress of Brandenburg. The two Electresses were eager to examine for themselves the much-talked-about Tsar. The younger Electress, Sophia Charlotte, who had been visiting her mother in Hanover while her husband, the Elector Frederick, was welcoming Peter in Königsberg, was especially intrigued. She had expected to meet him in Berlin, and now, determined to overtake him as he approached Hanover, she packed her mother, her brothers and her children into carriages and hurried to intercept the Russian party at the town of Koppenbrügge. Arriving just ahead of Peter, she sent a chamberlain to invite the Tsar to dinner.
At first, seeing the size of the ladies’ retinue and the crowd of local citizens milling curiously outside the gate, Peter refused to come. The chamberlain persisted, and Peter yielded on the assurance that, apart from Sophia Charlotte and her mother, there would be only her brothers, her children and the important members of Peter’s suite. Ushered into the presence of the two royal ladies, Peter faltered, blushed and was unable to speak. They were, after all, the first aristocratic, intellectually inclined Western ladies he had ever met; his only previous contact with Western women had been with the middle-class wives and daughters of the Western merchants and soldiers in the German Suburb. But these two ladies were exceptional even among European aristocracy. Sophia of Hanover, then sixty-seven, was the vigorous, commonsensical, successful ruler of that thriving North German state. A few years after this meeting with Peter, she, as the granddaughter of King James I of England, would be picked by the British parliament to succeed Queen Anne and thereby secure the Protestant succession in England.* Her daughter, twenty-nine-year-old Sophia Charlotte of Brandenburg, was equally strong-minded and made a dazzling figure among the ladies of the North German courts. For a while, she had been the designated bride of Louis XIV’s grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, before politics had dictated that Burgundy should marry Marie Adelaide of Savoy. During the two years Sophia Charlotte had lived at Versailles, her wit and beauty had attracted the admiration of the Sun King himself. She was well educated, and Leibniz had become her friend as well as her tutor. Indeed, so delightful and appealing was Sophia Charlotte that her husband, who built the Charlottenburg Palace for her in Berlin, was actually in love with her. Naturally, in deference to the august example set for lesser monarchs by Louis XIV, Frederick felt that he must have a mistress, but he vastly preferred his charming and clever wife.
Peter, confronted by these poised and elegant ladies, simply covered his face with his hands and muttered in German, “I don’t know what to say.” Realizing his difficulty, Sophia Charlotte and her mother put their guest at ease by placing him between them at the table and beginning to talk to him. Before long, his shyness began to pass and he started speaking so freely that the two women had to compete for his attention. The dinner lasted four hours and both Electresses were eager to go on plying him with questions, but Sophia Charlotte was afraid that he was bored and called for music and dancing. Peter at first refused to dance, saying that he had no gloves, but once again the ladies changed his mind and soon he was performing heartily. Turning them around the floor, he felt strange things under their dresses: the whalebones in their corsets. “These German women have devilish hard bones,” he shouted to his friends. The ladies were delighted.
Peter was enjoying himself immensely. This party was gayer than those in the German Suburb, gayer even than the roaring banquets of the Jolly Company. He overflowed with good spirits. He ordered his dwarfs to dance. He kissed and pinched the ear of his favorite dwarf. He planted kisses on the head of the ten-year-old Princess Sophia Dorothea, the future mother of Frederick the Great, destroying her coiffure. He also embraced and kissed the fourteen-year-old Prince George, who would later become King George II of England.
In the course of the evening, the two Electresses closely observed the Tsar. He was, they found, far from the uncivilized young barbarian described by rumor. “He has a natural, unconstrained air which pleased me,” wrote Sophia Charlotte. His grimaces and facial contortions were not as bad as they had expected and, Sophia Charlotte added sympathetically, “Some are not in his power to correct.” The elder Electress, an experienced judge of men, described the evening and the guest of honor in detail:
The Tsar is very tall, his features are fine, and his figure very noble. He has great vivacity of mind, and a ready and just repartee. But, with all the advantages with which nature has endowed him, it could be wished that his manners were a little less rustic. We immediately sat down to table. Herr Koppenstein, who did the duty as marshal, presented the napkin to His Majesty, who was greatly embarrassed, for at Brandenburg, instead of a table napkin, they had given him a ewer and basin [to clean his hands] after the meal. He was very gay, very talkative, and we established a great friendship for each other, and he exchanged snuff-boxes with my daughter. We stayed in truth a very long time at table, but we would gladly have remained there longer still without feeling a moment of boredom, for the Tsar was in very good humor, and never ceased talking to us. My daughter had her Italians sing. Their song pleased him though he confessed to us that he did not care much for music.
I asked him if he liked hunting. He replied that his father had been very fond of it, but that he himself, from his earliest youth, had had a real passion for navigation and fireworks. He told us that he worked himself in building ships, showed us his hands, and made us touch the callous places that had been caused by work. He brought his musicians, and they played Russian dances, which we liked better than the Polish ones.…
We regretted that we could not stay much longer, so that we could see him again, for his society gave us much pleasure. He is a very extraordinary man. It is impossible to describe him, or even to give an idea of him, unless you have seen him. He has a very good heart, and remarkably noble sentiments. I must tell you also, that he did not get drunk in our presence, but we had hardly left when the people of his suite began to make ample amends.
He is a prince at once very good and very bad; his character is exactly that of his country. If he had received a better education, he would be an exceptional man, for he has great qualities and unlimited natural intelligence.
Peter signaled his own pleasure at the evening by sending each of the Electresses a trunkful of Russian sables and brocade. Then he left immediately, ahead of the main party. For Holland was only a few miles farther down the Rhine.
* 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.
* Sophia did not live to wear the British crown. She died before Queen Anne, and both her Hanoverian and English titles passed to her son, George Louis, who ruled the two simultaneously as Elector of Hanover and King George I of England.