Bishop Burnet, Peter the Great 1698
I mentioned in the relation of the former year [1698] the Tsar's coming out of his own
country; on which I will now enlarge. He came this winter over to England and stayed some
months among us. I waited often on him, and was ordered by both the king and the
archbishops and bishops to attend upon him and to offer him such information of our
religion and constitution as he was willing to receive. I had good interpreters, so I had
much free discourse with him. He is a man of very hot temper, soon inflamed and very
brutal in his passion. He raises his natural heat by drinking much brandy, which he
rectifies himself with great application. He is subject to convulsive motions all over his
body, and his head seems to be affected with these. He wants not capacity, and has a
larger measure of knowledge than might be expected from his education, which was very
indifferent. A want of judgment, with an instability of temper, appear in him too often
and too evidently.
He is mechanically turned, and seems designed by nature rather to be a ship carpenter
than a great prince. This was his chief study and exercise while he stayed here. He
wrought much with his own hands and made all about him work at the models of his ships. He
told me he designed a great fleet at Azov and with it to attack the Turkish empire. But he
did not seem capable of conducting so great a design, though his conduct in his wars since
this has discovered a greater genius in him than appeared at this time.
He was desirous to understand our doctrine, but he did not seem disposed to mend
matters in Muscovy. He was, indeed, resolved to encourage learning and to polish his
people by sending some of them to travel in other countries and to draw strangers to come
and live among them. He seemed apprehensive still of his sister's intrigues. There was a
mixture both of passion and severity in his temper. He is resolute, but understands little
of war, and seemed not at all inquisitive that way.
After I had seen him often, and had conversed much with him, I could not but adore the
depth of the providence of God that had raised up such a furious man to so absolute an
authority over so great a part of the world. David, considering the great things God had
made for the use of man, broke out into the meditation, "What is man, that you are so
mindful of him?" But here there is an occasion for reversing these words, since man
seems a very contemptible thing in the sight of God, while such a person as the tsar has
such multitudes put, as it were, under his feet, exposed to his restless jealousy and
savage temper.
He went from hence to the court of Vienna, where he purposed to have stayed some time,
but he was called home sooner than he had intended upon a discovery, or a suspicion, of
intrigues managed by his sister. The strangers, to whom he trusted most, were so true to
him that those designs were crushed before he came back. But on this occasion he let loose
his fury on all whom he suspected. Some hundreds of them were hanged all around Moscow,
and it was said that he cut off many heads with his own hand; and so far was he from
relenting or showing any sort of tenderness that he seemed delighted with it. How long he
is to be the scourge of that nation God only knows.
Von Korb, Diary 1698-99
How sharp was the pain, how great the indignation, to which the tsar's Majesty was
mightily moved, when he knew of the rebellion of the Streltsi [i.e., the Muscovite
Guard], betraying openly a mind panting for vengeance! He was still tarrying at Vienna,
quite full of the desire of setting out for Italy; but, fervid as was his curiosity of
rambling abroad, it was, nevertheless, speedily extinguished on the announcement of the
troubles that had broken out in the bowels of his realm. Going immediately to Lefort
(almost the only person that he condescended to treat with intimate familiarity), he thus
indignantly broken out: ATell me, Francis, son of James, how I can reach Moscow by the
shortest way, in a brief space, so that I may wreak vengeance on this great perfidy of my
people, with punishments worthy of their abominable crime. Not one of them shall escape
with impunity. Around my royal city, which, with their impious efforts, they planned to
destroy, I will have gibbets and gallows set upon the walls and ramparts, and each and
every one of them will I put to a direful death." Nor did he long delay the plan for
his justly excited wrath; he took the quick post, as his ambassador suggested, and in four
week's time he had got over about three hundred miles without accident, and arrived the
4th of September, 1698---a monarch for the well disposed, but an avenger for the wicked.
His first anxiety after his arrival was about the rebellion---in what it consisted,
what the insurgents meant, who dared to instigate such a crime. And as nobody could answer
accurately upon all points, and some pleaded their own ignorance, others the obstinacy of
the Streltsi, he began to have suspicions of everybody's loyalty. . . No day, holy or
profane, were the inquisitors idle; every day was deemed fit and lawful for torturing.
There were as many scourges as there were accused, and every inquisitor was a butcher. .
.The whole month of October was spent in lacerating the backs of culprits with the knout
and with flames; no day were those that were left alive exempt from scourging or
scorching; or else they were broken upon the wheel, or driven to the gibbet, or slain with
the axe. . .
To prove to all people how holy and inviolable are those walls of the city which the
Streltsi rashly meditated scaling in a sudden assault, beams were run out from all the
embrasures in the walls near the gates, in each of which two rebels were hanged. This day
beheld about two hundred and fifty die that death. There are few cities fortified with as
many palisades as Moscow has given gibbets to her guardian Streltsi. (In front of the
nunnery where Sophia [Peter's sister] was confined) there were thirty gibbets erected in a
quadrangle shape, from which there hung two hundred and thirty Streltsi; the three
principal ringleaders, who tendered a petition to Sophia touching the administration of
the realm, were hanged close to the windows of that princess, presenting, as it were, the
petitions that were placed in their hands, so near that Sophia might with ease touch them.
General Alexander Gordon, History
of Peter the Great, 1718
This great emperor came in a few years to know to a farthing the amount of all his
revenues, as also how they were laid out. He was at little or no expense about his person,
and by living rather like a private gentleman than a prince he saved wholly that great
expense which other monarchs are at in supporting the grandeur of their courts. It was
uneasy for him to appear in majesty, which he seldom or never did, but when absolutely
necessary, on such occasions as giving audience to ambassadors or the like; so that he had
all the pleasure of a great emperor and at the same time that of a private gentleman.
He was a lover of company, and a man of much humor and pleasantry, exceedingly
facetious and of vast natural parts. He had no letters; he could only read and write, but
had a great regard for learning and was at much pains to introduce it into the country. He
rose early; the morning he gave to business till ten or eleven o'clock at the farthest;
all the rest of the day, and a great part of the night, to diversion and pleasure. He took
his bottle heartily, so must all the company; for when he was merry himself he loved to
see everybody so; though at the same time he could not endure habitual drinkers, for such
he thought unfit for business. When he paid a visit to a friend he would pass the whole
night, not caring to part with good company till past two o'clock in the morning. He never
kept guards about his person. . . He never could abide ceremony, but loved to be spoke to
frankly and without reserve. . . .
In the year 1703 the tsar took the field early, cantoned his troops in the month of
March, and about the 20th of April brought the army together; then marched and invested
another small but important place called Neva-Chance, which surrendered on the 14th of
May. The commodious situation of this place made the tsar resolve to erect on it a
considerable town, with a strong citadel, consisting of six royal bastions, together with
good outworks; this he soon put into execution and called it St. Petersburg, which is now
esteemed so strong that it will be scarcely possible for the Swedes ever to take it by
force.
As he was digesting the scheme of this, his favorite town, which he designed not only
for the place of his residence but the principal harbor of his shipping, as having a
communication with the sea by the river Neva; having duly observed and sounded it all
over, he found it would be a very natural project to erect a fort in the isle opposite to
the island of Ratusary; which for a whole league over to the land is not above four feet
deep. This is a most curious work scarcely to be matched. He went about it in winter, in
the month of November, when the ice was so strong that it could bear any weight, causing
it to carry materials such as timber, stone, etc. The foundation was thus laid: trees of
about thirty feet in length and about fifteen inches thick were taken and joined artfully
together into chests ten feet high; these chests were filled with stones of great weight,
which sunk down through the sea, and made a very solid foundation, upon which he raised
his fort, called Kronstadt.
Jean Rousset de Missy, Life of Peter the Great,
c. 1730
The tsar labored at the reform of fashions, or, more properly speaking, of dress. Until
that time the Russians had always worn long beards, which they cherished and preserved
with much care, allowing them to hang down on their bosoms, without even cutting the
moustache. With these long beards they wore the hair very short, except the ecclesiastics,
who, to distinguish themselves, wore it very long. The tsar, in order to reform that
custom, ordered that gentlemen, merchants, and other subjects, except priests and
peasants, should each pay a tax of one hundred rubles a year if they wished to keep their
beards; the commoners had to pay one kopek each. Officials were stationed at the gates of
the towns to collect that tax, which the Russians regarded as an enormous sin on the part
of the tsar and as a thing which tended to the abolition of their religion.
These insinuations, which came from the priests, occasioned the publication of many
pamphlets in Moscow, where for that reason alone the tsar was regarded as a tyrant and a
pagan; and there were many old Russians who, after having their beards shaved off, saved
them preciously, in order to have them placed in their coffins, fearing that they would
not be allowed to enter heaven without their beards. As for the young men, they followed
the new custom with the more readiness as it made them appear more agreeable to the fair
sex.
From the reform in beards we may pass to that of clothes. Their garments, like those of
the Orientals, were very long, reaching to the heel. The tsar issued an ordinance
abolishing that costume, commanding all the boyars [i.e., the nobles] and
all those who had positions at court to dress after the French fashion, and likewise to
adorn their clothes with gold or silver according to their means. As for the rest of the
people, the following method was employed. A suit of clothes cut according to the new
fashion was hung at the gate of the city, with a decree enjoining upon all except peasants
to have their clothes made on this model, upon penalty of being forced to kneel and have
all that part of their garments which fell below the knee cut off, or pay two grives every time they entered the town with clothes in the old style. Since the guards at the
gates executed their duty in curtailing the garments in a sportive spirit, the people were
amused and readily abandoned their old dress, especially in Moscow and its environs, and
in the towns which the tsar often visited.
The dress of the women was changed, too. English hairdressing was substituted for the
caps and bonnets hitherto worn; bodices, stays, and skirts, for the former undergarments.
. . The same ordinance also provided that in the future women, as well as men, should be
invited to entertainments, such as weddings, banquets, and the like, where both sexes
should mingle in the same hall, as in Holland and England. It was likewise added that
these entertainments should conclude with concerts and dances, but that only those should
be admitted who were dressed in English costumes. His Majesty set the example in all these
changes. . .
Source:
James Harvey Robinson, ed., Readings in European History, 2 Vols. (Boston:
Ginn and Co., 1904-1906), Vol. II: From the opening of the Protestant Revolt to the
Present Day, pp. 303-312.
Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton.
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