Part 20

Receptions were well enough for ambassadors, but they were idle flummery to the czar, who had come to see, not to be seen, and who did his best to keep out of sight. He visited the fine town hall, inspected the docks, saw a comedy and a ballet, consented to sit through a great dinner, witnessed a splendid display of fireworks, and, most interesting to him of all, was entertained with a great naval sham fight, which lasted a whole day.

Zaandam has the credit of having been the scene of Peter the Great's labor as a shipwright, but it was really at Amsterdam that his life as a workman was passed. At his request he was given the privilege of working at the docks of the East India Company, a house being assigned him within the enclosure where he could dwell undisturbed, free from the curiosity of crowds. As a mark of respect it was determined to begin the construction of a new frigate, one hundred feet long, so that the distinguished workman might see the whole process of the building of a ship. With his usual impetuosity Peter wished to begin work immediately, and could hardly be induced to wait for the fireworks to burn themselves out. Then he set out for Zaandam on his yacht to fetch his tools, and the next day, August 30, presented himself as a workman at the East India Company's wharf.

For more than four months, with occasional breaks, Peter worked diligently as a ship-carpenter, ten of his Russian companions--probably much against their will--working at the wharf with him. He was known simply as Baas Peter (Carpenter Peter), and, while sitting on a log at rest, with his hatchet between his knees, was willing to talk with any one who addressed him by this name, but had no answer for those who called him Sire or Your Majesty. Others of the Russians were put to work elsewhere, to study the construction of masts, blocks, sails, etc., some of them were entered as sailors before the mast, and Prince Alexander of Imeritia went to the Hague to study artillery. None of them was allowed "to take his ease at his inn."

Peter insisted on being treated as a common workman, and would not permit any difference to be made between him and his fellow-laborers. He also demanded the usual wages for his work. On one occasion, when the Earl of Portland and another nobleman came to the yard to have a sight of him, the overseer, to indicate him, called out, "Carpenter Peter of Zaandam, why don't you help your comrades?" Without a word, Peter put his shoulders under a log which several men were carrying, and helped to lift it to its place.

His evenings were spent in studying the theory of ship-building, and his spare hours were fully occupied in observation. He visited everything worth seeing, factories, museums, cabinets of coins, theatres, hospitals, etc., constantly making shrewd remarks and inquiries, and soon becoming known from his quick questions, "What is that for? How does that work? That will I see."

He went to Zaandam to see the Greenland whaling fleet, visited the celebrated botanical garden with the great Boerhaave, studied the microscope at Delft under Leuwenhoek, became intimate with the military engineer Coehorn, talked with Schynvoet of architecture, and learned to etch from Schonebeck. An impression of a plate made by him, of Christianity victorious over Islam, is still extant.

He made himself familiar with Dutch home life, mingled with the merchants engaged in the Russian trade, went to the Botermarkt every market-day, and took lessons from a travelling dentist, experimenting on his own servants and suite, probably not much to their enjoyment. He mended his own clothes, learned enough of cobbling to make himself a pair of slippers, and, in short, was insatiable in his search for information of every available kind.

His work on the frigate whose keel he had helped to lay was continued until it was launched. It was well built, and for many years proved a good and useful ship, braving the perils of the seas in the East India trade. But with all this the imperial carpenter was not satisfied. The Dutch methods did not please him. The ship-masters seemed to work without rules other than the "rule of thumb," having no theory of ship-building from which the best proportions of a vessel could be deduced.

Learning that things were ordered differently in English ship-yards, that there work was done by rule and precept, Peter sent an order to the Russian docks not to allow the Dutch shipwrights to work as they pleased, but to put them under Danish or English overseers. For himself, he resolved to go to England and follow up his studies there. King William had sent him a warm invitation and presented him a splendid yacht, light, beautifully proportioned, and armed with twenty brass cannon. Delighted with the present, he sailed in it to England, escorted by an English fleet, and in London found an abiding-place in a house which a few years before had been the refuge of William Penn when charged with treason. Here he slept in a small room with four or five companions, and when the King of England came to visit him, received his fellow-monarch in his shirt-sleeves. The air of the room was so bad that, though the weather was very cold, William insisted on a window being raised.

In England the czar, though managing to see much outside the ship-yards, worked steadily at Deptford for several months, leaving only when he had gained all the special knowledge which he could obtain. His admiration for the English ship-builders was high, he afterwards saying that but for his journey to England he would have always remained a bungler. While here he engaged many men to take service in Russia, shipwrights, engineers, and others; he also engaged numerous officers for his navy from Holland, several French surgeons, and various persons of other nationality, the whole numbering from six to eight hundred skilled artisans and professional experts. To raise money for their advance payment he sold the monopoly of the Russian tobacco trade for twenty thousand pounds. Sixty years before, his grandfather Michael had forbidden the use of tobacco in Russia under pain of death, and the prejudice against it was still strong. But in spite of this the use of tobacco was rapidly spreading, and Peter thus threw down the bars.

Great numbers of anecdotes are afloat about Peter's doings in Holland and England,--many of them, doubtless, invented. The sight of a great monarch going about in workman's clothes and laboring like a common ship-carpenter was apt to aid the imagination of story-tellers and give rise to numerous tales with little fact to sustain them.

In May, 1698, Peter left England and proceeded to Amsterdam, where his embassy had remained, often in great distress about him, for the winter was cold and stormy and at one time no news was received from him for a month. From Amsterdam he made his way to Vienna, whence he proposed to go to Venice and Rome, but was prevented by disturbing news from Moscow, which turned his steps homeward. Here he was to show a new phase of his varied character, as will be seen in the following tale.

THE FALL OF THE STRELITZ.

History presents us with four instances of an imperial soldiery who took the power into their own hands and for a time ruled as the tyrants of a nation. These were the Pretorian Guards of Rome, the Mamelukes of Egypt, the Janissaries of Turkey, and the Strelitz of Russia. Of these, the Pretorian Guards remained pre-eminent, and made emperors at their will. The other three came to a terrible end. History elsewhere records the tragic fate of the Mamelukes and the Janissaries: we are here concerned only with that of the Strelitz corps of Russia.

The Strelitz were the first regular military force of Russia, a permanent militia of fusileers, formed during the early reign of Ivan the Terrible, and themselves in time becoming a terror to the nation. The first serious outbreak of this dangerous civic guard was on the nomination of Peter I. to the throne of the czar. They did not dream then of the terrible revenge which this despised boy would take upon them.

Two days after the funeral of the czar Theodore the insurrection began, the Strelitz marching in an armed body to the Kremlin, where they accused nine of their colonels of defrauding them of their pay. The frightened ministers hastened to dismiss these officers, but this did not satisfy the savage soldiery, who insisted on their being delivered into their hands. This done, the unfortunate officers were sentenced to be scourged, some of them by that fearful Russian whip called the knout.

Their success in this outbreak led the Strelitz to greater outrages. The tiger in their savage natures was let loose, and only blood could appease its rage. Marching to the Kremlin, they declared that the late czar had been poisoned by his doctor, and demanded the death of all those in the plot. Breaking into the palace, they seized two of the suspected princes and flung them from the windows, to be received upon the pikes of the soldiers in the street below. The next victim was one of the Narishkins, the uncles of Peter the Great. He was massacred in the same brutal manner and his bleeding body dragged through the streets. Three of the proscribed nobles had fled for sanctuary to a church, but were torn from the altar, stripped of their clothing, and cut to pieces with knives.

The next victim was a friend and favorite of the Strelitz, who was killed under the belief that he was one of the Narishkins. Discovering their error, the assassins carried the mangled body of the young nobleman to the house of his father for interment. The old man, timid by nature, did not dare to complain of the savage act, and even rewarded them for bringing him the body of his son. For this weakness he was bitterly reproached by his wife and daughters and the weeping wife of the victim.

"What could I do?" pleaded the helpless father; "let us wait for an opportunity to be revenged."

A revengeful servant overheard these words and repeated them to the soldiers. In a sudden fury the savages returned, dragged the old man from the room by the hair of his head, and cut his throat at his own door.

Meanwhile some of the Strelitz, seeking the Dutch physician Vongad, who had attended the dying czar and was accused of poisoning him, met his son and asked where his father was. "I do not know," replied the trembling youth. His ignorance was instantly punished with death.

In a few minutes a German physician fell in their way. "You are a doctor," they cried. "If you have not poisoned our master Theodore, you have poisoned others. You deserve death." And in a moment the unlucky doctor fell a victim to their blind rage.

The Dutch physician was at length discovered and dragged to the palace. Here the princesses begged hard for his life, declaring that he was a skilful doctor and a good man and had worked hard to save their brother's life. They answered that he deserved to die as a sorcerer as well as a physician, for they had found the skeleton of a toad and the skin of a snake in his cabinet.

The next victim demanded was Ivan Narishkin, who they were sure was somewhere concealed in the palace. Not finding him, they threatened to burn down the building unless he were delivered into their hands. At this terrifying threat the young man was taken from his place of concealment and brought to them by the patriarch, who held in his hands an image of the Virgin Mary which was said to have performed miracles. The princesses surrounded the victim, and, kneeling to the soldiers, prayed with tears for his life.

All their supplications and the demands of the venerable patriarch were without effect on the savage soldiery, who dragged their captives to the bottom of the stairway, went through the forms of a mock trial, and condemned them to the torture. They were sentenced to be cut to pieces, a form of punishment to which parricides are condemned in China and Tartary. This tragedy went on until all the proscribed on whom they could lay their hands had perished and Sophia felt secure in her power.

In the end, Ivan and Peter were declared joint sovereigns (1682), and their sister Sophia was made regent. The acts of the Strelitz were approved and they rewarded, the estates of their victims were confiscated in their favor, and a monument was erected on which the names of the victims were inscribed as traitors to their country.

The Strelitz had learned their power, and took frequent occasion to exercise it. Twice again they broke out in revolt during the regency of Sophia. After the accession of Peter their hostility continued. He had sent them to fight on the frontiers. He had supplanted them with regiments drilled in the European manner. He had organized a corps of twelve thousand foreigners and heretics. He had ordered the construction of a fleet of a hundred vessels, which would add to the weight of taxes and bring more foreigners into the country. And he proposed to leave Russia, to journey in the lands of the heretics, and to bring back to their sacred land the customs of profane Europe.

All this was too much for the leaders of the Strelitz, who represented old Russia, as Peter represented new. They resolved to sacrifice the czar to their rage. Tradition tells the following story, which, though probably not true, is at least interesting. Two leaders of the Strelitz laid a plot to start a fire at night, feeling sure that Peter, with his usual activity, would hasten to the scene. In the confusion attending the fire they meant to murder him, and then to massacre all the foreigners whom he had introduced into Moscow.