Chapter 3

Walter's chance for adventure came full soon. His mother's family, the Champernouns, were related to the French Huguenot house of Montgomerie. The Catholics and the Huguenots were at war in France, and Walter's cousin Henry obtained permission of Queen Elizabeth to raise a troop of a hundred gentlemen in England to fight with him in France. He asked Raleigh at Oriel to join him, and the boy eagerly accepted. So he left Oxford, and with a number of others of good family, many scarcely older than himself, he crossed the Channel and entered France.

The moment was not a good one. The Huguenots had just lost the battle of Moncontour, and a little time after their great chief, the Prince of Condé, fell at Jarnac. But the small band of English gentlemen adventurers was not at all cast down. The Huguenot cause did not mean a great deal to them, and they speedily consoled themselves for Condé's loss.

When they actually took the field they found the warfare a very irregular sort of fighting, a sudden swoop down upon the Catholics in some ill-defended town, a quick retreat at the approach of regular troops, an occasional short skirmish in the open. Walter was sent into Languedoc, and joined in the chase of Catholics through the hills.

The country was full of steep cliffs, and there were many caves hidden in them. Fugitives would escape through the open country and meet in these recesses, and the Englishmen would follow, tracking them after the manner of hunters of wild game. Sometimes they would come to the top of a cliff, overlooking a cave in which they had seen men hide. Then they would lower lighted bundles of straw by iron chains until they came opposite the mouth of the cave. In a short time the men in hiding would be smoked out, and compelled to surrender. Often they had hidden treasures of money or plate in the caves, and these would fall into the captors' hands. This lure of booty added spice to the hunt.

It was rough, wild work, but it was a rough age, and men had few scruples when it came to dealing with their enemies. Young Raleigh proved a good fighter, fond of the hunts through the hills, and always ready for any wild expedition. He cared little enough for the cause for which the troop was supposed to be fighting. It was the opportunity to advance himself that concerned him most.

When he came back from France he found that there was no place for him at the manor-house in Devon. As a younger son he must fight his own way in the world. He had always loved London next after the Devon coast, and so he went there now, hoping that he might find some favor with the court. Queen Elizabeth liked to have youths of good family and good looks about her, and there were many of them living in London who used her court as a sort of club.

Walter made many friends of his own age, and lived as most of them did, mixing in all the excitements of city life. He was now rather a wild, reckless young blade, as willing to draw his sword in a street fight as to pay compliments to a pretty maid of honor. One day he got into a fight at a tavern with a noisy braggart. He managed to throw the man into a chair and bind him with a rope. Then he knotted the man's beard and moustache together so that his mouth was sealed. The rest of the tavern applauded him for his neat manner of silencing the boaster.

He did not always come out on top, however. On one occasion he fought in the street with Sir Thomas Perrot, and was arrested by the town watch. He was brought to trial, and sent to the Fleet prison for six days. The imprisonment meant very little to him, it was simply part of the life of adventure he was so fond of living.

We must remember that all England, in this age of Elizabeth, was full of this same spirit of adventure. Young men were rising rapidly; there were a hundred ways to gain distinction, and many of them, although ways which we might consider rather doubtful nowadays, were then regarded as quite proper. Walter Raleigh kept his eyes wide open, and when he saw a promising chance, he was always ready to accept it. The first adventure that offered was to take part in a seafaring expedition.

Englishmen of fortune in those days were in the habit of fitting out privateers to roam the seas, much like pirates. Sir Humphrey Gilbert had planned to send some such ships to the banks of Newfoundland to capture any Portuguese or Spanish vessels that might have gone there for the fishing. He intended to bring his prizes back to some Dutch port, and there sell them. Walter liked this plan and he talked it over with Sir Humphrey, but for some reason the plan failed.

A very little while afterward, however, Sir Humphrey asked him to sail in an expedition that was supposed to be searching for the northwest passage to Cathay, but which in reality was intended to seize any heathen lands it might find and occupy them in the name of England. The fleet sailed, but soon fell in with a Spanish squadron that was looking for just such English rovers. Sir Humphrey's fleet was beaten, and forced to return home. So for a time young Raleigh's chances of winning fortune on the seas were ended.

He went back to London, and took up his former life at court. Very soon he was sent with some troops to Ireland, and there again he had a chance at the same sort of fighting he had known in France. He proved himself a good soldier; he shunned no toil nor danger. But the life he had to lead was a hard one, and very poorly paid, and Raleigh saw no chance to make his fortune in that path.

Now, however, Raleigh was known to many powerful men. When he gave up the Irish fighting and went back to court he found that people there had heard of what he had accomplished and that he had a reputation for courage bordering on recklessness. That was a quality the English of that day much admired. The great lords were almost all reckless adventurers, plundering wherever they could, and they were glad to find young men who would do their bidding without asking questions.

By this time young Raleigh had become typical of his age, having its virtues and its vices. The age was wild, coveting money in order to fling it away on mad schemes, reveling in the dangers as well as the glories of battle and exploration, of plundering Spanish galleons, or of hunting untold riches in the world across the sea. Queen Elizabeth liked daring men, and Raleigh took every opportunity to bring himself before her notice.

The young courtier had learned all the arts that helped to make men's fortunes. He was tall and very handsome, a splendid swordsman, and a wit who could hold his own with poets and with statesmen. He still spoke with the strong broad accent of Devon, and when he learned that the Queen liked his unusual accent he was very careful to see that he never lost it. He studied each chance to please.

Elizabeth was extremely vain and extremely fond of romance. One day as she walked with certain of her lords and ladies she came to a marshy place, and stopped in hesitation, fearing to soil her slippers. This was the young courtier's chance. Raleigh had been in the background, but seeing the Queen hesitate he sprang forward, and sweeping his new plush cloak from his shoulders, spread it in the mire, so that she might cross. The Queen's face lighted up with pleasure at the graceful act, and she thanked the youthful gallant. Later she saw that he was given many court suits for the cloak he had so admirably ruined.

Having thus won her attention Raleigh next sought to fix himself in his Queen's mind. He wrote on the window of a room in which she passed much time the line:

"Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall."

Elizabeth learned who was author of the writing, and scratched the answer underneath:

"If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all."

Raleigh had no fear whatever of falling, but a becoming modesty sat well upon him. The Queen remembered the young man now for these two qualities, his gallantry and his becoming modesty, and saw to it that a man of such spirit should be kept at court. The ardent boy of Devon, the restless Oxford student, the wild Huguenot trooper, had grown to be a man worthy of notice.

He was now, as Walter Scott pictures him in "Kenilworth," the young seeker after royal favor, graceful, slender, restless, somewhat supercilious, with a sonnet ever ready on his lips to delight his friends or an epigram to sting his enemies.

We shall see him turn his many talents to great uses. He fell to planning voyages across the Atlantic to discover and settle parts of North America much as Sir Humphrey Gilbert had done, and as another young man about court, Sir Francis Drake, was doing. From the Queen, and from one noble or another who was interested in his marvelous schemes, he obtained the money to fit out several expeditions. Each in turn landed near what is now the Roanoke River, and each brought back rich gifts to the great English Queen. Among other things the explorer saw the Indians smoking a dried leaf called tobacco, tried the custom, liked it, and brought it back with him to England.

Raleigh had a stroke of genius when he named his colony Virginia, in honor of Elizabeth the Virgin Queen. It pleased her to think that a great empire in the western world should be named for her. She gave Raleigh whatever he asked, making him practically governor of all the English domain in America, and for a long time Virginia was supposed to cover even part of what later became New England. He started to colonize the land, but his colonies did not succeed, and he lost all the money he put into them. Nevertheless his Virginian scheme brought him a great deal of fame, which he now craved, and kept London talking of him.

London was soon to talk still more about this daring, brave, and brilliant Westcountryman. The prophecy of the old sailor at Budleigh Salterton Bay came true, and for a brief time all England held its breath while the famous Spanish fleet, called the Armada, bore down upon her coast. Then all over the country gentlemen of fortune manned ships and put to sea, but especially the men of Devon, of Somerset, and Cornwall, counties famed for their sailors.

Among these men was Raleigh; his advice was eagerly sought by the Queen's ministers, and when it came to the actual Channel fighting he made one of many gallant captains. The great Armada came to grief upon the English coast, and Raleigh had added another to his record of achievements.

Having been courtier, colonizer, warrior, Raleigh now blossomed forth as a poet, and became a friend and patron of Edmund Spenser. He had much skill in verse, and he was never lacking in imagination. But his real talents did not lie in that direction, and as in so many other things, he soon found himself distracted elsewhere.

The story of Raleigh's manhood belongs to history. Turn to tales of Elizabeth's court and you will find his name on almost every page. Now he is high in favor, braving it with the great Earl of Leicester, now down upon his luck, locked in some royal prison, writing verses to his many friends. His was a strange career; at one time there was no man in England whose favor was more sought, yet at the end he died upon the scaffold charged with treason. Time proved him guiltless of the charge, and almost at once the English people began to realize how great a light had been extinguished.

Through all his varying career he himself was the same brave, dreamy, ambitious man, the perfect type of that age which we call the Elizabethan. He could not stay in his native land of Devon; much as he loved its moorland and its bays, he had to listen to the call of London and the sea, and follow where their voices led him. Each way the road was set with many strange adventures, but he met and passed through them all with the high spirits that were part of his age. His courage never failed him, nor his joy in fighting his way to fortune with his own sharp wits.

IV

Peter the Great

The Boy of the Kremlin: 1672-1725

The halls of the Kremlin, the Czar's palace in Moscow, were filled with a wild rabble of soldiers on a winter afternoon near the end of the seventeenth century. The guards of the late Czar Alexis were storming through the maze of corridors and state apartments, breaking statues, tearing down tapestries, and piercing and cutting to pieces invaluable paintings with their spears and swords.

They were big, savage-faced men, pets of the half-civilized Russian rulers, and were called the Streltsi Guard.

They had broken into the Kremlin in order to see the boy who was now Czar, so that they might be sure that his stepmother had not hidden him away, as the rumor went, in order that her own son Peter might have the throne for himself. But once inside the Kremlin many of the soldiers devoted themselves to pillage, until the ringleaders raised the cry, "Where is the Czar Ivan? Show him to us! Show the boy Ivan to us! Where is he?"

In a small room on one of the higher floors a little group of women and noblemen, all thoroughly frightened, were gathered about two boys. The noise of the attack on the palace had come to their ears some time before; they had seen from the windows the mutinous soldiers climbing the walls and beating down the few loyal servants who had withstood them. The din was growing more terrific every instant. It was the matter of only a few minutes before the rioters would break into the room.

"We must decide at once, friends," said the Czarina Natalia. "If they enter this room they'll not stop at killing any of us."

The smaller of the two boys, a sturdy lad of eleven years, spoke up: "Let me go out on to the Red Staircase with Ivan, mother. When they see that we are both here they'll be satisfied."

A dozen objections were raised by the frightened men and women of the court. It was much too dangerous to trust the lives of the two boys to the whim of such a maddened mob.

"Nevertheless Peter is right," said Natalia. "It's the only chance left to us. They think I have done some harm to Ivan. The only way to prove that false is for him to stand before them, and my son must go with him."

The small boy who had spoken before took these words as final. "Come, Ivan," said he, and took the other's hand in his. Ivan, a tall, delicate boy, whose face was white with fear, gripped Peter's hand hard. He was used to trusting implicitly to his half-brother, although the latter was two years younger than he.

One of the noblemen opened the door, and the two boys went out of the room and crossed the hall to the top of the great Red Staircase. They looked down on the mob of soldiers who were gradually surging up the stairs, brandishing swords and halberds, fighting among each other for the possession of some treasure, and calling continually, "The Czar! Where are the boys Ivan and Peter? Where are they?"

At first in their excitement no one noticed the two boys on the stairway. Ivan, who was by nature timid, shrank away from their sight as much as he could, but Peter, who was of a different make, stood out in full view, and held fast to his brother's hand. He had inherited the iron nerve of the strongest of his ancestors. He looked at the mutinous rioters with bold, fearless eyes.

Presently a soldier caught sight of the younger boy and raised a cry loud above the general din. "There is the boy Peter, but where is Ivan? The Czar! The Czar!"

A score of voices took up the cry as all eyes were turned on the landing, and many men started up the stairs. "There is Peter, but where is the boy Ivan?" came the deafening chorus.

"Ivan is here with me," said Peter, his voice clear and high. He tried to pull Ivan nearer to him so that the men might see him. "Stand up where they can see you, Ivan!" he begged. "There's nothing to be afraid of. They only want to see their new Czar."

Trembling with fear the older boy, who had inherited all the weakness of his race, and none of its strength, was finally induced to step close to Peter. So, side by side, their hands clasped, the two looked down on the crowded stairway, and faced the mob of soldiers. They made a strange picture, two small boys, standing quite alone, fronting that sea of passionate, angry faces.

At sight of Ivan another cry arose. "There's the Czar! Hail Ivan! Hail the son of the great Alexis!"

For a moment the onward rush of the mob was checked, but only for a moment. Three or four soldiers started up the stairs, their lances pointed at Peter, shouting, "What shall we do with the son of the false woman Natalia?" They came so close to the boy that their spears almost touched him before they stopped. Had he turned to run no one can say what might have happened, but he did not turn, he did not even draw back nor show a single sign of fear.

"I am the son of the Czar Alexis also, and I am not afraid of any of you!"

The boy's calm eyes fronted the nearest soldiers steadily. The men heard his words and hesitated.

"Peter, the son of Alexis, is not afraid of his own father's guards!" the boy continued. "That is why I came out here when you called me."

In the hush that had followed his first words his voice carried clear to all the crowding men. When he finished there came a silence, and then of a sudden cheer on cheer rose on the stairs and through the hall. "Peter, the son of Alexis! Hail Peter! Hail the two boy Czars!"

The nearest soldiers dropped the points of their spears and joined in the shouting. A flush came into the younger boy's face and he smiled, and squeezed Ivan's hand tighter. He knew that the danger had passed.

Slowly the soldiers who had climbed nearest to the boys drew back down the stairs. Swords were returned to scabbards, harsh voices grew quieter, and within a quarter of an hour the Red Staircase and the great hall were empty of men.

Then the door of the room from which the two boys had come opened, and Natalia and her women stepped out. The Czarina, a woman of courage herself, took Peter in her arms. "My brave son," she murmured, "thou art worthy of thy father. I would have stood beside thee, but the people hate me, and it would have been worse for us all."

"I needed no one, little mother," said Peter. "If I am ever to be a ruler I must not fear to face my own men." Then his face grew more serious. "But if I ever am Czar they will not break into the Kremlin this way, mother, nor wilt thou need to hide thyself from them."

"God grant it be so, Peter!" answered Natalia. "I think they've learned much from thee this very day."

The Streltsi had indeed learned that the boy Peter was no coward, and their dislike changed to affection; but there were others in Moscow who plotted and planned against him, because the family of the late Czar's first wife were very powerful in Russia and they hated his second wife Natalia, and her son, who had been his father's favorite.

Everything that conspirators could do to break the boy's spirit was done; he was time and again placed in peril of his life; he was threatened and tempted and slandered to the people, but all to no avail. His mother did her best to shield him from his enemies, but when she found that her care was not enough she trusted to his own remarkable judgment and courage. These never failed either the boy or his mother.

As time passed it grew more and more clear that Peter was as strong as his poor stepbrother Ivan was weak, and in order to satisfy the people the younger boy was made joint-Czar with the elder.

The real power in Russia then, however, was the Princess Sophia, Peter's half-sister, a bitter enemy of both the boy and his mother. She did her best to break her stepbrother's spirit, hoping that he might come to some untimely end, as so many of the royal family had already done. She knew that Ivan was simply a weak tool in her hands, and so bent all her energies to try and ruin the younger Czar by taking away all restraint from over him, and letting him indulge every pleasure and whim.

He was given a palace of his own in a small village outside Moscow, and Sophia selected fifty boys of his own age to be his playmates. She had his former teachers dismissed and chose such comrades for him as she thought would grow up idle, vicious men.

Fortunately Peter's character was not so easily ruined. His mother and his old teachers had given him the beginning of an education and instead of falling into Sophia's snares, he immediately started to turn his playmates into scholars.

He formed a sort of military school, where the boys practiced all the discipline necessary in camp. He himself set to work to learn to use different tools, and in general he studied the trades of his people. He managed to get teachers who could instruct the boys in history and geography, and as a result instead of being good for nothing the circle of boys in the little palace became unusually energetic and active-minded. When he finally left the palace it had become a well-organized military school, and continued to be run as such for a long time afterward.

When the Princess Sophia realized that these plans of hers were failing, she decided on a more desperate measure. On the night of August 7, 1689, Peter was suddenly waked in the middle of night by fugitive soldiers coming from the Kremlin, who warned him that Sophia had gathered a band of soldiers to come out to his palace and kill him. The boy, realizing his extreme peril, jumped out of bed, and throwing on a few clothes ran to the stables, where he found his favorite horse and set out with some comrades into the neighboring forest.

There they stayed practically in hiding until officers came from the palace bringing him food and clothing, and gradually gathering about him until he had quite a small body-guard. By this time he had made up his mind what to do.

Feeling sufficiently strong with his friends, he finally set out for a monastery, thinking to find safe refuge there until the storm should pass. Here more friends came to join him, and as the news of Sophia's plot to kill the boy Czar was spread through the country, a new enthusiasm for the youthful Peter sprang up, and the very troops that had formerly sided with the Princess now denounced her as a traitor to Russia. Peter wrote to his stepsister asking for explanations about the plot at the Kremlin, but the Princess could make no satisfactory reply.

The monastery was now crowded with officers of the court who had come to realize that Sophia's power was gone and that the boy Czar's strength was rising rapidly. The time had come when he was strong enough to strike. He marched on the Kremlin and captured Sophia and those who had been in the conspiracy with her. Some of the Streltsi Guard who had taken part against him were tried and executed, and the Princess Sophia was shut up in a convent for the remainder of her life.

Such events did not tend to make the boy a merciful ruler, but surrounded as he was by traitors and spies he was compelled to rule with an iron hand if he was to rule at all.

From this time dates the beginning of his real influence in Russia. The army had been poorly organized. Now the young King set to work to drill it as effectively as he had drilled his playmates. He learned how cannon were built, and studied the manufacture of all kinds of firearms. About the same time he became deeply interested in ship-building, and determined to build a fleet of war-vessels on Lake Plestchéief.

He took some young men of his own age with him to the bank of the lake and there built a one-storied wooden house, a very primitive building, the windows filled with mica instead of glass, and set a double-headed eagle with a gilt wooden crown over the door to show it was the Czar's residence. Here he worked hard all one winter, he himself taking a hand in all the building that was done, laboring like any carpenter and enjoying the work far more than the state ceremonies he was obliged to go through with at the Kremlin.