CHAPTER IV

Peter Alexievitch now found himself in the position hitherto occupied by his rival.

The army that had foiled and humbled him ever since Narva was no longer in existence; the terrible Karl was in exile, without allies and with nothing to rely on but the exhausted resources of a distant and dispirited country.

The astute minister, Piper, the dreaded generals, Rehnsköld, Lewenhaupt, Wurtemberg, were all prisoners.

The Czar in one day had won the fruits of nine years of toil. More than half the Swedes were slain or slaves and there was no one to prevent his claiming the disputed Baltic Provinces.

Of the Poles he had no fear; he knew that Stanislaus could not stand without Karl, and that, if he had a mind, he might set up Augustus again.

In brief, he had made himself, in one battle, Arbiter of North Europe.

It was possible that Karl might endeavor to inflame Turkey into a revival of her old quarrel with him; but he had the remembrance of Azov to render him confident of mastering the Turks.

Not that it was in his nature to think and act other than prudently.

He had not begun this war for glory nor fought any battle for display, but always with the idea of some solid advantage, of taking some step towards the attainment of his final objective--the raising of Russia to a great place among the nations of the world.

The building of St. Petersburg and Kronstadt had already shown his intention of making his empire not Eastern but Western, and he had now demonstrated that he had mastered the art of war sufficiently to defeat utterly the greatest captain of the age.

He was not unduly elated at this success which was so much more than he had dared to hope for.

At first he had thought the Poltava battle lost; he had been in the thick of the fight and twice a ball had pierced his hat; perhaps Karl himself was no more surprised than Peter at the final issue of the combat.

The Czar’s manner of celebrating his victory was at once generous and savage.

He treated the Swedish generals with courtesy and consideration, drinking their health as “My masters in the art of war,” but the Cossacks and Kalmucks were broken on the wheel and the Swedish soldiers sent as slaves to Siberia.

He would have liked to have taken Karl, not from pride, but because he wished to know personally so remarkable a man, and he wished to capture the old hetman of the Cossacks that he might impale him alive.

“I wonder Sweden tolerates such a villain near him,” he exclaimed. “It must have been by his advice he came into the Ukraine.”

He spoke to his two generals, Mentchikoff and Alexis Golowin, as he took his ease after dinner in the fortress of Poltava.

“Sweden is insane,” said Mentchikoff calmly. “No man in his senses would have come so far from his base.”

“Nor turned into the Ukraine without guides or provisions,” added Golowin.

Peter made no reply; leaning against the frame of the open window he stared out into the sunny, dusty courtyard.

He was now thirty-six years of age and had lost all the bloom of youth; he was getting stout and his excesses had left their mark on his face, which, though still soft and handsome, was lined and swollen and an unhealthy color.

The thick locks were tinged with gray and his eyebrows and lips twitched with incipient disease.

He was now unbuttoned because of the heat; his green coat was grease-stained, his linen soiled.

In his right hand, coarsened by manual labor, he held a glass full of some sweet liquid round which the flies buzzed.

A star of the purest brilliants hung by a common ribbon from one of his buttonholes, which gleamed as his breast rose and fell with his heavy breathing.

The two generals were magnificent in satin coats, perukes, stars, and laces, but neither had clean hands or linen.

The air was heavy with the odors of the sour, greasy Russian cooking and the smell of brandy.

The room was roughly and coarsely furnished, but a valuable ikon hung in one corner adorned with pigeon blood rubies and still garlanded with the wreaths of wax fruit from the Easter offerings.

Peter’s thoughts were far away.

He was not dwelling on the personal advantages likely to accrue to him from this great victory, nor even on its military aspect; he was thinking that now at last he could secure his Baltic ports and gain for Russia that enormous trade once in the hands of, and so jealously guarded by, the Hansa League. The Russians, long treated as barbarians by the industrious and crafty Germans, had sold their goods to the great Hansa station at Novgorod always at a great loss, despite their persistent efforts to cheat, or bartered them for the English and Flemish cloths which could have been made in Russia.

Peter, who admired as much as he disliked the Germans, intended now that the Russian woods, metals, furs, wax, and honey should be traded direct with Europe.

He meant also to get the trade with Asia, and by this intercommunication with nations to teach arts and crafts to his own people. While he drunk his kvas, regardless of the circling flies, and stared absently into the sunny courtyard, Golowin and Mentchikoff were discussing the present plight of Karl XII.

The fugitive King had gone to Bender in Bessarabia, and was being treated with generous courtesy by the Porte.

He was, however, for all the pomp that surrounded him, nothing but a prisoner, and it was doubtful if, even had he wished, he could have left Turkey.

“He will give no further trouble,” remarked Prince Golowin.

But Mentchikoff was not of this opinion.

“A man of those lion-like qualities,” he said, “is not so easily subdued.”

“He may not be,” replied the other shrewdly, “but without resources he can do nothing.”

Peter turned his head and listened to this conversation.

“How many men has Sweden with him?” he asked, setting down his glass.

“They do not know, Peter Alexievitch,” replied Mentchikoff, “but it cannot be many--only those fugitives who contrived to escape across the frontier.”

“No one of importance?”

“Not beyond Poniatowski, Müllern, his chancellor, and a few officers--and the old Mazeppa,” said Mentchikoff.

At the mention of the hetman of the Cossacks Peter’s face twitched with fury.

“May the devil overtake that ancient traitor,” he cried, “and roast him to all eternity!”

He did not care to dwell on the thought of the escape of this rebel, who had indeed behaved with ingratitude and falsity to the monarch who had so warmly befriended and protected him.

Without any more words he left the room and went to the apartments of his wife, who accompanied him on all his campaigns.

He intended soon to marry her publicly and proclaim her as Czarina.

Not that Katherina had ever demanded this of him (indeed she had not expected him to marry her at all), but to please his own passion for this woman, who still continued to entirely please his curious fancy.

There were those who believed that if she had had a living child he could have disinherited Prince Alexis in favor of the offspring of Katherina, since the heir was not only the son of a disgraced and imprisoned mother, but showed already strong reactionary tendencies towards the barbaric customs Peter was so painfully eliminating from Russia.

Katherina was now clothed in Western fashion; a tight bodice and full skirt of blue silk, a pearl necklace, and her hair rolled into long curls.

She was now very stout, and her teeth were ruined through eating sweetmeats; her complexion was greasy, and her hands ill kept; she had acquired no air of dignity, but an expression of complete good nature showed still on her handsome features.

A Tartar maidservant with Asiatic features was seated on a scarlet cushion, singing as she worked a piece of orange and gold embroidery on a frame.

Peter spoke to neither but seated himself on the low covered chair beside his wife who knew better than to speak to him when he was silent.

The little maid, with an unchanged countenance, continued singing, in a low, melancholy, and monotonous voice, an old Tartar song:

The gentle baby died, mother, died when it was born. He will never saddle horse, mother, nor eat the cakes of corn, Or ride before his soldiers in the glory of the morn, Nor chase the bitter tiger or the fleet and lovely fawn. The gentle baby died, mother, died when he was born.

Peter stared at the singer, as if fascinated by her flat, brown face.

Katherina was not thinking of the song nor of him; it was very hot and she was almost asleep in her comfortable chair.

They wrapped him in a silken swaith and in a golden shawl, And laid him ’mid the tulips, him the fairest of them all. I saw him as a chieftain, magnificent and tall, Riding red from combat or playing of the ball. They wrapped him in a silken swaith and in a golden shawl.

And I am left so lonely, all in the twilight clear, A-holding of my bosom where lay my tender dear, A-watching of the tent door when the first stars appear, Crying for my baby in the great desert near. And I am left so lonely, all in the twilight clear.

Katherina glanced rather uneasily at the Czar; she had hoped that now he had achieved this great victory he would be less moody and melancholy.

Even her placid good-humor did not always find Peter easy to manage; sometimes her ease-loving temperament was inclined to regret the days of her comfortable prosperity with Prince Mentchikoff.

“The King of Sweden has not been captured?” she asked gently.

“Nay, he crossed the Bug and is safe in Turkey, flattered by the Sultan.”

“Well, he will trouble you no more,” said Katherina pleasantly.

The little Tartar maid rose and crept away, with a furtive look at the terrible Czar.

“I do not know,” replied Peter. “He is a very able man. But I think I have secured the Baltic Provinces.”

Leaning forward with a sudden eagerness he began discoursing of this Baltic Empire and what the acquisition of it would mean to Russia, what she could do when she commanded the town and gulf of Riga and all the islands, of the new naval base of Kronstadt, and the new arts and sciences already beginning to flourish in St. Petersburg.

As he spoke, his rough voice, suffused face, and swollen eyes became inspired; he forgot the ignorant woman to whom he spoke, and declaimed as if he was before a nation of men.

All that he said Katherina had heard before; she, who was not able to read or write, was not interested as to whether Esthonia, Livonia and Lithuania were in the hands of the Czar or not. As for his new city, she preferred Moscow to the new buildings that had risen on the marshes of the Neva.

It seemed to her a thing sufficiently tremendous to be Czar of Russia, and in her heart she wished that Peter would leave his ambitions and be content with the greatness he already had.

She was slightly disappointed that he was not satisfied with the great success he had just gained; she had hoped that when Karl was defeated Peter would enjoy the greatness and power he possessed in that peace and quiet and comfortable pomp that were her ideals of happiness.

Therefore a certain weariness came over her at hearing him once more expound the schemes she had never understood and now was tired of; even his project of making himself Emperor of All the Russias and her his Empress did not excite her; ease and tranquillity were what this lazy woman wanted, and she would sooner have been left in a secure obscurity than be dragged forward to a dubious and perhaps dangerous greatness.

Peter, talking vehemently and absorbed in these matters so near his heart, rose and began to walk up and down the room without noticing Katherina.

And she, half dozing, did not trouble to reply, but began to nod in her chair.

The Czar, suddenly turning to enforce some point, saw her heavy attitude and half-closed eyes; as he stared at her she yawned.

Peter instantly flamed into terrible wrath.

“Ah!” he cried. “You sleep while I talk, eh?”

She sat up at once, wide-awake and pale.

“I heard every word you said, Peter Alexievitch,” she stammered.

“You lie,” returned the Czar fiercely, “but what does it matter if you heard or no? It was all beyond your pitiful understanding.”

Katherina began to whimper.

“I have always been faithful,” she murmured, twisting her plump hands together.

Peter looked at her with contempt.

Anger would sometimes give him a clear-sighted vision of the creature who had so long infatuated him; he saw her now as a stupid peasant woman, and despised himself for the dominion she had over him.

His anger dropped to gloom.

“It is not your fault, but mine,” he said, “for putting you where you are.”

Katherina, grateful that his wrath had passed, dared not risk inflaming him by another word, but sat meekly pulling at the folds of her blue silk skirt.

Peter shrugged his shoulders and left her abruptly; his mood had been crossed and he had no wish for the company even of Mentchikoff, who was, like Katherina, a creature of his own creating, and accordingly sometimes despised by the Czar, who, despite his Western reforms, remained Eastern in his ideas of autocracy and his own almost divine power and privileges.

He went heavily downstairs, called for his horse and rode, alone, round the counterscarp of Poltava.

Karl would molest him no more--North Europe lay open to his armies; he could pull Stanislaus down as quickly as he had been set up, and put whatever puppet he chose on the throne of Poland.

He had accomplished his army, his navy, his port, his capital--and yet in his half-savage heart was still this brooding melancholy, this lingering dissatisfaction.

His own cruelties, his own excesses, seemed even to himself to mar his triumph.

The wife and the friend he had chosen dragged him down and he knew it, yet he could have no more avoided them than the diseases that hampered his body and clouded his brain.

He reined up his beautiful black Arab on the ramparts and gazed across the plain where he had broken Karl XII.

And even at that moment he felt a half-wistful envy of the man whom he had vanquished--the man who could conquer himself.