Part 20

Certain ministers, of more cunning than understanding, have pretended in their writings, that marshal de Villeroi wanted to make the young king of France take the upper hand on this occasion, and that the czar made use of this stratagem to overturn the ceremonial under the appearance of good nature and tenderness; but this notion is equally false and absurd. The natural good breeding of the French court, and the respect due to the person of Peter the Great, would not permit a thought of turning the honours intended him into an affront. The ceremonial consisted in doing every thing for a great monarch and a great man, that he himself could have desired, if he had given any attention to matters of this kind. The journeys of the emperor Charles IV. Sigismund, and Charles V. to France, were by no means comparable, in point of splendour, to this of Peter the Great. They visited this kingdom only from motives of political interest, and at a time when the arts and sciences, as yet in their infancy, could not render the era of their journey so memorable: but when Peter the Great, on his going to dine with the duke d'Antin, in the palace of Petitbourg, about three leagues out of Paris, saw his own picture, which had been drawn for the occasion, brought on a sudden, and placed in a room where he was, he then found that no people in the world knew so well how to receive such a guest as the French.

He was still more surprised, when, on going to see them strike the medals in the long gallery of the Louvre, where all the king's artists are so handsomely lodged; a medal, which they were then striking, happening to fall to the ground, the czar stooped hastily down to take it up, when he beheld his own head engraved thereon, and on the reverse a Fame standing with one foot upon a globe, and underneath these words from Virgil--'Vires acquirit eundo;' an allusion equally delicate and noble, and elegantly adapted to his travels and his fame. Several of these medals in gold were presented to him, and to all those who attended him. Wherever he went to view the works of any artists, they laid the master-pieces of their performances at his feet, which they besought him to accept. In a word, when he visited the manufactories of the Gobelins, the workshop of the king's statuaries, painters, goldsmiths, jewellers, or mathematical instrument-makers, whatever seemed to strike his attention at any of those places, were always offered him in the king's name.

Peter, who was a mechanic, an artist, and a geometrician, went to visit the academy of sciences, who received him with an exhibition of every thing they had most valuable and curious; but they had nothing so curious as himself. He corrected, with his own hand, several geographical errors in the charts of his own dominions, and especially in those of the Caspian Sea. Lastly, he condescended to become one of the members of that academy, and afterwards continued a correspondence in experiments and discoveries with those among whom he had enrolled himself as a simple brother. If we would find examples of such travellers as Peter, we must go back to the times of a Pythagoras and an Anacharsis, and even they did not quit the command of a mighty empire, to go in search of instruction.

And here we cannot forbear recalling to the mind of the reader the transport with which Peter the Great was seized on viewing the monument of cardinal Richelieu. Regardless of the beauties of the sculpture, which is a master-piece of its kind, he only admired the image of a minister who had rendered himself so famous throughout Europe by disturbing its peace, and restored to France that glory which she had lost after the death of Henry IV. It is well known, that, embracing the statue with rapture, he burst forth into this exclamation--'Great man! I would have bestowed one half of my empire on thee, to have taught me to govern the other.' And now, before he quitted France, he was desirous to see the famous madame de Maintenon, whom he knew to be, in fact, the widow of Lewis XIV. and who was now drawing very near her end; and his curiosity was the more excited by the kind of conformity he found between his own marriage and that of Lewis; though with this difference between the king of France and him, that he had publickly married an heroine, whereas Lewis XIV. had only privately enjoyed an amiable wife.

The czarina did not accompany her husband in this journey: he was apprehensive that the excess of ceremony would be troublesome to her, as well as the curiosity of a court little capable of distinguishing the true merit of a woman, who had braved death by the side of her husband both by sea and land, from the banks of the Pruth to the coast of Finland.

CHAP. XXVIII.

Of the return of the czar to his dominions.--Of his politics and occupations.

The behaviour of the Sorbonne to Peter, when he went to visit the mausoleum of cardinal Richelieu, deserves to be treated of by itself.

Some doctors of this university were desirous to have the honour of bringing about a union between the Greek and Latin churches. Those who are acquainted with antiquity need not be told, that the Christian religion was first introduced into the west by the Asiatic Greeks: that it was born in the east, and that the first fathers, the first councils, the first liturgies, and the first rites, were all from the east; that there is not a single title or office in the hierarchy, but was in Greek, and thereby plainly shews the same from whence they are all derived to us. Upon the division of the Roman empire, it was next to impossible, but that sooner or later there must be two religions as well as two empires, and that the same schism should arise between the eastern and western Christians, as between the followers of Osman and the Persians.

It is this schism which certain doctors of the Sorbonne thought to crush all at once by means of a memorial which they presented to Peter the Great, and effect what Pope Leo XI. and his successors had in vain laboured for many ages to bring about, by legates, councils, and even money. These doctors should have known, that Peter the Great, who was the head of the Russian church, was not likely to acknowledge the pope's authority. They expatiated in their memorial on the liberties of the Gallican church, which the czar gave himself no concern about. They asserted that the popes ought to be subject to the councils, and that a papal decree is not an article of faith: but their representations were in vain; all they got by their pains, was to make the pope their enemy by such free declarations, at the same time that they pleased neither the czar nor the Russian church.

There were, in this plan of union, certain political views, which the good fathers did not understand, and some points of controversy which they pretended to understand, and which each party explained as they thought proper. It was concerning the Holy Ghost, which, according to the Latin church, proceeds from the Father and Son, and which, at present, according to the Greeks, proceeds from the Father through the Son, after having, for a considerable time, proceeded from the Father only: on this occasion they quoted a passage in St. Epiphanius, where it is said, 'That the Holy Ghost is neither brother to the Son, nor grandson to the Father.'

But Peter, when he left Paris, had other business to mind, than that of clearing up passages in St. Epiphanius. Nevertheless, he received the memorial of the Sorbonne with his accustomed affability. That learned body wrote to some of the Russian bishops, who returned a polite answer, though the major part of them were offended at the proposed union. It was in order to remove any apprehensions of such a union, that Peter, some time afterwards, namely, in 1718, when he had driven the jesuits out of his dominions, instituted the ceremony of a burlesque conclave.

He had at his court an old fool, named Jotof, who had learned him to write, and who thought he had, by that trivial service, merited the highest honours and most important posts: Peter, who sometimes softened the toils of government, by indulging his people in amusements, which befitted a nation as yet not entirely reformed by his labours, promised his writing-master, to bestow on him one of the highest dignities in the world; accordingly, he appointed him knéz papa, or supreme pontiff, with an appointment of two thousand crowns, and assigned him a house to live in, in the Tartarian quarter at Petersburg. He was installed by a number of buffoons, with great ceremony, and four fellows who stammered were appointed to harangue him on the accession. He created a number of cardinals, and marched in procession at their head, and the whole sacred college was made drunk with brandy. After the death of this Jotof, an officer, named Buturlin, was made Pope: this ceremony has been thrice renewed at Moscow and Petersburg, the ridiculousness of which, though it appeared of no moment, yet has by its ridiculousness confirmed the people in their aversion to a church, which pretended to the supreme power, and whose church had anathematized so many crowned heads. In this manner did the czar revenge the cause of twenty emperors of Germany, ten kings of France, and a number of other sovereigns; and this was all the advantage the Sorbonne gained from its impolitic attempt to unite the Latin and Greek churches.

The czar's journey to France proved of more utility to his kingdom, by bringing about a connexion with a trading and industrious people, than could have arisen from the projected union between two rival churches; one of which will always maintain its ancient independence, and the other its new superiority.

Peter carried several artificers with him out of France, in the same manner as he had done out of England; for every nation, which he visited, thought it an honour to assist him in his design of introducing the arts and sciences into his new-formed state, and to be instrumental in this species of new creation.

In this expedition, he drew up a sketch of a treaty of commerce with France, and which he put into the hands of his ministers at Holland, as soon as he returned thither, but it was not signed by the French ambassador, Chateauneuf, till the 15th August, 1717, at the Hague. This treaty not only related to trade, but likewise to bringing about peace in the North. The king of France and the elector of Brandenburg accepted of the office of mediators, which Peter offered them. This was sufficient to give the king of England to understand, that the czar was not well pleased with him, and crowned the hopes of baron Gortz, who from that time, left nothing undone to bring about a union between Charles and Peter, to stir up new enemies against George I. and to assist cardinal Alberoni in his schemes in every part of Europe. Gortz now paid and received visits publicly from the czar's ministers at the Hague, to whom he declared, that he was invested with full power from the court of Sweden to conclude a peace.

The czar suffered Gortz to dispose all his batteries, without assisting therein himself, and was prepared either to make peace with the king of Sweden, or to carry on the war, and continued still in alliance with the kings of Denmark, Poland, and Russia, and in appearance with the elector of Hanover.

It was evident, that he had no fixed design, but that of profiting of conjunctures and circumstances, and that his main object was to complete the general establishments he had set on foot. He well knew, that the negotiations and interests of princes, their leagues, their friendships, their jealousies, and their enmities, were subject to change with each revolving year, and that frequently not the smallest traces remain of the greatest efforts in politics. A simple manufactory, well established, is often of more real advantage to a state than twenty treaties.

Peter having joined the czarina, who was waiting for him in Holland, continued his travels with her. They crossed Westphalia, and arrived at Berlin in a private manner. The new king of Prussia was as much an enemy to ceremonious vanities, and the pomp of a court, as Peter himself; and it was an instructive lesson to the etiquette of Vienna and Spain, the punctilio of Italy, and the politesse of the French court, to see a king, who only made use of a wooden elbow-chair, who went always in the dress of a common soldier, and who had banished from his table, not only all the luxuries, but even the more moderate indulgences of life.

The czar and czarina observed the same plain manner of living; and had Charles been with them, the world might have beheld four crowned heads, with less pomp and state about them than a German bishop, or a cardinal of Rome. Never were luxury and effeminacy opposed by such noble examples.

It cannot be denied, that if one of our fellow-subjects had, from mere curiosity, made the fifth part of the journeys that Peter I. did for the good of his kingdom, he would have been considered as an extraordinary person, and one who challenged our consideration. From Berlin he went to Dantzic, still accompanied by his wife, and from thence to Mittau, where he protected his niece, the duchess of Courland, lately become a widow. He visited all the places he had conquered, made several new and useful regulations in Petersburg; he then goes to Moscow, where he rebuilds the houses of several persons that had fallen to ruin; from thence he transports himself to Czaritsin, on the river Wolga, to stop the incursions of the Cuban Tartars, constructs lines of communication from the Wolga to the Don, and erects forts at certain distances, between the two rivers. At the same time he caused the military code, which he had lately composed, to be printed, and erected a court of justice, to examine into the conduct of his ministers, and to retrieve the disorders in his finances; he pardons several who were found guilty, and punishes others. Among the latter was the great prince Menzikoff himself, who stood in need of the royal clemency. But a sentence more severe, which he thought himself obliged to utter against his own son, filled with bitterness those days, which were, in other respects, covered with so much glory.

CHAP. XXIX.

Proceedings against prince Alexis Petrowitz.

Peter the Great, at the age of seventeen, had married, in the year 1689, Eudocia Theodora, or Theodorouna Lapoukin. Bred up in the prejudices of her country, and incapable of surmounting them like her husband, the greatest opposition he met with in erecting his empire, and forming his people, came from her: she was, as is too common to her sex, a slave to superstition; every new and useful alteration she looked upon as a species of sacrilege; and every foreigner, whom the czar employed to execute his great designs, appeared to her no better than as corruptors and innovators.

Her open and public complaints gave encouragement to the factious, and those who were the advocates for ancient customs and manners. Her conduct, in other respects, by no means made amends for such heavy imperfections. The czar was at length obliged to repudiate her in 1696, and shut her up in a convent at Susdal, where they obliged her to take the veil under the name of Helena.

The son, whom he had by her in 1690, was born unhappily with the disposition of his mother, and that disposition received additional strength from his very first education. My memoirs say, that he was entrusted to the care of superstitious men, who ruined his understanding for ever. 'Twas in vain that they hoped to correct these first impressions, by giving him foreign preceptors; their very quality of being foreigners disgusted him. He was not born destitute of genius; he spoke and wrote German well; he had a tolerable notion of designing, and understood something of mathematics: but these very memoirs affirm, that the reading of ecclesiastical books was the ruin of him. The young Alexis imagined he saw in these books a condemnation of every thing which his father had done. There were some priests at the head of the malcontents, and by the priests he suffered himself to be governed.

They persuaded him that the whole nation looked with horror upon the enterprises of Peter; that the frequent illnesses of the czar promised but a short life; and that his son could not hope to please the nation, but by testifying his aversion for all changes of custom. These murmurs, and these counsels, did not break out into an open faction or conspiracy, but every thing seemed to tend that way, and the tempers of the people were inflamed.

Peter's marriage with Catherine in 1707, and the children which he had by her, began to sour the disposition of the young prince. Peter tried every method to reclaim him: he even placed him at the head of the regency for a year; he sent him to travel; he married him in 1711, at the end of the campaign of Pruth, to the princess of Brunswick. This marriage was attended with great misfortunes. Alexis, now twenty years old, gave himself up to the debauchery of youth, and that boorishness of ancient manners he so much delighted in. These irregularities almost brutalized him. His wife, despised, ill-treated, wanting even necessaries, and deprived of all comforts, languished away in disappointment, and died at last of grief, the first of November, 1715.

She left the prince Alexis one son; and according to the natural order, this son was one day to become heir to the empire. Peter perceived with sorrow, that when he should be no more, all his labours were likely to be destroyed by those of his own blood. After the death of the princess, he wrote a letter to his son, equally tender and resolute: it finished with these words: 'I will still wait a little time, to see if you will correct yourself; if not, know that I will cut you off from the succession, as we lop off a useless member. Don't imagine, that I mean only to intimidate you; don't rely upon the title of being my only son; for if I spare not my own life for my country, and the good of my people, how shall I spare you? I will rather choose to leave my kingdom to a foreigner who deserves it, than to my own son, who makes himself unworthy of it.'

This is the letter of a father, but it is still more the letter of a legislator; it shews us, besides, that the order of succession was not invariably established in Russia, as in other kingdoms, by those fundamental laws which take away from fathers the right of disinheriting their children; and the czar believed he had an undoubted prerogative to dispose of an empire which he had founded.

At this very time the empress Catherine was brought to bed of a prince, who died afterwards in 1719. Whether this news sunk the courage of Alexis, or whether it was imprudence or bad counsel, he wrote to his father, that he renounced the crown, and all hopes of reigning. 'I take God to witness,' says he, 'and I swear by my soul that I will never pretend to the succession. I put my children into your hands, and I desire only a provision for life.'

The czar wrote him a second letter, as follows:[98]--'You speak of the succession, as if I stood in need of your consent in the disposal thereof. I reproached you with the aversion you have shewn to all kind of business, and signified to you, that I was highly dissatisfied with your conduct in general; but to these particulars you have given me no answer. Paternal exhortations make no impression on you, wherefore I resolved to write you this once for the last time. If you despise the advice I give you while I am alive, what regard will you pay to them after my death? But though you had the inclination at present to be true to your promises, yet a corrupt priesthood will be able to turn you at pleasure, and force you to falsify them. They have no dependance but upon you. You have no sense of gratitude towards him who gave you your being. Have you ever assisted him in toils and labours since you arrived at the age of maturity? Do you not censure and condemn, nay, even affect to hold in detestation, whatever I do for the good of my people? In a word, I have reason to conclude, that if you survive me, you will overturn every thing that I have done. Take your choice, either endeavour to make yourself worthy of the throne, or embrace a monastic state. I expect your answer, either in writing, or by word of mouth, otherwise I shall treat you as a common malefactor.'

This letter was very severe, and it was easy for the prince to have replied, that he would alter his conduct; instead of which, he only returned a short answer to his father, desiring permission to turn monk.[100]

This resolution appeared altogether unnatural; and it may furnish matter of surprise, that the czar should think of travelling, and leaving a son at home so obstinate and ill-affected; but, at the same time, his doing so, is next to a proof, that he thought he had no reason to apprehend a conspiracy from that son.

The czar, before he set out for Germany and France, went to pay his son a visit. The prince, who was at that time ill, or at least feigned himself so, received his father in his bed, where he protested, with the most solemn oaths, that he was ready to retire into a cloister. The czar gave him six months to consider of it, and then set out on his travels with the czarina.

No sooner was he arrived at Copenhagen, than he heard (what he might reasonably expect) that the czarowitz conversed only with factions and evil-minded persons, who strove to feed his discontent. Upon this the czar wrote to him, that he had to choose between a throne and a convent; and that, if he had any thoughts of succeeding him, he must immediately set out and join him at Copenhagen.

But the confidants of the prince remonstrating to him how dangerous it would be to trust himself in a place where he could have no friends to advise him, and where he would be exposed to the anger of an incensed father, and the machinations of a revengeful step-mother; he, under pretence of going to join his father at Copenhagen, took the road to Vienna, and threw himself under the protection of the emperor Charles VI. his brother-in-law, intending to remain at his court till the death of the czar.

This adventure of the czarowitz was nearly the same as that of Lewis XI. of France, who, when he was dauphin, quitted the court of his father Charles VII. and took refuge with the duke of Burgundy; but the dauphin was much more culpable than Alexis, inasmuch as he married in direct opposition to his father's will, raised an army against him, and threw himself into the arms of a prince, who was Charles's declared enemy, and refused to hearken to the repeated remonstances of his father, to return back to his court.

The czarowitz, on the contrary, had married only in compliance with his father's orders, had never rebelled against him, nor raised an army, nor taken refuge in the dominions of an enemy, and returned to throw himself at his feet, upon the very first letter he received from him; for, as soon as Peter knew that his son had been at Vienna, and had afterwards retired to Tyrol, and from thence to Naples, which, at that time, belonged to the emperor, he dispatched Romanzoff, a captain of his guards, and the privy-counsellor Tolstoy, with a letter written with his own hand, and dated at Spa, the 21st of July, N. S. 1717. They found the prince at Naples, in the castle of St. Elme, and delivered to him his father's letter, which was as follows:--