Voltaire's history of Charles XII, king of Sweden · Voltaire
BOOK I
Livonia, the most beautiful and fertile province of the North, had once belonged to the Knights of the Teutonic order. The Russians, Poles, and Swedes had since severally disputed their claim to it. Sweden had enjoyed it for nearly one hundred years, and was solemnly confirmed in possession of it by the Peace of Oliva. The late King Charles XI, in his severity to his subjects, had not spared the Livonians. He robbed them of their privileges and part of their estates. Patkul, who from his unhappy death has since gained the notoriety of misfortune, was deputed by the nobility of Livonia to lay their grievances before the King. His speech to his master was respectful, but strong and full of the rugged eloquence begotten of calamity and courage. But kings too often regard public speeches as vain ceremonies, which they must endure without paying attention to. But Charles XI, who, when he did not give way to transports of rage, knew how to act a part, patted Patkul gently on the shoulder and said, “You have spoken for your country like a brave man; I honour you for it. Proceed.” But a few days after he had Patkul declared guilty of high treason and condemned to death.
Patkul, who had hidden, took to flight, and carried his resentment to Poland. Some time after he was admitted to the court of King Augustus. Charles XI was dead, but the sentence of Patkul was not annulled, and he was still most resentful. He pointed out to the King of Poland how easily Livonia could be conquered; the people were in despair, and eager to shake off the Swedish yoke; the King was only a child, and unable to defend himself. These proposals were well received by a prince who had long meditated this conquest. Preparations were immediately made for a sudden invasion of Sweden, empty formalities of ultimata and manifestoes being dispensed with. At the same time the storm darkened on the Russian frontier. Peter Alexiowitz, Czar of Russia, had already made his name feared by the battle in which he defeated the Turks in 1697, and by the conquest of Azov, which gave him the control of the Black Sea. But the actions which won him the title of “The Great” were far more glorious than conquests.
Russia occupies the whole of Northern Asia and Europe, and from the frontiers of China extends 1,500 leagues to the borders of Poland and Sweden. Yet the existence of this immense country was not even realized by Europe before the time of the Czar Peter. The Russians were less civilized than the Mexicans at the time of their discovery by Cortez; born the slaves of masters as barbarous as themselves, they were sunk deep in ignorance, and unacquainted with the arts and sciences, and so insensible of their use that they had no industry. An old law, held sacred among them, forbade them, on pain of death, to leave their own country without the permission of their Patriarch. Yet this law, avowedly enacted to prevent them from realizing their state of bondage, was agreeable to a people who, in the depths of their ignorance and misery, disdained all commerce with foreign nations. The era of the Russians began with the creation of the world; they reckoned up 7,207 years at the beginning of the last century, without being able to give any reason why they did so. The first day of the year corresponded to our 13th of September. The reason they gave for this was that it was probable that God created the world in autumn, in a season when the fruits of the earth are in full maturity!
Thus the only traces of knowledge found among them were founded on gross mistakes; not one of them suspected that autumn in Russia might be spring in another country in the antipodes. Not long before, the people were for burning the secretary of the Persian ambassador, because he had foretold an eclipse of the sun. They did not even know the use of figures, but in all their calculations made use of little beads strung on wire; and this was their method of reckoning in all their counting-houses, and even in the treasury of the Czar. Their religion was, and still is, that of the Greek Church, but intermingled with superstitions, to which they firmly adhered in proportion to their absurdity and their exacting nature. Few Russians dare eat a pigeon, because the Holy Ghost is portrayed in form of a dove. They regularly kept four Lents a year, and during that time might eat neither eggs nor milk. God and St. Nicholas were the objects of their worship, and next to them the Czar and the Patriarch. The authority of the latter was as boundless as the people’s ignorance. He had power of life and death, and inflicted the cruelest punishments, from which there was no appeal. Twice a year he rode in solemn procession, ceremoniously attended by all the clergy; and the people prostrated themselves in the streets before him, like the Tartars before their Grand Lama.
They practised confession, but only in the case of the greatest crimes; and then absolution was held necessary, but not repentance; they believed themselves purified in God’s sight as soon as they received the priest’s benediction. Thus they passed without remorse straight from confession to theft or murder; so that a practice which, in the case of other Christians, acts as a deterrent, was, in their case, only an incentive to crime. They scrupled to drink milk on a fast-day, but on festivals fathers of families, priests, matrons and maids got inebriated with brandy. As in other countries they had religious differences among themselves, but the most important cause of dispute was whether laymen should make the sign of the cross with two fingers or with three, and a certain Jacob Nursoff had, during a previous reign, raised a rebellion on this question. The Czar, in his vast kingdom, had many subjects who were not Christians; the Tartars, on the west coast of the Caspian, and the Palus Mæotis were Mahometans; while the Siberians, Ostiacs and Samoides, who live near the Baltic, were pagans. Some of these were idolators, and some were without God in the world; still, in spite of that, the Swedes, who were sent as prisoners among them, report more favourably of their manners than those of the ancient Russians.
Peter Alexiowitz had received an education which tended to increase the barbarity of his part of the world. His disposition led him to like strangers before he knew they could be useful to him. Le Fort was the first instrument that he made use of to change the face of Russia. Peter’s mighty genius, checked but not destroyed by a barbarous education, suddenly broke out; he resolved to act a man’s part, to hold command of men and to create a new nation. Several princes before him had renounced their thrones, from distaste for public business, but there was no instance of a prince resigning that he might learn to rule better, as Peter the Great did. He left Russia in 1698, before the completion of the second year of his reign, and took a journey into Holland, under an ordinary name, as if he were the domestic servant of M. le Fort, whom he appointed ambassador-extraordinary to the States-General. When he reached Amsterdam he entered his name on the list of ships’-carpenters to the Indian Admiralty, and worked in the dockyard like other carpenters. In his leisure time he learned those branches of mathematics which might prove useful to a prince, _e. g._ such as related to fortifications, navigation, and the making of plans. He went into the workmen’s shops, examined all their manufactures, and let nothing escape his notice. Thence he passed to England, where he perfected himself in the science of ship-building, and, returning to Holland, carefully investigated everything which might be of use in his own country.
At last, after two years of travel and labour which nobody else would have willingly undergone, he reappeared in Russia, bringing thither with him the arts of Europe. A band of artists of all kinds followed him, and then for the first time great Russian vessels were to be seen on the Black Sea, the Baltic, and even on the ocean. Imposing buildings of architectural merit were set up amidst the Russian huts. He founded colleges, academies, printing-houses and libraries. The great towns were civilized; and gradually, though not without difficulty, the dress and customs of the people were changed, so that the Russians learned by degrees what social life really is. Even their superstitions were abolished, the Czar declared head of the Church, and the influence of the Patriarch suppressed. This last undertaking would have cost a less absolute Prince his throne and his life, but in the case of Peter not only succeeded, but assured his success in all his other innovations. Peter, having subdued the ignorant and barbarous clerical orders, dared to venture to educate them, and so ran the risk of making them a power in the State--but he believed that he was strong enough to take this risk. In the few monasteries which remained he had philosophy and theology taught; though this theology was only a survival of the age of barbarity from which Peter had rescued his country. A credible witness assured the writer that he had been present at a public debate, where the question was whether the use of tobacco was a sin; the proposer argued that it was lawful to intoxicate oneself with brandy, but not to smoke, because the Holy Scriptures say that, “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.”
The monks were not content with the reform. Scarcely had the Czar set up printing-presses than they made use of them to abuse him. They called him Antichrist, because he had the men’s beards cut off, and because post-mortem dissection was practised in his academy. But another monk, who wanted to make his fortune, wrote refuting this argument, and proving that Peter was not Antichrist because the number 666 was not included in his name! The author of the libel was broken on the wheel, and his opponent made Bishop of Rezan. The Reformer of Russia carried a law which puts to shame many a civilized state; by this law no member of the civil service, no “bourgeois” with an established position, and no minor, might enter a monastery. Peter quite grasped the importance of not allowing useful subjects to take up idleness as a profession, nor those who had not yet command of the least part of their fortune to renounce liberty for ever. The Czar not only, after the example of the Turkish Sultans, subjected the Church to the State, but, by a greater stroke of policy, he destroyed a band of troops like the Janissaries; and that which the Ottoman Emperors failed to do, he succeeded in very rapidly; he disbanded the Russian Janissaries, called Strelitz, who had dominated the Czars. This band, feared rather by its masters than its neighbours, consisted of about 30,000 infantry, half stationed at Moscow, and the other half at various points on the frontier; a member of the Strelitz only drew pay at the rate of four roubles a year, but privileges and abuses amply made up for this.
Peter at first formed a band of mercenaries, in which he had himself enrolled, and was not too proud to begin as drummer-boy, so much were the people in need of good example. He became officer by degrees, made new regiments from time to time, and at last, finding himself at the head of disciplined troops, broke up the Strelitz, who were afraid to disobey him. The cavalry resembled that of Poland, and that of France in the days when France was only a collection of fiefs. Russian noblemen took the field at their own expense, and engaged without discipline, and sometimes unarmed but for a sabre and a quiver; they were quite unused to discipline, and so were always beaten. Peter the Great taught them to obey, both by example and by punishment. For he himself served as a soldier and subordinate officer, and as Czar severely punished the “boyards,” as the noblemen were called, who argued that the privilege of the nobility was to serve the State in their own way. He instituted a regular corps of artillery, and seized 500 church bells to cast cannon. By the year 1714 he had 13,000 brass cannon. He also formed a corps of dragoons, a form of arm both suited to Russian capacity and for which their horses, which are small, are particularly fit.
Russia has, at the present day (1738), thirty well-equipped regiments of dragoons of 1,000 men each. He it was, too, who established the hussars in Russia; he even got a school of engineers in a country where he was the first to understand the elements of geometry. He was a good engineer himself; but he excelled especially in seamanship. As he was born with an extreme fear of the sea, it is all the greater credit to him that he was a good captain, a skilful pilot, a good seaman, and a clever carpenter. Yet in his young days he could not cross a bridge without a shudder; and he had the wooden shutters of his carriage closed on these occasions. It was his courage and will which led him to overcome this constitutional weakness. He had built on the Gulf of Tanais, near Azov, a fine port; his idea was to keep a fleet of galleys there, and as he considered that these long, flat, light craft would be successful in the Baltic, he had 300 of them built in his favourite town of Petersburg. He taught his subjects how to construct them from ordinary fir, and then how to manage them.
The revenue of the Czar was inconsiderable, compared with the immense size of his empire. It never exceeded twenty-four millions, reckoning the mark as £50, as we do at the present moment; but, after all, only he is rich who can do great deeds. Russia is not densely populated, though the women are prolific and the men are strong. Peter himself, by the very civilization of his empire, contributed to its population. The causes of the fact that there are still vast deserts in this great stretch of the continent are to be sought in frequent recruiting for unsuccessful wars, the transporting of nations from the Caspian to the Baltic, the destruction of life in the public works, the ravages wrought by disease (three-quarters of the children dying of small-pox), and the sad result of a means of government long savage, and barbarous even in its civilization. The present population of Russia consists of 500,000 noble families, 200,000 lawyers, rather more than 5,000,000 “bourgeois” and peasants paying a kind of poll-tax, and 600,000 men in the provinces conquered from the Swedes; so that this immense realm does not contain more than 14,000,000 men; that is to say, two-thirds of the population of France. The Czar Peter, having transformed the manners, laws, militia, and the very face of his country, wished also to take a prominent part in commerce, which brings both riches to a State and advantages to the whole world. He intended to make Russia the centre of Asian and European trade. The Volga, Tanais, and Duna were to be united by canals, of which he drew the plans, and new ways were to be opened from the Baltic to the Euxine and the Caspian, and from these to the Northern Ocean.
In the year 1700 he decided to build on the Baltic a port which should be the mart of the North, and a town which should be the capital of his empire, because the port of Archangel, ice-bound for nine months in the year, and the access to which necessitated a long and dangerous circuit, did not seem to him convenient. Already he was seeking a passage to China through the seas of the north-east, and the manufactures of Paris and of Pekin were to enrich his new town. A road of 754 versts, made across marshes which had to be first filled, led from Moscow to his new town. Most of his projects were carried out by his own hand, and two Empresses who succeeded him successively carried out his policy whenever practicable, and only abandoned the impossible. He made tours throughout his empire whenever he was not engaged in active warfare. But he travelled as lawgiver and natural philosopher. He carefully investigated natural conditions everywhere, and tried to correct and to perfect. He himself plumbed rivers and seas, had locks made, visited the timber-yards, examined mines, assayed metals, planned accurate maps, and worked at them with his own hand.
He built, in a desolate district, the imperial town of Petersburg, which, at the present day, contains 60,000 houses, and where there has arisen in our day a brilliant Court, and where the greatest luxury is to be had. He built the port of Cronstadt on the Neva, Sainte-Croix on the frontiers of Persia, and forts in the Ukraine and in Siberia, docks at Archangel, Petersburg, Astrakan, and at Azov; besides arsenals and hospitals. His own residences he built small and in bad style, but his public buildings were magnificent and imposing. The sciences, which in other parts have been the slow product of centuries, were, by his care, introduced into his empire in full perfection. He made an academy, modelled on the famous institutions of Paris and London; at great expense men like Delisle, Bilfinger, Hermann, Bernoulli, were summoned to Petersburg. This academy is still in existence, and is now training Russian scholars. He compelled the younger members of the nobility to travel to gain culture, and to return to Russia polished by foreign good breeding. I have met young Russians who were quite men of the world, and well-informed to boot. It is shocking to realize that this reformer lacked the cardinal virtue of humanity. With so many virtues he was yet brutal in his pleasures, savage in his manner, and barbarous in seeking revenge. He civilized his people, but remained savage himself. He carried out his sentences with his own hands, and at a debauch at table he displayed his skill in cutting off heads. There are in Africa kings who shed the blood of their subjects with their own hands, but these monarchs pass for barbarians. The death of one of his sons, who ought to have been punished or disinherited, would make his memory odious, if the good he did his subjects did not almost atone for his cruelty to his own family.
Such a man was Peter the Czar, and his great plans were only sketched in outline when he united with the kings of Poland and Denmark against a child whom they all despised. The founder of Russia resolved to be a conqueror; he believed the task an easy one, and felt that a war so well launched would help him in all his projects. The art of war was a new art in which his people needed lessons. Besides, he wanted a port on the east side of the Baltic for the execution of his great plans. He needed Ingria, which lies to the north-east of Livonia. The Swedes possessed it, and it must be seized from them. His ancestors, again, had had rights over Ingria, Estonia, and Livonia; it seemed the right time to revive these claims, which not only dated from a hundred years back, but had also been annulled by treaties. He therefore concluded a treaty with the King of Poland to take from Sweden the districts which lie between the Gulf of Finland, the Baltic, Poland and Russia.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.