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Fri 23 May, 2003 06:24 am
Well, she's three hunded years old
So mean, she couldn't grow no nails . . .
- my corruption of a Captain Beerheart lyric
Petr Alexeevitch Romanov, the third Tsar of that dynasty, was truly a remarkable and unique figure in history. He had been suckered into participating in the Great Northern war by another very remarkable figure in history, Augustus the Strong, elected King of Poland, and hereditary and Electoral Duke of Saxony. The Russians were disasterously defeated before Narva when the crazy King Charles of Sweden attacked their lines in the teeth of a howling blizzard. Thanks to the storm, the darkness and the confusion, the Swedes were able to get the Russians to accept terms, and march away-before they discovered just what kind of tight corner crazy ol' Charlies had gotten himself into. Petr had left and gone to Novgorod when he had been apprized of the approach of the Swedes, for which he has been very unjustly accused of physical cowardice. The courage he displayed on the siege works at Azov in 1695 and 1696 give the lie to that slur, as did his subsequent behavior in combat. He was wise to have gone, and he was organizing a response to the Swedes even before he learned of the defeat of his army. In 1701 and 1702, Sheremetev and Menshikov lead brilliant cavalry campaigns against the Swedes in Livonia and Courland (modern Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia), and early in 1703, Petr started north with an army and a mission.
Lake Ladoga is the largest fresh-water lake in Europe. At it's southwest corner, a river issues, the Neva, which has been justly described as a fifty-mile long mill race. The current is terrific. At the point where the lake enters into the river, there is a rocky island, and on this island, the Swedes had erected a stone fortress, then known as Noteborg (the "Nut" castle-meaning a hard nut to crack). Petr was never hide-bound by ideas, and, having borrowed the plans for a conventional blue-water navy from the Dutch and English, he had also sent Russians to Venice to study the construction of war galleys. On the south shore of Lake Ladoga, a body of water which can be as fierce in it's storms as Lake Superior, he had a fleet of such galleys and a fleet of transport barges built. These were then taken along the shore of the lake to Noteborg. The fighting was horrific, but finally, the Russians took the castle by amphibious assault-in an age when most European generals were considered good if they could avoid battle, and amphibious assault was considered to be insanely risky. This was in May, 1703.
Petr took his little fleet of galleys and his long line of transports down the Neva to it's mouth on the Baltic. Finding some Swedish frigates there, he prepared to lure them into a trap in the shallow waters (a tactic used again and again with great effect against the Swedes in the years to come), but the Swedish commander showed more wisdom than many of his successors, and withdrew.
Here, in Vasilevsky island, were a few huts of Finnish fisherman, only occupied seasonally, given the frequently flooding which left most of the island underwater. Petr, however had a vision. He was also, "of Greater and Lesser Russia, and all the Russias, Autocrat." Here, he ordained a great city would be built. What Petr Alexeevitch ordained was done. Under the most adverse circumstances, and in a region which hadn't the resources to support a large town, let alone a city, St. Petersburg was born. The lives disrupted and lost, as he ordered more than 100,000 peasants brought from all over his empire to build his new capital, was tragic. But what Petr ordained, no one dared deny. And he made of it a beautiful city-Italian architects, French designers of ornamental gardens, and experts in every craft and science from all over Europe were brought to this "Venice of the Snows." His successors vied with one another and the other monarchs of Europe to build beautiful palaces and pleasure gardens, and largely succeeded. And Petr's beloved navy found a home here. In the Naval Museum, the little Dutch clinker-built boat which he had found in the shed at Ishmailovo in 1693, while still a teenager, is preserved. Kronstadt was built on a barely visible sand bar a few miles out from the mouth of the river, it remains an important naval base to this day.
I wish i were there, even if they don't put on a show worthy of Petr. (Note added by editing: Petr was 21 in 1693, and not a teenager, so i'll have to go check the date on which he found the little boat at Ishmailovo--this is done from memory, but i'm confident of the facts, or most of them.)
The building of St. Petersburg was a fascinating process. Since the city was founded on marshes, there was a lot of attempts to dry them out, houses were built on stilts, and in just a few years, the city was immense. The Hermitage museum alone, one of the most fabulous architectures on Earth, is worth to travel there for. One tidbit I remember from my Russian language and literature classes (as a good Pioneer I competed in Russian 'Olympics' - knowledge competition) that Hermitage has 117 staircases. Imagine the size of that monster. I also remember that the statue of Petr, the dominant of St. Petersburg, kept falling and falling, for the horse's legs could not support the weight of the entire statue. Finally they strengthened it with a snake climbing up on the horse's hind leg - some legend was involved there of course, that Petr while young, like Hercules, has strangled a snake or whatnot. That I don't remember. The oak tree that Petr has planted upon establishing St. Petersburg is apparently still alive and well! I MUST go one day.
Actually, the boat is well over 300 years old . . . that's just a line from a Captain Beefheart song which i altered for the silliness . . . i had written, and attempted to post a very long, detailed post, which this lame web site lost . . . i'll do it again this evening.
The web site you link is suspect. I say that because they write of the Battle of Narva, 1703 . . . the Battle of Narva took place on November 20, 1700. Except, perhaps, for some of Sheremetev's raiders, the Russians did not come near Narva again until 1705, when it was besieged by regular approaches, a breach was made, and the city was taken by storm. That kind of gross error leads me not to trust any of their other information. Especially that the Swedes ever captured Petr's little Dutch boat--that simply never happened. I'll give a detailed acount of the rise of Petr Alexeevitch this evening . . .
Cool. And thanks for the correction on the website's date.
Goes to show you, find at least three independent verifications before publishing.
Joe
I'm fascinated by this guy, Joe, i'll try to get a citation for the biography i've read most recently . . . it's the best i've yet read . . .
Yipes. I went back to make sure I read it correctly and they have TWO boats linked to Petr.
c1690
"Peter I's boat", a Russian shallop, Sjöhistoriska Museet, Stockhom. A clinker built boat with four oars. Captured by the Swedish army at the Battle of Narva, 1703.
(No date) Listed under additional vessels
Svjatoj Nicolaj, Central Naval Museum, St Petersburg. Russian sources state that the Svjatoj Nicolaj originally was a gift from Maria Stuart to Ivan the Terrible in the late 1500s. It is said to have been discovered by Peter [the Great] at the age of sixteen and repaired by him and a Dutchman named Timmerman.
(The second boat is the one I had read about in an article about feats of sailing when I went to see antartic explorer Shackleton's boat at M. of Natural History, NYC)
I've emailed the website's contact. We'll see.
This is fun.
Joe
Good lookin' out, Joe . . . as i recall it, the Dutch gentleman to whom Petr applied for help with the boat was named Timmerman, so the second citation may be the one to which i have referred . . . that whole battle of Narva thing, apart from the inaccuracy of the dating, has the fishy smell of some variety of Swedish propaganda, after having been completely and humiliatingly defeated by Petr in the Great Northern War. By the end of the War, Petr's new navy was cruising the waters of the islands around Stockholm, and landing cavalry who rode through the countryside outside Stockholm, raiding and burning. Mad King Charles XII, finally escaping the Turks, and riding across Europe, reappeared to demand that an exhausted nation supply the means for him to continue the war. He then went off to the lines of a city in Norway which the Swedes were besiging (what lunacy!), where he was shot while inspecting the trenches. I've always wondered if that were a Norwegian bullet--or the bullet of a Swede hoping to put his motherland out of her misery . . .
OK, i promised/threatened to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing more than i can remember:
The "Rurics," or those who claimed to descend from a Kievan line of princes, were the Princes and Grand Princes of Muscovy. Ivan, the third of that title, in the late 1460's made himself master of "Great Russia." Why, he tought, collect all of this treasure to send it off to the Crimean Tatars? I'll collect it, keep it for myself, and let them come to take it from me. The Riurikovich (i think that's a correct spelling, it's the modern pc designation for this dynasty) had always skimmed more than 50% of what had been collected for the tribute (read "protection money") sent to the Tatars, but Ivan III was right--the Tatars were no longer a major force in Asia, and they raided the Ukraine--they could not sustain a campaign against Muscovy. Most Americans have never heard of any Tsars between "Grozny Ivan," Ivan the Terrible, and Peter the Great, if they know that much. Ivan IV, "the Terrible," was the grandson of Ivan III, and his successor, Fedor, was the last of the Ruric Tsar. Ivan IV plays a simple part in this story. He had expanded into the Ukraine, "Little Russia," and with the benefits of the conquest came an obligation to at least make a show of fending off the Tatar raids, which typically took 20,000 to 40,000 Russians for the slave markets of the East. So he established a sort of military colonist in the cities of the South. Unlike military colonists elsewhere in history, who were usually farmers, these he set up as petty tradesmen--and therefore expected them to maintain their weapons and training. His predecessors, the Grand Princes, had relied upon the Feudal Levy to fill their armies, and that was a very unreliable source upon which to rely. Ivan wanted something better, and his idea was that the strelets would support himself and family from small trade, and be ready to serve the Tsar at need. This system broke down almost immediately, and became somewhat corrupt--as could have been expected. The more adroit became the equivalent of NCO's, and they and the officers took advantage of the untutored ordinary streltzy to engross their trade, and to make them little better than serfs. But they were a little better than serfs--regulation required their regimental commanders to feed them well, and to keep them equipped. They enjoyed a relative decent standard of living for the times, and were but rarely called upon to perform their avowed tasks.
But after the death of Boris Gudenov in 1605, there began the time of troubles. Ivan had pushed the Poles from Kiev, and had taken much of the Ukraine, securing the rest by extorting allegiance from the Hetman of the Don Cossacks, and using a little "tibute" (thinly disguised bribery, but of no great sum) had secured the neutrality of the Zhaparosky Cossacks. The people of the western Ukraine, Cossack or otherwise, remained under Polish control, and Poland now took a step which would prove fatal to the peace of the region--they elected Sigismund of Sweden, son of Gustav Vasa, as their king, on condition that he accept Catholicism. He did, and, like many converts, became more enthusiastic than those born to the faith. To his proud mind, the Russians, with their dull-witted Orthodoxy, were insulting the Poles by occupying the Ukraine, and Sigismund was the son of a vigorous dynast, and had much of his drive and talent, if little of his wisdom. He began a war with Russia, which would eventually see a Polish puppet Tsar installed in Moscow, and the Kremlin under siege by the Russians, to drive out the Poles. This was referred to as "The Time of Troubles." The Russians did recapture the Kremlin, and the Polish Tsar was put into a siege gun on the walls, and fired back in the direction of Poland. But the country was exhausted, and the authority of the Tsars in tatters. With the death of Vasili IV in 1610, the country was adrift.
A council of Boyars, Commons and Patriarchs and Metropolitans of the Orthodox Church met to find a candidate. The office was finally offered to Mikhail Romanov, then 16 years of age. He was loathe to accept the post, but was finally prevailed upon to do so. He must have had great acumen, even at that age, because he finally agreed only on the condition that he he have a free hand in the appointment of a government. It was now 1613.
He was succeeded by his son, Alexei Mikhailovitch, after convening another extraordinary congress like the one which had nominated him, and scuring their approval and recognition of the succession. Here was another vigorous dynast of the stripe of Gustav Vasa.
Gustav's sons succeeded him, Erick and John, but the line was dying out quickly, when Sigismund accepted election as the Catholic King of Poland, and the Lutheran Swedes, whose loyalty to the King had been cemented with the establishment of Lutheranism, wanted no part of Sigismund. They chose his younger brother Charles. When Charles died in 1611, his son Gustav II Adolf succeeded under an state regency, as he was a minor. He fought an indecisive campaign against the Danes, who at that time occupied Scania, Sweden's southernmost province. Although he won no battles, he learned much. But events had reached such a pass in the East, that the regents and Gustav became concerned of the threat of Russia united to a hostile Poland, and Gustav's minority was declared to be at an end, and, in 1613, this teenage monarch began his first foreign campaign against the teenager who was now Mikhail, of Greater and Little Russia, and of all the Russias, Autocrat. The Russians were in no shape to put up a good fight, but fortunately, when the Swedes were convinced that the Polish usurper had left town suddently (you know, shot out of a cannon), and that Mikhail was no Polish puppet, Gustav withdrew. Not before, however securing reluctant Russian acknowledgement of the Swedish occupation of the Baltic coast. Gustav Adolph, immortalized in history as Gustavus Adolphus, went on to be recognized as one of the most original military thinkers in history. He fought the Poles to a standstill in the 1620's, exhausting them, while actually building up the military capacity of Sweden. He landed in Northern Germany in 1630, and Protestant German, supine beneath the heel of the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor, by the agency of the great Czech general Wallenstein, suddenly had a savior. The story of this King's career, to last less than two more years, leaving his brilliant and unstable daughter Christina on the throne, at this time but three years of age, is not the story here. It is enough to know that Gustav Adolf made Sweden the greatest military empire of that era in Europe, and carved a huge empire for her from the Baltic coast. From Bremen to Riga and Narva, the Swedes controlled the coast and it's ports.
After Mikhail had secured the recognition of Alexei's succession in 1642, he died in 1645. Alexei first married Maria Miroslavskaya, and she gave him sons and daughters. Two of his sons would be Tsars, and his daughter Sophia the first truly powerful woman in Russia. At that time, all administrative positions in the government were held by Boyars, and their families and adherents benefitted in appointments to government posts. So, naturally, when the Miroslavsky daughter married the Tsar, the Miroslavskys moved in to take the best spots. Alexei was devoutly religious, although the greatest controversy in the history of the Russian Orothodox church would take place in his reign--but that is not my tale. He was also very intelligent and inquisitive, something he passed on to his son Petr. It was he, and not Petr, who began the westernization of Russia. He brought in Scots and German military officers, and he estalished a foreigner's district outside Moscow to further trade and development. His most trusted friend, and the Minister Plenipotentiary of his court, was Artemon Matveev. Matveev was also a friend to the foreigners. When Maria Miloslavskaya died, Alexei was still relatively young, and Artemon introduced him to Natalya Narishkina. The Narishkins were a poor and "no account" family from central Asia, and might have been Muslim before the conquest of the territory. But Alexei was charmed with the girl, who had been taken in by Artemon's Scots wife and thoroughly westernized. Alexei then married her, to the horror of the Miloslavsky's, and, nothing behind hand, the Narishkins pushed them out, and set themselves up in government. This resentment would smolder. Natalya gave Alexei a son in 1672, Petr. His other two sons still living, Fedor and Ivan, were both sickly, and both had significant, although not necessarily life-threatening birth defects. Petr was the proverbial "healthy bouncing boy," who would one day grow into a giant in his age, reaching a height of 6' 7". When Alexei suddenly and unexpectedly died in 1676, the world turned upside down for the Narishkins. The Miloslavskys saw to the installation of Fedor on the throne, and pushed the Narishkins right back out again, with Matveev sent to exile in Siberia.
Fedor was very infirm, and was said to "rule Russia from his back," rarely able to stand and leave the sick bed. His mind was active and he was alert and intelligent, but his body failed him. He lasted just six years on the throne. And so now, with his younger brother Ivan just 14, and Petr 10, the Boyars had to choose a successor. Ivan was, if anything less desirable than Fedor. Although not bed-ridden, he was baddly crippled at birth, and had little energy, an no interest in the throne. He'd have happily been a monk. So the Boyars chose the boy Petr, and, as would have been the custom, Natalya was nominally his regent. So, the Miroslavskys were right back out again, and the Narishkins in. Matveev was recalled from Siberia.
And now we go to the Streltzy district in Moscow, just over the river from the Kremlin. (Remember the Streltzy? The "regular army" of Ivan?) Many of their officers were, and had been, even in the days when Matveev commanded them, Miroslavsky adherents. No one will ever be certain who instigated them, but shortly after the return of Matveev, they were convinced that the Narishkins had murdered Ivan, were holding Petr a prisoner, and were going to set up Matveev as the Tsar. It was a preposterous tale, but the Streltzy had by now a long history of insurrection as negotiating tactic on their pay and benefits, and it wasn't hard to arouse them this time. They crossed the river before anyone in the Kremlin knew they were coming, and were within the walls and threateing everyone with their pikes. Alarmed palace staff rushed to Natalya to know what to do, so she took both boys by the hand and lead them out onto the Red Porch of the Palace, not far from Red Square (and you thought it was a communist name). She showed both of the boys, and assured the Streltzy that there was no threat to Ivan or Petr. Matveev came out, called upon the men to remember his as their commander and comrade, and had pretty well convinced them that there was no cause for alarm. They were feeling rather foolish, and somewhat resentful (after all this think always used to at least get them some ready cash), when an unkind fate made its appearance in the person of one of the few Narishkin officers of the Streltzy, who came out onto the porch. He began by calling them dogs and cowards, and ordered them back to their district under threat of the knout (flogging with a heavy, knotted rope cat). Enraged, some of their number ran onto the porch, and threw him bodily onto the upraised pikes of their comapnions. Before the horrified view of the Tsaritsa and the two boys, he was hacked to pieces. Artemon Matveev came out at the sound of a disturbance, and he was quickly thrown onto the pikes as well. From this followed three days of slaughter, with the Streltzy hunting into every nook and cranny and cellar and sewer of the Kremlin to find Narishkins (funny how complete a list of whom they should look for these largely illiterate men had). Peace was finally restored through a direct appeal by Sophia Alexeevna, the Miroslavsky daughter of the late Tsar. Thereafter began the regency of Sophia, and of her close advisor, and her putative lover, Prince Golytsin. Peter and Ivan became "co-tsars" under Sophia's regency. Peter and his mother were consigned to Preobrezhenskoe, a summer palace outside Moscow where Alexei had done his hawking. The largely lived there, sometimes going to the Semyenovskoe palace, or to Ishmailovo. Petr's education had been indifferent at best while his half-brother Fedor had been Tsar, now it stopped altogether. As long as he did not appear to be the focus of an opposition to Sophia, she didn't care what he did. When he requisitions arms and black powder form the Kremlin, she let it be sent. When his household filled with the young men of great families of a similar age, and they began to play "toy soldiers" under the bemused eyes and with the advice of the Dutch, German and Scots men of the foreigner's district, Sophia was in the midst of her two, great and disasterous campaigns against the Crimean Tatars in the Ukraine, she had no time for them. And them, around 1689 or 1690, Petr was wandering, bored, around Ishmailovo with a Dutchman (Timmerman?), and found the little boat in the shed.
Within a few years, the disasters of Sophia's regency eroded support for the Miloslavsky faction. Then the Narishkins took a page from the book used with the Streltzy, and faked a rumor that there was a plot to murder Petr. He was awakened in the middle of the night, and take to the Monastary at Troitsky. This ancient religious foundation was surrounded by a wall so stout, the Poles had failed to take it when they took the Kremlin. Peter was soon joined by his "toy" regiments, one day to win immortal Russian military fame as the Preobrezhensky and Semyenovsky Guards, and politcal leaders and commanders of Streltzy regiments began to abandon Sophia, and rush to Troitsky to make their peace with the new power in the land. Sophia was eventually sent to a convent she was never to leave. Ivan continued to discharge the ceremonial duties of the Tsar, and an almost-grown Petr was left to play his "games" on a scale even he had never imagined. The eventually result was a new powerful Navy, which would soon take him to Azov, and eventually to capture this port at the mouth of the Don, a window on the Black Sea. Sophia's Golytsin had never made it to within a hundred miles of Azov. When the Turks came to terms, and signed a twenty-five year truce with the Tsar, this restless giant was left free to work out his destiny unhindered from the South and East, although his dreams of a Russian Navy on the Black Sea were finished. He eventually visited Western Europe, helping to build a new frigate, a gift of the Dutch East India Company, with his own hands, in the top secret East India docks in Amsterdam. Later, he spent about five months, mostly in the dock yards near London. And he spread young Russians all over Europe to study everything under the sun. Remember that he was "of Great and Little Russia, and of all the Russias, Autocrat." He never forgot. When he wanted intelligent young men to study the building of galleys in Venice, he ordered the great families to provide them, and they did. When he decided a registry of all such young men should be kept and they should all be required to serve in government, or the military, or abroad as students, it was done. And when he decided to found one of Europe's greatest cities and the new capital of his new Russian on the site of a few fisher's huts on a swampy, half-submerged island at the mouth of one of Europe's most treacherous rivers, St. Petersburg was founded.
Setanta, this will soon be the plot of the new Aaron Spellonovich TV series, 'Petrograd Hills 90210". What a spoiler!
Ain't it grand, Boss, history and literature are full of more juicy gossip than the mind of the best screen writer . . .
(Yeah, Beth, you sure do. When you coming by again? And bring Setanta...)
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