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allowing Russia to be attacked by his armies, all the
while that he was asserting his peaceful disposition.
His invasion of Russia filled up the measure of his
iniquities. This conduct necessarily left ineffaceable
memories in the hearts of the Russians.

By taking up arms, Sigismond intended to assure
to his son the throne of Russia, and restore to Poland
the places she had lost in the 15th century. He
besieged Smolensk, and wrote to announce to the
inhabitants that he did not come to shed the blood of
the Russians, but, on the contrary, to protect them;
and that he was prepared to guarantee to them the
maintenance of their worship and liberties. The
people of Smolensk, who knew the ardour with
which Sigismond persecuted orthodoxy in his own
dominions, repelled all his advances, and the voïevode
Cheïn made ready to defend the town to the last.
Sigismond wrote from his camp at Smolensk to the
Polish voïevodes who were serving under the im-
postor, with orders to abandon him. The Polish
Touchinists obeyed with regret, complaining that the
king would appropriate the reward of their toils; the
Russian Touchinists, not knowing what to do, fol-
lowed their allies, and, already accustomed to every
sort of treason, made their submission to the king,
and offered to recognise his son Vladislas as Tzar of
Russia. At the head of these refugees were the
boyard Michael Soltykof and the currier Andronof.

Chouïski had now two enemies equally formidable—
the King of Poland and the false Dmitri, who, himself
threatened by the ambition of his royal rival, had to
retreat to the South. Vassili's nephew, Skopine, who
had saved him by his victories, and won him popu-
larity by his frank manners, died in the midst of his
successes. The people then revived their old dislike

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of the Tzar, and accused him of poisoning his nephew. Another of the Chouškis, the ambitious Dmitri, was also involved in the accusation. Dmitri Chouški, as unpopular with the army as he was with the capital, was betrayed in battle by the foreign regiments, and this defeat completed the ruin of Vassili. The people rose in Moscow; a great assembly of the populace and the boyards was held in the plains of Serpoukhof. The Tzar was "humbly requested" to vacate the throne, because he caused Christian blood to be shed, and was not successful in his government. The southern frontier towns also refused to obey him. Vassili Chouški yielded, and abdicated; a short time afterwards he was forced to become a monk.

VLADISLAS OF POLAND—THE POLES AT THE KREMLIN.

Everyone was obliged to take an oath of obedience to the *douma* of boyards, who naturally seized the executive power during the interval before the election of a new Tzar. There were two candidates for the vacant throne—Vladislas, son of the King of Poland, and the false Dmitri. Now the latter was evidently an impostor. He ruled the upper and middle classes by terror alone, and had only the populace on his side. As they could not at once get rid of both the Poles and the brigand of Touchino, they chose the lesser of the two evils.

A Polish army, under the hetman Zolkiewski, had arrived at Mojášk: the impostor occupied Kolomenskó. The boyards invited Zolkiewski to approach Moscow, and they began to negotiate. The hetman promised in the name of the young prince to maintain orthodoxy, the liberties and privileges of the orders, the partition of legislative power between

362

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

the king and the *douma*. No one was to be executed without a trial, nor deprived of his dignities without a reason; all Muscovites might go, if they wished, to be educated abroad. The Russians began to like the Polish system of the *pacta conventa*. The inhabitants of Moscow vowed fealty to the Tzar Vladislas. One point still remained to be decided—the Russians desired that Vladislas should embrace orthodoxy. Zolkiewski reserved the decision to the King of Poland. He induced the boyards to send ambassadors to Sigismond, and Prince Vassili Galitsyne and the Metropolitan Philarete Romanof left immediately for the camp at Smolensk. This terrible crisis seemed at the point of disentangling itself in a way that was tolerably advantageous for Russia. She was to have a foreign sovereign, but one already acquainted with Slav manners, and his being a foreigner was even a gage for the partisans of reforms and Western civilisation. Poland and Russia, which might have united under Ivan and under Feodor, had another chance of doing so under a Polish prince. Such was the confidence of the boyards, that, finding the security of Moscow troubled by the neighbourhood of the impostor, they proposed to Zolkiewski to enter into the town and even the Kremlin. This unpatriotic resolution, dictated to the nobles by their mistrust of the lower classes, was to bring fatal consequences on Moscow. Zolkiewski wished to take his guarantees against the chiefs of the nation: Galitsyne and Philarete were already under Smolensk at the discretion of the king; he sent for the fallen Tzar also and his two brothers as hostages.

Sigismond meditated a new treachery against Russia. His object was to conquer Muscovy, not for his son, but for himself. He stipulated with the

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ambassadors that Smolensk should be ceded to Poland, but they courageously repelled this proposition. They demanded on their own part that Vla-dislas should leave immediately for Moscow, as being the only means for allaying the suspicions to which the conduct of the king had given rise. Sigismond refused. He wished to be Tzar himself. In despair of conquering the scruples of the two chief ambas-sadors, he addressed himself to their inferior col-leagues. The Secretary Tomila, on being asked to open the gates of Smolensk, replied: "If I were to do it, not only would God and the Muscovites curse me, but the earth would open and swallow me. We are sent to negotiate in the interests of our country, not of ourselves." All the Russians did not show this probity. The disgusting spectacle of the camp of Touchino was repeated at Smolensk. Men crowded round the king, as formerly around the brigand, to wring from him dignities, land, and money. Soltykof, Mstislavski, and the currier Andronof especially dis-tinguished themselves by their baseness. At Moscow the boyards denounced each other to the commandant of the Polish garrison. By the suggestion of Soltykof they wrote to the king to beg him to make his entry into Moscow. The Patriarch Hermogenes refused to sign the letter, and the people, more patriotic than the boyards, supported the Patriarch. Some few nobles, like Andrew Galitsyne and Ivan Vorotinski, had the honour of being suspected by the Poles, and were arrested by Leo Sapieha, successor of Zolkiew-ski. By permitting the Poles to enter the towns, the oligarchs had put Russia in the power of the King of Poland.

About this time the second impostor died, assassinated by one of his private enemies. His death

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

had grave consequences. It healed misunderstandings, as, since the false Dmitri was dead, Sigismond had no longer any pretext for keeping his troops in Russia. The nobles had now no motive for distrusting the people, and could unite with them against the strangers. Whispers were heard in the streets of Moscow that it was necessary to combine against the Lithuanians. Soltykof and Andronof denounced these generous intentions to the enemy. The Patriarch Hermogenes, suspected of patriotism, was thrown into prison, where he afterwards died of hunger. The provinces were agitated, and the inhabitants of Smolensk and Moscow wrote to all the towns entreating them not to accept the perfidious enemy of orthodoxy as their prince. The citizens did their part, the *diéti-boyarskié* made their preparations for war, and Lapounof collected an army at Riazan. At his approach Moscow began to fill with reinforcements, and the Poles fortified the rampart of the Kremlin. Suddenly a quarrel broke out between the people and the soldiers. In the first heat the Poles and Germans are said to have massacred 7000 men; but resistance was organised in the streets of the Biélyi-gorod, and the foreigners, repulsed by Prince Pojarski, had to intrench themselves in the Kremlin and the Kitaï-gorod. To clear the neighbourhood, the Poles set fire to the neighbouring streets. Moscow was almost entirely in flames.

On hearing of the preparations of Lapounof and the revolt of Moscow, Sigismond caused the Muscovite ambassadors, Galitsyne and Philarete, to be arrested, and sent them prisoners to Marienburg, in Prussia. A short time afterwards Smolensk fell, after a resistance compared by the Poles themselves

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to that of Saguntum, though the king was not ashamed to torture the brave voïevode Cheïn, who had dared to resist him. He entered Warsaw in triumph, and the unhappy Vassili Chouïski, a Tzar of Russia, was dragged a prisoner through the streets in triumph. Lapounof was now reinforced by Prince Troubetskoï and Ivan Zaroutski, at the head of the Cossacks of the Don. A hundred thousand men besieged the Poles, who were shut up in the Kremlin, but the elements composing this large army were too conflicting and corrupt for the enterprise to succeed. The three leaders were mutually jealous of each other. Lapounof had committed more than one treason, Zaroutski had been one of the first to declare for Otrépief, and the others were hardly more loyal. The soldiers of Lapounof hated the Cossacks, who on their part only sought occasions for pillage. The Poles managed to raise the men of the Don, by inventing a pretended letter of Lapounof, saying, "Wherever you take them, slay them or drown them." A revolt broke out in the camp: Lapounof was assassinated, many of his adherents were murdered, and this great army was miserably dispersed.

Russia, a prey to civil war, as was France of the 16th century to the wars of religion, suffered, like her, from foreign intervention. In France, English and Spaniards watched the tides of party success, and profited by them all to gain some place or some province. Russia became the theatre of war for two rival Powers, Catholic Poland and Lutheran Sweden. When Vladislas was proclaimed Tzar, Sweden considered herself offended, and acted as an enemy. De la Gardie took the ports of the Baltic; and the boyards of Novgorod the Great, imitating those of Moscow, opened the gates to the foreigners.

366

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

It was under the protection of Poland that the first
two impostors had arisen in the west and south; under
the protection of Sweden a third false Dmitri started
up in the country of Pskof. Marina Mniszek on her
side, who after the death of Otrépief had thrown
herself into the arms of the brigand of Touchino,
acknowledged the Cossack Zaroutski as guardian of
her son.

NATIONAL RISING—MININE AND POJARSKI—
ELECTION OF MICHAEL ROMANOF.

The situation of Russia, like that of France during
the English wars, or the wars of the League, was
frightful. The Tzar was prisoner, the Patriarch
captive, the Swedes at Novgorod the Great, the
Poles at the Kremlin, and the higher nobility bought
by the strangers. Everywhere bands of brigands
and highwaymen pillaged towns, tortured peasants,
and desecrated churches. Famine increased: in
certain districts men were driven to eat human
flesh. This country, accustomed to be governed
autocratically, had no longer any government. In
her supreme need, who was to save Russia? It was
the people, by a movement similar to that which in
France produced Joan of Arc; it was the people,
in the largest acceptation of the word, including the
honest nobility and the patriotic clergy. Already
miraculous rumours showed the excitement that pos-
sessed all minds. At Nijni-Novgorod, at Vladimir,
apparitions were seen. The monks of Troïtsa, with
the hegumene Dionysius and treasurer-historian
Palitsyne at their head, sent letters to all the
Russian cities. The citizens of Kazan raised the
distant Russia of the Kama. When the despatches

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367

from Troïtsa reached Nijni, and the protopope read them to the assembled people, a citizen of the town, the butcher Kouzma Minine, rose. "If we wish," he said, "to save the Muscovite Empire, we must spare neither our lands nor our goods; let us sell our houses, and put our wives and children to service; let us seek a man who will fight for the orthodox faith, and march under his banner." To give up all, and to arm themselves, such was the word that was handed round. Minine and others gave the third of their possessions; one woman who had 12,000 roubles gave 10,000 to them. Those who hesitated to contribute had to do it by force. Minine only accepted the office of treasurer of the insurrection on condition that his fellow-citizens should place themselves absolutely at his discretion. A chief was necessary; the people saw that he must be a noble. Now at Starodoub lived Prince Dmitri Pojarski, still weak from wounds he had received in the revolt of Moscow. Minine went to seek him, and besought him to take the command of the army. Their preparations then began, and they fasted and prayed. Russia felt herself in a state of sin; she had taken and violated so many oaths—to Godounof, to his son Feodor, to Otrépief, to Chouïski, to Vladislas. Three days of fast were commanded. Everyone took part in it, even the infants at the breast. With the money collected they organised the *streltsi*, and equipped the *diéti-boyarskié*; but they refused to admit those impure elements which had imperilled the national cause. They would have none of the help of Margeret, the mercenary who had perjured himself so many times, nor of the pillaging and murdering Cossacks. They remembered the assassination of Lapounof.

368

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

With the army marched the bishops and monks; the holy images were borne at the head of the columns. This enthusiasm did not exclude political wisdom; they wished at least to secure the support of Sweden against Poland, so they amused De la Gardie by negotiating for the election of a Swedish prince. When the troops had completely assembled at Iaroslavl, they marched on Moscow. The Cossacks of Zaroutski and Troubetskoï were still encamped under its walls; but these two armies, though fighting for the same object, could not act together. An attempt to murder Pojarski had increased the mistrust of the men of the Don. When, however, the hetman Chodkiewitz tried to throw a detachment into Moscow, he was defeated on the left bank of the Moskowa by Pojarski, on the right bank by the Cossacks. It is true that the latter, at the decisive moment, refused to fight; it needed the prayers of Abraham Palitsyne to bring them into line, and the intervention of Minine and his troops to decide the victory. The Polish garrison of the Kremlin were then pressed so close that they were reduced to eat human flesh. They capitulated, on condition that they were to have their lives. They gave up their prisoners, among whom was young Michael Romanof.

The Kremlin and the Kitaï-gorod had opened their gates, when men learned that Sigismond was advancing to the help of the Polish garrison. It was too late. At the news of these events he had to retrace his steps; the devotion of the people of Russia had freed their country. This year of 1612 remained for long in the memory of the nation; and when the invasion of 1812 came to refresh their recollections, they raised on the Red Place a colossal

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369

monument to the two liberators, the butcher Minine
and the Prince Pojarski.

Russia, once more herself, could proceed freely to
the election of a Tzar. A great National Assembly
gathered at Moscow. It was composed of the great
ecclesiastical dignitaries, of delegates nominated by
the nobles, by the *diéti-boyarskié*, the merchants, the
towns and districts. The delegates had to be fur-
nished with special powers. They all agreed they
would have no stranger, neither Pole nor Swede.
When it became a question of choosing among the
Russians, scheming and rivalry commenced; but one
name was pronounced which gained all the votes,
that of Michael Romanof. He was elected not for
his own sake, for he was then only fifteen years old,
but for that of his ancestors the Romanofs, and his
father, the Metropolitan Philarete, then prisoner at
Marienburg. The name of Romanof, of the kin
of Ivan IV., was the highest expression of the
national feeling (1613).

The new dynasty had better chances of stability
than that of Godounof or that of Chouški. There
were no crimes to reproach it with; it had its origin
in a national movement, it dated from the liberation,
and had only glorious memories. No phantom, no
recollection, no regret of the past, stood before it.
The house of Ivan the Terrible had been the cause
or the occasion of too much suffering to Russia; the
false Dmitris had stifled the regrets for the true.
The accession of the Romanofs coincided with a
powerful awakening of patriotism, with the passion
for unity, with a universal longing for order and
peace. Already they inspired the same devotion as the
oldest dynasty. It is said that the Poles, on hearing
of the election of Michael, sent armed men to seize

VOL. I.

2 B

THE ROMANOFS.

371

CHAPTER XIX.

THE ROMANOFS: MICHAEL FEODOROVITCH AND
THE PATRIARCH PHILARETE (1613-1645).

Restorative measures — End of the Polish war — Relations with Europe — The States-general.

RESTORATIVE MEASURES—END OF THE POLISH WAR.

RUSSIA had at last a sovereign, but she was in the
situation in which Henry IV. found France at his
accession. The great civil and foreign war was
finished, but it had left everywhere its evil traces.
Henry IV., when he became king, had been obliged
to reconquer all his kingdom, province by province,
town by town, half by arms and half by negotia-
tions, to win it from chiefs of the bands, leaguers,
great governors who had become independent, and
foreigners. In the same way, in Russia, Zaroutski,
leader of the Don Cossacks, ruled in Astrakhan,
with Marina and the son she had borne to the
brigand of Touchino; the Polish partisan Lissovski
ravaged the country of the south-west; the Zapo-
rogian Cossacks infested the regions of the Dwina:
scarce a province but was a prey to some robber-
band. No doubt the Poles had been expelled from
the Kremlin as the Spaniards were expelled from
reconquered Paris, but an offensive movement of the
enemy might be expected; moreover they still
retained many places, notably the important town of
Smolensk. Sweden had profited by the state of

2 B 2

372

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

Russia to lay hands on the cities of Carelia and on Novgorod the Great. In the interior of the country, the towns and cities were in ruins, the population diminished and impoverished, and brigandage had become a habit. At the Court, the Russian lords had learned to disobey, and were not less turbulent than the Leaguers who surrounded Henry IV. What Russia needed was a reign of restoration.

Michael Romanof had not the genius of the restorer of France. He was almost a child, and the boyards turned his authority against himself: the silent and bloody intrigues that Ivan IV. had only restrained by capital punishment broke forth again, and the ferocious depravity of the nobles was the shame of Russia. Quiet men and foreigners regretted Ivan the Terrible. "Oh that God would open the eyes of the Tzar as he opened those of Ivan!" wrote a Dutchman at this time, "otherwise Muscovy is lost." Happily the good will of the nation was equal to every emergency. The day of the coronation the men-at-arms presented a request for pay, as their devastated fiefs no longer gave them any revenue. The Tzar and the clergy sent letters to the Russian towns to entreat them to help the State to pay the troops, and to aid her with men and money against the foes within and without. Zaroutski was the first who was attacked. The inhabitants of Astrakhan, outraged by his barbarities, had rebelled and imprisoned him in the Kremlin, whence he attempted to escape at the approach of the Russian voievodes. He was captured, and condemned to be impaled; the son of the brigand of Touchino, in spite of his youth, was hung, and his mother, Marina the Pole, died in prison. By the advice of the clergy and the boyards, the Tzar tried to negotiate with Baloven,

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another brigand chief, who, by way of answer, attacked Moscow, but was defeated and his band destroyed. The people of the Dwina themselves executed justice on the Zaporogues. Lissovski was eagerly pursued by Pojarski, but this clever partisan outwitted all the efforts of the liberator. Peace with Poland had to be concluded before he could be quieted.

In 1615 a Congress assembled beneath the walls of Smolensk, under the mediation of Erasmus Handelius, envoy of the Emperor of Germany. It was impossible to come to an understanding: the Poles refused to admit the election of Michael Romanof, and wished to recognise Vladislas as Tzar of Russia. "You might as well," said Handelius, "try to reconcile fire and water." The negotiations were broken off. With Sweden, however, they were more successful; here the mediators, England and Holland, showed more zeal and energy than the house of Austria had done. The troubles and the impoverished state of Muscovy reacted on their commerce. By pacifying the North, they hoped to re-open Russia to their merchants, and secure for themselves greater advantages.

In May 1614, Ouchakof and Zaborovski had been sent to ask help from Holland in men and money. The Dutch gave them a thousand gulden, but said that they had themselves only lately ended a great war, that they could give the Tzar no substantial aid, but would do their utmost to induce the King of Sweden to make peace. Alexis Ziousine had been despatched to London in June 1613; he was ordered to narrate all the excesses committed by the Poles in Moscow, and to say to King James, "After the destruction of Moscow, the Lithuanians seized

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

your merchants—Mark the Englishman, and all the others—took away all their wares, subjected them to a rigorous imprisonment, and ended by massacring them.” If by chance he discovered that the English were aware that it was not the Poles, but the Cossacks and the lower classes who had put Mark to death and seized on the merchandise, he was to have other excuses ready. The Tzar entreated help in money to pay the men-at-arms, and not in soldiers, as he could give them no pay. They would think themselves happy if the King of England would send the Tzar money, provisions, powder, lead, sulphur, and other munitions, to the value of about 100,000 roubles; but would content themselves with 70,000 roubles' worth, or in case of absolute necessity with 50,000. James received the envoy and his suite courteously, informed them that he was aware of the wrongs the Poles and the Swedes had inflicted on them, and ordered them three times following to cover themselves. The Russians declined to do this. “When we see thy fraternal love and lively friendship for our sovereign, when we hear thy royal words which glorify our prince, and contemplate thine eyes thus close at hand, how can we, *kholopys* as we are, put our hats on our heads at such a moment?” In August 1614, the year following this embassy, there appeared at Moscow John Merrick, who had for long traded with the holy city, but who came this time as ambassador from James I., qualified with full powers, as prince, knight, and gentleman of the bedchamber. In an interview with Prince Ivan Kourakine he began by demanding, on the part of the English merchants, a direct communication with India by the Obi, and with Persia by the Volga and Astrakhan. Kourakine alleged

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that this route was unsafe, that Astrakhan had only
lately been delivered from Zaroutski, and that nume-
rous brigands still infested the Volga. When secu-
rity should be established, they would open the
question with King James. They then passed to the
subject of mediation. John Merrick declared that
the King of England had assembled his Parliament
to consider the best means of helping the Tzar, but
that the Parliament had as yet decided nothing, and
that he had no instructions on this head. "But," said
Kourakine, "can you not assure us that your sove-
reign will send us help in the spring?" "How can
I guarantee it? The journey is long, and there is no
way save that by Sweden. . . . I believe, however,
he will give you aid." Merrick, having contented
himself with causing the Russians to hope, returned
to commercial matters: liberty of trade by the Obi
and the Volga, concessions of iron and jet mines on
the Soukhona, concessions of territory about Vologda,
for new establishments, &c. The Russian boyards
continued to expatiate on the difficulty of the
situation, and John Merrick went to Novgorod to
negotiate with the Swedes, where he was joined by
the envoys of Holland. Gustavus Adolphus, King
of Sweden, had obtained some successes over the
voïevodes, but he had not contented the Novgo-
rodians, nor been able to take Pskof. The kings of
Denmark and Poland were his enemies, and he may
have felt a presentiment of the splendid career
that awaited him in Germany. He consented to open
a congress, and in 1617 concluded with Russia the
Peace of Stolbovo, by which he received an indemnity
of 20,000 roubles, and kept Ivangorod, Iam, Koporié,
and Oréchek (Schlüsselburg), but ceded Novgorod,
Roussa, Ladoga, and some smaller places.

376

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

Russia was now able to concentrate all her forces against her worst enemy—the instigator of all her troubles. The Poles took the offensive, under the command of Vladislas and the hetman Khodkévitch. Dorogobouge and Viasma were surrendered by the treachery or weakness of their voïevodes; but Mojaïsk and Kalouga (which was defended by Pojar-ski) resisted and arrested the progress of the enemy. Vladislas, who had all the instincts of a soldier, resolved in 1618 to march on Moscow. Michael Romanof dreaded treason more than the arms of the enemy, and determined to exact a new oath of allegiance from his subjects. He assembled the Estates, and informed them that he was ready once more to suffer hunger in besieged Moscow, and to fight Lithuania, but he asked in return that the nobles should do as much for him, and that they should resist the seductions of “the king’s son.” Everyone made the required promise, and fresh letters went out from Moscow, calling all the towns to a holy war. Vladislas, however, had stopped at Touchino, where the hetman of Little Russia, after having ravaged the frontiers of the south-west, had joined him with his Cossacks. The days of the second impostor and of Touchinism seemed to have come back. The Poles, having been defeated in an attack on Moscow, proposed a congress, which met at Devulino, not far from the Troïtsa monastery, lately the victim of a new siege. A truce of fourteen years and six months was agreed on. Poland kept Smolensk and Severia, and Vladislas did not even renounce the title of Tzar of Russia, leaving this difficulty to be solved by the judgment of God. Such a peace was only an armistice (1618); there was, however, an exchange of prisoners: the brave

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377

voïevode Cheïn and the Metropolitan Philarete returned to Russia, and the latter was at once made Patriarch.

By the return of his father the young Tzar obtained the counsellor his inexperience had hitherto needed, and even more than a counsellor—a colleague, and almost a master. Philarete was in some sort associated with the throne. The empire had two chief nobles, two sovereigns, the Tzar of all the Russias and the Patriarch of all the Russias. They figured together in all public acts, and together received the reports of the boyards and foreign am-bassadors. It was time that a master was given to the boyards. The Soltykofs, Michael's favourites, had distributed the empire among their partisans, and plundered the treasury and the nation. They were charged with having falsely accused Michael's first bride, who was expelled from the palace, and having poisoned the second. This was a common practice with the nobles of Muscovy, those who were in favour fearing a new Tzarina above everything. They shrank from no means of removing her from their path; and their reputation on this head was so firmly established that the King of Denmark had refused Michael the hand of his niece, because, "in the reign of Boris Godounof, his brother, fiancé of the Princess Xenia, had been poisoned; and this would also be the fate of this young girl." Philarete made the boyards feel the weight of the Tzar's hand, and exiled the most guilty.

378

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

RELATIONS WITH EUROPE—THE STATES-GENERAL.

Russia had begun at last to be a European nation. Everywhere her political or commercial alliance was sought. Gustavus Adolphus, who was making preparations to play his part as the champion of Protestantism in Germany, wished to assure himself of the friendship of Russia against Poland. He represented to Michael, with much truth, that the Catholic League of the Pope, the King of Poland, and the house of Hapsburg were as dangerous to Russia as to Sweden; that if Protestantism succumbed it would be the turn of orthodoxy, and that the Swedish army was the outpost of Russian security. "When your neighbour's house is on fire," writes the King, "you must bring water and try to extinguish it, to guarantee your own safety. May your Tzarian majesty help your neighbours to protect yourself." The terrible events of late years had only too well justified these remarks. The intrigues of the Jesuits with the false Dmitri, and the burning of Moscow by the Poles, were always present to the memory of the Russians. A treaty of peace and commerce was concluded with Sweden, and a Swedish ambassador appeared at the Court.

England had rendered more than one service to Russia. In her pressing need James I. had lent her 20,000 roubles, and British mediation had led to the Peace of Stolbovo. John Merrick considered he had the right to demand that Russia should open to English commerce the route to Persia by the Volga, and to Hindostan by Siberia. The Tzar consulted the merchants of Moscow. They unanimously replied that such a concession would be their ruin, for they could never hope to rival the wealthier and

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more enterprising English. They were, however, ready to sacrifice their interests to those of the empire, if the dues paid by the foreigners were essential to the treasury. John Merrick declined to pay any dues, and the negotiation was broken off. They paid him, however, the 20,000 roubles, as he assured them the King had need of them for the help of his son-in-law, the Elector Palatine.

In 1615 the Tzar sent an envoy into France, to announce to Louis XIII. his accession to the throne, and to ask his aid against Poland and Sweden. In 1629 there appeared at Moscow the ambassador Duguay Cormenin, who was commissioned to solicit for French commerce what had been refused to English trade—free passage into Persia. He also spoke of a political alliance. “His Tzarian majesty,” he said, “is the head of Eastern countries and the orthodox faith; Louis, King of France, is the head of Southern countries; and the Tzar, by contracting a friendship and alliance with him, will get the better of his enemies. As the Emperor is closely allied to the King of Poland, the Tzar must be allied to the King of France. These two princes are everywhere glorious; they have no equals either in strength or power; their subjects obey them blindly, while the English and Brabançons are only obedient when they choose. The latter buy their wares in Spain, and sell them to the Russians at a high price, but the French will furnish them with everything at a reasonable rate.” This negotiation for the first Franco-Russian treaty spoken of in history had no result. As to the route to Persia, it was refused by the boyards, who said that the French might buy the Persian merchandise from the Russians.

380

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

Another ally against Poland offered itself to Mus-
covy. The Sultan Osman sent to Moscow the Prince
Thomas Cantacuzene, to announce that Turkey had
already declared war against the king. The Russians
asked no more than to help him, and Philarete and
Michael assembled the States-general. The deputies
“beat their foreheads” to the sovereigns, beseeching
them to “hold themselves firm for the holy churches
of God, for their Tzarian honour, and for their own
country against the enemy. The men-at-arms were
ready to fight, and the merchants to give money.”
The troops were already assembling when news was
received that Turkey had been defeated, and war
was postponed. The preparations had revealed
certain faults existing in the national army, and it
was decided to enlist foreign mercenaries, and in-
struct the native soldiers in Western tactics. Orders
were accordingly given to buy arms, and to attract
into Russia gun-founders and artillerymen. The
Russia of Michael and Philarete already announced
the Russia of Peter the Great; the era of reform
had begun. Each day Muscovy strengthened herself
against her European enemies, by turning against
them the weapon of their own civilisation.

She remained quiet for eight years. In 1632
Sigismond III. died, and the Elective Diet assembled
at Warsaw. Michael was determined not to let this
opportunity slip, and the second war with Poland
began. It did not turn out as well as had been
hoped. The vices of the old organisation and insti-
tutions showed themselves anew. The two voïe-
vodes commanding the army suddenly became pos-
sessed with the old mania of disputing precedence.
They were deprived of their command, and replaced
by Cheïn and Ismaïlof, who crossed the frontier with

THE ROMANOFS.

381

32,000 men and 158 guns. Twenty-three towns surrendered to the Muscovites, but Smolensk held out for eight months, and, just as it showed signs of capitulating, the Polish army under Vladislas, now King of Poland, made its appearance. On the rumour of a Tatar invasion in the south, part of the Russian nobles at once hastened to the defence of their own lands, and Cheïn, thus enfeebled, was attacked by the king, and his communications cut. Famine obliged him to surrender in the open field, and he obtained leave to retreat, though forced to abandon both his baggage and his artillery. His only fault lay in not understanding as well as his Western adversaries the strategy of modern warfare. He was only guilty of being a Russian of unreformed Russia. His enemies, however, accused him of treason in a council of war, and he was condemned with his colleague to be beheaded. Philarete was no longer there to force the boyards to live at peace with each other. He died in 1633. Vladislas, successful at Smolensk, was defeated at Bialaia, and a congress was held on the Polianka. The conditions of the truce of Devulino were confirmed. The Russians paid 20,000 roubles, and Vladislas renounced all claim to the throne of Moscow, and recognised for the first time the Tzarian title.

Shortly after there arose a new occasion for war. In spite of the treaties of peace concluded by Poland and Russia with Turkey, the Cossacks of the Dnieper, who were subjects of Poland, and the Cossacks of the Don, who were subjects of Russia, still continued to fight against Islam. To them, besides being a holy war, it was the means of procuring zipouns,—wide trousers of a beautiful scarlet

382

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

cloth. Determined partisans and pirates, both on
land and sea, they were thorns in the sides of the
Khan of the Crimea and the Grand Turk, attacking
with their light boats the heavy Ottoman galleys,
and insulting the coasts of the Bosphorus and Ana-
tolia. They were disavowed by their respective
governments, and were the subjects of perpetual
recrimination between the Porte and the two Slav
States. They were the brigands and corsairs of
Christianity, as the Tatars were of Islamism.

In 1627, 4400 Cossacks of the Don, aided by 1000
Zaporogues of the Dnieper, surprised Azof, and
offered to make a gift of it to the Tzar of Moscow.
The acquisition of such an important place, which
would secure the command of the mouth of the Don
and access to the Black Sea, was very tempting to
Russia. Again Michael Romanof assembled his
Estates. We must observe that since Ivan IV.
first assembled them the meetings had become more
and more frequent. The parliamentary history of
Russia dates from the reign of "the Terrible." This
time the nobles declared themselves ready to fight
if they had money given them for their equipment,
and begged the Tzar to exact it from the clergy
and merchants. The latter alleged that the rob-
beries of the public functionaries, the prolongation
of the wars, and the rivalry with the Germans and
Persians, had ruined them. The officers sent by
the Tzar to Azof reported that it was in too bad
a state for defence. In fact the conquest of Azof,
like that of the Crimea in the time of Ivan, was
premature, Russian colonisation not having as yet
extended itself sufficiently towards the South. The
Tzar gave orders accordingly to the *Dontsi* for its

THE ROMANOFS.

383

evacuation, and they did not leave one stone upon
another.

Western influence made considerable progress
during this reign. The merchants entreated that
access into the interior might be forbidden to those
strangers whose rivalry was their ruin; but the
latter were, on the contrary, so necessary to the
State and to the general progress that they had to
be invited into the country by all possible means.
Under Michael, more foreigners than ever came into
Russia. Vinius the Dutchman established foundries
at Toula for guns, bullets, and other iron weapons.
Marselein the German opened similar ones on the
Vaga, the Kostroma, and the Cheksna. Privileges
were granted to other foreign merchants or artisans,
and the only condition imposed on them was not to
conceal the secrets of their industries from the inha-
bitants of the countries. This is another point of
resemblance between this reign of reform and that
of Henri IV., who also summoned to his kingdom
Flemish, English, and Venetian artisans. One
European import did not, however, find favour in
Russia—the usage of tobacco was forbidden, and
snuff-takers had their noses cut off.

Learned men were also sought from Europe.
Adam Olearius of Holstein, a celebrated astronomer,
geographer, and geometer, was invited to Moscow.
Already the Academy of Sciences of Peter the Great
was foreshadowed. A cosmographical treatise was
translated from Latin into Russian. The Patri-
arch Philarete had established at Moscow an aca-
demy where Greek and Latin, the languages of the
Renaissance, were taught. The Archimandrite Dio-
nysius of Troitsa, who had distinguished himself in

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385

CHAPTER XX.

The political union of Lublin (1509), and the religious union
(1595)—Complaints of White Russia—Risings in Little
Russia.

POLITICAL UNION OF LUBLIN (1509), AND THE RELIGIOUS UNION (1595).

SPAIN in the 16th century had taken a large share
in the troubles of France; France in the 17th cen-
tury dismembered the Spanish Empire. In like
manner Poland expiated her part in the civil wars
of Russia. After the reforming reign of Michael
Romanof, his son Alexis was to inaugurate the era
of reprisals. Russia had almost fallen before Poland,
like France before Burgundy or Austria, but she
grew strong at Poland's expense, and on the ruins of
Poland founded her own greatness. A glance at the
constitution of the Polish Empire will show us what
internal difficulties prepared the way for the external
enemy—the Muscovite, the *Moskal*, as he was called
by the men of the West.

White Russia and Little Russia had been con-
quered by the Lithuanians, and formed with them
part of the Polo-Lithuanian State. They kept for
a long while Russian manners and habits. The
Russian language was used in the acts of legislation
till the 16th, and even till the 17th century. For a
short time, under the early Jagellons, it had even

VOL. I.

2 C

386

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

been the language of the Court. Soon, however, Polish influence predominated in the ruling class. The Russo-Lithuanian nobility were divided, like the Polish nobility, into *magnates*, who possessed large territories and occupied the high offices, and *schliachtas* or lesser nobles, who formed the retainers and almost the servants of the *magnates*. The military class assembled in the *diets* and *diétines*. The king's officers bore the titles of *voievodes*, *castellans*, and *starosts*. The Russo-Lithuanian towns, like those of Poland, received what was called "the law of Magdeburg." They were governed by a *vogt* of the king, who administered justice, assisted by the *burgomaster* and by *rathmänner*. The trading classes organised themselves, after the German fashion, into *zéche*, tribes or corporations.

Up to that time Russo-Lithuania and Poland had formed two States, distinct in law; and at the extinction of the Jagellons, who had always maintained them in a personal union, it was feared they would again separate. Ivan IV. founded great hopes on this expected separation, but the Poles in the reign of Sigismond made a great effort to accomplish a definite union. A diet was held at Lublin. The Russo-Lithuanian aristocracy were much averse to the union; difference of religion, national self-love, and corporate interests created a barrier between them and Poland. The Government shrank from no means of overcoming their resistance. It threatened not to defend Lithuania against the incursions of the Tzar, and to resume the Crown lands held by the refractory nobles. Notwithstanding, the Polish party were almost checkmated; rather than yield, the Lithuanian deputies left the diet in a body. At last the king contrived to gain two of the most

WESTERN RUSSIA IN THE 17TH CENTURY. 387

influential members—Constantine Ostrojski, voïevode of Kief, and Alexander Czartoryski, voïevode of Volhynia. Nicholas Radziwill, who had so long held the Polish tendencies in check, and who was the last representative of independent Lithuania, was dead. The king managed also to win over the Little Russian nobility, less hostile to Catholic Poland than the Protestant nobility of Lithuania. The *Union of Lublin* provided that the two crowns should be united on the same head, with equal rights; that there should be only one general diet and one senate; that they should sit at Warsaw, a Mazovian town, which was to become the capital of the new State; and that Poland and Lithuania should preserve each its great dignitaries—chancellor, vice-chancellor, marshals, and hetmans—their own army and their laws. The Russian countries, properly so called, underwent a fresh dismemberment. Little Russia was specially united to Poland.

The natural result of the Union of Lublin was the growth of Polish influence in the Russian territory. On one side, the Polish nobles had obtained the right of acquiring lands and holding offices in Lithuania; on the other, the Russian nobility, by mingling more completely with the nobility of the neighbouring country, adopted its ideas, habits, fashions, and even its language. It began to be *Polonised*, thus widening the breach that separated it from the masses of the people, profoundly attached to their tongue and their nationality. The division between the aristocracy and the people increased still further, when the Catholic propaganda penetrated among the nobility of the Russian territory.

A special article of the Union of Lublin ensured respect to the orthodox religion. Poland and

2 c 2

388

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

Lithuania had not, however, been able to escape
from the great religious struggles that then divided
Western Europe, and which sent a wave even into
Poland. A certain number of lords had embraced
Protestantism (Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Soci-
nianism). The Jesuits, who were everywhere at the
head of the reaction against reform, and whose hand
may be traced in all the civil wars of the 16th and
17th centuries, soon made their appearance in Poland.
Protestantism only took a feeble root in the country,
and did not occupy them long; they then turned their
attention to orthodoxy, the real national religion of
the Russo-Lithuanian provinces. They employed the
same means by which they had hitherto succeeded
everywhere in Europe: founded colleges, obtained a
hold on the young people, insinuated themselves into
the confidence of the women, gained the ear of the
kings, and reckoned yet more surely on their worldly
cleverness than on the purely ecclesiastical means
of preaching, confession, and pilgrimages. The
brave Batory, who specially occupied himself with
all that concerned the public peace and national
greatness, kept them at a distance. They found a
monarch more to their taste in Sigismond III., a
feeble copy of the Philips of Spain and the Fer-
dinands of Austria, and well fitted to draw on the
East the calamities that desolated Germany and the
West. He protected the Jesuits, and exhausted all
the influence and seductions that the throne put at
his disposal, to convert the orthodox nobility of his
oriental provinces to Catholicism. In order to
enlarge the field of conversions, the Jesuits invented
a compromise, which was to obtain from the Russian
clergy and people their submission to the Holy See,
while their Slavonic liturgy and special usages were

WESTERN RUSSIA IN THE 17TH CENTURY. 389

guaranteed them; this is what is called the Union of
the two Churches. In fact, the *union* once obtained,
they thought it but a step to unity, and even unifor-
mity. Peter Skarga the Jesuit, who published the
book of ‘The Unity of the Church of God,’ wished
to exclude the teaching of Slavonic, and only admit
that of Greek and Latin. In order to make their
plan more easily accepted by Government, they
represented to it that the effect of their religious
“union” would be the consolidation of the political
union of Lublin, and that a true Polish Estate would
not exist till the subjects held the same faith as their
prince.

Now orthodoxy, menaced by the King of Poland,
found a powerful support in the Russian princes
descended from Rurik and Gedimin. We have seen
Prince Kourbski, in the time of Ivan IV., and later,
Constantine Ostrojski, defend by their pen, their
word and their influence, the faith of their fathers, and
translate, compile, and disseminate books in favour
of orthodoxy. Little by little the nobles yielded to
the influence of the Court; in their struggle with
the Roman religion, the people saw themselves
abandoned almost entirely by their natural chiefs,
and even by their bishops. The king filled the
Lithuanian sees with prelates who were great princes,
wholly indifferent to theological questions, and proud
of their immense riches, of their numerous villages,
and their strong castles bristling with artillery.
Still the people did not give up all hope. From
Novgorod the Great, from Pskof, from Germany,
the principle of association had spread widely among
the cities of Western Russia. Societies were formed
for mutual assistance, which had their roots in the most
distant Slavonic, German, or Scandinavian past; they

390

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

were at the same time religious confraternities, and took an energetic part in the strife with the Jesuits. They had their elected chiefs, their common treasury, and they began to found schools, to set up printing-presses, and to disseminate polemical or pious books. They entered into mutual relations, and formed ties with the patriarchs of the East; to the royal bishops they opposed a democratic force, watching them, reprisling them, and denouncing the carelessness of their religion or manners to orthodox Christendom. The most celebrated of these confraternities were those of Lemberg in Gallicia, of Wilna in Lithuania, and of Loutsk in Volhynia; that of Kief founded the great ecclesiastical academy of Little Russia.

Under the stimulus of these popular societies, the bishops could no longer remain indifferent. It was necessary to take up a position at the head of the believers, or pass over to the ranks of the enemy. The orthodox prelates were in a very difficult position; they were in disgrace with the Government as the defenders of orthodoxy, and at the same time were harassed as lukewarm by the orthodox demagogy. Terletski, Bishop of Loutsk, was in this trying situation—the starost of Loutsk, a convert to Catholicism, directed a fierce persecution against his ancient bishop. Terletski was taken, imprisoned, and starved in his dungeon; he complained, but an orthodox bishop could expect no justice. He saw only one means of escaping from this humiliation, to disarm the violence of the Catholic nobles, and to enjoy in peace his episcopal revenues: this was to pass over to the Union. His neighbour, Ignatius Potiei, Bishop of Vladimir in Volhynia, and Michael Ragoza, Metropolitan of Kief, Primate of Western Russia, who was discontented with the Patriarch of Constan-

WESTERN RUSSIA IN THE 17TH CENTURY. 391

tinople, followed his example. Sigismond III. received these first defections with joy; Terletski and Potieï left for Rome, and placed the Russian Church at the feet of Clement VIII. The Pope celebrated this success by pompous solemnities (1595); but the projected union could not be realised without the consent of all the Russian bishops, of whom only three, the Metropolitan and the two Volhynians, were as yet gained over. Balaban, Bishop of Lemberg—who, although he was always at war with the confederation, had not sacrificed the national cause to his private enmity—remained with a layman, Constantine Ostrojski, the soul of orthodoxy. A council was held at Brest, in Lithuania (1596), under the presidency of Nicephorus, envoy of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The three dissidents refused to attend. Then the bishops formulated the anathema and the sentence of deposition. The Uniates hastened to retaliate by an excommunication, but their attempt in favour of the cause of Rome failed piteously. The people everywhere declared against them. At Wilna Bishop Potieï was assassinated by the citizens. At Vitepsk, Bishop Kountsévitch, who, from a renegade, had become a persecutor, gave occasion for a terrible riot; he was stabbed and thrown into the Dwina. Many of the citizens were punished, and the city deprived of “the law of Magdeburg.” The Uniates fished out of the Dwina the body of the prelate, and his tomb shortly became famous for its reputed miracles. At Kief, Veniamine Routski, a successor of Ragoza, re-organised the convents on the model of Latin monasteries; the monks took the name of Basilians. They did not gain in popularity. A Little Russian saying attributes to them the following catechism:—“Wherefore did God create thee and

392

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

put thee in the world?” “To do the seigneurs’
dirty work.”

The Eastern Church did not allow itself to be
defeated so easily as the Jesuits had hoped. It
opposed schools with schools, propaganda with pro-
paganda; it preached and it printed. The Uniate
Routski was replaced even at Kief by Peter Mohila,
a zealous partisan of orthodoxy. He was a rough
prelate, such as was needed in those hard times, and
an old soldier, ready to meet force with force. A
monastery of the diocese resisted his authority; he
marched to it instantly with troops and guns, and
chastised the rebels. He made the school founded
by the confraternity into a college, like those of
the Jesuits; instituted professors of Latin, Greek
and philosophy, and made it the intellectual centre
of Western Russia, and one of the points of departure
of the Russian Renaissance (1633).

COMPLAINTS OF WHITE RUSSIA—RISINGS IN
LITTLE RUSSIA.

In the diets of Warsaw, the complaints of the
orthodox clergy, and of the country people, more
completely enslaved, more cruelly oppressed since
they no longer held the religion of their masters, did
not remain without an echo. A deputy from Vol-
hynia, Lawrence Drevninski, exclaimed at the Diet
of 1620: “When your Majesty makes war on Turkey,
from whom do you obtain the greater part of your
troops? From the Russian nation, which holds the
orthodox faith; from that nation which, if it does
not receive relief from its sufferings and an answer
to its prayers, can no longer continue to make itself a
rampart for your kingdom. How can you beg it to

WESTERN RUSSIA IN THE 17TH CENTURY. 393

sacrifice all to secure for the country the blessings
of peace, when in its homes there is no peace?
Everyone sees clearly the persecutions that the old
Russian nation suffers for its religion. In the large
towns our churches are sealed up, and our goods are
pillaged; from the monasteries the monks have de-
parted, and cattle are shut up in them. Children die
without baptism; the ashes of the dead, deprived
of the prayers of the Church, are carried out of the
city like dead beasts; men and women live together
without the benediction of the priest; they die without
confession, without communion. Is not this to offend
God himself, and will not God avenge His people?
At Lemberg no one, not a Uniate, can live in the city,
trade freely, and enter into the *zéche* of artisans. . . .
For twenty years in each *diétine*, in each diet, we
have asked for our rights and liberties with bitter
tears, and for twenty years we have not been able to
obtain them. We shall have to cry with the prophet,
'O God, judge me, and judge my actions.'" The
situation of the serfs had become specially intolerable:
to the Polish or Polonised lord, to the Latin mission-
ary, was added a third scourge, the Jew, whom the
noble had made steward of his lands, and to whom
he had given the right of life and death over his
subjects, and farmed out the fishing and hunting,
the roads and taverns, even the orthodox Church, so
completely, that the peasant could neither marry nor
baptize his child without having bought from this
miscreant the access to the sanctuary.

The populations of White Russia had suffered, and
were still to suffer long, without rebellion. It was
not the same with the Little Russian populations of
the Ukraine. They had colonised the steppes of the
south, and reconquered the desert from the Tatars.

394

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

To attract emigrants to fill the royal grants, the Polish lords offered twenty or thirty years of absolute liberty. Thanks to this, the desert was peopled with unheard-of rapidity, and on this virgin soil a nation was formed, ignorant of slavery, that spoke not of thirty years' liberty, but perpetual freedom. The King of Poland favoured this race of hardy pioneers —these intrepid soldiers. The Ukraine was for him a sort of military frontier, a strong rampart for Poland against the Tatar and the Turk.

These warlike populations were organised in twenty *polks* of Cossacks—those of Peréiaslaf, Tcherkask, Mirgorod, Pultowa, &c. Each *polk* had its *polkovnik* or colonel: all obeyed one supreme chief, the *hetman* of Little Russia nominated by the king, who presided over the *starchina*\* or council of elders. In time the Cossacks became formidable to Poland herself; they incessantly embroiled her with her formidable neighbour, the Ottoman Empire. Batory was forced to punish with death more than one Cossack chief for having violated a truce or a treaty of peace, and he also limited the number of the military population, only recognising as Cossacks those who were inscribed on the register, to the number of six thousand, condemning the others to the cultivation of the soil; that is, to serfage. But the Cossacks would have nothing to do with the *corvée* of the *pans*, nor admit the limitations of the king. Notwithstanding the register, they remained in

\* The *starchina* was composed of the *oboznyi*, the head of the baggage department; of the judge; of the *pisar*, or chancellor; of the *esaoul*; of the standard-bearer; of the *polkovniks*; of the *sotniks*, or centurions; of the *atanans*. When the king invested the *hetman*, he handed to him the *boundchouk* (or banner), like a horse's tail, the stick or mace, and the seal.

WESTERN RUSSIA IN THE 17TH CENTURY. 395

arms, a formidable force, who in the religious struggle
were all enlisted on the side of orthodoxy, and who
caused royalty and the Uniate hierarchy and aristocracy to tremble.

Besides the Cossacks of the sedentary populations
or the Cossacks of the towns, there were also the
Zaporogues "beyond the *porogs*" or cataracts of
the Dnieper. They stood in the same relation to the
Little Russian Cossacks as those did to the Russo-Lithuanian population; they were the vanguard of
the vanguard, the forlorn hope of the Russian nationality. Entrenched in the "Large Meadow," a fortified island of the Dnieper, they had built a fort or *sétcha*, surrounded by a palisade. They recognised
no authority; like the Knights of Rhodes and Malta,
they encamped on the land wrested from the Mussulmans, and continued the holy war with Turk and Tatar, when Christendom was at peace with him.
They neither gave nor asked quarter, existed on the
plunder of the infidel, courted dangers and "martyrdom," and received no women in their camp. They
were a race of warrior-monks, a Church militant, the
Templars and Hospitallers of the Dnieper. More
than one Polish noble of high rank came to join them
in their life of adventure and heroic poverty, and
learnt from them lessons of courage and chivalry.
All were equal, all brothers, and ate like the Spartans
at a common table; the offices of the *ataman* of the *camp*, and of the ten *atamans* of the *kourenes*, were
obtained by election. In close union with the Cossacks
of the Don, they were on land and sea the scourge of
Islamism—the Barbary Christians of the Black Sea.

The ill-feeling between the aristocratic government
of Poland and the orthodox population of Little
Russia continued to increase. When the Polish

396

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

nobles wished to treat the free husbandmen as serfs, they deserted in crowds to the countries of the Ukraine; the boldest went to reinforce the hordes of the Dnieper Cossacks, or the *sétcha* of the Zaporogues. The *kobzars* (blind bards) hastened from village to village, singing the song of the *pravda* (justice): "In this world there is no justice, justice is not to be found here; now justice lives under the laws of injustice. To-day justice is imprisoned by the nobles; injustice is seated at her ease by the *pans* in the hall of honour. To-day justice stands near the threshold, and injustice is throned with the *pans*, and hydromel is poured out into cups for injustice. O justice! our mother with the wings of an eagle, where shall we find thee? May God send the man who will perform justice—days of prosperity." These wandering poets sang so persistently, that the villages were emptied for the benefit of the Cossack camps, and justice ended by spreading her "eagle's wings," and the men "who were to perform justice" showed themselves openly.

The orthodox religion persecuted by the Uniates, the threatened serfage, the insolence of the nobles, the robberies of the Jews, the register and its limitation, gave rise in the 16th and 17th centuries to a series of revolts, in which the Zaporogues, zealous adherents of orthodoxy, in spite of their brigandage, played a great part. Specially distinguished among the Cossack chiefs were Nalivaiko, Pavliouk, Ostranitsa, and many others, whose memory has been retained by the wandering singers of the Ukraine. The Government wished after each victory to give satisfaction to the Little Russians, but their authority was not sufficient to restrain either the exigencies of the *pans* or the intolerance of the Jesuits. To the

WESTERN RUSSIA IN THE 17TH CENTURY. 397

horrible atrocities perpetrated on the insurgents, the
latter retaliated at each insurrection by atrocities
still greater. Each time the Government was vic-
torious, and after each defeat the yoke pressed more
heavily on Little Russia. From these successes
sprang a new danger for Poland. The eyes of the
oppressed turned towards an orthodox sovereign—
the Tzar of Russia; the democratic populations of
the Ukraine surmounted their repugnance to au-
thority, on seeing the anarchic violence produced by
Polish liberties. The Cossacks imagined they could
conquer if they had an ally, and this ally was only
to be found at Moscow.

398

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

CHAPTER XXI.

ALEXIS MIKHAÏLOVITCH (1645-1676) AND HIS SON
FEODOR.

Early years of Alexis — Seditions — Khmelnitski — Conquest
of Smolensk and the Eastern Ukraine — Stenko Razine —
Ecclesiastical reforms of Nicon — The precursors of Peter the
Great — Reign of Feodor Alexiévitch (1676–1682).

EARLY YEARS OF ALEXIS—SEDITIONS.

THE reign of Alexis Mikhailovitch may be summed
up in three facts: the reaction against Poland and
the union with Little Russia; the struggle between
the empire and the Cossacks; the first attempt at
religious reform, and the growth of European in-
fluence.

The new Tzar, the son of Michael and Eudoxia
Strechnef, was good and easy, like his father. In
his most violent rages, say the contemporary
writers, he never allowed himself to go beyond kicks
and cuffs. Though his mind was quicker than his
father's, he gave himself up to anyone who took the
trouble to influence him, even to the point of per-
mitting himself to be ruled entirely; unlike Ivan
the Terrible, who, as we have seen, never long
retained the same favourites. The extreme good-
nature of the prince towards his relations had grave
consequences. The people were oppressed with im-
punity, and were allowed to make no complaint.
Alexis gave all his confidence to the boyard Morozof,

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399

who had taken charge of his education, and for
thirty years had never left him. Morozof was proud,
ambitious, and unscrupulous; but learned, intelli-
gent, and full of finesse. He excelled above all
in disentangling the diplomatic complications be-
queathed to him by the last reign. When Alexis
was about to marry, Morozof did not disturb him-
self at seeing the young bride, Maria Ilinitchna
Miloslavski, arrive with a whole new dynasty of
relations and "men of the time." Instead of con-
spiring, as was usual, against the health or beauty of
the Tzarina, he preferred to associate her family with
his power, and take from them a surety. He married
a sister of Maria Ilinitchna, and became the brother-
in-law of his sovereign. He thus added to the old
title of favourite the new one of a kinsman by his
wife, and was strengthened in his power instead of
being ejected from it. His influence with his master
was greater than Richelieu's with Louis XIII., and
he had the honour of beginning the revenge for the
civil wars—the war with Poland.

Affairs in the interior were always too compli-
cated for Alexis to be able to act very energetically
in his relations with foreign Powers. The Russian
people in the "time of the troubles" had unlearnt
the passive and resigned obedience that had formerly
distinguished them; they knew no longer how to
suffer uncomplainingly, and complaint soon led to
revolt. We must also recognise the fact that they
suffered more than formerly. Russia had come ex-
hausted out of her civil wars, her agriculture and
commerce were ruined, and her population diminished
by emigrations and flight into the Cossack country.
The State, which already began to feel the heavy
expenses of a modern empire, which had to keep up

400

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

an army, foreign troops, all the machinery of war,
diplomacy, and an administration, saw itself forced to
increase the taxes, which fell more heavily than ever
on the thinned population. The Russian Govern-
ment united the vices of the past with those of
modern times; the corruption of its agents, the
impunity of the favourites and their creatures, and
the defective organisation of justice, tried to the
utmost the diminished patience of the people.

The year 1648, which saw the breaking-out of the
Fronde in France, witnessed a terrible revolt in
Moscow. The Tzar, powerless to stem the torrent,
had to deliver the judge Plechtchéef over to the
people, who dealt him summary justice. They then
demanded the okolnitchii Trakhaniotes, who was like-
wise handed over to them; finally, their fury turned
against Morozof, but the Tzar aided his brother-in-
law to escape and take refuge in the convent of
St. Cyril, whence he emerged quietly, like another
Mazarin, when the public emotion was appeased.
At Pskof the people rose on pretence that the Govern-
ment had given money and corn to the Niemtsi
(Germans)—that is, the Swedes—in accordance with
the last treaty with this Power. Nummens, the
Swede, was maltreated and imprisoned by the popu-
lace; the voïevode and the Prince Volkonski, envoy
of Moscow, expected to be put to death, and Arch-
bishop Macarius was twice put in chains. From
Pskof the revolt spread to Novgorod, where the
Danish ambassador was attacked by the people, and
left for dead in the streets. Archbishop Nicon, who
tried to quell the rebellion by spiritual arms, was
met by blows, and the streltsi made common cause
with the people. Novgorod only submitted at the
approach of Prince Khovanski at the head of his

ALEXIS MIKHAІЛОVITCH-FEODOR.

401

troops. These troops were insufficient for the reduction of Pskof, which, behind her tried ramparts, prepared to resist the Muscovites, as she had resisted the Poles. The Pskovians made many successful sorties, and only capitulated under the promise of a general amnesty. Khovanski's troops were too few to enable him to refuse their conditions, and it was time to turn against external enemies the spirit of turbulence that the civil war had left in the masses.

Happily for Russia, Poland was still more profoundly agitated, and a revolt more considerable than those of Moscow, Pskof, or Novgorod, was to open to the Muscovite armies the entrance into the Ukraine.

KHMELNITSKI—CONQUEST OF SMOLENSK AND THE EASTERN UKRAINE—STENKO RAZINE.

We have seen that Little Russia, after many partial risings, only awaited a chief to break out into a general insurrection. This chief was found in Bogdan Khmelnitski,—a brave, clever, energetic, and even educated Cossack. He was owner of Soubbo-tovo, near Tchigirine, and had been ill-treated and imprisoned by one of his neighbours, the Pole Tchaplinski, who also seized on Khmelnitski's son, a boy of ten years, and had him whipped in the public streets by his men. Khmelnitski could obtain no redress, either for himself or for his countrymen, against the Jews and the taxes. King Vladislas is said to have told him that the senators would not obey him, and, drawing a sword on paper, he handed it to Bogdan, observing, "This is the sign royal: if you have arms at your sides, resist those who insult and rob you; revenge your wrongs with your swords, and when the time comes you will help me against

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

the pagans and the rebels of my kingdom.” In the
Polish anarchy of that date it is quite possible that
the king may have held this language, and himself
placed the sword in the hands of those whom he
could not protect. Vladislas acknowledged Bogdan
ataman of the Zaporogues, and in return Bogdan
promised him the following year a body of 12,000
men.

Konetspolski, the gonfalonier of the Crown, and
Potočki, tried to get rid of Bogdan, but he fled to
the Zaporogues, and then passed over to the Khan
of the Crimea, and returned to the heroes of the
Dnieper with a Mussulman army. To Tatars and
Zaporogues were soon added all the malcontents of
Little Russia. Cossacks and people were alike deter-
mined to finish with it. Bogdan defeated the Polish
generals Potočki and Kalinovski; first at the "Yel-
low Waters," where the registered Cossacks aban-
doned the Polish banners after having stabbed their
hetman Barabbas, and then at Korsoun, where the
Poles lost 8000 men and 41 guns. The two generals
fell into the hands of Bogdan, who delivered them
up to the Khan of the Crimea. This double victory
was the signal of a general insurrection. The or-
thodox clergy everywhere preached a crusade against
the Jesuits and Uniates, and everywhere the peas-
sants rose against the Polish or Polonised *pans*.
The castles were demolished, the governors put to
death. The Jews were in a sad strait. According
to a popular song they only asked one thing—to
be allowed "to escape in their shirts beyond the
Vistula, abandoning their wealth to the Cossacks, and
promising to teach their children to live honestly,
and to covet no more the land of the Ukraine"
(1648).

ALEXIS MIKHAІЛОVITCH—FEODOR.

403

At this critical moment for Poland, King Vladislas
died, and the Diet met at Warsaw for the new elec-
tion, with all its accustomed turbulence. At this
news the revolt in Little Russia increased. Wher-
ever the nobles could defend themselves they gave
back cruelty for cruelty. Jeremiah Vichnevetski,
a powerful Polonised Russian lord, took a town
belonging to him by assault, and exercised the most
horrible reprisals. "Make them suffer," he cried to
the executioners, "they must be made to feel death;"
and his Cossack prisoners were impaled. The Cos-
sacks, who in the absence of a king expected justice
from no one, broke out more violently than ever.
Khmelnitski pursued his course of success; he de-
feated the Poles near Pilava, and penetrated into
Gallicia as far as Lemberg, a rich, half-Jewish city,
which had to pay a war indemnity. He was be-
sieging Podmostié when he learned that John Casimir
was elected in the place of his brother Vladislas. The
new king at once sent envoys to negotiate his sub-
mission. The commissioners promised him satisfac-
tion for his own grievances and those of the Cossacks
on condition that the insurgents were abandoned to
them. "Let the peasants return to their ploughs,
and the Cossacks alone bear arms," said the Poles.
Bogdan could neither abandon the Cossacks, who
would not hear of the register, nor the country people,
whose revolt had given him the victory, to be again
placed, as was proposed, under the yoke of the
pans. "The time for negotiations is past," he said
to the commissioners; "I must free the whole Russian
nation from the yoke of the Poles. At first I took up
arms for my own injuries—now I fight for the true
faith. The people will stand by me as far as Lublin,
as far as Cracow; I will not betray them." The

2 D 2

404

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

war continued, and Bogdan summoned the Khan of the Crimea to his aid, and marched to meet the Polish army, commanded by the king in person. John Casimir found himself at Zborovo surrounded by the innumerable cavalry of the enemy. It would have been all over with him had he not purchased the defection of the Khan of the Crimea by a large sum, and the promise of an annual tribute. The Khan then retired, recommending his ally to the clemency of the king. Khmelnitski was driven to treat; the register was re-established, but the number of Cossacks enrolled was raised to 40,000; Bogdan was recognised hetman of Little Russia, and the town of Tchigirine assigned to him as a residence. It was agreed that there should be neither Crown troops nor Jews in the localities inhabited by the Cossacks, and no Jesuits where orthodox schools existed. The Metropolitan of Kief was to have a seat in the senate of Warsaw.

What Bogdan had foreseen when he refused to treat really happened; the treaty could not be executed. The number of fighting men who had taken part in the election exceeded 40,000—were those in excess to be relegated to the work of the fields, to the seignorial corvée? The people had helped the Cossacks—were they then to be surrendered to their pans? Bogdan soon found himself involved in inextricable difficulties: on one side he violated the treaty by enrolling more than 40,000 men in his register; on the other hand, if he executed it, he would have to begin by inflicting death on the rebels. He wore out his popularity in performing this ungrateful task. He preferred to take up arms, accusing the Poles of having broken certain clauses of the treaty. This war was less successful

ALEXIS MIKHAÏLOVITCH-FEODOR.

405

than the first; the Khan of the Crimea, who a second
time came to the aid of the Cossacks, a second time
betrayed them, and the Cossacks were beaten at
Berestechtko. The conditions of the Peace of the
White Church (Belaïa Tcherkof) were more severe
than those of the first peace. The number of regis-
tered Cossacks was reduced to 20,000; and 20,000
more, thus finding themselves excluded from the army,
were thrown back upon the people. The greater part
chose rather to emigrate to Russian soil, to wander to
the Don, or to live by brigandage on the Volga.

A peace such as this was only a truce, and the
Cossacks were certain to break it as soon as they could
find an ally. Bogdan wrote to entreat the Tzar to
take Little Russia under his protection. The Govern-
ment of Alexis had sought for some time a pretext
for rupture with Poland. The Polish Government,
in writing to the Tzar, had not used the full royal
title. Moscow never missed an opportunity for re-
monstrance; Warsaw assured them that it was pure
inadvertence. "Then," said the Russians, "an ex-
ample must be made of the guilty." No example
was made, and the diminution of title was used at
every interchange of notes. The Court of Russia
kept up this casus belli, waiting for a moment
to profit by it; this was found in the appeal of
Khmelnitski. The Estates were convoked, and to
them were reported the repeated insults to his
Tzarian Majesty, and the persecution of the true faith
in Little Russia. It was added, that the Little
Russians, if repulsed by the Tzar, would have to
place themselves under the protection of the Sultan.
On this occasion the Estates declared for war. Alexis
sent the boyard Boutourline to receive the oath of the
hetman, the army, and the people of Little Russia.

406

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

It was time that the Tzar decided. Bogdan, be-
trayed a third time by the Khan, had been defeated
at Ivanetz on the Dniester, but on the receipt of the
news from Moscow he called the General Assembly
at Perćiaslavl to announce to them the fact. "Noble
colonels, *esauuls*, and centurions, and you army of
Zaporogues, and you orthodox Christians," cried the
hetman, "you see it is no longer possible to live
without a prince. Now we have four to choose from:
the Sultan of Turkey, the Khan of the Crimea, the
King of Poland, and the Tzar of orthodox Great
Russia, whom for six years we have not ceased to
entreat to become our Tzar and lord. The Sultan is a
Mussulman; we know what our brethren the ortho-
dox Greeks suffered at his hands. The Khan is also a
Mussulman, and our alliances with him have brought
us nothing but trouble. It is needless to remind you of
what the Polish *pans* have made us endure. But the
Christian and orthodox Tzar is of the same religion
as ourselves. We shall not find a better support than
his. Whoever thinks otherwise may go where he
likes—the way is open." The air rang with applause,
the oath demanded by Boutourline was taken, and an
embassy set out for Moscow, to ask the maintenance of
Ukranian liberties. The Tzar freely granted all their
conditions: the army was to be raised permanently
to the number of 60,000; the Cossacks were to elect
their hetman; the rights of the *schliachta* and the
towns were to be maintained; the administration of
the towns and the imposition of taxes were to be
entrusted to the natives; the hetman was to have
the right of receiving foreign ambassadors, but was
to signify the fact to the Tzar; and he was forbid-
den, without special leave, to receive the envoys of
Turkey and Poland.

ALEXIS MIKHAÏLOVITCH—FEODOR.

407

In May 1654 the Tzar Alexis solemnly announced in the *Ouspienski Sobor* that he had resolved to march in person against his enemy the King of Poland. He commanded that in this campaign no occasion should be given for the generals to dispute precedence. The Polish voïevodes affirm that on this occasion "Moscow made war in quite a new way, and conquered the people by the clemency and gentleness of the Tzar." This humanity, so well-timed in a war of deliverance, contributed greatly to the success of the Muscovites. Polotsk, Mohilef, and all the towns of White Russia opened their gates one after the other, and Smolensk only resisted five weeks (1654). The following year the Prince Tcherkasski defeated the hetman Radziwill and began the conquest of Lithuania proper; Wilna, the capital, Grodno, and Kovno, fell successively. During this time Khmelnitski and the Muscovites invaded Southern Poland and took Lublin. All the East resounded with the Russian victories: it was said at Moscow that the Greeks prayed for the Tzar and refused obedience to any but an orthodox emperor, and that the Hospodars of Wallachia and Moldavia implored Alexis to take them under his protection.

Poland seemed reduced to the last extremity; and there was still a third enemy to fall on her. Charles X., King of Sweden, arrived and captured Posen, Warsaw, and Cracow, the three Polish capitals. This conflict of ambitions was, however, the salvation of the *pospolite*; the Swede threatened the Russian conquests, and claimed Lithuania. He entered into relations with Khmelnitski, who forgot the oath he had taken; it was Charles XII. and Mazeppa enacted half a century before. The Tzar Alexis feared he had only shaken Poland to strengthen Sweden, and

408

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

would not risk the reunion of these two formidable
monarchies under the same sceptre. He hastened
to negotiate with the Poles, who promised to elect
him after the death of their present king; then he
turned his arms against Sweden. The latter was
the heir on the Baltic of the Livonian Order. Alexis
trod in the steps of Ivan the Terrible; like him, his
successes were rapid, but they as rapidly evaporated
in smoke. He took Dünaburg and Kokenhusen, two
old castles of the Knights; but the Russians besieged
Riga in vain, and succeeded no better at Oréchek or
Kexholm. The occupation of Dorpat terminated the
first campaign (1656); after that, hostilities lan-
guished, and Alexis concluded a truce of twenty years,
which secured him Dorpat and a part of his conquests.
The affairs of Poland and Little Russia became, how-
ever, so terribly complicated, that the truce became
the Peace of Cardis, by which Alexis abandoned all
Livonia (1661).

The hetman Khmelnitski had more than once
given his new sovereign cause for discontent. In
spite of his oath, he had negotiated with Sweden and
Poland. In fact, now that he had got rid of his
former master, he did not want to become the vassal
of a new sovereign, but to create a third Slav State
between Poland and Russia, and to remain its inde-
pendent sovereign. This hope was shared by the
Cossacks. They had revolted against Poland because
the king was weak and could not make himself
respected by the aristocracy; they feared the Tzar of
Muscovy would be only too strong. All government,
all authority, was a burden to the free Cossack.

Bogdan, however, kept up the appearances of
submission. His death was the signal of disorder.
Vygovski, chancellor of the Cossack army, took the

ALEXIS MIKHAÏLOVITCH-FEODOR.

409

mace of the hetman, but Martin Pouchkar, the
polkovnik of Pultowa, and the Zaporogues, refused to
recognise him. Vygovski, Pouchkar, and the Zapo-
rogue ataman denounced each other at Moscow.
Vygovski caused Pouchkar to be assassinated, and
made advances to Poland, to secure himself an ally
against the Tzar; he also applied to the Khan of the
Crimea, and defeated Prince Troubetskoï at Kono-
top; but after the retreat of the Khan, the majority
of the Cossacks declared for Moscow, and obliged the
rebel to fly to Poland. George Khmelnitski, son of
the liberator, was elected hetman.

The troubles of Little Russia revived the courage
of the Poles. They succeeded in expelling the
Swedes, and refused to execute the treaty of Moscow.
The war recommenced, and the Russians were unfor-
tunate. The very extremity of their misfortunes
seemed to have bound the Poles together. After
some slight successes, one Russian army was defeated
at Polonka by the voïevode Tcharnetski, the conqueror
of the Swedes; another, commanded by the boyard
Cheremetief and the hetman George Khmelnitski,
allowed itself to be surrounded near Tchoudnovo by
the Tatars and Poles, and being deserted by the Cos-
sacks, was forced to lay down its arms. In the north
they lost Wilna and the whole of Lithuania.

Khmelnitski had become a monk. Teteria, his
successor, had done homage to the king; but the
country on the left bank of the Dnieper refused to
recognise him as hetman, and elected Brioukhovetski,
who was devoted to Russia. John Casimir crossed
the river, and was on the point of reconquering the
whole Ukraine; but having been repulsed at the siege
of Gloukhof, he lost all his best troops through hun-
ger and cold in the steppes of the desert. The two

410

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

empires were exhausted by a war which had already lasted ten years. The whole of Poland had been overrun by Swedes, Russians, and Cossacks. Russia had no longer money with which to pay her army, and she had recourse to a forced currency, by which a bronze coinage was given the fictitious value of silver. Everywhere were heard bitter complaints of the famine. At Moscow a riot broke out against the Miloslavskis, the kinsmen of the Tzarina, and the multitude marched to the palace of Kolomenskoé to drag them out by force. The soldiers had to fire on the rebels, and 7000 of them were killed or taken.

Notwithstanding all this, neither the Poles nor the Russians would lay down arms without being assured the possession of all that they had conquered with so many sacrifices. Poland was now attacked by two new misfortunes—the revolt of Prince Lubomirski, who had some grievance against the queen, and the death of Teteria, whose successor, Dorochenko, went over to the Sultan, and by so doing involved the Government in a war with both Turks and Tatars. It was necessary to treat with Russia, and a thirteen years’ truce was concluded at Androussovo. Alexis renounced Lithuania, but kept Smolensk and Kief on the right bank of the Dnieper, and all the Little Russian left bank (1667).

The treaty with Poland did not give peace to Little Russia. Neither the Dnieper Cossacks nor the Don Cossacks could exist under the obedience and regularity essential to a modern State. The more Russia became civilised and centralised, the more she became separated from the men of the Steppe; the further the frontier of this civilised Russia advanced to the South, the nearer approached the inevitable conflict. The reign of Alexis, troubled at first by the

ALEXIS MIKHAÏLOVITCH—FEODOR.

411

revolts of the Muscovite cities, was now vexed by
the revolts of the Cossacks.

The hetman Brioukhovetski was a devoted adherent
of Russia, but he was surrounded by many malcon-
tents. As usual, the people had not got all they had
hoped by the revolution; he saw, however, in the
absolute authority of the Tzar, a bulwark against
the Little Russian oligarchy of the *starchina* and the
*polkovniks*, and against the turbulence of the Cos-
sacks. “God,” he said to the latter, “has delivered
us from you; you can no longer pillage and devast-
tate our houses.” The Cossacks and the *starchina*, or,
in other words, the military and aristocratic party,
were still more displeased to see the Muscovite voïe-
vodes establish themselves in the towns. The Repub-
lic of the Zaporogues already feared that it had given
itself a master. Methodius, Metropolitan of Kief,
encouraged the resistance of a party of the clergy
who wished to remain subject to the Patriarch of
Constantinople, and not to be transferred to the
Patriarch of Moscow. It was Methodius who orga-
nised the rebellion; he made advances to the hetman,
who opened a negotiation with Dorochenko, the ata-
man of the right bank, who promised to resign his
office and to recognise as chief of Little Russia the
man who would deliver her. The weak Brioukho-
vetski allowed himself to be persuaded, and at the
Assembly of Gadatch, in 1668, it was decided to
revolt against the Tzar, and to take the oath to the
Sultan, as the men of the right bank had already done.
Two voïevodes and 120 Muscovites were put to death.
A short time after, Brioukhovetski was slain by order
of Dorochenko, who became hetman of both banks.
But of the two parties which divided Little Russia,
the party of independence or the Polish and Turkish

412

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

party, and the party of Moscow, the latter was pre-
dominant on the left bank. It did not hesitate to
make terms with the Tzar, and, at the price of
a few concessions, a second time submitted to him
entirely. Mnogogrechnyi, the new hetman, took up
his abode at Batourine.

The right bank had no reason to pride itself on
the policy to which it was committed by Dorochenko.
It became the theatre of a terrible war between
Turkey and Poland, and was cruelly ravaged by
Mahomet IV. Abandoned for a moment by the
weak King Michael Vichnevetski, it was conquered
by his energetic successor, John Sobieski. The left,
or Muscovite bank, had less to suffer, although the
Sultan claimed it equally as his own possession,
but the inhabitants had only to fight with their old
enemies the Tatars.

The Cossacks of the Don at this period were,
on the whole, tolerably quiet; but one of their num-
ber, Stenko Razine, overturned all Eastern Russia.
The immigration of the Cossacks of the Dnieper,
expelled from their native land by war, had created
a great famine in these poor plains of the Don.
Stenko assembled some of these starved adventurers,
and formed a scheme for the capture of Azof; but on
being hindered by the *starchina* of the Dontsi, he
turned towards the East, towards the Volga and the
Jaïk (Oural). His reputation was wide-spread; he
was said to be a magician, against whom neither
sabre, balls, nor bullets could prevail, and the bri-
gands of all the country crowded to his banner. He
swept the Caspian, and ravaged the shores of Persia.
The Russian Government, powerless to crush him,
offered him a pardon if he would surrender his guns
and boats stolen from the Crown. He accepted the

ALEXIS MIKHAÏLOVITCH—FEODOR.

413

offer; but his exploits, his wealth acquired by pillage, and his princely liberality created him an immense party among the lower classes, and among the Cossacks and even the *streltsi* of the towns. The lands of the Volga were always ready for a social revolution; hence the success of Razine, and later of Pougatchef. There brigands were popular and respected; honest merchants, come to the Don for trading purposes, and learning that Stenko had begun the career of a pirate, did not hesitate to join him.

In 1670, Stenko having spent all the money he had gained by pillage, went up the Don with an army of vagabonds, and thence crossed to the Volga. All the country rose on the approach of a chief already so famous. The inhabitants of Tzaritsyne opened their gates to him. A flotilla was sent against him, but the sailors and the *streltsi* surrendered, and betrayed to him their commanders. Astrakhan revolted, and delivered up its two voïevodes, one of whom was thrown from the top of a bell-tower. Ascending the Volga, he took Saratof and Samara, and raised the country of Nijni-Novgorod, Tambof, and Pensa. Everywhere in the Russia of the Volga the serfs revolted against their masters—the Tatars, Tchouvaches, Mordvians, and Tcheremisses against the domination of Russia. It was a fearful revolution. In 1671 Stenko Razine was defeated, near Simbirsk, by George Baratinski. His prestige was lost; he was pursued into the steppes, arrested on the Don, and sent to Moscow, where he was executed (1671).

His death did not immediately check the rebellion. The brigands still continued to hold the country. At Astrakhan, Vassili Ouss governed despotically, and threw the archbishop from a belfry. Finally, how-

411

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

ever, all these imitators of Razine were killed or
captured, the Volga freed, and the Don became as
peaceful as the Dnieper.

ECCLESIASTICAL REFORMS OF NICON—THE PRECURSORS
OF PETER THE GREAT.

If Alexis, father of Peter the Great, was not
himself a reformer, his whole reign was a prepa-
ration for reform. Who can tell how much Peter
owed to the example of his father — and of his
mother Natalia, the pupil of Matvéef—to the ideas of
Nicon, Polotski, and Nachtchokine? Nicon was the
son of a simple peasant of the Government of Nijni-
Novgorod. The Church drew the young man from
obscurity, and gave him little by little a place among
those who were great. A priest at Moscow, a recluse
renowned for his piety on the banks of the White
Lake, and later an archimandrite of the *Novospasski
Monastyr*, he was at last nominated Metropolitan
of Novgorod, where we have seen him appease a
sedition at the peril of his life. The Tzar loved
and admired him, and made him Patriarch, and
allowed him to take the title of Chief Noble and
Sovereign, once borne by Philarete. A man who
had raised himself to such a height from such a
depth was not capable of mastering his ambition.
Proud and imperious, he made himself a multitude
of enemies among the clergy and the nobles, and
despised them.

Nicon took up the correction of the holy books
begun by Dionysius of Troitsa. A number of gross
mistakes and even interpolations had slipped into the
Slavonic manuscripts, and thence passed into print.
On being informed of these mistakes by some Greek

ALEXIS MIKHAÏLOVITCH-FEODOR.

415

prelates who had come to Moscow, Nicon assembled
a council, where it was decided that the printed
books must be corrected according to the ancient
Slavonic or Greek manuscripts. Nicon collected
these texts from all parts, and, with the help of
learned ecclesiastics, set to work. This attempt,
which denotes a truly modern and scientific spirit,
was the cause of a schism. To the people, and to a
large party of the clergy and monks, everything in
the holy books, even the mistakes of the copyists, was
sacred. Certain altered or interpolated texts had
in their turn consecrated usages opposed to those
generally followed by the Church. The sectaries
relying on these texts forbade the beard to be
shaven under the penalty of committing a mortal
sin, and ordered the sign of the cross to be made with
two fingers and not with three, and the liturgy
with seven *prosphires* and not with five. Fanatics
were ready to die sooner than read *Isous* for
*Isous* (Jesus). Besides those whom an excessive
respect for ancient texts and customs drove into
schism, we must reckon true heretics, who adopted
falsified or apocryphal renderings, and who, after
having been for long hidden and ignored in the
bosom of the orthodox Church, were all at once
unmasked. Thus the reforms of Nicon brought to
light the *raskol* latent in the Russian Church, with
all its multiplicity of sects—Old Believers, Drinkers of
Milk, Champions of the Spirit, Flagellants, Skoptsi,
or voluntary eunuchs, and many others, whose origin
may be traced to Alexandrine Gnosticism, Persian
Manichæism, and perhaps even to Hindu Pantheism
(1654).

The Tzar energetically supported his patriarch.
He diligently sought out the *religious madmen* (iouro-

416

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divié) and the wandering prophets who led the people astray, disgraced the men and women of his Court who persisted in crossing themselves with two fingers, imprisoned rebellious monks and ecclesiastics, and hunted down assemblies of non-conformists. One of Nicon's enemies was burnt alive. The most curious episode of this religious war was the revolt of the holy monasteries of the White Sea. The monks, passionately attached to their ancient customs, won over the streltsi and the diéti-boyarskié who formed the garrison of the fortified convent of Solovetski. An army had to be sent against them (1668), but the monastery only capitulated after a siege of eight years. It was then taken by assault, and the rebels hung.

At the same time that Alexis enabled Nicon to subdue his religious foes, he delivered him up to his political enemies. The proud and imperious character of the Patriarch had ended by rendering him insupportable to the Tzar. It was a reproduction of the rivalry of the Patriarch Keroularios and the Emperor Isaac Comnenus in the 11th century (Byzantine). The courtiers did their best to foment this misunderstanding. Nicon, instead of combating their arts, treated them with disdain. At last his enemies put upon him a public insult, which made him beside himself. In the midst of the tears of the people, he solemnly placed his pontifical insignia on the altar, and retired to a convent he had founded near Moscow. This was to relinquish the field of battle to his adversaries. He expected that the Tzar would beseech him to resume his office, but the Tzar did not trouble himself about his old favourite. His voluntary exile lasted eight years (1658-1666), when a council was assembled on the occasion of the arrival

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of the Patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria at Moscow. The council approved of Nicon's reforms and his corrections of the sacred books; but for his voluntary desertion of the patriarchate, his audacious attacks on the Tzar and the bishops, and the abuse of his power over the inferior clergy, he was condemned to be imprisoned in a monastery on the White Lake.

By the side of Nicon among the reformers, we must mention Simeon Polotski, tutor of the sons of Alexis, who published against the *raskolniks* the 'Rod of Government;' wrote light verses, panegyrics, sermons, dramatic compositions, maxims, and examples drawn from the Scriptures, and never ceased to remind the Tzar of a French king. "There was once," he wrote, "a King of France called Francis I. As he loved literature and science, though his ancestors hated them and lived in ignorance like barbarians, the sons of illustrious families sought instruction, in order to please the monarch. Thus knowledge spread through the country, for it is the custom of subjects to imitate the prince; all love what he loves. Happy is the kingdom whose king gives a good example to all!" Simeon was a White Russian; others, like Slavinetski and Satanovski, who were charged by Nicon with the translation of foreign books, were natives of Little Russia, of Kief the learned. These two western divisions of Russia served as a link between Muscovy and Europe.

Two writers of this epoch merit special mention. Gregory Kotochikhine, under-secretary of the *Prikaz of Embassies*, was obliged, in consequence of a quarrel with the voievode Dolgorouki, to fly first into Poland and then into Sweden, where he wrote a curious treatise, called 'Russia under the reign of

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Alexis Mikhailovitch,' which appeared about 1666. He does not concern himself either with the clergy or the inferior classes, but gives a frightful picture of the ignorance, sensuality, and brutality of the boyards and nobles. So graphic is it that, as Polévoï remarks, we are forced involuntarily to ask, "In what state could the lower orders have been?" He speaks with horror and disgust of the administration of justice, compares foreign institutions with those of his own country to the advantage of the former, and regrets that his compatriots did not send their sons to be educated abroad.

Iouri Krijanitch, a Servian by birth and a Catholic priest, was one of those learned Slavs who now came into Russia to seek employment for their talents. He had proposed to himself three aims in coming to Moscow: 1. To elevate the Slavonic tongue by compiling a grammar and a lexicon, so that the Slavs might learn to speak and write correctly; and to place a larger number of words and phrases at their disposal, so that they might be able to express all the thoughts common to the human mind, and also political and general ideas. 2. To write the history of the Slavs, and to refute the falsehoods and calumnies of the Germans. 3. To unmask the tricks and sophisms made use of by foreign nations to deceive the Slavs. In his work entitled 'The Russian Empire in the middle of the 17th Century,' dedicated to Alexis Mikhailovitch, and lately republished by M. Bezsonof, he touches on all points of manners and customs, politics, and political economy. Like Kotochikhine, he attacks ignorance and barbarism, and advocates instruction, study, and civilisation, as being the only remedies for the misfortunes of Russia.

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Krijanitch is the first of the Slavophiles, or the Pan-Slavists, as they are at present called. He appeals to all the Slav nations—“Borysthenites, or Little Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, and Serbs.” He advises the Russians to mistrust equally Germans and Greeks. It was probably his philippics against the Greek clergy established in Russia that caused him in 1660 to be exiled to Tobolsk.

Ordine-Nachtchokine, son of a gentleman of Pskof, distinguished himself as a diplomatist in the negotiations for the Peace of Androussovo, which gave Kief and Smolensk to Russia. Summonsed to take part in the councils of the Tzar, he applied his activity to all branches of the administration; to the army, that needed reform; to commerce, that must be freed from the interference of the voïevodes; to diplomacy, for which men skilled in languages, representatives worthy of the Court of Russia, must be found. His object was to make Muscovy the centre of Asiatic and European trade; he instituted an Armenian Company for the purchase of Persian silks, dreamed of a fleet on the Caspian, constructed the first Russian vessel on the Oka, had extracts from foreign news-letters regularly translated for the enlightenment of the sovereign, and thus founded, though for the Tzar's benefit alone, the Russian press.

As he had necessarily to praise the usages of foreign countries, and to find fault with those of Russia, Nachtchokine could not but make himself many enemies. His morality was equal to his talent: incorruptible, indefatigable, and master of himself, he was the first great European that Russia had produced. While praising Europe he still remained a Russian. In his old age he became a monk.

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When Nachtchokine had to leave his post, the boyard Matvéef, a familiar friend of Alexis, was appointed his successor. One day, when the Tzar was dining with Matvéef, he noticed a young girl who was serving at table, and who pleased him by her modest and intelligent air. This was a motherless girl, Natalia Narychkine, to whom her uncle Matvéef had been a second father. "I have found a husband for her," said the Tzar to Matvéef some days after. This husband was the Tzar himself. The marriage drew closer still the ties that bound him to Matvéef. Now the latter was, like Nachtchokine, full of European ideas. His house was furnished and ornamented according to Western notions. His chosen guests did not give themselves up to the orgies authorised by national custom; they behaved as courteously as if they were in a French *salon*. His Scotch wife, a Hamilton by birth, was the only lady of the Court who did not paint herself, and, instead of keeping herself secluded in her apartments, took part in the conversation of men. We may conceive the influence of the boyard and his wife on their adopted daughter; and is it surprising that Natalia was the first Russian princess who drew back the curtains of her litter, and allowed her face to be seen by her subjects? Matvéef protected foreign artists,—"masters in perspective writings," as they were called. In the German *Slobode* of Moscow he established a sort of dramatic academy, where twenty-five merchants' sons learnt to act comedies. The Tzar acquired a taste for theatrical entertainments. Likatchof, his envoy at the Court of Florence, wrote to his sovereign enthusiastic letters full of the marvels which he had seen at the opera—of palaces which came and went, of a sea that rose and fell and filled itself with fish, of men

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who rode on monsters of the deep, or pursued each other into the clouds. Moscow undertook to rival Florence. In a wooden theatre, ballets and dramas, adapted from the Bible, were represented before the Tzar: 'Joseph sold by his Brethren,' 'The Prodigal Son,' and 'Esther,' which preceded that of Racine by seventeen years. At Moscow, as at St. Cyr, the piece gave scope to many allusions. Here Esther was Natalia Narychkine; Mordecai was Matvéef, the protector of her youth; and the crémi-anchtchik Haman, who was hung on the tchélobitié of Queen Esther, was, no doubt, Khitrovo, the former favourite. These pieces were enlivened by somewhat rough pleasantries. In 'Holofernes,' when Judith has cut off the head of the Assyrian voïevode, the servant cries, "Here is a poor man who will be much astonished, on awaking, to find his head carried away!"

During this reign, when Russia was trying to assimilate herself to Europe, diplomacy naturally took rapid strides. Muscovy had entered into more or less close relations with all the Courts of the West.

In 1645, Alexis sent Gerasimus Doktourof to notify his accession to the King of England, Charles I. The Russian envoy arrived in England in the midst of the Revolution. Being received at Gravesend with great honours and the firing of guns by the company of merchants that traded with Russia, he at once inquired "where was the king?" They replied, they did not know exactly where he was, because for three or four years there had been a great civil war, and instead of the king they had now the Parliament, composed of deputies from all the orders, who governed London as well as the kingdoms of England and

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Scotland. "Our war with the king," said the merchants, "began for the sake of religion, when he married the daughter of the King of France. She, being a Papist, persuaded the king into various superstitious practices; it was by her counsel that the king instituted archbishops and called in the Jesuits. Many people, in order to follow the example of the king, made themselves Papists too. Besides this, the king wished to govern the kingdom according to his own will, as do the sovereigns of other States. But here, from time immemorial, the country has been free: the early kings could settle nothing; it was the Parliament, the men who were elected, that governed. The king began to rule after his own will, but the Parliament would not allow that, and many archbishops and Jesuits were executed. The king, seeing that the Parliament intended to act according to its own wish, as it had done from all time, and not at all according to the royal will, left London with the queen, without being expelled by anyone, saying that they were going away into other towns. Once out of London, he sent the queen to France, and began to fight us, but the Parliament was the stronger. The Parliament is composed of two *palatay* (chambers): in one of them sit the boyards, in the other the men elected by the commons—the *sloujilié lioudi* and the merchants. Five hundred men sit in the parliament, and one orator speaks for all."

These lessons in the English Constitution could not penetrate the brain of the Russian envoy. He only recognised the king, and persisted, according to the text of his instructions, in trying to deliver his letters of credit to the king himself. "Hast thou a letter from thy sovereign, and a mission to the

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Parliament?” they asked him. He replied, “I have neither a letter nor a mission to the Parliament. Let the Parliament send me immediately before the king, and give me an escort, carriages, and provisions. Let the Parliament present me to him—it is to him that I will speak.” His demand was naturally refused, and he wished instantly to leave for Holland, but this was not allowed.

The following year Charles I. was brought a prisoner into London. Doktourof insisted on being presented to him. His request was ill-timed. “You cannot be brought before him,” they said to him; “he no longer governs anything.” Doktourof then refused a dinner given to him by the Russian Company, and only yielded when the dinner was served at his own house. The Parliament, however, did not wish to interrupt the friendly relations with Russia.

Doktourof was summoned before the House of Lords on the 13th of June. At his entrance all the “boyards” took off their hats, and Lord Manchester, the “chief boyard,” rose. Then Doktourof, to the general consternation, made the following speech:— “I am sent by my sovereign to your king, Charles, King of England. I have been sent as a courier (gonets) to negotiate important affairs of State, which offer great advantages to both sovereigns and to all Christendom, and may help to maintain peace and concord. It is the 13th of June, and, since I arrived in London on the 26th of November last, I have never ceased to show you the letter of the Czar, and to beg you to allow me to go before the king. You have kept me in London without permitting me either to have an interview with the king or to return to the Tzar; and yet in all the neighbouring

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countries the route is free to all ambassadors, envoys, and couriers of the Tzar."

Manchester replied that they would explain to the Tzar by letter their reasons for acting thus. They gave him a chair, and the English "boyards" like-wise seated themselves; and he began to look about the House, of which he gives a minute description in his report. He was then conducted to the House of Commons, and the dignitaries came to meet him pre-ceded by the royal sceptre. He renewed his declara-tions, and then retired ceremoniously. In June 1646 he left England much discontented. Alexis could understand no more of the English Revolution than his envoy. He maintained, like Catherine II., the cause of kings against the liberty of the subjects. In May 1647 he received at Moscow Nawtingall, envoy of Charles I., who denounced the captivity of the king, and said Charles would see with pleasure the English Company deprived of its privileges, and everyone allowed to trade freely with Russia. Alexis listened to his request, and granted him, as aid to the king, 30,000 *tchetverts* of corn, out of the 300,000 that were asked of him. But the English merchants settled in Russia accused Nawtingall of imposture, saying that the king's letter was apocryphal, and that the dog he had brought as a present to Alexis had never been bought by Charles I. Nawtingall was expelled in disgrace, and avenged himself by accusing his compatriots of a project of attacking Arkhangel, and of pillaging the Russian merchants. His honours as ambassador were then given back to him, but he quitted Russia.

When Alexis heard of the execution of Charles I., he published the oukase of June 1649, which, as a punishment to the regicides, forbade the English

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merchants to live in the cities of the interior, and
confined them to Arkhangel. The Tzar furnished
help in money and corn to Charles, Prince of Wales,
who in 1660 became Charles II., and resumed rela-
tions with him when he ascended the throne of the
Stuarts.

At the opening of the war with Poland, it occurred
to Alexis to notify the fact to the sovereigns of the
West. In 1653 he sent to Louis XIV. a certain
Matchékine, who was also presented to Anne of
Austria. In 1668 Peter Potemkine was accredited
first to the Court of Spain, and then to that of France.
It was just after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, and it
was not difficult for Russia to guess that the war
would soon recommence. The object of the embassy
was to induce Louis XIV. to enter into regular rela-
tions with Russia, and to send French vessels to
Arkhangel. Potemkine had conferences with Colbert
and the six merchant guilds of Paris. But the results
of this embassy were hardly greater than those
of the preceding one. The account of Potemkine
contains some curious details and quaint reflections
on the Spain and France of the 17th century, but is
chiefly occupied with difficulties raised by him on
questions of etiquette.

REIGN OF FEODOR ALEXIÉVITCH (1676-1682).

On the death of Alexis, his eldest son Feodor suc-
ceeded to the crown. The Miloslavskis, Feodor's
maternal relatives, profited by his accession to ruin
their enemy Matvéef, who was accused of magic,
deprived of his property and his title of boyard, and
banished to Poustozersk. In this reign the Little

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Russian question received a solution. The hetman Samoïlovitch and Prince Romodanovski defeated Dorochenko, and obliged him to resign the office of ataman. They then had to fight the Turks and Tatars, who twice invaded the Ukraine, and advanced to Tchigirine.

The country, according to a contemporary account, was covered with ruined towns and castles, and heaps of human bones that whitened in the sun. Finally the Sultan concluded at Bakhtchi-Seraï a truce of twenty years, which ceded to Russia Zaporogia and the Ukraine. In 1681 Feodor sent a new embassy to Louis XIV.; his envoy being the son of the old Potemkine, who managed, according to the diplomatic historian Flassans, to give by his own wisdom and learning a favourable idea of the nation which he represented.

It was in this reign that an assembly was held of the higher clergy and the boyards, to legislate on the question of precedence (*miestnichestvo*), which continued to be one of the plagues of Russia. The assembly commanded that there should be no more disputes, and in its presence and that of the Tzar the ‘Books of Rank’ were solemnly burnt. In future whoever “disputed” was to be deprived of his nobility and his wealth.

In order to defend the orthodox Church against the heresies of the West, and to connect it more closely with the Eastern Church, Feodor founded the Slavo-Græco-Latin Academy of Moscow. Greek and Latin, Christian philosophy and theology, were taught there. The brothers Likhoudi were brought from Greece to be professors there. This school, although ecclesiastical, was an advance on all other establishments of the kind in Russia, and produced

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CHAPTER XXII.

PETER THE GREAT: EARLY YEARS (1682-1709).

Regency of Sophia (1682-1689)—Peter I.—Expeditions against Azof (1695-1696)—First journey to the West (1697)—Revolt and destruction of the *streltsi*—Contest with the Cossacks: revolt of the Don (1706); Mazeppa (1709).

REGENCY OF SOPHIA (1682-1689)—PETER I.

ALEXIS MIKHAÏLOVITCH had by his first wife, Maria Miloslavski, two sons (Feodor and Ivan) and six daughters; by his second wife, Natalia Narychkine, one son (who became Peter I.) and two daughters. As he was twice married, and the kinsmen of each wife had, according to custom, surrounded the throne, there existed two factions in the palace, which were brought face to face by the death of Feodor. The Miloslavskis had on their side the claim of seniority, the number of royal children left by Maria, and above all, the fact that Ivan was the elder of the two surviving sons; but unluckily for them, Ivan was notoriously imbecile both in body and mind. On the side of the Narychkines was the interest excited by the precocious intelligence of Peter, and the position of legal head of all the royal family, which, according to Russian law, gave to Natalia Narychkine her title of "Tzarina Dowager." Both factions had for some time taken their measures and recruited their partisans. Who should succeed Feodor? Was it to be the son of the Miloslavski, or the son of the Narychkine?

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The Miloslavskis were first defeated on legal grounds. Taking the incapacity of Ivan into consideration, the boyards and the Patriarch Joachim proclaimed the young Peter, then nine years old, Tzar. The Narychkines triumphed: Natalia became Tzarina-Regent, recalled from exile her foster-father, Matvěef, and surrounded herself by her brothers and uncles.

The Miloslavskis' only means of revenge lay in revolt, but they were without a head; for it was impossible for Ivan to take the lead. The eldest of his six sisters was thirty-two years of age, the youngest nineteen; the most energetic of them was Sophia, who was twenty-five. These six princesses saw themselves condemned to the dreary destiny of the Russian *tsarévni*, and were forced to renounce all hopes of marriage, with no prospects but to grow old in the seclusion of the *terem*, subjected by law to the authority of a stepmother. All their youth had to look forward to was the cloister. They, however, only breathed in action; and though imperial etiquette and Byzantine manners, prejudices, and traditions forbade them to appear in public, even Byzantine traditions offered them models to follow. Had not Pulcheria, daughter of an emperor, reigned at Constantinople in the name of her brother, the incapable Theodosius? Had she not contracted a nominal marriage with the brave Marcian, who was her sword against the barbarians? Here was the ideal that Sophia could propose to herself; to be a Tzardiévitsa, a woman-emperor. To emancipate herself from the rigorous laws of the *terem*, to force the "twenty-seven locks" of the song, to raise the *fata* that covered her face, to appear in public and meet the looks of men, needed both energy, cunning, and patience that could wait and be content to pro-

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ceed by successive efforts. Sophia's first step was to
appear at Feodor's funeral, though it was not the
custom for any but the widow and the heir to be
present. There her litter encountered that of Natalia
Narychkine, and her presence forced the Tzarina-
Mother to retreat. She surrounded herself with a
court of educated men, who publicly praised her,
encouraged and excited her to action. Simeon Po-
lotski and Silvester Medviédef wrote verses in her
honour, recalled to her the example of Pulcheria and
Olga, compared her to the virgin Queen Elizabeth of
England, and even to Semiramis; we might think we
were listening to Voltaire addressing Catherine II.
They played on her name Sophia (wisdom), and
declared that she had been endowed with the quality
as well as the title. Polotski dedicated to her the
'Crown of Faith,' and Medviédef his 'Gifts of the
Holy Spirit.' The *terem* offered the strangest con-
trasts. There acted they the 'Malade Imaginaire,'
and the audience was composed of the heterogeneous
assembly of popes, monks, nuns, and old pensioners
that formed the Courts of the ancient Tzarinas. In
this shifting crowd there were some useful instru-
ments of intrigue. The old pensioners, while telling
their rosaries, served as emissaries between the palace
and the town, carried messages and presents to the
turbulent *streltsi*, and arranged matters between the
Tzarian ladies and the soldiers. Sinister rumours
were skilfully disseminated through Moscow: Feodor,
the eldest son of Alexis, had died, the victim of con-
spirators; the same lot was doubtless reserved for
Ivan. What was to become of the poor *tsarévni*,
of the blood of kings? At last it was publicly
announced that a brother of Natalia Narychkine
had seized on the crown and seated himself on the

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throne, and that Ivan had been strangled. Love and
pity for the son of Alexis, and the indignation excited
by the news of the usurpation, immediately caused
the people of Moscow to revolt, and the ring-
leaders cleverly directed the movement. The tocsin
sounded from 400 churches of the "holy city;" the
regiments of the *streltsi* took up arms and marched,
followed by an immense crowd, to the Kremlin, with
drums beating, matches lighted, and dragging cannon
behind them. Natalia Narychkine had only to show
herself on the Red Staircase, accompanied by her son
Peter, and Ivan who was reported dead. Their mere
appearance sufficed to contradict all the calumnies.
The *streltsi* hesitated, seeing they had been deceived.
A clever harangue of Matvéef, who had formerly
commanded them, and the exhortations of the Patri-
arch, shook them further. The revolt was almost
appeased: the Miloslavskis had missed their aim, for
they had not yet succeeded in putting to death the
people of whom they were jealous. Suddenly Prince
Michael Dolgorouki, chief of the *prikaz* of the *streltsi*,
began to insult the rioters in the most violent lan-
guage. This ill-timed harangue awoke their fury;
they seized Dolgorouki, and flung him from the top
of the Red Staircase on to their pikes. They stabbed
Matvéef under the eyes of the Tzarina; then they
sacked the palace, murdering all who fell into
their hands. Athanasius Narychkine, a brother of
Natalia, was thrown from a window on to the points
of their lances. The following day the *émeute* recom-
menced; they tore from the arms of the Tzarina her
father Cyril, and her brother Ivan; the latter was
tortured and cut to pieces, the former beaten, shorn,
and sent into a monastery. Historians show us
Sophia interceding for the victims on her knees, but

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an understanding between the rebels and the Tzar-
évna did exist; the *streltsi* obeyed orders. The
following days were consecrated to the purifying of
the palace and the administration, and the seventh
day of the revolt they sent their commandant, the
prince-boyard Khovanski, to declare that they would
have two Tzars—Ivan at the head, and Peter as co-
adjutor; and if this were refused, they would again
rebel. The boyards of the *douma* deliberated on this
proposal, and the greater number of the boyards were
opposed to it. In Russia the absolute power had
never been shared, but the orators of the *terem* cited
many examples both from sacred and profane his-
tory: Pharaoh and Joseph, Arcadius and Honorius,
Basil II. and Constantine VIII.; and the best of
all the arguments were the pikes of the *streltsi*
(1682).

Sophia had triumphed: she reigned in the name
of her two brothers, Ivan and Peter. She made a
point of showing herself in public, at processions,
solemn services, and dedications of churches. At
the *Ouspienski Sobor*, while her brothers occupied the
place of the Tzar, she filled that of the Tzarina; only
she raised the curtains and boldly allowed herself to
be incensed by the Patriarch. When the *raskolniks*
challenged the heads of the orthodox Church to dis-
cussion, she wished to preside and hold the meeting
in the open air, at the *Lobnoć Mićsto* on the Red
Place. There was however so much opposition, that
she was forced to call the assembly in the Palace of
Facets, and sat behind the throne of her two brothers,
present though invisible. The double-seated throne
used on those occasions is still preserved at Moscow;
there is an opening in the back, hidden by a veil of
silk, and behind this sat Sophia. This singular piece

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of furniture is the symbol of a government previously unknown to Russia, composed of two visible Tszars and one invisible sovereign.

The *streltsi*, however, felt their prejudices against female sovereignty awaken. They shrank from the contempt heaped by the Tzarévna upon the ancient manners. Sophia had already become in their eyes a “scandalous person” (*pozornoé litzo*). Another cause of misunderstanding was the support she gave to the State Church, as reformed by Nicon, while the *streltsi* and the greater part of the people held to the “old faith.” She had arrested certain “old believers,” who, at the discussion in the Palace of Facets, had challenged the patriarchs and orthodox prelates, and she had caused the ringleader to be executed. Khovanski, chief of the *streltsi*, whether from sympathy with the *raskol*, or whether he wished to please his subordinates, affected to share their discontent. The Court no longer felt itself safe at Moscow. Sophia took refuge with the Tzarina and the two young princes in the fortified monastery of Troitsa, and summoned around her the gentlemen-at-arms. Khovanski was invited to attend, was arrested on the way, and put to death with his son. The *streltsi* attempted a new rising, but, with the usual fickleness of a popular militia, suddenly passed from the extreme of insolence to the extreme of humility. They marched to Troitsa, this time in the guise of suppliants, with cords round their necks, carrying axes and blocks for the death they expected. The Patriarch consented to intercede for them, and Sophia contented herself with the sacrifice of the ringleaders.

Sophia, having got rid of her accomplices, governed by aid of her two favourites—Chaklovity, the new commandant of the *streltsi*, whom she had drawn from

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obsecurity, and who was completely devoted to her,
and Prince Vassili Galitsyne. Galitsyne has become
the hero of an historic school which opposes his genius
to that of Peter the Great, in the same way as in
France Henry, Duke of Guise, has been exalted at the
expense of Henry IV. He was the special favourite,
the intimate friend of Sophia, the director of her
foreign policy, and her right hand in military affairs.
Sophia and Galitsyne laboured to organise a Holy
League between Russia, Poland, Venice and Austria,
against the Turks and Tatars. They also tried to
gain the countenance of the Catholic Powers of the
West; and in 1687 Jacob Dolgorouki and Jacob
Mychetski disembarked at Dunkirk, as envoys to the
Court of Louis XIV. They were not received very
favourably: the King of France was not at all in-
clined to make war against the Turks; he was, on the
other hand, the ally of Mahomet IV., who was about
to besiege Vienna while Louis blockaded Luxemburg.
The whole plan of the campaign was, however, thrown
out by the intervention of Russia and John Sobieski
in favour of Austria. The Russian ambassadors re-
ceived orders to re-embark at Havre, without going
further south.

The government of the Tzarévna still persisted in
its warlike projects. In return for an active co-
operation against the Ottomans, Poland had con-
sented to ratify the conditions of the Treaty of
Androussovo, and to sign a perpetual peace (1686).
A hundred thousand Muscovites, under the command
of Prince Galitsyne, and fifty thousand Little Russian
Cossacks, under the orders of the hetman Samoło-
vitch, marched against the Crimea (1687). The
army suffered greatly in the southern steppes, as
the Tatars had fired the grassy plains. Galitsyne

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was forced to return without having encountered the enemy. Samoïlovitch was accused of treason, deprived of his command, and sent to Siberia; and Mazeppa, who owed to Samoïlovitch his appointment as Secretary-at-war, and whose denunciations had chiefly contributed to his downfall, was appointed his successor. In the spring of 1689 the Muscovite and Ukranian armies, commanded by Galitsyne and Mazeppa, again set out for the Crimea. The second expedition was hardly more fortunate than the first: they got as far as Perekop, and were then obliged to retreat without even having taken the fortress. This double defeat did not hinder Sophia from preparing for her favourite a triumphal entry into Moscow. In vain Peter forbade her to leave the palace; she braved his displeasure and headed the procession, accompanied by the clergy and the images and followed by the army of the Crimea, admitted the generals to kiss her hand, and distributed glasses of brandy among the officers. Peter left Moscow in anger, and retired to the village of Preobrajenskoé. The foreign policy of the Tzarévna was marked by another display of weakness. By the Treaty of Nertchinsk, she restored to the Chinese Empire the fertile regions of the Amour, which had been conquered by a handful of Cossacks, and razed the fortress of Albazine, where these adventurers had braved all the forces of the East. On all sides Russia seemed to retreat before the barbarians.

Meantime Peter was growing. His precocious faculties, his quick intelligence, and his strong will awakened alike the hopes of his partisans and the fears of his enemies. As a child he only loved drums, swords, and muskets. He learned history by means

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of coloured prints brought from Germany. Zotof,
his master, whom he afterwards made "the archpope
of fools," taught him to read. Among the heroes
held up to him as examples, we are not surprised to
find Ivan the Terrible, whose character and position
offer so much analogy to his own. "When the
Tzarévitch was tired of reading," says M. Zabiéline,
"Zotof took the book from his hand, and, to amuse
him, would himself read the great deeds of his father,
Alexis Mikhailovitch, and those of the Tzar Ivan
Vassiliévitch, their campaigns, their distant expe-
ditions, their battles and sieges: how they endured
fatigues and privations better than any common
soldier; what benefits they had conferred on the
empire, and how they extended the frontiers of
Russia." Peter also learnt Latin, German, and
Dutch. He read much and widely, and learned a
great deal, though without method. Like Ivan the
Terrible, he was a self-taught man. He afterwards
complained of not having been instructed according
to rule. This was perhaps a good thing. His edu-
cation, like that of Ivan IV., was neglected, but at
least he was not subjected to the enervating influence
of the *terem*—he was not cast in that dull mould
which turned out so many idiots in the royal family.
He "roamed at large, and wandered in the streets
with his comrades." The streets of Moscow at that
period were, according to M. Zabiéline, the worst
school of profligacy and debauchery that can be
imagined; but they were, on the whole, less bad for
Peter than the palace. He met there something
besides mere jesters; he encountered new elements
which had as yet no place in the *terem*, but con-
tained the germ of the regeneration of Russia. He
came across Russians who, if unscrupulous, were also

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unprejudiced, and who could aid him in his bold
reform of the ancient society. He there became
acquainted with Swiss, English, and German adven-
turers—with Lefort, with Gordon, and with Timmer-
mann, who initiated him into European civilisation.
His Court was composed of Leo Narychkine, of Boris
Galitsyne (who had undertaken never to flatter him),
of Andrew Matvéef (who had a marked taste for
everything European), and of Dolgorouki, at whose
house he first saw an astrolabe. He played at
soldiers with his young friends and his grooms, and
formed them into the "battalion of playmates," who
manœuvred after the European fashion, and became
the kernel of the future regular army. He learnt
the elements of geometry and fortification, and con-
structed small citadels, which he took or defended
with his young warriors in those fierce battles which
sometimes counted their wounded or dead, and in
which the Tzar of Russia was not always spared.
An English boat stranded on the shore of Yaousa
caused him to send for Franz Timmermann, who
taught him to manage a sailing boat, even with a
contrary wind. He who formerly, like a true boyard
of Moscow, had such a horror of the water that he
could not make up his mind to cross a bridge, became
a determined sailor: he guided his boat first on the
Yaousa, then on the lake of Peréiaslavl. Brandt, the
Dutchman, built him a whole flotilla; and already,
in spite of the terrors of his mother, Natalia, Peter
dreamed of the sea.

"The child is amusing himself," the courtiers of
Sophia affected to observe; but these amusements dis-
quieted her. Each day added to the years of Peter
seemed to bring her nearer to the cloister. In vain
she proudly called herself "autocrat;" she saw her

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stepmother, her rival, lifting up her head. Galitsyne
confined himself to regretting that they had not known
better how to profit by the revolution of 1682, but
Chaklovity, who knew he must fall with his mistress,
said aloud, "It would be wiser to put the Tzarina to
death than to be put to death by her." Sophia
could only save herself by seizing the throne—but
who would help her to take it? The *streltsi*. But
the result of their last rising had chilled them con-
siderably. Sophia herself, while trying to bind this
formidable force, had broken it, and the *streltsi* had
not forgotten their chiefs beheaded at Troïtsa. Now
what did the emissaries of Sophia propose to them?
Again to attack the palace; to put Leo Narychkine,
Boris Galitsyne, and other partisans of Peter to
death; to arrest his mother, and to expel the Patri-
arch. They trusted that Peter and Natalia would
perish in the tumult. The *streltsi* remained indif-
ferent when Sophia, affecting to think her life threat-
ened, fled to the *Dićvitchi Monastyr*, and sent them
letters of entreaty. "If thy days are in peril,"
tranquilly replied the *streltsi*, "there must be an
inquiry." Chaklovity could hardly collect four hun-
dred of them at the Kremlin.

The struggle began between Moscow and Preo-
brajenskoć, the village with the prophetical name
(the *Transfiguration* or *Regeneration*). Two *streltsi*
warned Peter of the plots of his sister, and, for the
second time, he sought an asylum at Troitsa. It was
then seen who was the true Tzar; all men hastened
to range themselves around him: his mother, his
armed squires, the "battalion of playmates," the
foreign officers, and even the *streltsi* of the regiment
of Soukharef. The Patriarch also took the side of
the Tzar, and brought him moral support, as the

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439

foreign soldiers had brought him material force. The partisans of Sophia were cold and irresolute; the *streltsi* themselves demanded that her favourite Chaklovity should be surrendered to the Tzar. She had to implore the mediation of the Patriarch. Chaklovity was first put to the torture and made to confess his plot against the Tzar, and then decapitated. Medviédef was at first only condemned to the knout and banishment for heresy, but he acknowledged he had intended to take the place of the Patriarch and to marry Sophia; he was dishonoured by being imprisoned with two sorcerers condemned to be burned alive in a cage, and was afterwards beheaded. Galitsyne was deprived of his property, and exiled to Poustozersk. Sophia remained in the *Dievitchi Monastery*, subjected to a hard captivity. Though Ivan continued to reign conjointly with his brother, yet Peter, who was then only seventeen, governed alone, surrounded by his mother, the Narychkines, the Dolgoroukis, and Boris Galitsyne (1689).

Sophia had freed herself from the seclusion of the *terem*, as Peter had emancipated himself from the seclusion of the palace to roam the streets and navigate rivers. Both had behaved scandalously, according to the ideas of the time—the one haranguing soldiers, presiding over councils, walking with her veil raised; the other using the axe like a carpenter, rowing like a Cossack, brawling with foreign adventurers, and fighting with his grooms in mimic battles. But to the one her emancipation was only a means of obtaining power; to the other the emancipation of Russia, like the emancipation of himself, was the end. He wished the nation to shake off the old trammels from which he had freed himself. Sophia remained a Byzantine, Peter aspired to be a European. In the

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

conflict between the Tzarévna and the Tzar, progress
was not on the side of the Diévitchi Monastyr.

EXPEDITIONS AGAINST AZOF (1695-1696)—FIRST
JOURNEY TO THE WEST (1697).

The first use the Tzar made of his liberty was to
hasten to Arkhangel. There, deaf to the advice and
prayers of his mother, who was astounded at this
unexpected taste for salt water, he gazed on that sea
which no Tzar had ever looked on. He ate with the
merchants and the officers of foreign navies; he
breathed the air which had come from the West. He
established a dockyard, built boats, dared the angry
waves of this unknown ocean, and almost perished in
a storm, which did not prevent the "skipper Peter
Alexiévitch" from again putting to sea, and bring-
ing the Dutch vessels back to the Holy Cape. Un-
happily, the White Sea, by which, since the time of
Ivan IV., the English had entered Russia, is frost-
bound in winter. In order to open permanent com-
munications with the West, with civilised countries,
it was necessary for Peter to establish himself on the
Baltic or the Black Sea. Now the first belonged to
the Swedes, and the second to the Turks, as the Caspian
did to the Persians. Who was first to be attacked ?
The treaties concluded with Poland and Austria, as
well as policy and religion, urged the Tzar against
the Turks, and Constantinople has always been the
point of attraction for orthodox Russia. Peter
shared the sentiments of his people, and had the
enthusiasm of a crusader against the infidel. Not-
withstanding his ardent wish to travel in the West,
he took the resolution not to appear in foreign lands
till he could appear as a victor. Twice had Galitsyne

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441

failed against the Crimea; Peter determined to attack the barbarians by the Don, and besiege Azof. The army was commanded by three generals, Golovine, Gordon, and Lefort, who were to act with the "bombardier of the Preobrajenski regiment, Peter Alexiévitch." This regiment, as well as three others which had sprung from the "amusements" of Preobrajenskoé—the Semenovski, the Botousitski, and the regiment of Lefort—were the heart of the expedition. It failed because the Tzar had no fleet with which to invest Azof by sea, because the new army and its chiefs wanted experience, and because Jansen, the German engineer, ill-treated by Peter, passed over to the enemy. After two assaults, the siege was raised. This check appeared the more grave because the Tzar himself was with the army, because the first attempt to turn from the "amusements" of Preobrajenskoé to serious warfare had failed, and because this failure would furnish arms against innovations, against the *Germans* and the *heretics*, against the new tactics. It might even compromise, in the eyes of the people, the work of regeneration (1695).

Although Peter had followed the example of Galitsyne, and entered Moscow in triumph, he felt he needed revenge. He sent for good officers from foreign countries. Artillerymen arrived from Holland and Austria, engineers from Prussia, and Admiral Lima from Venice. Peter hurried on the creation of a fleet with feverish impatience. He built of green wood twenty-two galleys, a hundred rafts, and seventeen hundred boats or barques. All the small ports of the Don were metamorphosed into dockyards; twenty-six thousand workmen were assembled there from all parts of the empire. It was like the camp of Boulogne. No misfortune—

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neither the desertion of the labourers, the burnings
of the dockyards, nor even his own illness—could
lessen his activity. Peter was able to write that,
“following the advice God gave to Adam, he earned
his bread by the sweat of his brow.” At last the
“marine caravan,” the Russian armada, descended
the Don. From the slopes of Azof he wrote to his
sister Natalia :* “In obedience to thy counsels, I
do not go to meet the shells and balls; it is they
who approach me, but tolerably courteously.” Azof
was blockaded by sea and land, and a breach was
opened by the engineers. Preparations were being
made for a general assault, when the place capitu-
lated. The joy in Russia was great, and the streltsi's
jealousy of the success of foreign tactics gave place
to their enthusiasm as Christians for this victory
over Islamism, which recalled those of Kazan and
Astrakhan. The effect produced on Europe was
considerable. At Warsaw the people shouted, “Long
live the Tzar!” The army entered Moscow under
triumphal arches, on which were represented Her-
cules trampling a pacha and two Turks under
foot, and Mars throwing to the earth a mourza
and two Tatars. Admiral Lefort and Schein the
generalissimo took part in the cortège, seated on
magnificent sledges; whilst Peter, promoted to the
rank of captain, followed on foot. Jansen, destined
to the gibbet, marched among the prisoners (1676).

Peter wished to profit by this great success to
found the naval power of Russia. By the decision
of the *douma* three thousand families were established
at Azof, besides four hundred Kalmucks, and a
garrison of Moscow *streltsi*. The Patriarch, the
prelates, and the monasteries taxed themselves for

* His mother died in 1694, his brother Ivan in 1696.

PETER THE GREAT.

443

the construction of one vessel to every eight thousand serfs. The nobles, the officials, and the merchants were seized with the fever of this holy war, and brought their contributions towards the infant navy. It was proposed to unite the Don and the Volga by means of a canal. A new appeal was made to the artisans and sailors of Europe. Fifty young nobles of the Court were sent to Venice, England, and the Low Countries, to learn seamanship and shipbuilding. But it was necessary that the Tzar himself should be able to judge of the science of his subjects; he must counteract Russian indolence and prejudice by the force of a great example; and Peter, after having begun his career in the navy at the rank of "skipper," and in the army at that of bombardier, was to become a carpenter of Saardam. He allowed himself, as a reward for his success at Azof, the much longed-for journey to the West.

In 1697 Admiral Lefort and Generals Golovine and Vosnitsyne prepared to depart for the countries of the West, under the title of "the great ambassadors of the Tzar." Their suite was composed of two hundred and seventy persons—young nobles, soldiers, interpreters, merchants, jesters, and buffoons. In the *cortéye* was a young man who went by the name of Peter Mikhailof. This *incognito* would render the position of the Tzar easier, whether in his own personal studies or in delicate negotiations. On the journey to Riga, Peter allowed himself to be insulted by the governor, but laid up the recollection for future use. At Königsberg the Prussian Colonel Sternfeld delivered to "M. Peter Mikhailof" "a formal brevet of master of artillery." The great ambassadors and their travelling companion were cordially received by the Courts of Courland, Hanover,

444

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

and Brandenburg. Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, afterwards Queen of Prussia, has left us some curious notes about the Tzar, then twenty-seven years of age. He astonished her by the vivacity of his mind, and the promptitude and point of his answers, not less than by the grossness of his manners, his bad habits at table, his wild timidity, like that of a badly brought-up child, his grimaces, and a frightful twitching which at times convulsed his whole face. Peter had then a beautiful brown skin, with great piercing eyes, but his features already bore traces of toil and debauchery. "He must have very good and very bad points," said the young Electress; and in this he represented contemporary Russia. "If he had received a better education," adds the princess, "he would have been an accomplished man." The suite of the Tzar were not less surprising than their master; the Muscovites danced with the Court ladies, and took the stiffening of their corsets for their bones. "The bones of these Germans are devilish hard!" said the Tzar.

Leaving the great embassy on the road, Peter travelled quickly, and reached Saardam. The very day of his arrival he took a lodging at a blacksmith's, procured himself a complete costume like those worn by Dutch workmen, and began to wield the axe. He bargained for a boat, bought it, and drank the traditional pint of beer with its owner. He visited cutleries, rope-walks, and other manufactories, and everywhere tried his hand at the work: in a paper manufactory he made some paper. However, in spite of the tradition, he only remained eight days at Saardam. At Amsterdam his eccentricities were no less astonishing. He neither took any rest himself, nor allowed others to do so; he exhausted all his

PETER THE GREAT.

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ciceroni, always repeating, “I must see it.” He in-
spected the most celebrated anatomical collections;
engaged artists, workmen, officers, and engineers; and
bought models of ships, and collections of naval laws
and treaties. He entered familiarly the houses of
private individuals, gained the goodwill of the Dutch
by his bonhomie, penetrated into the recesses of the
shops and stalls, and remained lost in admiration
over a dentist.

But, amidst all these distractions, he never lost
sight of his aim. “We labour,” he wrote to the
Patriarch Adrian, “in order thoroughly to master
the art of the sea; so that, having once learnt it, we
may return to Russia and conquer the enemies of
Christ, and free by His grace the Christians who are
oppressed. This is what I shall long for, to my
last breath.” He was vexed at making so little pro-
gress in shipbuilding, but in Holland everyone had
to learn by personal experience. A naval captain
told him that in England instruction was based on
principles, and these he could learn in four months;
so Peter crossed the sea, and spent three months
in London and the neighbouring towns. There he
took into his service goldsmiths and gold-beaters,
architects and bombardiers. He then returned to
Holland, and, his ship being attacked by a violent
tempest, he reassured those who trembled for his
safety by the remark, “Did you ever hear of a Tzar
of Russia who was drowned in the North Sea?”
Though much occupied with his technical studies, he
had not neglected policy; he had conversed with
William III., but did not visit France in this tour,
for “Louis XIV.,” says St. Simon, “had procured the
postponement of his visit;” the fact being that his
alliance with the Emperor, and his wars with the

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

Turks, were looked on with disfavour at Versailles. He went to Vienna to study the military art, and dissuaded Leopold from making peace with the Sultan. Peter wished to conquer Kertch in order to secure the Straits of Ienikale. He was preparing to go to Venice, when vexatious intelligence reached him from Moscow.

REVOLT AND DESTRUCTION OF THE STRELTSI.

The first reforms of Peter, his first attempts against the national prejudices and customs, had raised him up a crowd of enemies. Old Russia did not allow herself quietly to be set aside by the bold innovator. There was in the interior a sullen and resolute resistance, which sometimes gave birth to bloody scenes. The revolt of the *streltsi*, the insurrection of Astrakhan, the rebellion of the Cossacks, and later the trial of his son and first wife, are only episodes of the great struggle. Already the priests were teaching that Antichrist was born. Now it had been prophesied that Antichrist should be born of an adulteress, and Peter was the son of the second wife of Alexis, therefore his mother Natalia was the "false virgin," the adulterous woman of the prophecies. The increasingly heavy taxes that weighed on the people were another sign that the time had come. Others, disgusted by the taste shown by the Tzar for German clothes and foreign languages and adventurers, affirmed that he was not the son of Alexis, but of Lefort the Genevan, or that his father was a German surgeon. They were scandalised to see the Tzar, like another Gregory Otrépief, expose himself to blows in his military "amusements." The lower orders were indignant at the abolition of

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the long beards and national costume, and the raskolniks at the authorisation of "the sacrilegious smell of tobacco." The journey to the West completed the general dissatisfaction. Had anyone ever before seen a Tzar of Moscow quit Holy Russia to wander in the kingdoms of foreigners? Who knew what adventures might befall him among the niemtsi and the bousourmanes? for the Russian people hardly knew how to distinguish between the Turks and the Germans, and were wholly ignorant of France and England. Under an unknown sky, at the extremity of the world, on the shores of the "ocean sea," what dangers might he not encounter? Then a singular legend was invented about the travels of the Tzar. It was said that he went to Stockholm disguised as a merchant, and that the queen had recognised him, and had tried in vain to capture him. According to another version, she had plunged him in a dungeon, and delivered him over to his enemies, who wished to put him into a cask lined with nails, and throw him into the sea. He had only been saved by a *streletz*, who had taken his place. Some asserted that Peter was still kept there; and in 1705 the *streletsi* and raskolniks of Astrakhan still gave out that it was a false Tzar who had come back to Moscow—the true Tzar was a prisoner at Stekoln, attached to a stake.*

In the midst of this universal disturbance, caused by the absence of Peter, there were certain symptoms peculiarly disquieting. The Muscovite army grew more and more hostile to the new order of things. In 1694 Peter had discovered a fresh conspiracy, having for its object the deliverance of Sophia; and at the very moment of his departure from Russia he

* A. Rambaud, ‘La Russie Épique,’ p. 303.

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

had to put down a plot of *streltsi* and Cossacks, headed
by Colonel Tsykler. Those of the *streltsi* who had
been sent to form the garrison of Azof pined for their
wives, their children, and the trades they had left
in Moscow. When in the absence of the Tzar they
were sent from Azof to the frontiers of Poland, they
again began to murmur. "What a fate is ours! It
is the boyards who do all the mischief; for three years
they have kept us from our homes." Two hundred
deserted and returned to Moscow; but the *douma*,
fearing their presence in the already troubled capital,
expelled them by force. They brought back to
their regiments a letter of Sophia. "You suffer," she
wrote; "later it will become worse. March on Moscow.
What is it you wait for? There is no news of the
Tzar." It was repeated through the army that the
Tzar had died in foreign lands, and that the boyards
wished to put his son Alexis to death. It was neces-
sary to march on Moscow and exterminate the nobles.
The military sedition was complicated by the reli-
gious fanaticism of the *raskolniks* and the demagogic
passions of the popular army. Four regiments revolted
and deserted. Generals Schein and Gordon, with
their regular troops, hastened after them, came up with
them on the banks of the Iskra, and tried to persuade
them to return to their duty. The *streltsi* replied by
a petition setting forth all their grievances: "Many
of them had died during the expedition to Azof,
suggested by Lefort, a German, a heretic; they had
endured fatiguing marches over burning plains, their
only food being bad meat; their strength had been
exhausted by severe tasks, and they had been ban-
ished to distant garrisons. Moscow was now a prey
to all sorts of horrors. Foreigners had introduced
the custom of shaving the beard and smoking tobacco.

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449

It was said that these *niémtsi* meant to seize the town. On this rumour, the *streltsi* had arrived, and also because Romodanovski wished to disperse and put them to the sword without anyone knowing why.” A few cannon-shots were sufficient to scatter the rebels. A large number were arrested; torture, the gibbet, and the dungeon awaited the captives.

When Peter hastened home from Vienna, he decided that his generals and his *douma* had been too lenient. He had old grievances against the *streltsi*; they had been the army of Sophia, in opposition to the army of the Tzar; he remembered the invasion of the Kremlin, the massacre of his mother's family, her terrors in Troitsa, and the conspiracies which all but delayed his journey to the West. At the very time that he was travelling in Europe for the benefit of his people, these incorrigible mutineers had forced him to renounce his dearest projects, and had stopped him on the road to Venice. He resolved to take advantage of the opportunity by crushing his enemies *en masse*, and by making the Old Russia feel the weight of a terror that would recall the days of Ivan IV. The long beards had been the standard of revolt—they should fall. On the 26th of August he ordered all the gentlemen of his Court to shave themselves, and himself applied the razor to his great lords. The same day the Red Place was covered with gibbets. The Patriarch Adrian tried in vain to appease the anger of the Tzar by presenting to him the wonder-working image of the Mother of God. “Why hast thou brought out the holy icon?” exclaimed the Tzar. “Retire and restore it to its place. Know that I venerate God and His Mother as much as thyself, but know also that it is my duty to protect the people and punish the rebels.”

VOL. I.

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HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

On the 30th of October there arrived at the Red
Place the first instalment of 230 prisoners: they came
in carts, with lighted torches in their hands, nearly
all already broken by torture, and followed by their
wives and children, who ran behind chanting a funeral
wail. Their sentence was read, and they were slain,
the Tzar ordering several officers to help the exe-
cutioner. John George Korb, the Austrian agent, who
as an eye-witness has left us an authentic account of
the executions, heard that "five rebel heads had been
sent into the dust by blows from an axe wielded by
the noblest hand in Russia." The terrible carpenter of
Saardam worked and obliged his boyards to work at
this horrible employment. Seven other days were em-
ployed in this way; a thousand victims were put to
death. Some were broken on the wheel, and others
died by various modes of torture. The removal of
the corpses was forbidden: for five months Mos-
cow had before its eyes the spectacle of the dead
bodies hanging from the battlements of the Kremlin
and the other ramparts; and for five months the
streltsi suspended to the bars of Sophia's prison pre-
sented her the petition by which they had entreated
her to reign. Two of her confidants were buried
alive; she herself, with Eudoxia Lapoukhine, Peter's
wife, who had been repudiated for her obstinate
attachment to the ancient customs, had their heads
shaved and were confined in monasteries. After the
revolt of the inhabitants of Astrakhan, who put their
voïevode to death, the old militia was completely
abolished, and the way left clear for the formation
of new troops.

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CONTEST WITH THE COSSACKS: REVOLT OF THE
DON (1706); MAZEPPA (1709).

The *streltsi* was not the only military force of
ancient Russia whose existence and privileges had
become incompatible with the organisation of the
modern State. The “armies” (*voïska*) of Cossacks—
those republican and undisciplined warriors who had
been formerly the rampart of Russia, and were her
outposts against the barbarians—had to undergo a
transformation. The empire had numerous grievances
against them: the Cossacks of the Ukraine and those
of the Don had given birth to the first and the second
of the false Dmitris, and from the army of the Don
had sprung the terrible Stenko Razine.

In 1706 the Cossacks of the Don revolted against
the Tzarian government, because they were forbidden
to give an asylum to the peasants who fled from their
masters, or to those who took refuge from taxation in
the camp. The ataman Boulavine, and his lieutenants
Nekrassof, Frolof, and Dranyi, summoned them to
arms. They murdered Prince George Dolgorouki, de-
feated the Russians on the Liskovata, took Tcherkask,
threatened Azof, all the while protesting their fidelity
to the Tzar, and accusing the voïevodes of having
acted “without orders.” They soon, however, suf-
fered defeat at the hands of Vassili Dolgorouki,
brother of the dead man. Boulavine was stabbed by
his own soldiers, and Nekrassof fled with two thou-
sand men to the Kuban. The rebel camp was laid
waste, and Dolgorouki was able to write: “The
chief mutineers and declared traitors have been hung;
of the others, one out of every ten; and all these
dead malefactors have been laid on rafts and aban-

452

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

doned to the river, to strike terror into the hearts of
the Dontsi, and to cause them to repent."

Since Samoïlovitch had been removed, Mazeppa
had been the hetman of the Little Russian Cossacks of
the Ukraine. In his youth a page of John Casimir,
King of Poland, that adventure had befallen him
which the poem of Lord Byron and the pictures of
Horace Vernet have rendered famous. Loosed from
the back of the unbroken horse which had carried
him into the solitudes of the Ukraine, he had entered
the Cossack army, and, by betraying all chiefs and
parties in turn, he had risen through all the grades
of military service. He owed the office of hetman to
Galitsyne and Sophia, but was one of the first to em-
brace the cause of Peter. His elevation gained him
many enemies, but the Tzar, who admired his intel-
ligence and believed in his fidelity, delivered up to
him his accusers. He executed the monk Salomon,
who pretended to reveal Mazeppa's intrigues with
the King of Poland and Sophia; Mikhailof in 1690,
and the diak Souzlof in 1696, were likewise put to
death.

All this time the Ukraine was being steadily
undermined by factions. In the Cossack army there
always existed a Russian party, a party who longed
for Polish government, and a party who wished to
do homage to the Turks. In 1693 Petrek, one of the
chiefs, invaded the Ukraine with 40,000 Tatars, but
was forced to retreat. Besides this, the views of
the army and those of the sedentary populations of
the Ukraine were always at variance. The hetman
dreamed of becoming independent, the officers dis-
liked being responsible to anyone, and the soldiers
wished to live at the expense of the country, without
either working or paying taxes, after the manner of

PETER THE GREAT.

453

the ancient nobles; but the farmers who had created
the agricultural prosperity of the country, the
citizens who could not work in security, in fact all
the peaceful labouring population, determined to get
rid of the turbulent military oligarchy, and hailed
the Tzar of Moscow as a liberator.

Mazeppa represented the military element of the
Ukraine, and was hated by the more peaceful classes.
The Tzar overwhelmed him with proofs of con-
fidence, but Mazeppa feared the strengthening of the
Russian State. He remembered how one day in an
orgie the Tzar had seized him by the beard and
violently shaken him. The taxes imposed on the
vassal State of Little Russia became daily heavier,
and in the war with Charles XII. they increased
still more. Everything was to be feared from the
imperious humour and autocratic pretensions of
Peter. The invasion of the Swedes, now imminent,
would necessarily precipitate the crisis; and either
Little Russia would gain her independence by the
help of the foreigners, or their defeat on her soil would
give a mortal blow to her prosperity and hopes for
the future. Feeling the approach of the hour when
he must obey the White Tzar, Mazeppa allowed him-
self to be drawn into communications with Stanislas
Leszczinski, the King of Poland set up by the Swedish
party. The witty Princess Dolskaïa had given him
an alphabet in cipher. Up to that time Mazeppa
had delivered to the Tzar all letters tampering with
his fidelity, and, in return, the Tzar surrendered to
him all his accusers. When he received the letters
of the princess he smiled and said, "Wicked woman,
she wants to detach me from the Tzar." He did
not give up the letter, but burned it. When the
hand of Menchikof's sister was refused to one of

454

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

his cousins, when Menchikof himself began to give
direct orders to the commanders of the *polks*, when
the Swedish war and the march of the Muscovite
troops limited his power and augmented the burdens
of his territory, when the Tzar sent pressing injunc-
tions for the equipment of the army in European
style, when he felt around him the spirit of rebellion
against Moscow, he wrote to Leszczinski, saying that
he did not think the Polish army sufficiently strong,
but assuring him of his goodwill. His confidant,
Orlik, was in the secret of all his intrigues. Some
of his subordinates who had penetrated his designs
made another attempt to denounce him to the Tzar:
among these were Paleï, celebrated in the songs of
the Ukraine; Kotchoubey, whose daughter Mazeppa
had taken; and Iskra. The information was very
exact, and revealed his secret conferences with the
emissaries of the King and of Princess Dolskaïa. It
failed, like former denunciations, through the blind
confidence of Peter: Paleï was sent to Siberia; Iskra
and Kotchoubey were tortured, forced to confess
themselves false witnesses, delivered up to the het-
man, and beheaded. Mazeppa was conscious that
such extraordinary good fortune could not last, and
the malcontents urged him to think of their common
safety. At this moment Charles XII. arrived in the
neighbourhood of Little Russia. "The devil has
brought him," cried Mazeppa; and he tried between the
two powers to save the independence of his little State,
without delivering himself over completely either to
Charles XII. or Peter the Great. When the latter in-
vited him to join the army, he pretended that he was ill,
and even received extreme unction. But Menchikof
and Charles were approaching—a choice must be
made. Mazeppa left his bed, assembled his most

PETER THE GREAT.

455

faithful Cossacks, and crossed the Desna to effect a
junction with the Swedish army. Then Peter the
Great made a proclamation denouncing the treason
of Mazeppa, his alliance with the heretics, his plot
to restore the Ukraine to Poland, and to fill the
monasteries and temples of God with Uniates. He
was cursed in all the churches of Russia. Batourine,
his capital, was taken by Menchikof, sacked, and
destroyed; his accomplices, whom he had abandoned,
died on the wheel and the gibbet; he himself fled,
after the battle of Pultowa, to the Turkish territory,
and perished miserably at Bender. A new hetman,
Skoropadski, was elected in his stead; the mass of
the people and the Cossack army pronounced loudly
for the Tzar, and the Swedes had to cope with the
rising of the entire population of the Ukraine. In
spite of this, the independence of Little Russia was
past. The privileges of the Cossacks were over, and
twelve hundred of them were sent to work at the
Canal of Ladoga. A Muscovite official was joined
to Skoropadski to govern "in concert with the
advice of the hetman." Muscovite subjects were
allowed to hold lands in the Ukraine by the same
title as the Little Russians; Menchikof and Chafirof
were given large domains there by Skoropadski,
whose daughter married another Muscovite, Tolstoï,
created commandant of the *polk* of Niéjine. In 1722
Little Russia, whose affairs up to that time had been
conducted by the department of Foreign Affairs,
was governed by a special office founded at Moscow
under the name of "Little Russian Affairs." This was
clear proof that the Ukraine had ceased to be an
autonomous State. When Skoropadski died, Peter
did not nominate a successor, declaring that "the
treasons of the preceding hetmans did not allow a

456

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

decision to be made lightly in this grave matter of
election, and that he needed time to find a man
of assured fidelity."

From this time the institutions of the Ukraine
were modified at the will of Peter the Great and
his successors. The hetmanate was now abolished,
now restored, till the last man who held the title, a
courtier of Catherine II., abdicated in 1789. The
affairs of the Ukraine were sometimes directed by
the office of Little Russia, sometimes by the office
of Foreign Affairs, till the time when, under Cathe-
rine II., it became an integral part of the empire.
As to the Zaporogues, after their sétcha had been
taken by Peter the Great, they emigrated to the
Crimea, obtained their restoration to the Lower
Dnieper from Anne, found the neighbouring country
already transformed, and, as their existence seemed
incompatible with security and colonisation, were
finally expelled in 1775.

From the year 1709 we may say that there no
longer existed in the empire a single military force
that could oppose its privileges to the will of the
Tzar.

END OF VOL. I.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.