1 February: Boreham on Peter the Great

The Boy Who Built An Empire
It was at this time in 1725 that the people of Russia were in mourning following the death of Peter the Great on the twenty-eighth of January.[1] It seems incredible that Russia, which occupies so much of our attention nowadays, is in reality so extremely young. Queen Elizabeth was on the throne of England before the first foundations of national life in Russia had been laid. Even then the attempts of Ivan to mould his unwieldy empire into shape consisted for the most part of a series of fierce combats with peoples of the restless temper of the Cossacks and the Tartars. The chronicles show that, in the Seventeenth Century, the computations of the Russian Imperial Treasury were made by the help of balls of string hung on wires. The most splendid palaces were characterised by filth and misery of the most revolting description. And, in the year 1663, the gentlemen of the retinue of the Earl of Carlisle were, in the city of Moscow, thrust into a single bedroom and told that, if they did not remain together, they would be in danger of being devoured by rats. It was not until our own tumultuous revolutions and restorations had passed into history that the young and outcast Peter drilled the ragged companions of his childish games into the nucleus of a huge army and laid the foundations of an empire destined to fill a large place in the happenings of the days then hastening on.

The Vision Splendid
One of the great days of human history was the day on which the boy Peter chanced upon a broken boat. It was only an old, half-rotten, wooden skiff, thrown to the scrap heap with useless lumber in the little village of Ismailof, but, captivating the boy's fancy and stirring his imagination, he could not take his eyes from it. It changed the whole current of his life, filled his head with dreams of maritime adventure, and led to the construction of the Russian navy. The Russia of his infancy was an inland Russia, that had no outlet upon the great waterways of the world. Peter caught a vision. He fashioned his toy ships and launched them on his mimic lakes. He built his navies and sailed them on his inland seas. But this was poor fun and merely whetted his appetite. He dreamed of the Atlantic and the Pacific, talked incessantly of distant oceans and maritime highways, and, the more he dreamed and chattered, the more restless and ill at ease he became. A few years later his most splendid victories on land failed to satisfy him because none of them gave him an outlet for his ships. As soon as the first flush of triumph had passed, says Waliszewkski, he always came back to the ideal that tortured his fancy, sleeping and walking—a Baltic port, some means of access to the open sea, a window open upon Europe! And, by sheer strength of will and force of character, Peter achieved the desire of his heart.

Indelible Impress
In the middle of the Nineteenth Century Dean Stanley visited Russia and was most powerfully impressed by the way in which Peter the Great still dominated Russian thought and Russian aspiration. "The more one looks at the city of St. Petersburg, for example, the more one is struck," declared the Dean, "by the singular greatness of the man who, with all his barbarism and all his weaknesses and all his sins, con­ceived the idea of thrusting the nation into the light of Europe and erecting a new capital and a new empire among the cities and the kingdoms of the world. And, by one tremendous wrench, by his own manual labour and by his own gigantic strength, he forced his dream to fulfilment!" Russia, the Dean maintains, was literally dragged by the heels and kicked by the boots of the giant Peter into vital contact with the European world. The position which the awakening nation quickly assumed among the great Powers is in itself the most imposing monument to Peter's herculean vigour.

Abiding Authority
Yet he was a savage to the last, with a savage's ferocity and a savage's crudity. If, at dinner, the conversation became lively or the argument heated, Peter would rise in anger, draw his sword and unless overwhelmed by numbers, thrust it with murderous intent at the simpleton who had been so indiscreet as to contradict him. When driving in state between Amsterdam and The Hague he stopped the carriage 20 times to measure the width of a bridge, go into a mill—which he had to reach by crossing a meadow with the water up to his knees—or enter some quaint little cottage whose occupants had to be peremptorily ejected. He was always inquisitive, always whimsical and always in a hurry. When on foot he invariably ran, and when driving he ordered the coachman to keep the horses at a gallop. His visit to England was long remembered with amusement. The prodigious quantities of meat he devoured, the fabulous draughts of brandy he swallowed, the professional fool who jabbered at his feet and the monkey which perched, grinning, at the back of his chair—these, during those memorable weeks, provided themes for the excited gossip of the English people. And the more eagerly the crowds pressed forward to obtain a glimpse of him, the more he struggled to avoid their gaze. When, at the theatre, he discovered that the people were looking, not at the actors, but at him, he strode out of the building in high dudgeon. He was anxious to see the House of Lords in session, but when told he could not see it without himself being seen, he clambered on to the roof of the august edifice and peeped in through a small window. Behind all his oddities and barbarisms, however, we are compelled to admire the man himself—his gigantic stature, intellectual forehead, piercing black eyes, long raven hair, mouth expressing indomitable power—and, as century succeeds century, and Russia enters upon a destiny that no seer today can foretell, the thought of that masterful and titanic personality will continue to hold its sway over the imagination of mankind.

F W Boreham

Image: Peter the Great

[1] Two dates are commonly given for the death of Peter the Great in St Petersburg—8 February and 28 January (the latter being in the old style of calendaring).