Peter the Great (114 page)

' Weber also witnessed Russians at sports and recreation. In a large, grassy field on the south side of the Neva, peasants, laborers and common people of all sorts gathered on Sunday afternoons after drinking in taverns. Men and boys divided into groups to box and fight for fun, screaming and shouting. Foreigners were appalled by these dusty, drunken melees, report -

ing that when the combat was over "the ground lies full of blood and hair, and many had to be carried away."

In the height of summer, the heat in St. Petersburg was almost intolerable; not even during the few hours of night when the sun disappeared below the horizon did the air become really cool. For some Russians, beer was a solution. But one visit to a Russian taphouse to see how the beer was dispensed was enough to put most foreigners off Russian beer forever. As Weber described this scene:

The liquor stands there in an open tub or cooler to which the common people crowd, taking it out with a wooden dipper and drinking it, holding their mouths over the tub that nothing may be spilled, so that if by any chance any of it misses their mouths, it runs down their beards and falls again into the tub. If a customer happens to have no money, he leaves his old fur coat, a shirt, a pair of stockings or some other part of his wearing apparel, to pawn until the evening when he receives his wages. In the meantime, those filthy pledges [the clothing] hang on the brim round the tub, nor does it matter much whether they are pushed in and float there for some time.

While his people were brawling in the fields and cooling themselves with beer, Peter's favorite summer relaxation was to sail on the Gulf of Finland. Sometimes, when he sailed to Kronstadt or Peterhof, he invited foreign ambassadors to accompany him. Weber's account of one such excursion presents a graphic picture of what it was like to spend a weekend in the country as a guest of Peter the Great:

On June 9, 1715, the Tsar went to Kronstadt, where we also followed in a galley, but in consequence of a great storm, we were obliged to remain at anchor in this open boat for two days and two nights without lights, without beds, without food and drink. When at last we arrived at Kronstadt, the Tsar invited us to his villa at Peterhof. We went with a fair wind, and at dinner wanned ourselves to such a degree with old Hungarian wine, although His Majesty spared himself, that on rising from the table, we could scarcely keep our legs, and when we had been obliged to empty a bowl holding a quart apiece from the hands of the Tsaritsa, we lost our senses, and in that condition they carried us out to different places, some to the garden, some to the woods, while the rest lay on the ground here and there.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, they woke us up and again invited us to the summer house,
where the Tsar gave us each an axe and bade us follow him. He led us into a young wood, where he pointed out trees which it was necessary to fell in order to make an
allee
straight to the sea about a hundred paces long, and told us to cut down the trees. He himself began to work on the spot (there were seven of us besides the Tsar) and although this unaccustomed work, especially when we had not half recovered our senses, was not at all to our liking, we nevertheless cut boldly and diligently, so that in about three hours the
allee
was ready and the fumes of wine had entirely evaporated. None of us did himself any harm except a certain ambassador who hacked at the trees with such fury that by the fall of one, he was hit, knocked down, bruised, and badly scratched. After verbal thanks, we received our real recompense after supper in a second drink, which was so strong that we were taken to our beds unconscious.

We had hardly succeeded in sleeping an hour and a half before the Tsar's favorite appeared at midnight, pulled us out of our beds and dragged us willing or unwilling to the bedroom of a Circassian prince, asleep there with his wife, where by their bedside they plied us with so much wine and vodka that on the following day none of us could remember how we got home.

At eight o'clock in the morning we were invited to the palace for breakfast, which instead of coffee or tea as we expected, consisted of a good glass of vodka. Afterward we were taken to the foot of a little hill and made to mount eight wretched country nags without saddles or stirrups and ride about in review for an hour in the sight of Their Majesties, who leaned out the window. A certain Russian of distinction led the vanguard, and by the help of switches or sticks we made our jades mount uphill as best we could. After having taken a turn for an hour in the wood and refreshed ourselves with hearty draughts of water, we had a fourth drinking bout at dinner.

As the wind was strong we were put in the Tsar's covered boat, in which the Tsaritsa with her maid of honor had occupied the cabin, while the Tsar stood with us on the open deck and assured us that in spite of the strong wind we should arrive at Kronstadt at four o'clock. But after we had been tacking back and forth for two hours, we were caught by such a frightful squall that the Tsar, leaving aside all his jokes, himself took hold of the rudder, and in that danger displayed not only his great skill in working a ship, but an uncommon strength of body and undauntedness of mind. The Tsaritsa was laid on high benches in the cabin, which was full of water, the waves beating over the vessel, and violent rains falling, in which dangerous condition she also showed a great deal of courage and resolution.

We all gave ourselves up wholly to the will of God, and consoled ourselves with the thought that we should drown in such noble company. All effects of the drink disappeared very quickly, and we were filled with thoughts of repentance. Four smaller boats on which were the court of the Tsaritsa and our servants were tossed about on the waves and driven ashore. Our boat, which was strongly built and crewed with experienced sailors, after seven dangerous hours reached the harbor of Kronstadt, where the Tsar left us saying: "Good night to you, gentlemen. This was carrying the jest too far."

Next morning, the Tsar was seized with a fever. We on our part, being thoroughly soaked, having for so many hours sat in water up to the middle, made haste to get ashore on the island. But not being able to get either clothes or beds, our own baggage being gone another way, we made a fire, stripped stark naked, and wrapped our bodies up again in the coarse covers of sleds which we had borrowed from the peasants. In this condition we passed the night, warming ourselves at the fire, moralizing and making grave reflections on the miseries and uncertainties of human life.

On the 16th of July, the Tsar put to sea with his fleet, which we had not the good fortune to see, being all of us ill with fevers and other indispositions.

48

THE SECOND JOURNEY WEST

Peter
's second historic journey to the West, in 1716-1717, came nineteen years after the Great Embassy of 1697-1698. The curious and enthusiastic young Muscovite giant who insisted on anonymity while he learned to build ships and who was regarded in Europe as something between a bumpkin and a barbarian had now become a powerful and victorious monarch, forty-four years old, whose exploits were known and whose influence was felt wherever he traveled. This time, of course, the Tsar was a familiar figure in many of the places he visited. In 1711, 1712 and 1713, Peter had visited the towns and princely courts of the North German states, and the oudandish stories about his appearance and behavior were disappearing. Still, he had never been to Paris; Louis XIV had been a friend of Sweden, and it was not until the Sun King died in September 1715 that the Tsar felt free to visit France. Ironically, Peter's visit to Paris, the most memorable event in this second journey, was not on his itinerary when he left St. Petersburg. His trip had three purposes: to try to improve his health, to attend a royal marriage and to attempt a final blow at Charles XII and end the war with Sweden.

Peter's doctors had long insisted that he go. For a number of years, the Tsar's health had given them concern. It was not his epileptic convulsions that bothered them; they were of short duration, and a few hours after they had passed, Peter seemed quite normal. But fevers—sometimes as a result of unrestricted drinking, sometimes because of the fatigue of travel and worry, sometimes from a mixture of these causes—kept him in bed for weeks. In November 1715, after a drinking bout at Apraxin's house in St. Petersburg, Peter became so ill that the Last Sacrament was given to him. For two days, his ministers and senators remained in an adjacent room, fearing the worst. But within three weeks the Tsar was on his feet and able to go to church, although his face was pale and shrunken. During this illness, one of Peter's physicians went to Germany and Holland for consultation, and returned with the opinion that the patient should travel as soon as possible to Pyrmont near Hanover, where the mineral waters bubbling out of the earth were thought to be milder than the waters of Carlsbad, which Peter had visited previously.

Peter was also going to oversee the marriage of his niece Catherine, the daughter of his half-brother, Ivan. Ivan's wife, Tsaritsa Praskovaya, was devoted to Peter and had allowed her daughters, Anne and Catherine, to be used as marriage partners to promote his German alliances. Anne had married the Duke of Courland in 1709 only to be widowed two months later. Now, Catherine, at twenty-four the older of the two, was to wed the Duke of Mecklenburg, whose small duchy lay on the Baltic coast between Pomerania, Brandenburg and Holstein.

Peter's third purpose in traveling west was to meet his allies, Frederick IV of Denmark, Frederick William of Prussia and George Louis of Hanover, who since September 1714 was now also King George I of England. Peter's ambassador in Copenhagen, Prince Vasily Dolgoruky, had been urging King Frederick IV to join Peter in an allied invasion of the Swedish province of Scania, which lay three miles across the Oresund from the Danish coast of Zealand. Frederick was hesitating, and Peter believed that only by going in person would he be able to persuade the Danes to take what now seemed the only step that could force Charles to end the war.

On January 24, 1716, the royal party left St. Petersburg. With Peter were the senior of
ficials of the Foreign Ministry,
Golovkin, Shafirov and Tolstoy, and the rising seco
nd-level men, Osterman and Yagu
zhinsky. Catherine would look after Peter's health, leaving her little son, Peter Petrovich, three months old, and his sisters, Anne, now eight, and Elizabeth, seven, in the care of the Tsaritsa Praskovaya, who every day wrote a brief but affectionate account of the health and progress of the children. Praskovaya, in turn, was trusting her daughter "Katusha" (Catherine, the intended bride) to Peter's care.

Peter arrived in Danzig on February 18, a Sunday, just in time to attend a church service, accompanied by the Burgomeister. During the sermon, feeling a draft, Peter reached over, removed the Burgomeister's wig and put it on his own head. At the end of the service, he returned the wig with thanks. It was later explained to the startled official that it was Peter's habit, when his head was cold, to borrow a wig from any nearby Russian; in this case, the Burgomeister's had been the handiest.

Although all parties were on hand to celebrate the marriage in Danzig, the terms of the settlement had not yet been worked out. Duke Karl Leopold of Meckleburg has been described as "a tyrannical boor and one of the most notorious little despots that only the decay of the German constitution at that time had allowed to grow up." Meckleburg was small and weak and needed a powerful protector; marriage to a Russian princess would bring the Tsar's support. Knowing that two daughters of Tsar Ivan V were available, not caring which he received, he sent a betrothal ring to St. Petersburg with a letter of proposal in which the name of the recipient had been left blank. Catherine had been chosen.

The wedding took place on April
8,
with Peter and King Augustus both present. The bridegroom was dressed in a Swedish-style uniform, with a long Swedish sword, but he forgot to wear his cuffs. At two o'clock, the Tsar's carriage arrived to bring Karl Leopold and his chief minister, Baron Eichholtz, to Peter's house. In front of a crowd of people filling the square before the house, the Duke stepped out of the carriage—and his wig caught on a nail. Bareheaded, he stood in front of the crowd while the faithful Eichholtz scrambled up and detached the wig from the nail. Then, with the bride, who wore the crown of a Russian grand duchess, the party walked through the streets to a small Orthodox chapel which Peter had had built especially for the service. The Orthodox ceremony, performed by a Russian bishop, lasted two hours, during which time Peter moved freely through the congregtion and the choir, prompting in the Psalter and helping with the singing. After the service, as the wedding party again walked through the streets, people in the crowd cried out, "Look! The Duke has no cuffs on!"

In the evening, there was a fireworks display on the square in front of the house where the Duke was staying. Peter led Augustus and the new bridegroom through the crowd, personally setting off the rockets. So long did this last that at one o'clock in the morning Eichholtz had to remind his master that his bride had gone to bed three hours earlier. Karl Leopold departed, but even here Eichholtz had to worry. The bridal chamber had been decorated with many lacquered objects, including a lacquered bed. The Duke hated the sharp odor and Eichholtz feared that he would be unable to sleep on it, but the Duke managed, and the next day the newly married pair and the entire wedding party dined with a satisfied and happy Peter. The festivities ended badly, however, when officials in both parties fell to squabbling over the exchange of commemorative gifts. The Duke had made handsome presents to the Russian ministers, but the Mecklenburgers received nothing—"not even a crooked pin." Worse, Tolstoy, who was used to the exchange of fabulous stones in Constantinople, complained that the ring he received was less valuable than those presented to Golovkin and Shafirov. Osterman, a junior diplomat in the Russian party, tried to calm Tolstoy's wrath by giving him also the small ring with which
he
had been presented, but Tolstoy continued to complain that he had been insulted.