[1724 A.D.] tells us that at the sight of that terrible aspect he was appalled, gave himself up for lost, and remained motionless; but his master, with a broken and panting voice, exclaimed to him, "Get up! speak to me! there's no need to dress yourself"; and the trembling marshal obeyed.

He then learned that, but the instant before, guided by too faithful a report, the czar had suddenly entered Catherine's apartment; that the crime was revealed, the ingratitude proved; that at daybreak the empress should lose her head that the emperor was resolved!

The marshal, gradually recovering his voice, agreed that such a monstrous act of treachery was horrible; but he reminded his master of the fact that the crime was as yet known to no one, and of the impolicy of making it public; then, growing bolder, he dared to call to recollection the massacre of the strelitz, and that every subsequent year had been ensanguined by executions; that, in fine, after the imprisonment of his sister, the condemning of his son to death, and the scourging and imprisonment of his first wife, if he should likewise cut off the head of his second, Europe would no longer look upon him in any other light than that of a ferocious prince, who thirsted for the blood of his subjects and even of those who were a part of himself. Besides, he added, the czar might have satisfaction by giving up Moens to the sword of the law upon other charges; and as to the empress, he could find means to rid himself of her without any prejudice to his glory.

While Repnin was thus advising, the czar, who stood motionless before him, gazed upon him intently and wildly, and kept a gloomy silence. But in a short time, as was the case when he was labouring under strong emotions, his head was twisted to the left side, and his swollen features became convulsively contracted - signs of the terrible struggle by which he was tortured. And yet the excessive working of his mind held his body in a state of frightful immovability. At length, he rushed precipitately out of the chamber into the adjoining room. For two whole hours he hastily paced it; then suddenly entering again like a man who had made up his mind, he said to Repnin, "Moens shall die immediately! I will watch the empress so closely that her first slip shall cost her life!"

Moens and his sister were at once arrested. They were both confined in the winter palace, in an apartment to which none had admission except the emperor himself, who carried them their food. At the same time a report was spread that the brother and the sister had been bribed by the enemies of the country, in hopes of bringing the empress to act upon the mind of the czar prejudicially to the interests of Russia. Moens was interrogated by the monarch in presence of General Uschakov; and after having confessed whatever they pleased, he lost his head on the block (November 27th). At the same time his sister, who was an accomplice in the crime and a favourite of Catherine, received the knout, and was banished to Siberia; her property was confiscated; her two sons were degraded and were sent to a great distance, on the Persian frontier, as private soldiers.

Moens walked to meet his fate with manly firmness. He always wore a diamond bracelet, on which was a miniature of Catherine; but, as it was not perceived at the time of his being seized, he found means to conceal it under his garter; and when he was on the scaffold he confided this secret to the Lutheran pastor who accompanied him, and under cover of his cloak slipped the bracelet into his hand to restore it to the empress.

The czar was a spectator of the punishment of Moens from one of the windows of the senate. The execution being over, he got upon the scaffold, took the head of Moens by the hair, and expressed with brutal energy how

[1725 A.D.]

delighted he was with the vengeance he had taken. The same day Peter had the cruelty to conduct Catherine in an open carriage round the stake on which was fixed the head of her unfortunate lover. He watched her countenance attentively, but fortunately she had self-command enough not to betray her grief. Repnin adds that, from that dreadful night till his death, Peter never more spoke to the empress except in public, and that, in his dwelling, he always remained separate from her.

Peter the Great lived only to his fifty-third year. In spite of frequent attacks of illness and of his calling himself an old man, the emperor might have hoped to live yet a long while and to be able to dispose of his great inheritance in accordance with the interests of the state. But his days were already numbered. When Peter came to St. Petersburg in March, 1723, on his return from Persia, he appeared in much better health than before the campaign; in the summer of 1724 he became very weak, but in the second half of September he grew visibly better, walked at times in his gardens, and sailed on the Neva. On the 22nd of September he had a very severe attack; it is said that he fell into such a state of irritation that he struck the doctors and called them asses; afterwards he again became better, and on the 29th of September he was present at the launching of a frigate, although he told the Dutch minister Wild that he still felt rather weak. In spite of this he set off in the beginning of October to inspect the Ladoga canal, against the advice of his doctor Blumentrost; then he went to the Olonetz iron works and hammered out with his own hands a bar of iron of the weight of three pouds;1 from there he went to Starya Rusa to inspect the salt works, and in the beginning of November he went by water to St. Petersburg. But there, at a place called Lakta, he saw that a boat coming from Kronstadt with soldiers had run aground; he allowed no one to restrain him, but went himself to their assistance and helped to float the boat and save the people, standing up to his waist in the water. The attacks were speedily renewed; Peter arrived at St. Petersburg ill and could not regain his health; the affair of Mons also aggravated his condition. He occupied himself but little with affairs, although he showed himself as usual in public. On the 17th of January, 1725, the malady increased; Peter ordered that a movable church should be constructed near his sleeping room and on the 22nd he made his confession and received the sacrament; his strength began to leave him, he no longer cried out as before from the violence of the pain but only groaned. On the 27th all criminals were pardoned who had been condemned to death or to the galleys according to the articles of war, excepting those guilty of the first two offences against the law-murder and repeated robbery: the noblemen who had not appeared at the military reviews at the appointed time were also pardoned. On that day, at the expiration of the second hour, Peter asked for paper and tried to write, but the pen fell out of his hand; of that which he had written only the words "give up everything" could be deciphered; he then ordered his daughter Anna Petrovna to be called so that she might write under his dictation, but he could not pronounce the words. The following day, the 28th of January, at the beginning of the sixth hour after midnight, Peter the Great was no Catherine was almost unceasingly with him, and it was she who closed his eyes.

In terrible physical sufferings, in full recognition of the weakness of humanity, asking for the comfort afforded by religion, died the greatest of historical workers. We have already spoken in the proper place of how the work of

1

1 A poud contains forty Russian pounds, or about thirty-six pounds avoirdupois.

[1725 A.D.]

Peter was prepared by all preceding history; how it necessarily proceeded from the same; how it was required by the people, who by means of a tremendous revolution in their existence and customs, by means of an extraordinary effort of strength, had to be brought forth from their hopeless condition into a new way, a new life. But this in nowise diminishes the greatness of the man who in the accomplishment of so difficult an exploit lent his mighty hand to a great nation, and by the extraordinary power of his will strained all her forces and gave direction to the movement.

SOLOVIEV'S ESTIMATE OF PETER'S WORK

Revolutionary epochs constitute a critical time for the life of nations, and such was the epoch of the reformation of Peter. Complaints of the great burdens were to be heard from all sides

and not without cause. The Russian knew no rest from recruiting: recruiting for painful, ceaseless military service in the infantry, and for the newly created naval service; recruiting of workmen for new and difficult labour in distant and unattractive places; recruiting of scholars for the schools, and of young men to be sent to study abroad. For the army and for the fleet, for the great works and undertakings, for the schools and the hospitals, for the maintenance of diplomats and diplomatic bribery, money was necessary. But there was no money in the impoverished state, and heavy taxes in money and in kind had to be levied upon all; in necessary cases they were deducted from the salaries; well-to-do people were ruined by the construction of houses in St. Petersburg; everything that could be taken was taken, or farmed out; the poor people had one object of luxury-oak coffins; but these were confiscated by the fiscus and sold at a high price; raskolniki (dissenters) had to pay double taxes; the bearded had to pay for the privilege of wearing their beards. Orders upon orders were issued; men were to seek for ores and minerals, and for dye-stuffs; they were to tend their sheep not as they had previously done, to dress the skins differently, to build boats in a new way, to dare weave no narrow pieces of cloth, to take their goods to the west instead of to the north.1 New government centres were created, new courts established, the people did not know where to turn, the members of these new institutions and courts did not know how to go about their novel duties, and official papers were sent from one place to another.

A BASHKIRIAN WOMAN

The standing army pressed heavily on the unarmed population. People tried to escape from the hard service and hide themselves, but all were not

[That is, to St. Petersburg instead of to Archangel.]

[1725 A.D.]

successful, and cruel punishments threatened the disobedient. Illiterate nobles were forbidden to marry. Meanwhile beneath the new French frocks and wigs there was the old coarseness of manners; the same want of respect for human dignity in oneself and in others; the same hideous drunkenness and noisy brawling with which every festivity was terminated. Woman was brought into the society of men, but she was not surrounded with the respect due to her sex and obligations; pregnant women were made to drink to excess. The members of the highest institutions quarrelled and abused each other in the coarsest manner; bribery was as bad as before; the weak were subjected to every violence from the strong, and, as formerly, the noble was permitted to oppress the moujik (peasant), the well-born the base-born.

But this is only one side: there is another. The people were passing through a hard school -the stern teacher was not sparing in punishments for the idle and those who violated the regulations; but the matter was not limited to threats and punishments alone. The people were really learning, learning not only figures and geometry, not only in Russian and foreign schools; the people were learning the duties of citizens, the work of citizens. At the emission of every important regulation, at the inauguration of every great reform, the lawgiver explains why he acts thus, why the new is better than the old. The Russians then received such instruction for the first time; what now seems to us so simple and within the reach of all was first learned by these people from the edicts and manifestoes of Peter the Great.

For the first time the mind of the Russian was awakened, his attention directed to the great questions of political and social organisation; whether he turned sympathisingly or unsympathisingly to the words and deeds of the czar was a matter of indifference - he was obliged to think over these words and deeds, and they were continually there to arouse him. That which might have ruined a decrepit society, a people incapable of development the shocks of the epoch of reforms, the utter restlessness developed the forces of a vigorous young nation which had been long asleep and required a violent shock to awaken it. And there was much to be learned. Above was the governing senate, the synod; everywhere was collegiate organisation, the advantages of which were set forth in the church statutes. Everywhere the principle of election was introduced. The trade guilds were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the local governors and given their own independent administration. Peter's whole system of government was directed against the chief evils from which ancient Russia had suffered: the immaturity of forces, the want of a public spirit, the lack of independence of action, the absence of initiative capacity. The former council of the czar (douma) had suffered from all the deficiencies enumerated. Peter established the senate, to which fidelity had to be sworn and the ukases of which had to be obeyed as the ukases of the czar himself. Peter was not jealous of the power created

[1725 A.D.]

by him: he did not limit it; but on the contrary he continually and without ceremony required that it should profit by its importance, that it should really be a governing body. Peter's reproaches and rebukes to the senate were directed against its slowness, its languor, its want of management, and its inability to carry its decrees into immediate effect. The Russian of former times who had received a commission from the government went about in leading strings. He was not trusted, his smallest movement was feared, he was swathed like a child in long detailed instructions, and upon every fresh occasion that presented itself and was not defined in the instructions, the grown up child required teaching. This habit of asking for orders greatly angered Peter: "Act according to your own consideration, how can I tell you from such a distance!" he wrote to those who asked him for instructions. He employed the collegiate system—whether he had met with it in the west or whether it had been advised by Leibnitz is a matter of indifference; he employed it everywhere as the most powerful method of training the Russian people to unrestrained public activity. Instead of separate individuals, institutions came to the front, and over all rose the state, the real significance of which the people of Russia now learned for the first time when they had to take the oath.

Having set forth the importance of the state, and demanding that heavy sacrifices should be made, to this new divinity, himself giving the example, he nevertheless took measures that the individual should not be crushed, but should receive the requisite, balancing development. The first place must here naturally be given to the civilisation introduced by Peter, to the acquaintance with other nations in advance of Russia. We know that before the time of Peter the bond of the family was powerfully maintained in Russia; its prolonged existence is easily explained by the condition of society, which was unable to safeguard its members, and who were therefore obliged to seek security in private associations, chief among which was the natural blood relationship between members of the same family or clan. The elder protected the younger, and had power over them because they had to answer to the government for them. It was thus in every sphere of society; the independent Russian never presented himself alone, but always accompanied by his brothers and nephews; to be without clan and family was equivalent to being in the utmost poverty. It is easy to understand that the clan association hindered the development of personality; the state could not give to personal merit power over clan rights; jealous to the last degree of any insult to the honour of his clan, the ancient Russian was indifferent to his own personal honour. But by the end of the seventeenth century the demands of the state had so increased that the unity of the clan could not withstand them, and the destruction of precedence (mestnitchestov) struck a blow to the clan bond in the highest class of society, among those in the service of the czar. The reform of Peter struck a final blow by its decided, exclusive attention to personal merit, by raising persons "above their old parents" (that is, their kinsfolk), by bringing into the service a large number of foreigners; it became advantageous for new men to appear to have no clan relations, and many of them began willingly to trace their origin from foreign countries.

As to the lower ranks of the population, the blow to the clan bond was brought about by the poll-tax; the former expression, "such a one with his brothers and nephews," began to disappear, for the brothers and nephews had to pay separately each for himself, and appeared as separate, independent individuals. And not only did the former clan relations disappear,