The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia. Voltaire

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СКАЧАТЬ for his patriotic virtue, and the noble use he made of his immense riches, which he distributed like a citizen of the world, sending men of abilities, at a great expense, to all parts of the globe, in search of whatever was most rare and valuable, and fitting out vessels at his own charge to make new discoveries.

      Peter Bas gave a truce to his labours for a short time, but it was only to pay a private visit at Utrecht, and at the Hague, to William, king of England, and stadtholder of the United Provinces. General Le Fort was the only one admitted to the private conference of the two monarchs. Peter assisted afterwards at the public entry of his ambassadors, and at their audience: they presented, in his name, to the deputy of the states, six hundred of the most beautiful sables that could be procured; and the states, over and above the customary presents on these occasions, of a gold chain and a medal, gave them three magnificent coaches. They received the first visits of all the plenipotentiaries who were at the congress of Ryswick, excepting those of France, to whom they had not notified their arrival, not only because the czar espoused the cause of Augustus against the prince of Conti, but also because king William, whose friendship he was desirous of cultivating, was averse to a peace with France.

      At his return to Amsterdam he resumed his former occupations, and completed with his own hands, a ship of sixty guns, that he had begun himself, and sent her to Archangel; which was the only port he had at that time on the ocean.

      He not only engaged in his service several French refugees, Swiss, and Germans; but he also sent all sorts of artists over to Moscow, and he previously made a trial of their several abilities himself. There were few trades or arts which he did not perfectly well understand, in their minutest branches: he took a particular pleasure in correcting with his own hands, the geographical maps, which at that time laid down at hazard the positions of the towns and rivers in his vast dominions, then very little known. There is still preserved, a map, on which he marked out, with his own hand, his projected communication of the Caspian and Black Seas, the execution of which he had given in charge to Mr. Brekel, a German engineer. The junction of these two seas was indeed a less difficult enterprise than that of the Ocean and Mediterranean, which was effected in France; but the very idea of joining the sea of Azoph with the Caspian, astonished the imagination at that time: but new establishments in that country became the object of his attention, in proportion as his successes begat new hopes.

      His troops, commanded by general Schein and prince Dolgorowski, had lately gained a victory over the Tartars near Azoph, and likewise over a body of janissaries sent by sultan Mustapha to their assistance. (July 1696.) This success served to make him more respected, even by those who blamed him, as a sovereign, for having quitted his dominions, to turn workman at Amsterdam. They now saw, that the affairs of the monarch did not suffer by the labours of the philosopher, the traveller, and the artificer.

      He remained at Amsterdam, constantly employed in his usual occupations of shipbuilding, engineering, geography, and the practice of natural philosophy, till the middle of January 1698, and then he set out for England, but still as one of the retinue of his ambassadors.

      King William sent his own yacht to meet him, and two ships of war as convoy. In England he observed the same manner of living as at Amsterdam and Saardam; he took an apartment near the king's dockyard, at Deptford, where he applied himself wholly to gain instruction. The Dutch builders had only taught him their method, and the practical part of shipbuilding. In England he found the art better explained; for there they work according to mathematical proportion. He soon made himself so perfect in this science, that he was able to give lessons to others. He began to build a ship according to the English method of construction, and it proved a prime sailor. The art of watchmaking, which was already brought to perfection in London, next attracted his attention, and he made himself complete master of the whole theory. Captain Perry, the engineer, who followed him from London to Russia, says, that from the casting of cannon, to the spinning of ropes, there was not any one branch of trade belonging to a ship that he did not minutely observe, and even put his hand to, as often as he came into the places where those trades were carried on.

      In order to cultivate his friendship, he was allowed to engage several English artificers into his service, as he had done in Holland; but, over and above artificers, he engaged likewise some mathematicians, which he would not so easily have found in Amsterdam. Ferguson, a Scotchman, an excellent geometrician, entered into his service, and was the first person who brought arithmetic into use in the exchequer in Russia, where before that time, they made use only of the Tartarian method of reckoning, with balls strung upon a wire; a method which supplied the place of writing, but was very perplexing and imperfect, because, after the calculation, there was no method of proving it, in order to discover any error. The Indian ciphers, which are now in use, were not introduced among us till the ninth century, by Arabs; and they did not make their way into the Russian empire till one thousand years afterwards. Such has been the fate of the arts, to make their progress slowly round the globe. He took with him two young students from a mathematical school,46 and this was the beginning of the marine academy, founded afterwards by Peter the Great. He observed and calculated eclipses with Ferguson. Perry, the engineer, though greatly discontented at not being sufficiently rewarded, acknowledges, that Peter made himself a proficient in astronomy; that he perfectly well understood the motions of the heavenly bodies, as well as the laws of gravitation, by which they are directed. This force, now so evidently demonstrated, and before the time of the great Newton so little known, by which all the planets gravitate towards each other, and which retain them in their orbits, was already become familiar to a sovereign of Russia, while other countries amused themselves with imaginary vertices, and, in Galileo's nation, one set of ignorant persons ordered others, as ignorant, to believe the earth to be immoveable.

      Perry set out in order to effect a communication between rivers, to build bridges, and construct sluices. The czar's plan was to open a communication by means of canals between the Ocean, the Caspian, and the Black Seas.

      We must not forget to observe, that a set of English merchants, with the marquis of Caermarthen47 at their head, gave Peter fifteen thousand pounds sterling, for the permission of vending tobacco in Russia. The patriarch, by a mistaken severity, had interdicted this branch of trade; for the Russian church forbid smoking, as an unclean and sinful action. Peter, who knew better things, and who, amongst his many projected changes, meditated a reformation of the church, introduced this commodity of trade into his dominions.

      Before Peter left England, he was entertained by king William with a spectacle worthy such a guest: this was a mock sea-fight. Little was it then imagined, that the czar would one day fight a real battle on this element against the Swedes, and gain naval victories in the Baltic. In fine, William made him a present of the vessel in which he used to go over to Holland, called the Royal Transport, a beautiful yacht, and magnificently adorned. In this vessel Peter returned to Holland the latter end of 1698, taking with him three captains of ships of war, five and twenty captains of merchant ships, forty lieutenants, thirty pilots, as many surgeons, two hundred and fifty gunners, and upwards of three hundred artificers. This little colony of persons skilful in all branches, sailed from Holland to Archangel, on board the Royal Transport, and from thence were distributed into all the different places where their services were necessary. Those who had been engaged at Amsterdam went by the way of Narva, which then belonged to the Swedes.

      While he was thus transplanting the arts and manufacture of England and Holland into his own country, the officers, whom he had sent to Rome, and other places in Italy, had likewise engaged some artists in his service. General Sheremeto, who was at the head of his embassy to Italy, took the tour of Rome, Naples, Venice, and Malta, while the czar proceeded to Vienna with his other ambassadors. He had now only to view the military discipline of the Germans, after having seen the English fleets, and the dock-yards of Holland. Politics had likewise as great a share in this journey as the desire of instruction. The emperor was his natural ally against the Turks. Peter had a private audience of Leopold, and the two monarchs conferred standing, to avoid the trouble of ceremony.

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