#permsky | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ranfanblog · 1 year

Text

But like Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities

I did not expect to meet Peter the Great in Moby Dick, and even less with this reference, but of course, of the many things to note about the Tsar, this is undoubtedly the most characteristic. But not the only one. And since Melville has given me the opportunity to share one of my obsessions, namely the crazy biography of the greatest (literally and figuratively) Tsar of all the Russias, here is a very long post about the figure, work, life and death of a man with only one dream: Ships.

Prince Pyotr Alekseevich was Tsar of Russia, prince of Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir and Novgorod. Tzar of Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberia. Sovereign of Pskov. Grand Prince of Smolensk, Tversk, Yugorsk, Permsky, Vyatsky, Bulgarsky and others. Sovereign and Grand Prince of the lands of Novgorod Nizovsky, Chernigovsky, Ryazan, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Belozersky, Udorsky, Kondiisky and and Sovereign of all northern lands. Of the lands of Iberia (not that one, the other one), of the Kings of Kartlia and Georgia, of the lands of Kabardin, of the Princedoms of Circassia and the mountains and many other states and lands east and west, here and there, and successor and sovereign and ruler.

All this piece of land:

Half of those places have Dragonlance Kingdom names, let's face it.

And it's not easy to govern: seven time zones, fourteen thousand languages, tongues and dialects, myriad cultures, religions and traditions, and the outlet to the sea where God lost his cap. In this beautiful Frankenstein country, Peter was born, the son of Natalia Naryshkina and Alexei I, Tzares of Russia. One of their 13 children, I mean.

The Tzar will be survived by five of his Tzarevichs and at his death he will be succeeded by his son Fyodor III, Peter's elder brother:

Fyodor was 15 years old when he was crowned Tzar of it all.

Educated by the most renowned monk of the time, he spoke Polish and Latin. He was in poor health, half-paralysed and disfigured, but he was a reformer, and began to ventilate the country, which smelled like a bear. He founded the Academy of Sciences and reformed the law to ease punishments. And he eliminated the "pedigree" system by which public offices were elected in Moscow, the mestnichestvo, unblocking decades of administrative paralysis.

And here is a necessary aside: The mestnichestvo consisted of civilian and military positions being determined by seniority and family. And that's it. In other words, if you were the fifth son of the Whateverovich family, you could be a third corporal of the Fifth regiment of Irkusk sappers. That's all you need to do, just ask for it and you get it. Now imagine the entire administration and army of the Duchy of Moscow organised like this. There was a register of all the families and positions so that everything was clear and concise. If anyone dared to sit in your place at the Tzar's table, it came to blows.

The whole administration was full of useless people in high positions because they won the genetic lottery, and capable people eating a turd because they were born in the wrong family, or two months late. It was a real mess.

So Fyodor said enough is enough and ordered the books to be burned. The boyars were not amused by this.

Anyway, good old Fyodor dies and THE PIPHOSTION ensues.

Welcome to the Moscow Uprising of 1682*.

Two sides are fighting for the succession, the Miloslavsky and the Naryshkin. The latter want to appoint Peter Tzar. The former accuse the latter of having murdered Ivan, Peter's half-brother.

Then the Streltsy's arrived.

The Streltsy were a military unit of musketeers with bardiches, who double as police and fire brigade. It's a virtually hereditary post (to no one's surprise) and they lived in their own neighbourhoods in Moscow. And they were pissed off.

*They order them by date because, as you can imagine, this had more sequels than TRANSFORMERS.

The truth is that the Streltsy are chronically underpaid by the state, which forces them into trade or agriculture. They are also used as border guards in the provinces and as siege troops, which takes them away from their business. The Moscow Streltsy allies with Ivan's supporters. On 11 May, amid general unrest, they storm the Kremlin and lynch their own officers and several boyars. A few days later they storm the palace and kill several nobles in front of the ten-year-old Peter. It ends with Ivan V as Tzar, Peter as heir and his sister Sophia as regent of all the Russias.

Sophia is, of course, behind the riots.

The infant Tzars "rule" from a double throne. The Tzarevna Sophia sits behind the throne and whispers answers to Peter. Literally. She orders to make a little window in the back of the throne.

This matters little to Peter: he is the "second" Tzar, he is not going to inherit a shit, and he has an education to take care of, at a time when education was not very interesting. Except for him.

Peter began his studies with a church accountant named Nikita Zotov. Tzar Fyodor III had already taught the boy his first letters, and recommended his mother to continue with it. Zotov came out of nowhere, was given a flat in Moscow and began to educate.

Zotov freaks out a bit, but he gets on with it. Peter is not a genius, but he is very curious, and when something interests him, it interests him. A lot. They hit it off, the Tsar and the accountant, and Zotov and Peter will be friends for the rest of their lives. Another of Peter's tutors is Patrick Gordon, a Scottish soldier of fortune who ends up in Russia on the run from the Calvinists. Our wandering Scotsman (and other wandering Scottish chums) go off to the Swedish-Polish war and fight for five years.

On both sides. Several times.

Between him and Paul Menesius, another Scottish soldier of fortune, they educated young Peter in the ways of war. You can see that Russia and Scotland were strangely linked in those years. It is not clear who came up with the idea, but the way to teach young Peter about the things of war was with The Toy Army.

Not "a": THE.

Peter's Toy Army (Poteshnye voiska in Russian) was a unit of 100 sons of the court nobles and diplomats, friends of Peter, along with servants and enlisted personnel more or less by force.

Trained with live ammunition by the Scots.

To learn the art of war, Peter created his war in the Palace courtyard, with artillery, muskets and all the trappings. The Toy Army was expanded and trained to become the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky Regiments of the Imperial Guard.

You know that Sci Fi/Fantasy cliché, that breed of invincible warriors raised for WAR from childhood and so on and so forth?

WELL, THAT'S WHAT PETER THE GREAT SET UP: HIS OWN ELITE UNIT OF RUSSIAN SUPER-SOLDIERS.

Peter the Great was the greatest. Of Russia. And of Europe.

No, really.

The Tsar of the Russian Empire was two meters and three centimeters tall, in a century when the average height was around one meter sixty-five.

Summer 1689. Peter is 17 years old, has two regiments of super-soldiers and a mission: to turn Russia into a maritime power. Because someone, we don't know who, has taught young Peter to sail, and he has got the idea into his head.

Peter plans to wrest power from his half-sister Sophia, after she led two disastrous military campaigns in Crimea. Sofia discovers the coup attempt and recruits her Streltsy to stop it. But Peter's loyalists tell him and he flees to the Troitse-Sergiyeva monastery.

Peter entrenches himself in the convent, and his friends come to help him. The boyars also take his side, as do some of the Streltsy. Sophia eventually loses her grip on power, and Peter I takes control of all the Russias.

Because Ivan V is ill.

Since his birth, Ivan V has always been sickly and weak, both in body and mind. He has no interest in government and spends his days in prayer and fasting. He will not be drawn into the coups and counter-coups between his sister and his half-brother.

After his marriage, Ivan gradually disappeared from court life. At the age of 27 he was senile, paralysed and half blind. His death will be the end of the period of the Two Tsars and the beginning of the single rule of Peter I, although since he takes Sophia out of the way Peter is already the Tsar.

Back to Peter. The first thing he does is to modernise Russia. All of it. The whole thing. From the wardrobe to the army, Peter wants his empire to be a modern nation, like Prussia, England or France, so he reoganises the whole medieval mess he has at home. With the help of the Scots he overhauls the army and puts it to work as his Imperial Guard. The church is being carved up, he sets up the bishops himself and controls it from the synod. Although he knows the Bible well, it is clear that Peter is not a communicant.

Another thing is the way people dress, which is something he can't cope with.

So as a measure to implement the fashion, create a tax on long tunics and beards. Yes, a tax on beards. Every hipster neighbourhood would be up in arms today.

He also set his second great goal: to be a maritime power, because he really liked ships. At the time, Russia had only two sea outlets: the Pacific, which was a fucking huge distance away from Moscow, and the White Sea, which is only really liquid for like a couple of months of the year.

Indeed, Russia is cut off from the North Sea and the Mediterranean. From the former by the Swedes, who are quarrelling with everyone at the time, and from the latter by the Ottomans, who control access to the Black Sea, where Sofia's campaigns to take Crimea have been unsuccessful.

Peter goes FULL WARHAMMER and starts the Azov Campaigns.

Seriously, THE AZOV CAMPAIGNS.

Azov is an Ottoman fortress that stands between Peter and the Black Sea. After making a few arrangements with Poland to pass through, Peter goes overland with two armies for his well-deserved passage to the sea, along with his loyal Scots.

They fail to take Azov.

Although there have been victories, they fail to hold the ground they have gained and must retreat, leaving the fortress back to the Ottomans. But Peter has a plan, and a fixed idea. So he get back to Moscow and builds a fucking fleet and sets off down the river with his new toys: the first Russian Navy Fleet.

And this time Azov falls.

In less than a year, the Russians build and arm a fleet and defeat the Ottomans, taking the fortress than have resisted all previous attempts to be taken.

Bombarded and besieged by sea and land, unable to receive reinforcements and supplies, with the Ottoman fleet on the run, Peter I the Great achieves his first victory and proof that the Russian fleet is more than a passing fancy. Two years after his victory at Azov, the Russian Navy and its first port are created. Although the Ottomans still control Crimea and the Black Sea, the Russian fleet begins to become a reality.

Faced with the Ottoman threat and the need to bring closer ties with the Europeans he so admires, Peter I organises The Grand Embassy, a group of some 300 nobles and diplomats that he sends to Europe to make friends for the Russian Empire. All as part of his master plan…

… to learn how to build more, better ships!

This is where I tell you that the socio-economic conditions in Europe created the need for Peter I's new Russia to open up to the sea, the relations between England and the Danes, etc., but what am I going to fool you?

Peter I wanted ships. Full stop.

So he sends the Grand Embassy to travel around Europe and look for allies against the Ottomans… And to learning about ships.

1697. The 17th century comes to an end. The Grand Embassy travels through Poland and the Germanic principalities, seeking further support for their war against the Ottomans. Their efforts are unsuccessful, but contact will soon bring other unexpected fruits.

The journey west continues.

In late summer the Grand Embassy arrives in Holland. For four months the diplomats meet with other diplomats and nobles. The Ottomans mattered to no one so far from their borders, and in Spain there were more worrying matters: the succession of Charles II.

Heading the embassy is Franz Lefort, a former Swiss soldier of fortune in the service of Tsar Peter I, and one of his closest friends. Lefort has served with Patrick Gordon in Kiev, and participated in the firsts disastrous Crimean campaigns. Lefort has also done diplomatic work for the Tsars, and during the capture of Azov, he served as admiral of the Russian fleet. The Tsar is a common guest in his household and the social life of the court gravitates around him.

Along with Lefort, Count Fyodor Golovin, another of Tsar Peter's close associates, has been appointed as Count Fyodor Golovin, a boyar with a military career and a world. A lot of world.

During Sophia's regency, Golovin was sent to defend Albazin, by the Amur River:

Defend it from whom?

Well, this man:

This man is the Kangxi Emperor, the fourth of the Quing Dynasty, and one of the most famous and prosperous emperors of the dynasty.

Precisely because he did not allow himself to be pushed around by the Russians, among others.

(Albazin was about where Jixi is now).

Did I forget to mention that this is THE BORDER WITH CHINA?

Yes, where DIO lost his sandal. That's where Golovin was sent with nearly 700 men.

Anyway, not much of a joke: when Golovin arrives in Albazin, the Chinese have destroyed the fort. He rebuilds it, improving the defences, and rallies his men. And the Chinese troops begin a gruelling siege that lasts more than half a year. Of the more than 800 Russians, 66 survive.

The situation was resolved diplomatically, and the Russians leave the banks of the Amur River, the Black Dragon.

Golovin returns to Russia. The real one. At that time, such a journey was the stuff of science fiction, mind you.

This is Golovin, a veteran and friend of the Tsar, who is commissioned by Peter I to hire naval experts and buy modern weapons while he travels around Europe with the Grand Embassy.

Golovin was not only in charge of scouting naval talent: He also brought with him a group of naval engineers, master shipwrights and workers whose mission was to learn the cutting-edge techniques of the shipyards of Europe. One of them was Pyotr Michalov.

Pyotr was apprenticed in the shipyards of the largest fleet of the time, the Dutch East India Company, for four months and five days, and his master certified that he learned all branches of the trade and behaved properly. We know because the documents that certified such learning has been recorded and stored.

But Pyotr Michalov kept a secret… Badly.

He was actually Tsar Peter I!

Peter I. Peter I The Great. THE GREAT. The two-metre tall Russian, one of the tallest men in Europe, regent of the continent's largest nation, has been working "incognito" in the shipyards for months.

Officially, he is not present at the Grand Embassy. He is still in Russia.

And, officially, the rest of Europe's nobles pretend they know nothing about the two-metre Russian who wants a job in the shipyards and asks a lot of questions and is then accompanied by the authorities to see the new ships.

Nothing at all. No. Niet.

Because Peter likes ships. He LOVES to work the timber and to create the hull and to literally build them. He didn't like to be treated like a nobleman and to be seen like a boss: He want to work with his own hands and to learn the tricks and secrets of the artisans and workers. That's whats Melville talking about when he wrote:

But like Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen.

After the Netherlands, the Grand Embassy visited England, where it was clear that all the great powers of the time were more concerned about Spain than Russia. Pedro looks for a comfortable place to spend the winter, but above all close to the Deptford shipyard, where he will once again work "incognito" as a simple worker.

The Grand Embassy is housed at Sayes Court, working in the dockyards and on diplomatic missions, and generally doing Russian: using portraits as shooting targets, destroying gardens with wheelbarrow races, sealing doors and windows with mud… One of the house servants wrote to his master, John Evelyn (yes, that John Evelyn):

"There is a house full of people and right nasty."

Evelyn claimed damages from the Crown, and had to be compensated almost €40000 in today's currency. It seems he didn't like his guests' habit of using the furniture as firewood.

After the British winter, which is Russian for "pretty nice weather", the Grand Embassy continued on its course through Europe. Since it was clear that the Ottomans were of no importance to anyone, the Russians concentrated on the Swedes, who blocked their access to the Baltic. And here history takes away a unique opportunity. One of those things that make you dream of a uchronia where the world could have been different. Where possibilities are multiplied and juxtaposed in an unrepeatable fractal. One of those almost perfect moments.

Peter & The Embassy are in Poland when the Streltsy Uprising of 1698 breaks out, putting an end to the Grand Embassy and forcing the Tsar to rush back to Russia...

JUST AS THEY WERE ABOUT TO VISIT VENICE!!!!

The Streltsy are fed up. They get paid too little, too late and too badly, and on top of that the Moscow ones have been in Azov for two years. When they are sent to a new posting instead of back to Moscow, they get angry.

A group returns to Moscow to complain, and ask Sophia Alekseyevna, THAT Sophia, for her intercession. 2300 Streltsy head to Moscow with the intention of reinstalling Sofia on the throne. Peter sends 4000 loyal soldiers under Patrick Gordon.

The Streltsy are defeated, captured and cruelly tortured to death, whipped or exiled.

The Streltsy were disbanded in the following years, and Peter I never again toured European countries. The Grand Embassy had taught Peter many things, and it was on his return that the modernisation of Russia began.

With the beard tax.

He also changed the calendar, moving the beginning of the year from September to January, from 7207 to 1700.

After reforming the army by sending home 70% of the officers, and ensuring with treaties that Azov would remain in his power, he turned to Sweden. Peter the Great wasted no time during the Great Embassy. Between building ships and destroying other people's property he still had time for diplomacy. With Poland and Denmark he declared war on Sweden.

The Swedes are doing very well in Europe. The Baltic is theirs, and they have a modern, professional army that allows them to stand up to others who are numerically superior, as Peter is about to find out.

Their king, Charles XII, this steampunk-looking gentleman, will have to deal with Russians and Poles, and although he wins early victories, he will make THE MISTAKE.

The Russians are being cocky at the beginning of the war, conquering to the north-west. The plan is to get an outlet to the Baltic because ships, you know. So they take what will be Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and keep it. They lay siege to Narva. Pyotr, who has the attention span of an amphetamine-blind gerbil, leaves a foreign general, De Croÿ, in command of the siege to go somewhere else.

It ends as expected. The Russians are wiped out. The Swedes' tactics disrupt the Tsar's formations and although they outnumber the Swedes 4 to 1, the Russians have neither training, discipline nor morale. The Russian army is slaughtered and surrenders within hours. But not all.

The Preobrazhensky and Semyonosky Regiments hold their positions and fortify themselves, fighting back while the rest of the Russian troops flee, kill their own foreign officers and surrender to the Swedes.

They are the Toy Army Regiments, and they will not surrender until they are completely surrounded and decimated.

And what is Pyotr doing meanwhile? Founding St. Petersburg, his outlet to the sea and future Imperial Capital:

While Charles XII continues his moves against his other enemies, Russia offers him peace: he now has two seaports, St. Petersburg and Kronstand. Pyotr can now build his fleet and play with his little boats, so he is not interested in war.

But Charles XII will make THE MISTAKE. Rejecting the peace offerings, the Swedes will invade Poland and continue with Ukraine. Their goal: Moscow.

And what always happens when someone tries to invade Russia will happen.

The Russians do not put up a fight, they retreat and burn everything behind them. They wait for winter to catch up with the enemy. At the Battle of Poltava, the Swedes, exhausted and starving, are crushed. Charles XII has to flee south, where he is taken in by the Ottoman Empire during his exile. Russia will win the war and become the modern maritime power that Pyotr always wanted. Charles XII will never forgive himself, and it is not until his death in battle a decade later that peace is signed between Russia and Sweden. By then, the Swedes had had enough of the Russian navy, which bombarded and attacked the coast year after year, often directly under Peter I's command.

A fleet built from scratch, based in St. Petersburg and Kronstand, in less than five years. Pyotr will continue to reign as Tsar of all the Russias, facing revolts, plots and various wars.

And partying. A lot of partying.

Peter had another passion besides ships. With his friends from the Toy Army, Zotov, Golovin, Lefort, Gordon and others, he would meet at Lefort's house, until the house became too small for him. So much so that Pyotr paid for a palace for 1500 people. Pyotr awarded titles to his buddies, organised sledge races, drinking ceremonies and more parties.

200 colleagues.

Partying.

With the Tsar.

The Grand Embassy was clearly a Russian-style Erasmus.

And finally, the death of our great Pyotr.

Legend has it that Peter was in St Petersburg visiting a shipyard, of course, because Peter the Great was not going to visit a bakery, as we all know… During the visit, Baltic November, Peter saw that some soldiers had fallen into the water and were in danger. Being a naturally courageous person, Peter jumped into the Baltic and there he went, to save his fellow citizens. In November. And so it was that Peter I the Great, Tsar of All the Russias, etc, etc, died of pneumonia, doing heroic things because he was like that, a very tall man, a very Tsar, who propelled his country 300 years into history, while he lived 600 years ahead of the rest.

I wish Pyotr had discovered zeppelins.

And to bid farewell to this great man, the statue I like the most, without epicness or grandiloquence. The image of a man and his passion:

"Alas! I have civilized my own subjects; I have conquered other nations; yet I have not been able to civilize or to conquer myself."

#Whale Weekly #Moby Dick #Herman Melville #Peter I The Great #European History #Russia #17th Century #18th Century #I don't like the Great Men's History but... He was a GREAT MAN #Also an absolutist monarch #But for the Tsars that come before and after him... Not that bad

49 notes · View notes