CHAPTER XV

CHARLES XII.--NARVA--ST. PETERSBURG

The Baltic was at this time a Swedish sea. Finland, Livonia, and all the territory on the eastern coast, where once the Russians and the German knights had struggled, was now under the sovereignty of an inexperienced young king who had just ascended the throne of his father Charles XI., King of Sweden. If Peter ever "opened a window" into the West, it must be done by first breaking through this Swedish wall. Livonia was deeply aggrieved just now because of some oppressive measures against her, and her astute minister, Patkul, suggested to the King of Poland that he form a coalition between that kingdom, Denmark, and Russia for the purpose of breaking the aggressive Scandinavian power in the North. The time was favorable, with disturbed conditions in Sweden, and a youth of eighteen without experience upon the throne. The Tsar, who had recently returned from abroad and had settled matters with his _Streltsui_ in Moscow, saw in this enterprise just the opportunity he desired, and joined the coalition.

At the Battle of Narva (1700) there were two surprises: one when Peter found that he knew almost nothing about the art of warfare, and the other when it was revealed to Charles XII. that he was a military genius and his natural vocation was that of a conqueror. But if Charles was intoxicated by his enormous success, Peter accepted his humiliating defeat almost gratefully as a harsh lesson in military art. The sacrifice of men had been terrible, but the lesson was not lost. The next year there were small Russian victories, and these crept nearer and nearer to the Baltic, until at last the river upon which the great Nevski won his surname was reached--and the Neva was his! Peter lost no time. He personally superintended the building of a fort and then a church which were to be the nucleus of a city; and there may be seen in St. Petersburg to-day the little hut in which lived the Tsar while he was founding the capital which bears his name (1703). No wonder it seemed a wild project to build the capital of an empire, not only on its frontier, but upon low marshy ground subject to the encroachments of the sea from which it had only half emerged; and in a latitude where for two months of the year the twilight and the dawn meet and there is no night, and where for two other months the sun rises after nine in the morning and sets before three. Not only must he build a city, but create the dry land for it to stand upon; and it is said that six hundred acres have been reclaimed from the sea at St. Petersburg since it was founded.

Charles XII. was too much occupied to care for these insignificant events. He sent word that when he had time he would come and burn down Peter's wooden town. He was leading a victorious army toward Poland, he had beheaded the traitorous Patkul, and everything was bowing before him. The great Marlborough was suing for his aid in the coalition against Louis XIV. in the War of the Spanish Succession. Flushed with victory, Charles felt that the fate of Europe was lying in his hands. He had only to decide in which direction to move--whether to help to curb the ambition of the Grand Monarque in the West, or to carry out his first design of crushing the rising power of the Great Autocrat in the East. He preferred the latter. The question then arose whether to enter Russia by the North or by way of Poland, where he was now master. The scale was turned probably by learning that the Cossacks in Little Russia were growing impatient and were ripe for rebellion against the Tsar.

Peter was anxious to prevent the invasion. He had a wholesome admiration for the terrible Swedish army, not much confidence in his own, and his empire was in disorder. He sent word to Charles that he would be satisfied to withdraw from the West if he could have one port on the Baltic. The king's haughty reply was: "Tell your Tsar I will treat with him in Moscow," to which Peter rejoined: "My brother Charles wants to play the part of an Alexander, but he will not find in me a Darius."

It is possible that upon Ivan Mazeppa, who was chief or Hetman of the Cossacks at this time, rests the responsibility of the crushing defeat which terminated the brilliant career of Charles XII. Mazeppa was the Polish gentleman whose punishment at the hands of an infuriated husband has been the subject of poems by Lord Byron and Pushkin, and also of a painting by Horace Vernet. This picturesque traitor, who always rose upon the necks of the people who trusted him, whose friendships he one after another invariably betrayed, reached a final climax of infamy by offering to sacrifice the Tsar, the friend who believed in him so absolutely that he sent into exile or to death anyone who questioned his fidelity. Mazeppa had been with Peter at Azof, and abundant honors were waiting for him; but he was dazzled by the career of the Swedish conqueror, and believed he might rise higher under Charles XII. than under his rough, imperious master at Moscow. So he wrote the King that he might rely upon him to join him with 40,000 Cossacks in Little Russia. He thought it would be an easy matter to turn the irritated Cossacks from the Tsar. They were restive under the severity of the new military _régime_, and also smarting under a decree forbidding them to receive any more fugitive peasants fleeing from serfdom. But he had miscalculated their lack of fidelity and his own power over them.

It was this fatal promise, which was never to be kept, that probably lured Charles to his ruin. After a long and disastrous campaign he met his final crushing defeat at Poltova in 1709. The King and Mazeppa, companions in flight, together entered the Sultan's dominions as fugitives, and of the army before which a short time ago Europe had trembled--there was left not one battalion.

The Baltic was passing into new hands. "The window" opening upon the West was to become a door, and the key of the door was to be kept upon the side toward Russia! Sweden, which under Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XI., and Charles XII. had played such a glorious part, was never to do it again; and the place she had left vacant was to be filled by a new and greater Power. Russia had dispelled the awakened dream of a great Scandinavian Empire and--so long excluded and humiliated--was going to make a triumphal entry into the family of European nations.

The Tsar, with his innovations and reforms, was vindicated. For breadth of design and statesmanship there was not one sovereign in the coalition who could compare with this man who, Bishop Burnet thought, was better fitted for a mechanic than a Prince--and "incapable of a great enterprise."

Of Charles XII. it has been said that "he was a hero of the Scandinavian Edda set down in the wrong century," and again that he was the last of the Vikings, and of the Varangian Princes. But Mazeppa said of him, when dying in exile: "How could I have been seduced in my old age by a military vagabond!"

Ivan, Peter's infirm brother and associate upon the throne, had died in 1696. Another oppressive tie had also been severed. He had married at seventeen Eudoxia, belonging to a proud conservative Russian family. He had never loved her, and when she scornfully opposed his policy of reform, she became an object of intense aversion. After his triumph at Azof, he sent orders that the Tsaritsa must not be at the palace upon his return, and soon thereafter she was separated from her child Alexis, placed in a monastery, and finally divorced. At the surrender of Marienburg in Livonia (1702) there was among the captives the family of a Lutheran pastor named Glück. Catherine, a young girl of sixteen, a servant in the family, had just married a Swedish soldier, who was killed the following day in battle. We would have to look far for a more romantic story than that of this Protestant waiting-maid. Menschikof, Peter's great general, was attracted by her beauty and took the young girl under his protection. But when the Tsar was also fascinated by her artless simplicity, she was transferred to his more distinguished protection. Little did Catherine think when weeping for her Swedish lover in Pastor Glück's kitchen that she was on her way to the throne of Russia. But such was her destiny. She did not know how to write her name, but she knew something which served her better. She knew how to establish an influence possessed by no one else over the strange husband to whom in 1707 she was secretly married.

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