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VOLTAIRE

Russia Under Peter the Great

François Marie Arouet, known to the world by the assumed name of Voltaire (supposed to be an anagram of Arou[v]et l[e] j[eun]), was born in Paris on November 21, 1694. Before he was twenty-two, his caustic pen had got him into trouble. At thirty-one, when he was already famous for his drama, "OEdipe," as well as for audacious lampoons, he was obliged to retreat to England, where he remained some three years. Various publications during the years following his return placed him among the foremost French writers of the day. From 1750 to 1753 he was with Frederick the Great in Prussia. When the two quarrelled, Voltaire settled in Switzerland and in 1758 established himself at Ferney, about the time when he published "Candide." His "Siècle de Louis Quatorze" (see ante) had appeared some years earlier. In 1762 he began a series of attacks on the Church and Christianity; and he continued to reign, a sort of king of literature, till his death, in Paris on May 30, 1778. An admirable criticism of him is to be found in Morley's "Voltaire"; but the great biography is that of Desnoiresterres. His "Russia under Peter the Great" was written after Voltaire took up his residence at Ferney in 1758. This epitome is prepared from the French text.

I.--All the Russias

When, about the beginning of the present century, the Tsar Peter laid the foundations of Petersburg, or, rather, of his empire, no one foresaw his success. Anyone who then imagined that a Russian sovereign would be able to send victorious fleets to the Dardanelles, to subjugate the Crimea, to clear the Turks out of four great provinces, to dominate the Black Sea, to set up the most brilliant court in Europe, and to make all the arts flourish in the midst of war--anyone expressing such an idea would have passed for a mere dreamer. Peter the Great built the Russian Empire on a foundation firm and lasting.

That empire is the most extensive in our hemisphere. Poland, the Arctic Ocean, Sweden, and China lie on its boundaries. It is so vast that when it is mid-day at its western extremity it is nearly midnight at the eastern. It is larger than all the rest of Europe, than the Roman Empire, than the empire of Darius which Alexander conquered. But it will take centuries, and many more such Tsars as Peter, to render that territory populous, productive, and covered with cities, like the northern lands of Europe.

The province nearest to our own realms is Livonia, long a heathen region. Tsar Peter conquered it from the Swedes.

To the north is the province of Revel and Esthonia, also conquered from the Swedes by Peter. The Gulf of Finland borders Esthonia; and here at this junction of the Neva and Lake Ladoga is the city of Petersburg, the youngest and the fairest of the cities of the empire, built by Peter in spite of a mass of obstacles. Northward, again, is Archangel, which the English discovered in 1533, with the result that the commerce fell entirely into their hands and those of the Dutch. On the west of Archangel is Russian Lapland. Then, ascending the Dwina from the coast, we arrive at the territories of Moscow, long the centre of the empire. A century ago Moscow was without the ordinary amenities of civilisation, though it could display an Oriental profusion on state occasions.

West of Moscow is Smolensk, recovered from the Poles by Peter's father Alexis. Between Petersburg and Smolensk is Novgorod; south of Smolensk is Kiev or Little Russia; and Red Russia, or the Ukraine, watered by the Dnieper, the Borysthenes of the Greeks--the country of the Cossacks. Between the Dnieper and the Don northwards is Belgorod; then Nischgorod, then Astrakan, the march of Asia and Europe with Kazan, recovered from the Tartar empire of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane by Ivan Vasilovitch. Siberia is peopled by Samoeides and Ostiaks, and its southern regions by hordes of Tartars--like the Turks and Mongols, descendants of the ancient Scythians. At the limit of Siberia is Kamschatka.