Peter I (Pyotr Alekseyevich Romanov, in Russian), better known as the name of Peter the Great (Piotr Veliki, in Russian) was born on June 9 (May 30), 1672 in Moscow and died on February 8 (January 28), 1725 in Saint Petersburg. Son of Alexis I (1629-1676) and Natalia Narychkina (1651-1694), he was Tsar of Russia from 1682 and became the first emperor of the Russian Empire from 1721 until his death in 1725.
He profoundly reformed his country and pursued an expansionist policy that transformed Russia into a European power.
Youth
On his death in 1676, Alexis I left four surviving children:Fédor, who succeeded him, Ivan, and Sophie Alexeïevna, from his first wife, Maria Miloslavskaïa, and Pierre, son of his second wife, Natalia Narychkina.
Ivan was 16 and Pierre 10 when Fedor died in 1682. The two brothers were then proclaimed tsars. This is the only case in Russian history where two tsars ruled jointly.
After the Moscow Revolt of 1682, Ivan V's sister, Sophia Alexeievna, dismisses Natalia from the regency, which she assures herself from 1682 to 1689. She signs with the Union of Poland-Lithuania the peace treaty eternal of 1686, by which Russia enlarges its territories and integrates a coalition including Austria, Poland and Venice, which carries out battle against the Turks. She also ordered expeditions against the Crimean Khanate, and signed with Qing China the Treaty of Nertchinsk (1689), which deprived Russia of access to the Sea of Japan, but allowed it to establish commercial relations with the Middle Empire.
During this time, she confines young Pierre and his mother to the village of Preobrazhenskoye, near Moscow. Pierre was then left in the care of a tutor named Zotov. Not all historians agree on the quality of Nikita Zotov's tutoring, Robert K. Massie1 for example, praises his efforts, but Lindsey Hughes criticizes the teaching he gave to the future tsar.
In the summer of 1689, the young Pierre decided to take advantage of the weakening of the regent, following the failure of the Crimean campaigns, to seize power. Warned, the regent Sophie conspires with the streltsy to remove Pierre, but he takes refuge in the monastery of the Trinity-Saint-Serge, about 90 km from Moscow, where he gathers his allies. The general of the Russian imperial army Patrick Gordon becomes on this occasion his faithful ally. In this same year 1689, Pierre forces the regent to retire to a convent. The two brothers then shared power until Ivan's death in 1696.
In 1689, Pierre immediately handed over power to his mother, preferring to live an eventful youth with Alexandre Menchikov and other companions of debauchery, including the Genevan François Lefort, the Scot Patrick Gordon, as well as the Russians Nikita Zotov, Fédor Romodanovski ( en), Gabriel Golovkin, Fedor Golovin and Peter Tolstoy. In addition to the Calvinist Lefort and the Catholic Gordon, the young Pierre also met, in the Nemetskaya sloboda (“foreign quarter”), the Strasbourg resident Timmermann, the Dutch Winnius, Brandt, etc., who introduced him to European culture, the educated in military art and navigation, and would become its future generals and engineers. Europe interests him, not for its spiritual or artistic civilization, but as the homeland of good technicians which Russia lacks.
Curious about all the novelties, Pierre found in the house of his grandfather, Nikita Romanov, an English canoe of a particular structure which was at the origin of his passion for navigation. His passion was born on the little lake Plechtcheyevo; but he also went north, to Arkhangelsk in 1693-1694, the only seaport at the time, overlooking the White Sea4. He then realizes the need for Russia to open other maritime routes that are easier to access, while the Baltic Sea is controlled by the Empire of Sweden and the Black Sea by the Ottoman Empire and the Khanate. of Crimea.
Seizure of power (1694) and first campaign against the Tatars (1689-1696)
Lefort, taking advantage of his taste for military games, formed with fifty of his young companions a company which was the nucleus of the famous Preobrajensky regiment; another group was the nucleus of the Semyonovsky regiment. When he definitively regained power in 1694, they became his most devoted collaborators and Lefort was his favorite, then Menchikov on the death of the Swiss in 1699.
Having become sole sovereign, the young giant (he was two meters tall) was to carry out the reforms that would transform Russia and make it a great European power, a window open to the West to tear his country from the weight of what he called “Asian barbarism”.
In the spring of 1695, Peter sent an army against the Crimean Tatars to divert the attention of the Turks and headed for the fortress of Azov which, located on the Don 16 km from the Sea of Azov, offers indirect access to the black Sea. However, he fails to take the city. He then decided to build a fleet, setting up a shipyard in Voronezh, located on a tributary of the Don, and associated the whole country with this national work:it was the official creation of the Imperial Navy of Russia. The city was taken the following year, in June, and Peter I founded the first Russian naval base in Taganrog in September 1698. This was commanded from 1698 to 1702 by Admiral Fedor Golovin and Vice-Admiral Cornelius Cruys ( en) became its first governor in 1711.
By the Treaty of Constantinople (1700), which put an end to the Russo-Turkish War of 1686-1700, the Russians were recognized by the Sublime Porte as possessing Azov and the base of Taganrog, and also obtained the right to retain and have a permanent minister in the Ottoman Empire. This campaign marked the first successful military offensive by the Russian army on foreign soil for several centuries, and established Russia as an important country in European diplomacy. However, control of the Sea of Azov alone did not provide him with a sufficient route for trade, while peace with Sultan Mustafa II allowed Peter to turn to the Baltic Sea.
The “Great Embassy” (March 1697-September 1698)
On December 16, 1696, Pierre announced to the Duma of the boyars (ru) the creation of a "Grand Embassy", made up of the three diplomats François Lefort, Fédor Golovine (who became his Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1700 to 1706) and Prokofi Voznitsine (ru) and courtiers, as well as his intention to join it, making him the first Tsar to leave the Empire since Grand Duke Iziaslav of kyiv at the end of the 11th century. He aimed firstly to forge alliances with various European states in order to wage a war against the Ottoman Empire, which is why he excluded the France of Louis XIV from his trip, which had turned to the Sublime Porte to take his enemies from behind. The trip is then an opportunity to approach Western culture, to learn different manual trades and to recruit foreign specialists, especially for the navy. Each visit was an opportunity for various projects.
He thus left, incognito, under the name of Pierre Mikhaïlov, in March 1697, in Prussia, and mainly studied artillery there, while his diplomats tried to forge an alliance with Frederick III of Brandenburg, future king of Prussia. Then he went to the Habsburg Empire, to the Spanish Netherlands, where he worked as a simple laborer in the shipyards of the Dutch East India Company near Zaandam, and studied shipbuilding in Amsterdam. In England, he deepened his theoretical knowledge of shipbuilding in Deptford (London) and visited the University of Oxford as well as the house of Isaac Newton. He then went to Vienna, having a disappointing interview with Leopold I of the Holy Empire.
Indeed, all eyes are on the succession of the throne of Spain, which opposes the Bourbons to the Habsburgs. The considerable stake eclipsed the interest of a war against the Ottoman Empire, and exploded in the War of the Spanish Succession from 1701.
Return to Russia
The “Grand Embassy” was cut short when Peter heard the news of the revolt of the streltsy (Russian Imperial Guards), who intended to put the ex-regent Sophie back on the throne. Peter, who was heading for Venice, returned hastily to Moscow on September 5, 1698, in order to crush the revolt definitively. This was finally repressed in his absence, in a bloody way (torture and public executions), in particular by General Patrick Gordon, of Scottish origin.
In addition, Peter I had his wife, Eudoxia Lopoukhine, locked up in the monastery of Suzdal, accusing her of having plotted against him with the streltsy, and divorced her. He then entrusts his son, Alexis Petrovich, to his aunt Nathalie Alexeïevna. It was not long before he met, in 1703, Marthe Skavaiskra, a former Catholic peasant of Lithuanian origin, servant and mistress of his friend Alexander Menchikov. He married her in 1712, she converted to Orthodoxy and took the name of Catherine. Already the mother of a child of Peter, Anna, she gave the emperor six other children; besides Anna, only the future Elizabeth I of Russia survived.
The year before, in 1711, he married his son Alexis to Charlotte of Brunswick-Lüneburg, sister-in-law of Emperor Charles VI, thus getting closer to the Habsburgs, who had united the Austrian and Spanish possessions (before Charles VI was only forced to abandon his claims to Spain by the Treaty of Rastadt of 1714). Appointed governor of Moscow by his father in 1708, Alexis however lost interest in his function, and took the side, with his mother, of the opponents of the reforms of Peter the Great.
The Great Northern War (1700-1721)
Russia, allied with Denmark and Poland, went to war against the Sweden of the young Charles XII in 1700. The Swedes having seized Russian territories on the shores of the Baltic Sea fifty years earlier, Peter wanted to wash away what was for an affront to him. Moreover, the occupied region was an obstacle for the tsar who dreamed of making Russia a naval power. Since Sweden had a large army and was led by a young and strong-willed king, Charles XII, the war was longer and harder than Peter expected.
The Russian army, unprepared for war, had to face a large professionalized Swedish army, commanded by their king Charles, who proved to be a brilliant strategist (he was an important opponent of Peter).
The first attempt to seize the Baltic coast ended with the Battle of Narva in 1700, in which 8,000 Swedes defeated 38,000 Russians. Charles then attacked Peter and his ally, King Augustus II of Poland. For the next eight years, the Swedes ravaged Poland and Saxony and forced Augustus to abandon his Polish throne. Finally in 1708, Charles invaded Russia in order to take Moscow and dethrone Peter.
Map of the bay of Saint Petersburg, founded in 1703, with the island of Kotlin, fortified by Peter the Large.
At the same time, Pierre began a new campaign in the Baltic countries against a reduced number of Swedish soldiers. He then conquered the lands of present-day Estonia and the mouth of the Neva River, where he founded the city of Saint Petersburg in 1703, as well as the Peter and Paul fortress located there, designed by the Swiss architect Domenico Trezzini (see below). He took the opportunity to fortify the island of Kotline in the Gulf of Finland, 20 km from St. Petersburg (the fortress will be renamed Kronstadt). Thinking that he could beat Pierre at any moment, Charles ignored these campaigns.
After meeting him in Russia in 1708, Charles defeated Peter at Golovchin on July 3, 1708, but suffered his first defeat at the Battle of Lesnaya on September 28, 1708, when Peter crushed the left wing of the advancing Swedish army. went to join Charles' main army at Riga. Because of this defeat, Charles was forced to abandon his march on Moscow. Unable to advance further east, Charles invaded Ukraine, then called Little Russia.
Pierre used the scorched earth technique which resulted in the impossibility for the Swedish army to refuel. The Swedish army suffered considerably from the particularly cold winter of 1708-09, but resumed the Ukrainian campaign in the summer of 1709, hoping to force Peter to abdicate.
When Charles resumed the campaign, he found Peter much more belligerent, and the two armies fought at Poltava on June 27, 1709. Peter's years of labor to improve the Russian army were rewarded when he inflicted a crushing defeat on the Swedes, causing nearly 10,000 deaths and capturing most of the remaining soldiers in the enemy army. Helped by Austrian and French diplomats, Charles then fled to the Ottoman Empire, neutral until then, and asked Sultan Ahmet III for help for a new campaign. Convinced by the Emperor of Sweden, he declared war on Saint Petersburg on November 20, 1710, triggering the Russo-Turkish War of 1710-1711.
Peter I's Prut Campaign in Moldavia (1710-1711). Pierre obtains the defection of the hospodar of Moldavia Dimitrie Cantemir, which does not prevent him from being defeated by Sultan Ahmet III.
Led by Boris Sheremetiev (en), the Russian troops, joined by the Moldavian troops of Dimitrie Cantemir, who had defected to the sultan, were defeated at Stanilesti in July 1711. The Treaty of Prout (July 23, 1711) ratified the victory of Constantinople:Russia concedes to him the ports of Azov and Taganrog which it had seized in 1697. In exchange, Peter I obtained from Ahmet III that he abstain from interference in the conflict between Russia and the king of Sweden. In 1714, the sultan expelled Charles XII of Sweden from his empire.
To the north, Peter's armies conquered the Swedish province of Livonia (the northern half of present-day Latvia and southern Estonia) and again attacked the Swedes in their province of Finland. Charles still refused to sign a peace treaty and it was his death in 1718 that brought an end to hostilities. His sister, Ulrique-Éléonore succeeded him and in 1721, the Treaty of Nystad put an end to the "Great Northern War" and the coasts of the Baltic Sea which go to the Finnish border and which then belonged to Sweden were ceded to Russia.
Emperor of all the Russias
On November 2, 1721, the Senate of Russia granted Peter the title of "Emperor of all the Russias", which replaced the traditional title of tsar which had been granted to him until then, thus manifesting the fascination of Peter the Great for the Western Europe. He was quickly recognized as such by the kings of Poland, Prussia and Sweden. In 1724 he crowned his second wife Catherine with the title of Empress.
The modernization of Russia
The first reforms
Peter began to reform Russia early in his reign, pushing the country towards modernity. Strongly influenced by his Western advisers, he reorganized the Russian army along European lines and dreamed of making Russia an important sea power. He faced opposition from many Russian politicians and brutally suppressed all rebellions against his rule, including the major Astrakhan revolt of 1705 (the Bulavin Rebellion, named after the eponymous Don Cossack) and the of the Bashkirs in 1707
The opposition of his son Alexis and his trial (1716-1718)
In 1716, Peter the Great summoned Alexis Petrovich, his son from his first marriage, to choose between the sincere adoption of the new ideas or the renunciation of the throne. But the latter took advantage of his father's stay in Denmark to flee to his brother-in-law Charles VI in Naples. Czar's emissaries, including Peter Tolstoy (who had been ambassador to Constantinople) convinced him to return to Russia, where he was immediately locked up in the Peter and Paul Fortress.
Pierre forced him to denounce his accomplices in his flight, and made Alexis's mistress, Euphrossine, speak, the latter implicating in a plot of treason the whole clan of the Lopoukhine, including Eudoxie (Pierre's first wife), the Bishop of kyiv, Captain Glébov (former lover of Eudoxia), fifty nuns and hundreds of boyars. All are suspected of having wanted to overthrow Pierre in favor of Alexis. This one would then have canceled all the reforms and made Saint-Petersburg a desert.
A commission of inquiry, chaired by Menshikov, was set up; Pierre wanted in fact to establish Alexis' guilt in order to disinherit him without appeal. The prisoner was whipped daily in an effort to make him confess, which he eventually did.
On June 28, 1718, the trial of Alexis began. On July 7, the latter was found "guilty of a crime against state security" and sentenced to be whipped "until death ensues". In reality, he had just died as a result of his tortures.
In an attempt to hide the facts, a diplomatic document will state that Alexis died "after having confessed his faults and obtained the pardon of his father".
As for Peter Tolstoy, his help earned him the appointment of head of the Secret Chancellery, comparable to the Black Cabinet in France, but with formidable police powers. Close to Menshikov, Tolstoy fell into disgrace on the death of Catherine I (1727).
Specific reforms
To change the old Russian customs, Peter applied drastic measures. On September 5, 1698, he imposed a special tax on the richest Russians. These, except the priests, had to pay one hundred rubles a year, while the rest of the population had to pay only one kopek per head. This tax, along with many others, enabled the modernization of Russia. During the reign of Peter, serfdom was also reinstated. As early as 1699, he also issued an ukase allowing Russians to travel abroad.
On January 24, 1722, he created the Table of Ranks to reduce the power of the boyars. The rank of nobility was then no longer simply hereditary, but determined by the official function of the person, thus possibly allowing loyal commoners to be ennobled by being appointed to higher positions. the Table remained in force until the fall of Tsarism in 1917.
One of the most significant examples of Peter's reforms to abolish ancient customs was the establishment in 1704 of a special tax on the wearing of beards7, considering that this was a retrograde sign compared to other Europeans. . Until that time, men were very attached to this aspect of their personality.
It was the scissors brought back in his suitcases from his trip to Holland that gave Pierre the idea of the ukase. Only recalcitrants wishing to "maintain a resemblance to the Creator" had to pay an annual tax proportional to their social rank, ranging from one hundred rubles for nobles to 1/2 kopek for peasants.
Faced with the unpopularity of the measure, Pierre published a corrigendum, exempting the religious from the ukase, and therefore from the tax.
A good part of Russian society gradually accepted this constraint, while the hostility of the common people remained manifest. Peter I then reacted by publishing a few more dissuasive additional ukases, while the wearing of the traditional long garment with wide sleeves (the kaftan) was also prohibited in favor of the costume worn at the time in the West.
Attempts at legal reform
Peter the Great, aware of Russia's delays in the legal field, tried in 1700 to modernize the 1649 code by incorporating the ukases promulgated since then. To do this, he assembled a first commission, which was unsuccessful. A second commission convened in 1714 also failed to draft a sufficiently clear body of laws. In 1720, Peter the Great convened a third commission whose goal was to write a general code of Russian laws on the Swedish, then Danish model. It was again a failure.
Economic and technical reforms
In 1704, he undertook a major monetary reform by creating a ruble based on silver metal, equivalent to the thaler, international currency of exchange.
Influenced by commercialism [ref. necessary], he also tried to encourage industry and commerce, despite a small proportion of merchants, as well as education and science (including the inventions of Isaac Newton which he had learned in Eastern Europe West) - he sent young people abroad to improve their knowledge. His reign also saw the adoption of the counting of the years of the Julian calendar, the simplification of the Cyrillic alphabet, the introduction of Arabic numerals and the publication of the first newspaper in the Russian language.
Religious Reforms
The Russian Orthodox Church was strongly opposed to Peter's reforms. She considered them harmful to the survival of old Russian traditions and dangerous to her power (Peter even ordered the casting of bronze church bells to make cannons). After the death of Patriarch Adrian in 1700, Peter did not name a successor, and in January 1721 he established the Holy Synod to govern the Church, which was otherwise the final stage of his reforms.
St. Petersburg Foundation
One of the major works of the reign of Peter the Great was the construction of a new city on the shores of the Baltic Sea, at the bottom of the Gulf of Finland, in 1703. The city, which he named Saint Petersburg, was to be resolutely turned towards the West and modernity. It immediately became the capital of the Russian Empire in 1712 and remained so until the October Revolution of 1917.
As early as 1703, Peter ordered the construction of fortifications at the mouth of the Neva, intended to shelter the army during the Great Northern War against Sweden. He built the fortress of Schüsselburg (the key city) and fortified the island of Kotlin.
Then the idea of building a city on the surrounding marshes came to him in 1706, no doubt because the location of Saint Petersburg made it a seaport most often free of ice and well connected by the Neva to the river network of the Russia. The construction of the city was a challenge and engulfed a large part of Russia's resources in the autocratic tradition of the tsars, without sparing the blood of its people:30,000 serfs in 1706, then 40,000 in 1707, were conscripted by force to build the city.
Saint Petersburg was built on stilts, as the Dutch did. The shortage of masons was such that the construction of stone buildings remained prohibited until 1714 throughout Russia, as long as work on the foundations of the city was in progress. In total, it is said, 150,000 workers perished in the swamps for the construction of Saint Petersburg.
The foundation of Saint Petersburg was accompanied by profound sociological changes desired by the emperor and concretized by laws. The Russians of Saint Petersburg now dress “à la française”, shave their beards. They circulate in the new city in sailing boats under penalty of fine. These changes aim to westernize the Russian population of Saint Petersburg in order to motivate Western merchants to come and trade in Russia, and also to familiarize Russians with navigation, to train "seafarers" essential to the development of the navy. Russia and the growth of trade.
Petersburg today is the second largest city in Russia by population.
Love life
For many historians, Peter the Great was bisexual. He would thus have taken as a lover a Swiss adventurer, François Lefort, and continued his relationship with him even though he was married to Eudoxie Lopoukhine and had a child with her.
Anecdotes
When Peter I stayed in the Principality of Liège, at Spa, in 1714, to "take the waters", he bought a multitude of objects from local crafts (Jolités de Spa), and planned to open a Russian Spa in Olonets (the most famous spring in Spa, incidentally bears the name of “Pouhon Pierre-le-Grand”. A bust of the Tsar, donated by Prince Anatole Demidoff, was placed there in 1856).
During his three-month triumphal visit to France in 1717, Peter the Great met the "first tragic actor in Paris", Michel Baron, and gave him his sword in recognition of his talent. Curious (equipped with a notebook to write down everything he considers interesting), he immersed himself in culture, science and technology to benefit his country and Europeanize it. He takes his revenge by meeting Louis XV since just before ascending the throne, he had been warmly welcomed by all the courts of Europe, except that of Louis XIV who despised Russia, considering it a country of backwards.
Descent
In 1689, Peter I married Eudoxie Lopoukhine, daughter of Grand Officer of the Crown Illarion Abramovich Loupoukhine. From this union were born 3 children:
Alexis Petrovich (1690-1718), who married Charlotte of Brunswick-Lüneburg in 1711, whose posterity,
Alexander Petrovich (1691-1692),
Pavel Petrovich (1693).
In 1712 Peter I remarried Martha Skavronska, daughter of a Lithuanian peasant, who was rebaptized according to Orthodox rites as Catherine Alexeievna. Eleven children are from this union:
Piotr Petrovich (1704-1705),
Pavel Petrovich (1705-1707),
Ekaterina Petrovna (1706-1708),
Anna Petrovna (1708-1728), who married Karl-Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp in 1724, including one son:
Karl-Pieter-Ulrich (1728-1762), future emperor of Russia under the name of Peter III.
Elizabeth Petrovna (1709-1761), future Empress of Russia under the name of Elizabeth I,
Natalia Petrovna (1713-1715),
Margarita Petrovna (1714-1715),
Piotr Petrovich (1715-1719),
Pavel Petrovich (1717),
Natalia Petrovna (1718-1725),
Pyotr Petrovich (1719-1723).
Succession
Starting from the left, the tomb of Elizabeth I of Russia and that of Catherine I of Russia. On the bronze plaque, we can read Catherine I. On the right, the tomb of Peter the Great, a bust of the monarch marks the resting place of the first ruler of the Romanov dynasty to be buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg. On the tombstone, we can distinguish the decorations worn by the monarch.
In 1722, the descendants of Peter the Great had only three daughters left, two of whom were born out of wedlock, one granddaughter and one grandson. The emperor who had his son Alexis killed promulgates a law according to which the reigning sovereign had to designate his successor himself, contrary to Russian tradition which wanted the legal succession to be the eldest son. He succeeded in marrying Anna Petrovna, his daughter born out of wedlock to his second wife and then aged 16 and a half, to Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, who had failed to take over from his uncle Charles XII of Sweden on his death. in 1718, and had by then left Sweden, becoming commander of the troops of the Guard in Saint Petersburg. The marriage contract stipulated that Anna and Charles-Frédéric had to give up any claim to the Russian throne, and Pierre obtained following this clause [ref. necessary] the right to appoint his successor. From this marriage was born the future Peter III of Russia in 1728; Anna died soon after, at the age of 20. However, struck by a new attack of uremia, the Tsar died in January 1725 without having designated an heir. The Guard proclaimed Empress Martha Skavronskaya, whom the Emperor had had crowned Empress the previous year and who ascended the throne as Catherine I of Russia. She died two years later leaving the throne to the son of the late Tsarevich and the late Charlotte of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Peter II of Russia.
Too young to govern, he first left the reins of power to the Dolgoroukov family - which opposed the policy of Peter the Great and Catherine I - before seizing power and pursuing the Pierre's work, notably being advised by Menshikov, who had been appointed head of government by Catherine I. When Peter II died, his cousin Anna Feodorovna, daughter of Tsar Ivan V of Russia, brother of Peter the Great, seized power.
Awards
Order of the Elephant:Denmark085.png
Order of the White Eagle:Band to Order White Eagle.png
Works
Diary of Peter the Great from the year 1698 until the conclusion of the Peace of Neustadt, Berlin, 1773 (online at Google books)
In culture
At the cinema
Pierre le Grand réalisé par Vladimir Petrov de 1937 à 1939 avec Nicolas Simonov dans le rôle titre.
La Jeunesse de Pierre le Grand, titre du 1er épisode, réalisé par Sergueï Guerassimov en 1980 avec Dimitri Zolotoukhine dans le rôle titre.
Au début des affaires glorieuses, titre du 2e épisode, réalisé par Sergueï Guerassimov en 1980.
En littérature
Alexis Nikolaïevitch Tolstoï, Pierre Ier
Henri Troyat, Pierre le Grand (ISBN 2081208385)
Jean des Cars, La Saga des Romanov (ISBN 2259207979)
Vladimir Fédorovski, Le Roman des Tsars