I send you with which to adom your youth.
—Pyrmont, June 5, 1716
I received your letter with the present, and I think you have a prophetic spirit that you sent only one bottle, for I am not allowed to drink more than one glass a day, so that this store is quite enough for me. You write that you don't admit my being old. In that way you try to cover up your first present [the spectacles] so that people should not guess. But it is easy to discover that young people don't look through spectacles. I shall see you soon. The water is acting well, but it has become very tiresome here.
—Altona, November 23, 1716
Petrushka has cut his fourth tooth; God grant he cut all so well, and that we may see him grow up, thus rewarding us for our former grief over his brothers.
Two years later, Catherine writes to Peter about this same son.
—July 24, 1718
I and the children, thank God, are in good health. Although on my way back to Petersburg, Petrushka was a little weak with his last teeth, yet now with God's help he is quite well and has cut three back teeth. I beg you. little father, for protection against Petrushka, for he has no little quarrel with me about you; namely, because 394 when I tell him that Papa has gone away he does not like it, but he likes it better and becomes glad when I say that Papa is here.
—Reval, August 1, 1718
Thanks, my friend, for the figs, which came safely. I have had myself shorn here and send you my shorn locks, though I know they will not be received.
In July, 1723, only eighteen months before he died, Peter wrote again from Reval, where he had built himself a small white stucco house and Catherine an ornate pink palace.
The garden planted only two years ago has grown beyond belief, for the only big trees which you saw have in some places stretched their branches across the walk. . . . The chestnuts all have fine crowns. The house is being plastered outside, but is ready within and, in one word, we have hardly anywhere such a handsome house. I send you some strawberries which ripened before our arrival, as well as cherries. I am quite astonished that things are so early here, when it is in the same latitude as Petersburg.
It is reassuring to read these letters. Not many parts of Peter's life were as unblemished and happy as his relationship with Catherine. Through these letters, we have the satisfaction of knowing that a man whose childhood was stained with horror, whose public life was filled with struggle, and whose family life saw the appalling tragedy of the Tsarevich Alexis, did at least have some moments of felicity. In Catherine, Peter found an island amidst the storms.
29
THE HAND OF THE AUTOCRAT
In the early years of war—indeed, throughout his reign—Peter was constantly on the move. Nine years passed between the battles of Narva and Poltava; during this time, the Tsar was never more than three months in a single place. Now in Moscow, now in St. Petersburg, now in Voronezh; then on to Poland, Lithuania and Livonia, Peter traveled incessantly, everywhere inspecting, organizing, encouraging, criticizing, commanding. Even in his beloved Petersburg, he hurried back and forth between houses in different parts of the city. If he stayed under one roof for more than a week, be became restless. He ordered his carriage—he would go to see how a ship was building, how a canal was proceeding, what was being accomplished with the new harbor at Petersburg or Kronstadt. Traveling back and forth over the immense distances of his empire, the Tsar broke every precedent before the eyes of his astonished people. The time-honored image of a distant sovereign, crowned, enthroned and immobile in the white-walled Kremlin, bore no resemblance to this black-eyed, beardless giant dressed in a green German coat, black three-cornered hat and high, mud spattered boots, stepping down from his carriage into the muddy streets of a Russian town, demanding beer for his thirst, a bed for the night and fresh horses for the morning.
Overland travel in this time was a trial for the spirit and a torment for the body. Russian roads were little more than rutted tracks across meadows or through forests. Rivers were crossed by dilapidated bridges, crude ferries or shallow fords. The human beings one encountered were impoverished, frightened and sometimes hostile. In winter, wolves prowled nearby. Because of mud and potholes, carriages moved slowly and often broke down; over some stretches, five miles was all that could be covered in a day. Inns were rare and travelers looked for beds in private houses. Horses—even when the driver carried an official order that they must be provided—were difficult to find, and usually could be used over a distance of no more than ten miles, after which they had to be unharnessed and returned to their owner while the traveler and his driver searched for fresh animals. Under such conditions, a journey was often interrupted by long, unexpected delays. When St. Petersburg was rising, Peter ordered a new road, 500 miles long, between the new city and the old capital of Moscow. The trip between the two cities took four to five weeks. Later in his reign, the Tsar demanded a straighter road, along the line of the present railroad, which would have shortened the distance by 100 miles. Eighty miles of this new highway had been completed with the project was abandoned. The lakes, swamps and forests in the area of Novgorod made an impenetrable barrier.
In fairness, the condition of Russian roads was not unique in the early eighteenth century. In 1703, it took fourteen hours to travel from London to Windsor, a distance of twenty-five miles. Daniel Defoe, writing in 1724, declared of his country's highways, 'It is a prostitution of the language to call them turnpikes.' One was 'vile, a narrow causeway cut into ruts'; others were 'execrably broke into holes . . . sufficient to dislocate one's bones.' Although stagecoaches were being introduced into Western
Europe and larger cities had famous and comfortable travelers' inns like the Golden Bull in Vienna, land journeys still were difficult. To cross the Alps'from Vienna to Venice during the winter, passengers had to descend from their carriages and go part of the way on foot across the snow.
The difference between Russia and Western Europe lay less in the frightful, pocked surface of the roads than in the wildness and vastness of the surrounding country. Early in April 1718, Friedrich Weber, the Hanoverian minister to Russia, set out from Moscow to St. Petersburg: 'We had over twenty open rivers to pass, where there were neither bridges nor ferries,' he wrote. 'We were obliged to make floats for ourselves as well as we were able, the country people who were not accustomed to see travelers that way, being fled, upon our coming, with their children and horses into the woods. In all my lifetime I never had a more troublesome journey, and even some of our company who had traveled over a great part of the world protested that they never underwent the like fatigues before.'
Because of the difficulty of traveling by road, Russians looked forward eagerly to the alternatives of travel by water or across the snow. The great rivers of Russia were always primary avenues of internal trade. Boats and barges carried grain, timber and flax on the broad waters of the Volga, the Don, the Dnieper, the Dvina and, later, the Neva. Travelers to and from Europe often elected to journey by sea. Before the Baltic was opened to them, Russian ambassadors sailed for Western Europe from Archangel, preferring the icebergs and storms of the Arctic Ocean to the discomforts of overland travel.
But in Peter's Russia, the most popular means of travel was by sled in winter. First, the frost froze the autumn mud and hardened the roads; then the falling snow covered everything with a smooth, slippery surface over which a horse could pull a sled at twice the speed of a carriage in summer. Rivers and lakes, frozen hard as steel, made easy highways between the towns and villages. 'Travel by sled is certainly the most commodious and swiftest traveling in the world either for passengers or for goods,' wrote John Perry. 'The sleds, being light and conveniently made, and with little labor to the horses, slide smooth and easy over the snow and ice.' It cost only one quarter as much to move goods on runners as on wheels. Therefore, through the autumn Russian merchants piled up their goods, awaiting the coming of winter to transport them to market. Once the blanket of snow had fallen, the sleds were loaded and every day several thousands arrived in Moscow, both horses and drivers wreathed in steaming breath, the mingle with the city's crowds.
Out in the country, the main roads were marked by high posts painted red and long avenues of trees planted on both sides of the road. 'These posts and trees are useful,' observed a Dutch traveler, 'because in winter it would be difficult to find the way without them, all being covered with snow.' Every twelve or fifteen miles, an inn had been built, at Peter's command, to provide shelter for travelers.
Noblemen and important persons traveled in closed sleds which were in fact small carriages painted red, green and gold, mounted on runners rather than wheels, and drawn by two, four or six horses. If the journey was
