Soon after this Azof was taken. One of the conditions of the surrender was that the treacherous artilleryman should be delivered up to the Czar. He was taken to Moscow, and there put to death with tortures too horrible to be described. They did not deny that the man had been greatly injured by his Russian commander, but they told him that what he ought to have done was to appeal to the emperor for redress, and not to seek his revenge by traitorously giving up to the enemy the trust committed to his charge.
The emperor acquired great fame throughout Europe by the success of his operations in the siege of Azof. This success also greatly increased his interest in the building of ships, especially as he now, since Azof had fallen into his hands, had a port upon an open sea.
In a word, Peter was now very eager to begin at once the building ships of war. He was determined that he would have a fleet which would enable him to go out and meet the Turks in the Black Sea. The great difficulty was to provide the necessary funds. To accomplish this purpose, Peter, who was never at all scrupulous in respect to the means which he adopted for attaining his ends, resorted at once to very decided measures. Besides the usual taxes which were laid upon the people to maintain the war, he ordained that a certain number of wealthy noblemen should each pay for one ship, which, however, as some compensation for the cost which the nobleman was put to in building it, he was at liberty to call by his own name. The same decree was made in respect to a number of towns, monasteries, companies, and public institutions. The emperor also made arrangements for having a large number of workmen sent into Russia from Holland, and from Venice, and from other maritime countries. The emperor laid his plans in this way for the construction and equipment of a fleet of about one hundred ships and vessels, consisting of frigates, store-ships, bomb-vessels, galleys, and galliasses. These were all to be built, equipped, and made in all respects ready for sea in the space of three years; and if any person or party failed to have his ship ready at that time, the amount of the tax which had been assessed to him was to be doubled.
In all these proceedings, the Czar, as might have been expected from his youth and his headstrong character, acted in a very summary, and in many respects in an arbitrary and despotic manner. His decrees requiring the nobles to contribute such large sums for the building of his fleet occasioned a great deal of dissatisfaction and complaint. And very soon he resorted to some other measures, which increased the general discontent exceedingly.
He appointed a considerable number of the younger nobility, and the sons of other persons of wealth and distinction, to travel in the western countries of Europe while the fleet was preparing, giving them special instructions in respect to the objects of interest which they should severally examine and study. The purpose of this measure was to advance the general standard of intelligence in Russia by affording to these young men the advantages of foreign travel, and enlarging their ideas in respect to the future progress of their own country in the arts and appliances of civilized life. The general idea of the emperor in this was excellent, and the effect of the measure would have been excellent too if it had been carried out in a more gentle and moderate way. But the fathers of the young men were incensed at having their sons ordered thus peremptorily out of the country, whether they liked to go or not, and however inconvenient it might be for the fathers to provide the large amounts of money which were required for such journeys. It is said that one young man was so angry at being thus sent away that he determined that his country should not derive any benefit from the measure, so far as his case was concerned, and accordingly, when he arrived at Venice, which was the place where he was sent, he shut himself up in his house, and remained there all the time, in order that he might not see or learn any thing to make use of on his return.
This seems almost incredible. Indeed, the story has more the air of a witticism, invented to express the sullen humor with which many of the young men went away, than the sober statement of a fact. Still, it is not impossible that such a thing may have actually occurred; for the veneration of the old Russian families for their own country, and the contempt with which they had been accustomed for many generations to look upon foreigners, and upon every thing connected with foreign manners and customs, were such as might lead in extreme cases, to almost any degree of fanaticism in resisting the emperor's measures. At any rate, in a short time there was quite a powerful party formed in opposition to the foreign influences which Peter was introducing into the country.
There was no one in the imperial family to whom this party could look for a leader and head except the Princess Sophia. The Czar John, Peter's feeble brother, was dead, otherwise they might have made his name their rallying cry. Sophia was still shut up in the convent to which Peter had sent her on the discovery of her conspiracy against him. She was kept very closely guarded there. Still, the leaders of the opposition contrived to open a communication with her. They took every means to increase and extend the prevailing discontent. To people of wealth and rank they represented the heavy taxes which they were obliged to pay to defray the expenses of the emperor's wild schemes, and the loss of their own proper influence and power in the government of the country, they themselves being displaced to make room for foreigners, or favorites like Menzikoff, that were raised from the lowest grades of life to posts of honor and profit which ought to be bestowed upon the ancient nobility alone. To the poor and ignorant they advanced other arguments, which were addressed chiefly to their religious prejudices. The government were subverting all the ancient usages of the country, they said, and throwing every thing into the hands of infidel or heretical foreigners. The course which the Czar was pursuing was contrary to the laws of God, they said, who had forbidden the children of Israel to have any communion with the unbelieving nations around them, in order that they might not be led away by them into idolatry. And so in Russia, they said, the extensive power of granting permission to any Russian subject to leave the country vested, according to the ancient usages of the empire, with the patriarch, the head of the Church-and Peter had violated these usages in sending away so many of the sons of the nobility without the patriarch's consent. There were many other measures, too, which Peter had adopted, or which he had then in contemplation, that were equally obnoxious to the charge of impiety. For instance, he had formed a plan-and he had even employed engineers to take preliminary steps in reference to the execution of it-for making a canal from the River Wolga to the River Don, thus presumptuously and impiously undertaking to turn the streams one way, when Providence had designed them to flow in another! Absurd as many of these representations were, they had great influence with the mass of the common people.
At length this opposition party became so extended and so strong that the leaders thought the time had arrived for them to act. They accordingly arranged the details of their plot, and prepared to put it in execution.
The scheme which they formed was this: they were to set fire to some houses in the night, not far from the royal palace, and when the emperor came out, as it is said was his custom to do, in order to assist in extinguishing the flames, they were to set upon him and assassinate him.