Now, suppose we were altogether ignorant of ‘ the details of his operations, military and diplomatic. The mere fact that the conversion of Muscovy into Russia was brought about by its transformation from a half-Asiatic inland country into the paramount maritime power of the Baltic, would it not enforce upon us the conclusion that England, the greatest maritime power of that epoch, a maritime power lying, too, at the very gates of the Baltic, where, since the middle of the 17th
century, she had maintained the attitude of supreme arbiter; that England must have had her hand in this great change, that she must have proved the main prop, or the main impediment of the plans of Peter the Great, that during the long protracted and deadly struggle between Sweden and Russia, she must have turned the balance, that if we do not find her straining every nerve in order to save the Swede, we may be sure of her having employed all the means at her disposal for furthering the Muscovite? And yet, in what is commonly called history, England does hardly appear on the plan of this grand drama, and is represented as a spectator rather than as an actor. Real history will show that the Khans of the Golden Horde were no more instrumental in realising the plans of Ivan III. and his predecessors than the rulers of England were in realising the plans of Peter I and his successors.