A Window Open To Europe

Peter the Great hated Moscow. It was to him the embodiment of that old

Russia which he was seeking to reform out of existence. Had he been able

to work his own will in all things, he would never have set foot within

its walls; but circumstances are stronger than men, even though the

latter be Russian czars. In one respect Peter set himself against

circumstance, and built Russia a capital in a locality seemingly lacking

in all natural adaptation for a city.



In the early days of the eighteenth century his armies captured a small

Swedish fort on Lake Ladoga near the river Neva. The locality pleased

him, and he determined to build on the Neva a city which should serve

Russia as a naval station and commercial port in the north. Why he

selected this spot it is not easy to say. Better localities for his

purpose might have been easily chosen. There was old Novgorod, a centre

of commerce during many centuries of the past, which it would have been

a noble tribute to ancient Russian history to revive. There was Riga, a

city better situated for the Baltic commerce. But Peter would have none

of these; he wanted a city of his own, one that should carry his name

down through the ages, that should rival the Alexandria of Alexander the

Great, and he chose for it a most inauspicious and inhospitable site.



The Neva, a short but deep and wide stream, which carries to the sea

the waters of the great lakes Ladoga, Onega, and Ilmen, breaks up near

its mouth and makes its way into the Gulf of Finland through numerous

channels, between which lie a series of islands. These then bore Finnish

names equivalent to Island of Hares, Island of Buffaloes, and the like.

Overgrown with thickets, their surfaces marshy, liable to annual

overflow, inhabited only by a few Finnish fishermen, who fled from their

huts to the mainland when the waters rose, they were far from promising;

yet these islands took Peter's fancy as a suitable site for a commercial

port, and with his usual impetuosity he plunged into the business of

making a city to order.






In truth, he fell in love with the spot, though what he saw in it to

admire is not so clear. In summer mud ruled there supreme: the very name

Neva is Finnish for "mud." During four months of the year ice took the

place of mud, and the islands and stream were fettered fast. The country

surrounding was largely a desert, its barren plains alternating with

forests whose only inhabitants were wolves. Years after the city was

built, wolves prowled into its streets and devoured two sentries in

front of one of the government buildings. Moscow lay four hundred miles

away, and the country between was bleak and almost uninhabited. Even

to-day the traveller on leaving St. Petersburg finds himself in a

desert. The great plain over which he passes spreads away in every

direction, not a steeple, not a tree, not a man or beast, visible upon

its bare expanse. There is no pasturage nor farming land. Fruits and

vegetables can scarcely be grown; corn must be brought from a distance.

Rye is an article of garden culture in St. Petersburg, cabbages and

turnips are its only vegetables, and a beehive there is a curiosity.



Yet, as has been said, Peter was attracted to the place, which in one of

his letters he called his "paradise." It may have reminded him of

Holland, the scene of his nautical education. The locality had a certain

sacredness in Russian tradition, being looked upon as the most ancient

Russian ground. By the mouth of the Neva had passed Rurik and his

fellows in their journeys across the Varangian sea,--their own sea.

The czar was willing to restore to Sweden all his conquests in Livonia

and Esthonia, but the Neva he would not yield. From boyhood he had

dreamed of giving Russia a navy and opening it up to the world's

commerce, and here was a ready opening to the waters of the Baltic and

the distant Atlantic.



St. Petersburg owed its origin to a whim; but it was the whim of a man

whose will swayed the movements of millions. He was not even willing to

begin his work on the high ground of the mainland, but chose the Island

of Hares, the nearest of the islands to the gulf. It was a seaport, not

a capital, that he at first had in view. Legend tells us that he

snatched a halberd from one of his soldiers, cut with it two strips of

turf, and laid them crosswise, saying, "Here there shall be a town."

Then, dropping the halberd, he seized a spade and began the first

embankment. As he dug, an eagle appeared and hovered above his head.

Shot by one of the men, it fluttered to his feet. Picking up the wounded

bird, he set out in a boat to explore the waters around. To this event

is given the date of May 16, 1703.



The city began in a fortress, for the building of which carpenters and

masons were brought from distant towns. The soldiers served as laborers.

In this labor tools were notable chiefly for their absence. Wheelbarrows

were unknown; they are still but little used in Russia. Spades and

baskets were equally lacking, and the czar's impatience could not wait

for them to be procured. The men scraped up the earth with their hands

or with sticks and carried it in the skirts of their caftans to the

ramparts. The czar sent orders to Moscow that two thousand of the

thieves and outlaws destined for Siberia should be despatched the next

summer to the Neva.



The fort was at first built of wood, which was replaced by stone some

years afterwards. Logs served for all other structures, for no stone was

to be had. Afterwards every boat coming to the town was required to

bring a certain number of stones, and, to attract masons to the new

city, the building of stone houses in Moscow or elsewhere was forbidden.

As for the fortress, which was erected at no small cost in life and

money, it soon became useless, and to-day it only protects the mint and

cathedral of St. Petersburg.



The new city, named Petersburg from its founder, has long been known as

St. Petersburg. While the fort was in process of erection a church was

also built, dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul. The site of this wooden

edifice is now occupied by the cathedral, begun in 1714, ten years

later. As regarded a home for himself, Peter was easily satisfied. A hut

of logs--his palace he called it--was built near the fortress,

fifty-five feet long by twenty-five wide, and containing but three

rooms. At a later date, to preserve this his first place of residence in

his new city, he enclosed it within another building. Thus it still

remains, a place of pilgrimage for devout Russians. It contains many

relics of the great czar. His bedroom is now a chapel.



Such a city, in such a situation, should have taken years to build.

Peter wished to have it done in months, and he pushed the labor with

little regard for its cost in life and treasure. Men were brought from

all sections of Russia and put to work. Disease broke out among them,

engendered by the dampness of the soil; but the work went on. Floods

came and covered the island, drowning some of the sick in their beds;

but there was no alleviation. History tells us that Swedish prisoners

were employed, and that they died by thousands. Death, in Peter's eyes,

was only an unpleasant incident, and new workmen were brought in

multitudes, many of them to perish in their turn. It has been said that

the building of the city cost two hundred thousand lives. This is, no

doubt, an exaggeration, but it indicates a frightful mortality. But the

feverish impatience of the czar told in results, and by 1714 the city

possessed over thirty-four thousand buildings, with inhabitants in

proportion.



The floods came and played their part in the work of death. In that of

1706, Peter measured water twenty-one inches deep on the floor of his

hut. He thought it "extremely amusing" as men, women, and children were

swept past his windows on floating wreckage down the stream. What the

people themselves thought of it history does not say.






As yet Peter had no design of making St. Petersburg the capital of his

empire. That conception seems not to have come to him until after the

crushing defeat of the Swedish monarch Charles XII. at the battle of

Pultowa. And indeed it was not until 1817 that it was made the capital.

It was the fifth Russian capital, its predecessors in that honor having

been Novgorod, Kief, Vladimir, and Moscow.



To add a commercial quarter to the new city, Peter chose the island of

Vasily Ostrof,--the Finnish "Island of Buffaloes,"--where a town was

laid out in the Dutch fashion, with canals for streets. This island is

still the business centre of the city, though the canals have long since

disappeared. The streets of St. Petersburg for many years continued

unpaved, notwithstanding the marshy character of the soil, and in the

early days boats replaced carriages for travel and traffic.



The work of building the new capital was not confined to the czar. The

nobles were obliged to build palaces in it,--very much to their chagrin.

They hated St. Petersburg as cordially as Peter hated Moscow. They

already had large and elegant mansions in the latter city, and had

little relish for building new ones in this desert capital, four hundred

miles to the north. But the word of the czar was law, and none dared say

him nay. Every proprietor whose estate held five hundred serfs was

ordered to build a stone house of two stories in the new city. Those of

greater wealth had to build more pretentious edifices. Peter's own taste

in architecture was not good. He loved low and small rooms. None of his

palaces were fine buildings. In building the Winter Palace, whose

stories were made high enough to conform to others on the street, he had

double ceilings put in his special rooms, so as to reduce their height.



The city under way, the question of its defence became prominent. The

Swedes, the mortal enemies of the czar, looked with little favor on this

new project, and their prowling vessels in the gulf seemed to threaten

it with attack. Peter made vigorous efforts to prepare for defence.

Ship-building went on briskly on the Svir River, between Lakes Ladoga

and Onega, and the vessels were got down as quickly as possible into the

Neva. Peter himself explored and measured the depth of water in the Gulf

of Finland. Here, some twenty miles from the city, lay the island of

Cronslot, seven miles long, and in the narrowest part of the gulf. The

northern channel past this island proved too shallow to be a source of

danger. The southern channel was navigable, and this the czar determined

to fortify.



A fort was begun in the water near the island's shores, stone being sunk

for its foundation. Work on it was pressed with the greatest energy, for

fear of an attack by the Swedish fleet, and it was completed before the

winter's end. With the idea of making this his commercial port, Peter

had many stone warehouses built on the island, most of which soon fell

into decay for want of use. But to-day Cronstadt, as the new town and

fortress were called, is the greatest naval station and one of the most

flourishing commercial cities in Russia, while its fortifications

protect the capital from dangers of assault.



In those early days, however, St. Petersburg was designed to be the

centre of commerce, and Peter took what means he could to entice

merchant vessels to his new city. The first to appear--coming almost by

accident--was of Dutch build. It arrived in November, 1703, and Peter

himself served as pilot to bring it up to the town. Great was the

astonishment of the skipper, on being afterwards presented to the czar,

to recognize in him his late pilot. And Peter's delight was equally

great on learning that the ship had been freighted by Cornelis Calf, one

of his old Zaandam friends. The skipper was feasted to his heart's

content and presented with five hundred ducats, while each sailor

received thirty thalers, and the ship was renamed the St. Petersburg.

Two other ships appeared the same year, one Dutch and one English, and

their skippers and crews received the same reward. These pioneer vessels

were exempted forever from all tolls and dues at that port.



St. Petersburg, as it exists to-day, bears very little resemblance to

the city of Peter's plan. To his successors are due the splendid granite

quays, which aid in keeping out the overflowing stream, the rows of

palaces, the noble churches and public buildings, the statues, columns,

and other triumphs of architecture which abundantly adorn the great

modern capital. The marshy island soil has been lifted by two centuries

of accretions, while the main city has crept up from its old location to

the mainland, where the fashionable quarters and the government offices

now stand.



St. Petersburg is still exposed to yearly peril by overflow. The violent

autumnal storms, driving the waters of the gulf into the channel of the

stream, back up terrible floods. The spring-time rise in the lakes which

feed the Neva threatens similar disaster. In 1721 Peter himself narrowly

escaped drowning in the Nevski Prospect, now the finest street in

Europe.



Of the floods that have desolated the city, the greatest was that of

November, 1824. Driven into the river's mouth by a furious southwest

storm, the waters of the gulf were heaped up to the first stories of the

houses even in the highest streets. Horses and carriages were swept

away; bridges were torn loose and floated off; numbers of houses were

moved from their foundations; a full regiment of carbineers, who had

taken refuge on the roof of their barracks, perished in the furious

torrent. At Cronstadt the waters rose so high that a hundred-gun ship

was left stranded in the market-place. The czar, who had just returned

from a long journey to the east, found himself made captive in his own

palace. Standing on the balcony which looks up the Neva, surrounded by

his weeping family, he saw with deep dismay wrecks of every kind,

bridges and merchandise, horses and cattle, and houses peopled with

helpless inmates, swept before his eyes by the raging flood. Boats were

overturned and emptied their crews into the stream. Some who escaped

death by drowning died from the bitter cold as they floated downward on

vessels or rafts. It seemed almost as if the whole city would be carried

bodily into the gulf.



The official reports of this disaster state that forty-five hundred of

the people perished,--probably not half the true figure. Of the houses

that remained, many were ruined, and thousands of poor wretches wandered

homeless through the drenched streets. Such was one example of the

inheritance left by Peter the Great to the dwellers in his favorite

city, his "window to Europe," as it has been called.