Empire: World History - 74. Peter the Great: The First Emperor

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

A giant of Russian history, and a giant of a man. Peter the Great, standing at 6'8, established Russia as the world power that it is today and is famously one of Vladimir Putin's inspirations. He expanded Russia's borders, modernised the state, and built St Petersburg from a swamp. Yet with all this, he still found time for drunken debauchery of the most absurd level; he enjoyed dwarf-throwing, wheelbarrow racing, and creating the position of Archdeacon Fuck-Off for his ministers. Listen as William and Anita are once again joined by Simon Sebag Montefiore to discuss the quite unbelievable life of Peter the Great, the first emperor of Russia. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durempel. I'm so glad you're all still there. You know, we had just such a hefty dose of gouging and a burning and a... Bear Skins was a new one.

And rib action. Rib action was a new one on me. I mean, we are with a kindred spirit here, it seems. Our Mughals are looking very, very underwhelming compared to Seabagg's tartars. Well, we should not just say Seabag, because for those of you who don't know, our very special guests has joined us again for this podcast,

Simon Seabag, Montefiorea, author of the world, a family history of humanity, along with other fabulous books on writing, Russia, which we have used... Particularly the Romanovs. The Romanovs, yeah, absolutely. So, look, we had just left you at the last episode with Michael, the reluctant Zahel and his mother, sort of being jostled to take over.

We are now going to leap forward to the grandson of Michael, Peter the Great. So when we left Michael, Michael's mother, I mean, we may not have mentioned this, was winging at the time saying, why am I taking over this? There's not even any silver in this place. It's like there's nothing left. The cupboard is bare, like a grumpy mother hubbard, you know. Yeah, well, there was no bedding. There were no roofs on the palaces.

So anyway, so they took over. And the key point, as far as empire is concerned, before we get to all the extraordinary stuff about Peter the Great, is that the Romanos came to power saying that they would restore the empire, restore royalty, and throw out all the invaders who were the Tartas, the Swedes, and the polls, and they did this. And so the new, the Romanov dynasty was founded on the idea that the Tsar is a military commander in chief. And that is important because come to our own period, that's why Russian leaders Stalin, Peter the Great, Putin see themselves as incomplete unless they are real commanders in chief.

And that real precedent is created by none other than Peter the Great. So is it true? I mean, you, I think have said this in one of your books that Putin idolizes people. to the Great, and he's read your book, Potemkin. That's one of his... He's read my book, from the Great and Potemkin. Did you get a fan mail? Did he send a little sort of email or what happened? He sent the Minister of Culture. Oh. Yeah. And the Minister of Culture...

With a head or? No head. The Minister of Culture's offer was that, you know, as a reward, would I like to, would I like to research Stalin? Would I like to have access to Stalin's archives? Which they were just opening in 1999, which I did. And I wrote Stalin Accord of the Reds. But the point is that he does worship Peter the Great. He worships Peter the Great and he worships Prince Potemkin and that era, this 18th century. Even worships according to Lavrov, his foreign minister, Ivan the Terrible, I'll start from the last episode.

Yeah, Sergei Lavrov says that, you know, his real advisors in the invasion of Ukraine where Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, all of whom we're discussing in this podcast. Yeah, we are. So let's dive straight into Peter. a huge figure and a huge man. But let's go back to sort of baby Peter. Where does he appear on the scene? Who is he?

You said earlier that the ones with the troubled childhoods end up with the most troubled adulthoods, and this seems to be very much the case here. Yeah, he's born the child of an old czar who marries for the second time, Alexi. He's born in 1672 by a second wife, and there's an older family of children by Maria Miloslav Skiah,

is Zara Lexi's first wife. When he's 10 years old, he succeeds to the throne, jumping a lot of intrigues here. And there's then a Streltzzi rebellion, the Strzzi remember, where the musketeers founded in, I think 1555 by Ivan the Terrible. But now they're totally out of date, entrenched elite, and kingmakers, and they think they can do what the hell they like. They raid the Kremlin, and they throw off Peter's godfather and his uncles, and they throw them off the, balcony of the Kremlin Palace and they onto their pikes and they then chop them up and go around carrying bits of them round the Kremlin saying look here comes Prime Minister Matt Vejaf and they're actually only only holding an arm and the 10 year old Peter is watching all of this and so he grows up

with gross grave insecurity is he holding this you know with a sort of pike against his head yes yes he's watching it with a pike against his head and his mum they're terrified. The Strzzi, who are large ruffians in fur hats, scarlet coats, carrying pikes and guns, are running riot, chopping people up in front of them. People he knows and knows well. A dwarf betrays his uncle, one of his Nishkin uncles, who's torn out and thrown out and thrown onto the pikes in front of Little Peter, he's impaled and then chopped up.

They basically create a sort of charnel house butcher's shop in Red Square. and all of this is seen by little Peter. He's 10 years old. He grows up hating the Stralzzi and wanting absolute power. And he also grows up, I mean, the physical manifestation of this, I don't know whether I'm just being too mumsy about it. But, you know, he has, he ticks, doesn't he? He has jerks and twitches and ticks.

Which nowadays, you know, we call, we can call as sort of part of a manifestation of PTSD. You know, you can see these things happening. He has PTSD. You would say that. Yeah. He says himself, I've never known such terror as I knew from the Stralcy. I wake up in the night, having nightmares about it. And it is now almost certainly that A, he gets his ticks,

and B, he suffers from epilepsy, which of course is a state secret that the Tsar has epilepsy. And so, you know, he's an extraordinary figure. He grows up to be a giant. He's six foot seven. As a younger man, he has a rather small head and a large body. But what you don't see from the portraits is these ticks and twitches. So he grows up to be strong and terrifying and incredibly able. And, you know, one of the most able statesmen in world history.

And he's intelligent. He doesn't like books. He's not bookish. He's not really concerned with poetry or reading Latin or history. But he loves doing things with his hands. He's, you know, one of those mechanical-minded, taking cannons apart or understanding how they work. Yes, he's fascinated by technology. He's fascinated by guns.

His first, when he's a boy, he goes to where his mother's in exile in Praibra-Brasinska. And he creates his own play regiments, which start off. with a whole lot of stable boys and grooms. And one of them is later becomes Prince Munchikov, his best friend. And him and Munchikov are very close. He calls him, my darling heart. And he creates these play regiments. And these play regiments become the guards,

become the imperial guards of Russia until 1917. And they are the Praetorian Guard that keeps the Romanov family in power. And as he grows up, he's obsessed with ships and guns. You tell a nice story in your book about him being given a sextant for the first time and no one in Russia can use it, but he's obsessed with it. That's right. And so he starts to spend, he's given it by a Dutchman and he begins to spend his time at the German colony, the German town, which is where all the foreign experts. And there he becomes best friends with two older men. One is France Lefort, who's a Swiss mercenary. And one is called Patrick Gordon, who's a Scotsman. The cock of the east. The cock of the east, who's an enormous. a womanizer, a drunk, a drinker, both of these men, the Swiss and the Scotsman, are extraordinarily able, up to date with the best military technology,

and they become devoted to young Peter. One of the loves that you haven't mentioned, which is a huge part of his life, is booze. I mean, the lad can drink. I mean, in the course of this story, he loses two prime ministers to alcohol poisoning. and he starts up now with his Swiss and German friends, something called the Jolly Company, which is his gang. And it's a sort of clubhouse situation in Lefort's house, in general the Fort's house.

And they start drinking incredibly heavily. And he literally often passes out. As he becomes into power, we might as well do this now. He expands this into a sort of semi-religious, sort of sacrilegious satire, a living pastiche, which I guess the thing it most resembles is Led Zeppelin on tour in the 70s

I'm not sure they'll thank you for it I think they're the greatest as Robert Platt Yeah Who's the Jimmy Page in this analogy? Well there is a Jimmy Page They are always amazing characters Menchikov, there's Lefort

There's heavy drinking Excuse the modern sensibilities But there are dwarfs jumping out of cakes There are naked women There are pigs drawing drawing carriages. Everyone is dressed as religious as popes or patriarchs or priests

and they all have hilarious names like big prick, go prick, fuck me now, all of this sort of thing. I don't know what I might have to censor all of this. You're allowed to do this. It's a podcast. It's okay.

We do this. And it's quite funny because they're all called things like using the word hui, the Russian word, which is also what Putin's now known as is Putin Huelo, Putin the dickhead. So this word again is kind of

It's not heard that. No, not right. It's relevant now. They parade around with fallacies and sausages and there are giants, there are dors, there are girls. Naked girls are constantly jumping out of cakes. Actually, I mean, literally, naked girls are going to cake.

That's not a figure of speech. And they drink so heavily that they often have fights. One person is actually killed by being, one person pulls somebody else's hair and they stab them with a fork. There's a lovely thing. You say that he frequently punches his hedgeman, occasionally knocking them out, through over-exuberance or fury. Yeah, yeah.

He often, I mean, he often suddenly remembers that somebody's been corrupt. And the fight in all Russian rulers is to control corruption. And the basic rule is the same as now, which is like, I give you what I like. And I can take it away from you whenever you like. And there's also this faux humility that goes on. I mean, we'll come back to the fact that when he first comes to power, he's kind of a joint czar. It's a co-chief executive position, which he soon sorts out. But when he's having, I'm obsessed with your drunken synod, you write about it so, so well.

And, you know, as well as sort of pointing his finger across the table going, you're a traitor. And everyone must dread going to drink with Peter. You must absolutely hate it because you just don't know what's going to happen. You had to have an iron constitution. As I said, two prime ministers actually died. He said, he said, I've lost two, I've lost two field marshals from this disease, he says about. This disease. And he calls it this deadly disease.

And it's called the all mad, all jesting, all drunken synod. Right. And it travels around with him. Do they dress up as popes and payche-ups and everything? And you say they literally throw dwarfs around. Again, they throw dwarfs around. And they also have fights, the people die during it of alcohol poisoning. But in a way, it's the Russian government at play.

And the Russian government is wherever Peter is. And one of the interesting things is you've got to have an unconstitution to survive the court of Peter the Great. but also interesting is that he's got an amazing eye for people. He's what, you know, like all great rulers, he's brilliant at spotting people. He's spotting able people. He has all the talents of the great ruler. He has vision. He has acumen.

And he has the resources to do this stuff, to do what he wants. At the moment, I mean, we're talking about him as if he's on his own. But he's in this kind of weird situation where he's sharing power. Yes, the result of that terrible, sort of that terrible, sort of that terrible stralpsy rebellion was that he was, he succeeded the throne with his elder brother who was a simple-minded or incapable of ruling. And he's actually ruled by his elder half-sister, Sophia, who's one of the most extraordinary women in Russia, the first woman to rule, who at 25 becomes the rule of Russia. But in the end, the great sovereign lady is what they call. Great sovereign lady. But five years later, Peter's old enough to take power.

He seizes his power from everybody. Assisted by a man, you call the windbag. Who is he? Well, Hovansky is a, is the Cossack sort of Lee, is a Cossack command. cavalry commander, who he soon gets rid of. And basically, Peter becomes absolute ruler in 1689. And then he sets about trying to reform Russia. And he's basically obsessed with the military. Okay. Before we get to the military, though, because what a man who has everything in a drunken synod,

what else does he need? He needs a wife, of course, because he sounds like perfect marriage material. Yes. He's going to be queuing up. Yes. Yeah, that's a good point, Anita. So at the same time, his mother marries him to Udoxia Lopukina, who is an ordinary, very kind of shy, traditional Russian wife. Russian women were traditionally locked up in the Teram, which is not dissimilar to Hary.

Yeah, it sounds even sounds like it. And does it have a Mongol origin? You were saying in the last episode about how... It may well have an Islamic origin. But Peter changes all that. He's already got a mistress, Anna Moms, who is a German. girl in the German district. And he's really liked, he actually likes kind of liberated women, unusually.

And so this wife, they're never really interested him, but he does have a son with Alexi. Well, wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're skipping my favorite part of all of this ancient Russian history. The Bride Show. Now, look, we've got experience of Silla Black. There is the American equivalent, which is, you know, the Bachelor. where you have this bevy of women who are present.

That is how his wife is chosen. Talk us through it. It's the most fabulous stories, Evac. It's the generation game, but with princesses on the conveyor belt. I mean, this is the last great bride show, really. And what happens is traditionally, and this may be, no one's quite sure if this is a Mongol or a Byzantine tradition. But basically an order is sent out to all towns that they are to send their prettiest women.

This is all very, very unpolitically correct, obviously. I'm hating you every minute, but do go on. They all come to Moscow. They are inspected by doctors. Then they meet the husband, the young bachelor's czar and only prince, and he chooses more of them. They have to undergo more tests. And ultimately, he gives a handkerchief to the one he chooses. But this being the Russian court, that,

it's not over yet because different factions obviously support. It's not like all these things, like whether it's X Factor or, you know, or any of these singing contests, it's actually kind of fixed because obviously different factions have their candidates. And so it looks like an equal competition, course it isn't.

And so it's kind of set up. It's kind of fixed. And so each person, the mother, the brother, the ruling faction, that they know, their brothers, their parents, all of them have their favourite candidates who they try and fix. I've just remembered there's actually a very similar thing in the Mughal Empire,

which is the bazaar, as it's called. And all these women are lined up and they try and sell the emperor radishes and things. Yes, that's right. But it's like, you know, because that's to find sort of mistresses. That's where they pick up mistresses, isn't it, William. It's not actually where they pick up their chief wife. Yes, you're right. The wives are from princely Rajput families.

Yeah. And there is a history in the bride show also. As you say, you know, people have their own faction, so it's a little bit fixed. But there is a history of sort of poisoning off some of the hopeful women or candidates. With Zah Michael, who we met last time as the founder of the Romanov dynasty, for his marriage, he doored the girl he chose in his bride show, but his courtiers poisoned her, gave her a laxative and a pneumatic, which meant that when she was walking around with him looking gorgeous,

she was suddenly sick and suffered appalling diarrhea, which meant that suggested that she wasn't healthy enough to be. bear the child. So she was sent back to her family and terrible humiliation. And he never got over losing her because he loved her. And then the guy who fed her the diuretic gets caught because she's life and well living in Siberia without any ever being sick ever again after this. Yes. Wasn't he, was he working for Michael's mother? Was it? Yes. Yes. God, the mother-in-law. There you are. Yeah. The mother-in-law. Literally the poisonous mother-in-law, literally. So that's the bride show, which is a big part of the Romanov story.

So Peter now has, he's got his mistress, he's got his German lady on the side, and he's got a wife. So now what is his ambition? What is going on in his head? What does he want? He wants to expand Muscovy. He has a vision for it. He hates the priests. He hates the patriarchs. He hates the boyars. He hates the Strelsy. He wants to update Russia. And one of the big, interesting things is that, you know, we're always presented with Peter the Great, as if he's this kind of wonderful sort of liberal. reformer. And we always think that about Russian rulers and people thought about about Putin. But in fact, he just wants Western technology to make Russia a great military power. Because the first thing he does is march down to the Sea of Azov by Crimea and take the port of Azov. He takes the Ottoman fortress of Azov. He founds Tagunrog and it's the first time

Russia has reached the Crimea basically and has a presence down there. And this is a crucial moment. It's a crucial moment. It gives them a port and everything. He doesn't keep it, by the way, but we'll come to that later. But for a while, he has it. And the point is that he realizes he needs, the first time he tries to take it fails. And he hasn't got artillery.

So he knows he needs Western artillery, Western ships, Western everything. So what he basically does is in 1697, he calls himself Pico McCoyakov as a pseudonym. He already is known as Bombard. dear Peter, which just means very junior, which is a very, it's like being called private Peter. And Anita, you mentioned this earlier. He likes to dress up in normal uniforms and to be in semi-incognito because monarchs had so much flummery they had to put up with a ceremony. So he went everywhere pretending to be Peter McCargoff while somebody else was head of the embassy. He was now leading to the West. He was just a junior member of the hundreds of people that

They set off in 6097, they set off with 250 people in the entourage. And they go around Europe and they visit Amsterdam, they visit Holland where the best ships are, and they visit London, and they visit all the major capitals of Europe. And what he's really looking for is to learn to make ships, and he does this himself. There's a lovely description in your book of him staying at John Evelyn's Immaculate House in Deptford, which he subsequently wrecks with his raucous behaviour. He's never seen a wheelbarrow before. Yeah, it's called Seas Court, and it's, I was at the Immaculate House.

He rents it in Deptford. He heads John Levin's house. And he and then his friends, and it gives you an idea of what they were like, what they all jesting, all drunk and all mad synod were like, because they wiped their bottoms on the curtains. Oh, God. They used paintings for Target practice. And they had, as William said, they had William said, they had Williams.

Bilbarrow races through the hedges. But he also came to Kensington Palace and met William III, which is just around the corner from where I'm sitting right now. And the most important thing is in Holland and also in England, he learned about shipbuilding. And the other thing that was fascinated him was dead bodies. He treated human bodies rather like technology. And he was very interested in dismantling them. There are warning signs. There are red flags coming up. He attended the He attended the Dissection of Bodies

He made Afterwards he queued up and made all He wanted to bite the dead body And he made all his entourage Including Peter Tolstoy and others Bite the body And he also got a Bight as it

Why? He was interested in dead flesh He was interested in dismantling human bodies And one of the things he did was He also bought a collection of nides, Scalples and pliers Thinking himself a surgeon and if you were a member of Peter the Great's entourage,

you never again said you had a bad sore toe or a bad teeth or toothache because he would instantly insist on either on cutting off the toe himself or with teeth on ripping the teeth out personally. So you never mention that again. I'm desperate to know because these are things that normally, when you have a guy who's in power and has ultimate power, they kind of delete the record. How do we know about the biting and stuff?

Because, I mean, you're brilliant at finding sources that other people haven't looked at. Oh, well, because this was openly, I mean, records of his trip, you know, there are records of Evelyn's estate, for example, exactly what he did. John Evelyn actually writes by this himself, doesn't it? He writes about it because he claims the money back from William III because he says he doesn't pay up. He needs to redecorate his house. Yeah.

So we have a full list of every damage that's done by the old jesting. His philosophy in life is very interesting. He often says, fast because wasted time is like death. It can never be reversed. So he goes back, he heads back to Moscow. But on the way, he learns that the Strzzi, the dreaded Strelsy, who threw all his family off the balcony when he was 10 years old, have rebelled again. And his friend, the cock of the east, General Gordon, defeats them. But when he arrives, he's already ordered torture chambers to be assembled, to be built in with small cubicles.

hundreds of cubicles and he arrests all the straltsy and he embarks on torturing them all to death. Often personally, you say, when he gets back. And there are records of him sort of smashing people's teeth out with a hammer saying like confess beast. And when they are all executed, he hangs out many of the bodies outside his half-sister Sophia's convent room where she's now confined. As you do. As he do. And he also is fascinated what happens when you cut someone's head off. And one of the things he wants to do is chop the head off and see how long they stay sitting up and twitching. And he's fascinated with that. But now he's destroyed all opposition. And he now is ready to embark on his great work, which is

to expand the empire. He's tried to the south. We talked about at the sea of Azav and the fortress of Azav. And now he follows in the footsteps of Ivan the Terrible. And he looks to all. And he looks towards Livonia and the Baltic Sea, and he attacks the Swedish Empire. And the Swedish Empire is the greatest empire militarily in Europe, along with the France, led by Charles the 12th. Now led by a very young king of Sweden, Charles of 12, who's a sort of very strange, balding, ascetic, very kind of intense, an obsessional young man who turns out to be... Yeah, that's weird, he's balding and ascetic, he's got all the sensibilities and the look of an old, wizened creature, but he's 18. He's just a kid.

But he can do amazing things. He's hardened himself for war by doing things like teaching himself to run up and jump on a horse, you know, without a saddle. He can pick up a glove by galloping parts off the ground, this kind of thing. And he's a military genius. And this becomes a great sort of contest, these two extraordinary young men. He's two young men. He's two great men. So what he does is, what Peter does is, in 1700, he launches this war in alliance with Augustus the Strong,

the demented and lascivious king of Poland and elector of Saxony, who's known as Augustus Strong because he has 400 children, and he seduces his own daughter, and is the fox-throwing champion of Europe, which I'm unsure we'll offend. I think that has to be a moment to take a break because we're at that point, but we will be back in a bit. You're breaking at Fox.

No, I think that's fine. Let's get over that. Go get a cup of tea. We'll be back. after this short break. Welcome back. We have the wonderful Simon Seabag Montefuri taking us through

one of the great episodes of Russian history and the beginning of the Russian Empire. And we left him about to tell us with this contest against his great rival, Charles of Sweden, the European champion

of the fox throwing, you were saying. No, no, that's Augustus the Strong. Sorry, Augustus the Strong. Well, Gus is so strong, it's very different. Charles of 12 has no vices, except he's not interested in women. He's only interested in war, and he's an ascetic. He's the only virtuous person in the whole of this podcast.

Peter the Great lines up with the fox thrower. He's their allies. He lines up with the foxfroar, and the idea is that they are going to, they are going to dismantle the Swedish Empire, which controls the whole way around the Baltic Sea, if you can imagine that, includes Finland, Norway, all the Baltic countries, bits of what is now Poland, and St Petersburg are all part of the Swedish Empire, extraordinary thing, but it's a forgotten empire. So in 1700, he attacks Nava, and he fails to take Nava, Peter. It's a terrible humiliation.

Charza 12 gallops out, defeats the army. Peter flees away, gallops away. It's an extreme embarrassment. And so Peter the Great is, you know, just sort of symbolises how, you know, rulers have to learn from mistakes and re-learn. You know, relearn how to... He just, he picks himself up and learns and he starts to improve all of his guards regiments, his elite guard regiments. And he embarks on this war, the Great Northern War last 20 years, basically. And it doesn't, it ends with Peter's victories, as we know. But it's a close-run thing. and Charles are 12th, the Swedish king makes a big mistake.

Instead of immediately invading Russia, as he should have, he decides to take Poland instead. And that gives Peter the time to recover. Is that because he underestimates Peter because he's defeated? He underestimates Peter. Yeah, because Peter so far has not been an impressive person. And so he thinks, I'll take Poland. Better at wheelbarrow races than full-scale battles at this point in that.

Better at soiling John Evelyn's curtains. We won't dwell on that anymore. Thank you for bringing it back. Third mention of John Evelyn's curtains. Better at partying. Better at partying. So he builds up his army. Meanwhile, finally, Charles of 12th is ready to invade Russia.

In 1708, 1709, he invades the Tsardom of Muscovy. And during this turbulent period, is this when he falls in love as well? during all this all hell breaking loose. Well, he does two things, two amazing things now. In 1703, he's taken enough Swedish territory, which he has managed to keep, to found a new city. And the new city is a window on the west.

He builds it on Hare's Island, on the eastern Baltic, and it's called St. Petersburg. And this is not an obvious spot for a new city. It's marshy, muskitos, islands. But it does. But he's thinking of boats and harbors. and stuff when he does it.

Boats are one of his enthusiasm. Boats are his obsessions. And he's brilliant. He can build boats by hand. He's extraordinary character. And so he starts to found this new city. And he makes all his grandees by how build houses. And he begins to spend a lot of time there.

And he supervises everything. There's one memo where he writes, anyone who defecates outside the public laboratories that I have created will be, whipped with the catar-nine tails. And he goes around inspecting St. Petersburg. And anybody who's, any officials who are found doing anything wrong, he jumps off his carriage and beats them with his stick or punches. Initially, no one wants to move to this city. No one wants to move there. Diplomats don't want to go there. The merchants want to stay in Archangel. So he just closes down the hemp trade in Archangel and makes them all move. He makes everyone. He's got immense power.

But at the same time, he's approved his army. But Charles the 12 has now invades Muscovy. And it looks like it's going to be curtains. It's a kind of blitzkrieg, isn't it? It's a very, very fast advice. And it shows how Russia, the openness of Russia to invade us, which is why security is obsessional and why, you know, their rulers have so much power. Love.

What about love? What about love? I mean, listen, just let me just, just to write that all of this is happening. You know, he's, and the founding of St. Petersburg, I mean, what they estimate 100,000 could have died in this creation of this dream of his, this window to the West that he wants to create. But in the meantime, at his friend's house, he meets Martha. Now, tell us a bit about Martha Scavronsky. Martha Scavronsky. Martha Scavronskia is one of the most extraordinary women in modern European history. And she's, she's underknown. What's fascinating about her is

she's not Russian. She's not an aristocrat. She's been the mistress of many people. She's a camp, what used to be called, a camp follower. She's extremely beautiful. She's extremely beautiful. highly intelligent, but she's semi-literate. She can read, but she can't write. Sometimes she's called in some old sources a laundry made. She has been a scullery made and a laundry made. The fact that she rises, and I'm slightly spoiling the story here, to empress in her own right. You are. You're doing a Dalrympel. Look, wait. Is extraordinary. Yeah, no, but wait, no, no, no, just don't do that. Don't give it away, because it's too lovely. So, and the other thing, extraordinary thing about Martha,

which is probably what makes her very attractive to Peter, the carouser, is she can hold her liquor. Yes, I mean, she's first seen being driven naked as a prisoner of war into the Russian camp. With a blanket. With a blanket. And she immediately becomes the mistress of the field marshal. Then she becomes the mistress of Peter's best friend, Prince Menshikov.

And mistress and best friend for life. And then Peter sees her and he falls in love with her. and it is one of the great love affairs. She cradles him when he has an epileptic fit. She's the only person who trusts. That's a very touching scene because he can be quite ill. The advisors just know to bring her along and all will be well. She'll make it your whisper back.

She teases him when he has asleep with other women, which he does all the time. He does exactly what he likes. He's terribly promiscuous. She jokes with him when he has a venereal disease. She encourages him in his sailing and all of that. She does say once, I hope you're not going to bring that back home. Yeah, the VD. Don't bring back your VD. Don't bring your VD back home. And she has 12 children with him.

Only, some of them are boys, which Peter's only really interesting boys. He calls them his recruits, army recruits. But he also has these daughters who become, who become his favorites and he adores them. And she has, she's such a heavy drinker and a hard sort of, she's such an amazing character. She's in the back of the bus with Peter. She's back in the bus. She forms her own jolly company of kind of debauchery. And that she dressed as an Amazon in it. And she becomes his great confidore. And it's one of the great love of us. We have all their letters. So she now becomes his wife. She gets rid of his old wife and he marries her. Did we say that Martha changed her name to Catherine? Yes, she's converted.

She's not even orthodox. And she converts to orthodoxy. It becomes your Catherine, Catherine. That may be relevant in a little while. It may be. Just put a pin in that. Her name is now Catherine. And, you know, the letters between them, I'm really interested in their dynamic because although she knows that he's going to sleep with other people and she teases him about it,

and there's that, you know, hilarious line that you've got on your book about, you know, don't bring back your VD, have a nice time, don't bring it back with you. It is the 18th century, so this kind of thing is not unknown. Is he the same with her and lovers? I mean, does he mind if she's... No, it doesn't work both ways. Doesn't, does it?

No, what does he do to her German lover? I mean, just... There's a later occasion when she, when she, has a young admirer may have had an affair with Villemons, who's the brother of Peter's first mistress Anamons, who we mentioned earlier. And when Peter finds out about it, he goes insane. And he arrests lots of people. He apparently says to her, you know, I made you, I can unmake you like that. And he smashes a mirror in the palace. And she says that doesn't do much for the interior decoration, does it? And she, and he arrests Villamons and has him beheaded, even though they're

great friends. And it's not the only good friend of his. He also executes one of his, one of his mistresses. But that's another story. And he shows her the head of Villamons. And the head is kept in his Kunstkama, which is his cabinet of curiosities. One of the things he does is clept body parts and freaks and dwarfs and fetuses in his Kunstkama, which was quite a common thing in the 18th century, a sort of scientific cabinet of curiosity. Is all in formaldehyde? Or is it just rotting? Mulderhyde. And when he executes later, also at the same time, this is much later in his re-rein-win, when he executes his former mistress and Catherine's lady-in-waiting Mary Hamilton,

who's very beautiful. A Scott again. He finds that she has aborted babies and exposed babies that she had with her lover out of marriage, Mary Hamilton. And she's his beloved former mistress, but he says, you've got to die because this is murder. And he walks with the... This is murder. This is murder. This is murder. This is murder. He walks with the beautiful Mary Hamilton, who's very, in her early 20s, he walks with her to the gallows,

and he whispers, everyone expects him to forgive her and to, you know, to pardon her, but he doesn't. And she's executed in all her beauty. He kisses her first, and then he,

he kisses her, and then she tells her to lay her head, and she's beheaded. He then, being, this is very Peter the Great, he then picks up her head, her beautiful, people said they'd never seen a more beautiful head. He picks it up,

and he says, those of you see this may be interested in, I know a lot about anatomy, and here's the windpipe, and here's the spine, and even the Muscovite crowd, who must have been hardy fellows, grown with horror at this. And then he kisses her on her bloody lips and drops her in a basket and goes off to work. Now, wait, I just, just before we move back to it, because there is also, you know, a war with Sweden going on. We're going to come back to that in a second. But just, how do you characterize this relationship? Because it could be, you know, woman, who's with a man like this is with a complete nut job. And does she, I mean, is, is, is, is, is it

love or is it an abusive relationship or is it some weird codependency between two really bizarre people? What is this relationship? Well, I think you should say they're very special people. They're exceptional people. I mean, Peter is a political genius because he has all the three great gifts for, you know, for ruling, you know, he has the vision and knows what he wants to do. He has the acumen to get it. done and he has the resources to do it. So he's extraordinary. But the only way to do anything in Russia is to do it by force. And he's an absolute autocrat and tyrant. And even the Russian, even his courtiers were constantly grumbling that he was a dictator. And a dynamo, just physically.

And a diner. Drinking an amazing constitution. Doing two hours on his lathe and then sort of, you know, doing a massacre. You know, he would literally supervise everybody personally. And he was extraordinary. He was constantly busting people for corruption, beating people. So did she love him? She loved him. And I think he was, in his way, a lovable character for her. I don't think it's an, I don't think it's an abusive relationship.

I think she was an extraordinary person. And I say, you know, probably one of the two most extraordinary women in modern European history, I think. The other one, we'll discussing another time. Right. Okay. So while these two are now, they found each other. Yes. and all that entails. We had kind of put a pin in what was going on with the ascetic leader of Sweden,

who has whooped Peter's butt once, but now Peter has picked himself up, and then what happens next? Well, he invades what is now Ukraine. As he invades Ukraine, fascinatingly, the hetman of the Cossacks, Mazepa, legendary figure, defects from the Russian side to the Swedish side. And Mazepra is regarded often as a sort of pre-Ukraine. His state is often regarded as a sort of pre-Ukraine, an early version of Ukraine. We should say, Siebeg here, just break in, because we've had several armies crossing Ukraine already in the course of this episode. Who is living in Ukraine?

Is there any sense of a separate people who are different from the Russians? Yes, yes. There's already, I mean, the peasantry in what is now Ukraine, in northern, what is now northern Ukraine, speak a dialect that is Ukrainian and that is now we now called that Ukrainian. It's regarded as the language of the peasantry, but there are also Poles who are the landlords there, there are Jews living in those territories, and there are Cossacks. Now, Cossacks develop, they start off, the word comes from Kazakh, which is Turkic for sort of free-booter, adventurer, and they are communities of different groups who have come together in these communities,

which are militarily semi-independent still. and one of them, the Zaporosian Cossacks, exist in Zaporosia, which is where the war is taking place in Ukraine now. We've already had this idea of Ivan the terrible rolling across Ukraine. Is there any sense to the people in Moscow that they're crossing any kind of boundary when they go into Ukraine at this period in history? Not at all. Ukraine is simply their province that they call little Russia. And as far as they're concerned, in 1654, Alexi, Peter's father, has signed. an agreement with Klemnitsky, the Hetman of the Cossacks, and who called himself Prince of Rus.

And he needed Russian help. So he signed this treaty with the Muscovite. And he thought that he was kind of uniting with Muscov, but actually, according to the Russian Tsars just regarded it as a Russian province. Now, if we had on this program a modern nationalist Ukrainian historian, Would he object at this point and say, actually, there's the beginnings of sense of nationalism or not even Ukrainian historians claim that at this point? He might do. He might say that, I mean, I think he would say that these Cossack communities are sort of precursors of the Ukrainian state and that their spirit of sort of semi-democratic elected hetmans and that their community

was a precursor to the sort of more free, more westernized, more democratic tradition that we now. now see in Ukraine. Well, if we had a Russian historian now in, he would say absolute nonsense. A Russian historian would say, actually, these Cossacks were just Cossacks. They had no interest in the Ukrainian-speaking peasantry, and that they now, they were sort of semi-traterous Russian allies, and ultimately the Cossacks would become military pillars of the Romanov Russian regime. In that new wonderful Orlando Faiji's book, the story of Russia, he builds up a very interesting case about how there is a war over history in this territory. We're not. just discussing military campaigns, that there are completely different understandings of history

depending on where you're viewing from. Do you find it very difficult to write this stuff without offending one or the other? Yeah. I mean, you have to be, it is very hard to write it without offending the other, but, you know, one just, one has to lay out both sides. I mean, for example, you know, Vladimir the Great, who converted in 9-88 to Christianity, you know, is also regarded as the founder of Russia and also the regarded as the founder of Ukraine. So the same people are being fought over by historians today. So then Peter, who has now regrouped, and so does he start winning against Charles and how does he start winning against Charles? Well, in 1709, on the 27th of June, 1709, Peter commands his own army, which he spent years building up at Poltava, which is now in

Ukraine and was then part of Muscovy, and he was very much helped by the fact that Charles 12th had been wounded in the leg and was on a stretcher. But Peter actually proves himself an outstanding commander-in-chief, setting a precedent for every Russian Tsar, General Secretary and President to this day, desperate to be a pet-trying commander, and he wins the battle of Poltar. And it's not an easy victory. It's a tough battle. It's a tough battle. And the Russians are fighting, the Muscovites, as they still are, are fighting the best army in Europe. But obviously, it's short of food, it's short of provisions. It's gone too deep into Russia.

It's gone too deep into Russia like Napoleon and Hitler. And it's also, it's genius commander is wounded and no one can really function without him. And he's got a wound on his foot, hasn't he? And he's gushing blood in the middle of all this. It's gushing blood. But Peter takes control and he does so in textbook style. He commands the battle and he wins hands down. And then of course, you know, Nannita, we were talking about love earlier.

And then he writes a brilliant note to Catherine, his wife, who's now Tsarina, the Tsarina of Russia. And he says to her, I've beaten the Swedes, come and help me celebrate. Come and celebrate with me, he writes, which is very much their relationship. And he also writes, doesn't he, that we have come from darkness into light. This for him is a complete turning point in his reign. Well, this is the moment, 1709, that Russia becomes a great power. And so it's an incredibly significant point.

And it's the moment really that Russia now can use Poland becomes a satellite state of Russia. Parts of Germany become under Russian control. I mean, Russia has now arrived. The second half of that quote is sort of just tells you exactly what you need to do. No one in the world knew us, but now they might. respect us. Yes, yes. They'd been a laughing stock. I mean, they'd been regarded as savages. I feel John Evelyn's curtains coming back here. Yes. And now they, you know, now they would be regarded differently. And also, Peter's changed the way they, we haven't mentioned this, but,

you know, when he came back from Europe, he forced everyone to give up their caff tans and to shave their beards and cut their hair. And in some cases, cut the beards himself. Yes, and he cut the beard's himself. And he now, and all the Russian elite now dressed like the Duke of Marlborough would dress or, you know, in a German coat with boots and, you know, a German military dress. Can we talk about one of the darkest chapters? It's already pretty dark, so just imagine what this is going to sound like. But Alexi, what happens to his son, Peter's son? Well, Alexi has never forgiven Peter for the way he treated his mother, Eudoxia, who he put away into a convent and divorced. He's also hates the fact that Peter always wants to fight more and more

wars. And he thinks that Peter's a dictator. And Peter just is just outraged by Alexi. Everything Alexi does is wrong. Alexi supports people who are opposed to Peter politically, which is very dangerous. And he also seems to have very little ability. And Peter regularly says stuff like, you know, that boy is like a thumb with a disease. You know, at some point I'm going to have to cut off. It's just awful. And he must, Alexi must know this, which may explain why he rather sensibly pegs it to Vienna. He doesn't want to be around his psychotic father.

He's locked up his mother and his man married to Catherine, the great love affair, and is doing these things that he just doesn't want to be part of. Yes. I mean, he's terrified of his father, who wouldn't be. And his father regularly says, I have to come and join me. help me or I'm going to like, I'm going to disinherit you and I'm going to cut you off like a, like a rotten thumb, he says. So then Alexi does an unforgivable thing, which is to run off to Europe to Peter's enemies in Vienna and elsewhere. And Peter orders Peter Tolstoy.

Now this is Tolstoy as in the Tolstoy family that we know. This is the founder of the Tolstoy family who becomes one of Peter's toughest henchman and he sends him off. No novelist this one. No novelist. This is his secret piece. chief. He's head of the secret chancellery. And he sends him off to leer back the poor Alexi. And Alexi has promised anything. He does

it over time, doesn't he? He says, look, you know, you're wrong about your dad. He loves you really. Come back. You know, there are things, it will be all right. You know, he really takes time to brainwash a child or this child of Peter to think he's safe. Yes. He lies to him. He soothes him.

He promises him his father's forgiveness, but he has in fact defected to Peter's enemy. So for now on, he's just marked. And the moment he comes back to Russian... Everyone knows what's going to happen. Everyone knows what's going to happen except Alexei, and Alexei arrives and is immediately arrested, and Peter treats him as a traitor. And he literally says, this boy is a gangrenous thumb. I would cut it off like a gangreness thumb. But it isn't just a cutting off plain as like there's torture? He takes his time, doesn't he? He takes his time, and he treats Peter, not like a a son, but like a treasonable minister, and he tortures him. And there are other people connected

with this conspiracy. He launches what Stalin would call a case against him. And there are many, many people helping Alexi, because of course, they're all thinking Peter could die at any moment, this guy's going to be czar. So a lot of people have covered themselves by kind of encouraging him and protecting him. They are all arrested. They are all tortured. They are all executed. and Alexei himself is tortured to death by Menshikov, his father's best friend, and by Peter himself, and they torture him, and finally he's tortured to death in 1718. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, it's just ghastly, over a period of weeks, it seems, from this. Oh, they torture him for months. They torture him for months. And he has no compunction about this.

No, he deliberately kills him. He's the gangrenous thumb, and he's doomed. And Peter, doesn't even mourn him, but... Does he come into the torture chamber himself? Does he talk to his son? Does it himself? He does things to his son. He thrashes him, he beats him. But this is thrashing with a nout where it's not like being whipped with a cat of nine tails

or what we think of. A nout is a huge leather, a bludgeon. When you beat people with that, it goes to the bone. So, you know, you can die of being beaten with an out from your body goes into shock. Or you can get infection. So he dies, we don't know exactly what he died on. Oh, gosh. It'll be sepsis or something horrific.

But now Peter doesn't have, but now Peter has, rather like Ivan the Tower where he's killed his heir. And he doesn't have a healthy son. And he has daughters. And he has grandson, Alexi left a son, but he doesn't have an heir, an adult air. So he's undermined his own kingdom. Okay. So he's killed off progeny. But his idea of expanding his Russia continues, doesn't it?

Yes. In 1711, the Ottomans attack him and they think they've got an opportunity. And this is another one of these amazing occasions when Peter could have failed. He's actually surrounded by the Ottoman Grand Vizier and he's got to surrender and his wife gives all her jewels to bribe him. She's there. She's in the middle of the seat. She stays with him. And she, again, she shows her total metal. She keeps complete calm. They're living like soldiers in trenches and she doesn't grumble. And Peter again, she shows her total metal. She keeps complete calm. They're living like soldiers in trenches and she doesn't grumble. And Peter, gets out. He has to give up as of, which he'd conquered at great cost, we talked about earlier, but he gets out. He calls it the banquet of death. It's the banquet of death. And he constantly talks about how hard it is to rule. He says, it's hard to live. I have to keep sword and pen in hand it all the time. But he also is always thinking about the east and expanding to the east. So in 1717, he sends off a junior commander, Alexander Bekovich, Charkaski, who is of Tartar descent, he sends him off with a small army to go into Central Asia, where there are these Khanates that we mentioned, ruled by descendants of Genghis Khan. And this is a long way south.

I mean, geographically, this is a hell of a journey. It's a long way south. But Russia is beginning to show an interest in South, which we'll talk about later. But he orders him, among other things, to force the Kivan Khan to submit to Peter and to send envoys to India to establish direct. trade with the Mughal emperors, interestingly. Yeah. And so Russia is already thinking about Central Asia and India, which it never gave up the hope of getting, by the way. So is this, would you say definitive,

this is the origin of the great game? I mean, this mindset is born. This is the beginning of the great game. Except that the Brits aren't established at all in India. So it's pre, they're moving south before the Brits even begin to move in. But they're thinking about India. pretty much before the Brits had even done. And this is a time, this is the sort of soon after the,

only soon after the death of Orangzeb, when the East India, far from being masters of India, were repeatedly humiliated and defeated by the Mughal emperors and had to behave like supplicants to them. And as Peter would have done too, if he'd reached it, which he didn't. Orangam actually puts all the East India Company factors in chains

and parades them and puts them to DACA fortress, and they have to beg for forgiveness. He defeats them. He forces them to pay massive fines. And Peter doesn't have much more success in Kiva. He doesn't have much more success. His army is literally wiped out. And terrible things happen to Bekowicz, Chakaski. The Khan separates them, says, welcomes them all, says,

come to Kiva, land of opportunity. And then splits them all up into small groups, each under a different Kahn. And then massacres them at night. Maskes them all at night. And does something terrible to Chikaski. He probably beheaded, but he may have been stuffed. with straw. There are many stories of what happened to him, but he never comes back. But this is only a small, you know, this is a small matter. More importantly, in 1722 and 23, Peter, you know,

invades Persia, which is a big power at this point. So we've got now, we've got Peter who has now been the first person to beat back the Swedes and prove himself to be this great leader, who's looking east, who's looking west. I mean, he's south, he's looking, I mean, you know, this is now an emperor of all Russia. It's a title that he takes for himself. It is, you know, emperor of all Russia. So that there are no principalities. There are no other places. Is it all the Russians? What is meant by that? All the Russians. All the Russians. All the Russians. All the Russians. And what it means is, what are the Russians? Well, the Russians are little Russia, Ukraine, white Russia, Belarusia, which means white Russia. So these are sort of regarded as sub-Russian

departments, sections, provinces, if you like, governorships. And the people in both those places, Ukraine and Belarus are regarded as sort of lesser Russians. So important for when we're trying to understand Putin today. Yes, this is the beginning of the oppression of Ukraine. But you've got to remember, I mean, Lenin called the Russian Empire the prison of nations. And there were hundreds of nations in the empire. It wasn't just about Ukraine. I mean, now he's added the Livonians, who are the ports, he's added to the Russian Empire now. He's added white Russia. He's added northern Ukraine. He's open relations with all those Georgian kings and so on, but he hasn't taken it. He's tried to take Baku, and he manages to take Baku, which is Persian. But the point is he's now a master, he's now vastly increased this empire. And in 1721, he starts to negotiate, he starts to negotiate peace with Sweden, finally. And it's the piece of Nystad. And it's another decisive moment in world history, because, it's the moment. Typically, Nystad is negotiated by a German and a Scotsman, William, James Bruce.

And he now negotiates and he wins Petersburg. Petersburg is now the capital of Russia. He moves it from the old capital to Ruska. And he's still in his late 40s. I mean, I just just put that in perspective. This is a man who has done all of this and is still in his late 40s. And Petersburg is now a proper city? Is it wood? Is it stone? No, no, it's coming stone. A lot of it is wood. A lot of it is like a sort of facade. Like they're just, they're kind of like a grand palace in the middle of a marsh.

And he and his, and typically a Peter, he's brilliant with people. He drives around with the sort of police chief, mayor of, of St. Petersburg, who is a Jew, a converted Jew from Portugal. So he's, the governor of, the governor is, is, Menchikov. But his, but the mayor is a converted Jew called Devi, and he drives around with him. And every time he finds something wrong, he beats him. him. And then he says, climb back into the carriage, brother, and they drive on. Oh, God, he's so nuts. And he spends a lot of time drinking in German and Dutch pubs, smoking his

pipe. And he refuses to let anyone build a bridge. He wants everyone to go around in boats. He wants everyone to go around in boats. And he's created the first Russian Navy in the Baltic. This is the point. 1721, he now creates a new country. And the country is Russia. He takes the name from Rus, the old, you know, sort of dark ages kingdom, founded by Rurik, all the years ago in the 9th century. And he kind of hellenizes it and he calls it Russia, and he changes the name of his country from the grand principality of Moscow to Russia. And he adopts a title. He's already Tsar, which is sort of emperor, but now he adopts a new title. And the title is imperato, Latin. Russia has arrived. It's a great power. It's a huge

empire of many nations, including Ukraine, but including many others. It's already reached the Pacific, so Siberia exists. And now he declares himself, Emperor of Russia. And he lived happily ever after. Oh, no, he didn't, because actually he got a bladder infection. From his VD. How on earth does the world lose Peter the Great after he's had his heart spoiled? He's had a huge crisis where he finds his wife maybe having the affair with Milam Moynes that we've told about.

So he ends up with another great purge of executing people. people. And then he gets a uremia, a bladder infection, possibly connected to the VD that everybody at that time probably had. And at age of 52, he dies, naming a successor a surprise. Instead of naming a male heir, he and his entourage, Prince Menshikov, his self-made henchman, declare Catherine as the empress of all the Russians. And she succeeds him. in her own right, as the first empress of Russia. This is not Catherine the Great, just to make... This is Catherine the first.

This is his hard-drinking. The former laundry-maid. Former laundry-maid, former courtesan, who is a woman. She's not an aristocrat. She's not even gentry. She's not Russian. She wasn't born Orthodox. And yet, she's had an extraordinary person, by all accounts.

And she is the most successful woman in modern Europe. Well, she was one of the great sovereign ladies. of Russia. We're going to end it here. Simon, it's just, well, Seabag, I sound like your scolding mother. Seabagabag, absolutely a delight to have you. Magnificent. Yeah, join us again on Tuesday when we'll be discussing the other great Catherine, Catherine the great. Till then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnhann. And goodbye from me, William Durember.