The Rest Is History - 563. Peter the Great: Bloodbath in the Kremlin (Part 2)

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

What abominable mischief and hedonism did the seventeen year old Peter the Great revel in during his strange and remarkable travels through Europe, before truly stepping into the role of Tsar of all the Russias? Did it serve a secret political purpose? What was the outcome of the first war he chose to wage against the Ottoman Empire? Why did he go on a crucial and possibly dangerous diplomatic mission disguised as a member of his own staff? And, when news reached him from Russia, of a mutiny that directly challenged his rule, what gruesome revenge did he wreak…? Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss in lurid technicolour, Peter the Great’s early life and rule: his flamboyant “gap year” and foreign travels, his early military conquests, his drastic reforms to Russia, and the outbreak of the Great Northern War, which would see Europe transformed forever. The Rest Is History Club: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to full series and live show tickets, ad-free listening, our exclusive newsletter, discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestishistory.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestishistory. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is the restishistory.com. The Tsar is a man of very hot temper, soon inflamed and very brutal in his passion. He raises his natural heat by drinking much brandy, which he rectified himself with great application. He is subject to convulsive motions all over his body, and his head seems to be afflicted with these. He was desirous to understand our doctrine.

He was indeed resolved to encourage learning and to polish his people by sending some of them to travel in other countries and to draw strangers to come and live among them. He seemed apprehensive still of his sister's intrigues. After I had seen him often and had conversed much with him, I could not but adore the depth of the providence of God that had raised up such a furious man to so absolute authority over so great a part of the world. So there we have Scotsman Dominic. Yeah. You could tell from my magnificent impression of a Scotsman.

Yeah. And I called Gilbert Burnett who met with Peter the great in London in 1698, but by far the most significant and interesting thing about Gilbert Burnett is that he was the bishop of Salisbury. He was. And how wonderful it is. We are doing this series about Peter the Great, who we left as master of Moscow. He'd crushed his sister Sophia's resistance. He'd secured the loyalty of the Streltsy, these frankly sinister and faintly grotesque soldiers who wear yellow boots and calf-downs and who

have a great fondness for jumping on the body parts of people that they've chopped and sliced into little bits. But here he is in England. He's twitching uncontrollably. He's drinking brandy. He's chatting about Protestant doctrine and he's doing it with a man from my neck of the woods, from Wiltshire, from Salisbury. From the Salisbury area?

Yes. I mean, it's great to have Wiltshire in the Salisbury area on the show. Dominic, I'll be honest, my worry when you suggested doing Peter the Great was that Salisbury wouldn't get a look in, but how wrong I was. The weirdest thing is not just that he's chatting about Christian doctrine with people from the Salisbury area, it's the fact that he's doing it under a false name. So he's traveled incognito. I mean, this is such a mad story. The Tsar of all the rushes has basically taken an extended gap year to travel anonymously to Western Europe and to hang around in shipyards and in taverns interfering with actresses and kind of

behaving in ludicrous ways. Wheelbarrow races. We both love a wheelbarrow race. We've only told that story 20 times on the rest of history. And now we're going to tell us again. Brilliant. So should we get back to where we left off? So the summer of 1689, Peter has deposed Sophia. He's 17 years old. He is now, we haven't actually described him physically.

He is a massive bloke. He's six foot seven. He's very kind of angular. He's a massive bloke. He's six foot seven. He's very kind of angular. He's got long brown hair and he's got a mustache. Interesting not a beard. Yeah, not a beard. Now Bishop Burnett mentioned his convulsive motions. So some people say, well, maybe he's just very restless.

He's very impatient and stuff. But other people say maybe he's got a kind of a nervous tick because don't forget when he was 10 years old, he saw his family chopped up and stamped on that would give you bad mental health, wouldn't it? I think better help or any mental health provider would have had a field day with pizza. The great to be completely honest with you. But I think it's also possible he's mildly epileptic. There are lots of descriptions of him when he's in Europe having sort of fits on the

left hand side of his face or his arm, his eyes rolling back in his head, all of this sort of stuff. And I think it's also fair to say Tom, he doesn't have the best and healthiest lifestyle. No, because actually, although he's taken supreme power, he then sort of gives it away because he says to his mother, you know, can you run Russia for me please? Because I just want to hang around with my mates, with my soldiers. And his lathes. And his lathes. And he wants to spend a lot of time.

He loves the German suburbs, so this place we talked about last time, which is full of kind of Scotsmen and Dutchmen and things. And they're all smoking pipes outside Protestant churches and talking to women, which the Orthodox Church doesn't approve of at all. Which the Orthodox Church doesn't approve of at all. And his closest friends, or some of them at least, come from the German suburb. So we talked last time, we promised we talk about General Gordon. We always liked General Gordon on the show.

This is a different General Gordon, not the bloke who died in cartoon, but still a friend of the show. Yeah. He's a Scottish mercenary who came from the Highlands. He came from Catholic family. So he basically left Scotland and then he had an amazing career actually. He fought for the Swedes against the Poles, then he fought for the Poles against the Swedes, then he fought for the Swedes against the Poles again, and then he

fought for the Poles against the Swedes again. Oh that's fine isn't it, that's legitimate. Yeah. I mean nobody really minds about that. That's how 17th century warfare works. It's basically like being a star footballer. You transfer from team to team. I think you can't fight against your own country, but you can fight for others. And that's completely legitimate. And he ended up serving the czars. And this guy, General Gordon becomes basically Peter's chief military advisor,

his tutor, I suppose. And then there's another mercenary who is called France Lafour, who's from Geneva, who basically is a massive drinker and a dancer, charming. His house, we're told, is always full of women. Peter's biographer Robert K. Massey describes as, Roller King bucks some sturdy wenches who did not take offense at barracks language or the admiring touch of rough male hands. So that kind of gives you a sense of the general vibe at these occasions.

I think it's fair to say. Yes. And just on the topic of rough male hands, Peter's hands are very calloused, aren't they? Because he's been with his lathes and all of that. Right. Because it's been like chopping stones or whatever he's doing. Yeah. And so when he goes on his gap year and he meets with all these, you know, members

of royalty and stuff, he's always showing off his calluses. He is, he's very proud of them. In an age when people would be proud of not having calloused hands, he's quite the reverse. So over time, Peter and this bloke Le Four and their pal, so actually he picks up Le Four's girlfriend who's called Anna Mons and she loves a drink and a lot of she becomes his mistress. Anyway peter and all these pals they basically they form something that they call the jolly company. I feel i don't actually think either of us would really enjoy life in the jolly company i'd have hated it i think you might enjoy it for a day. It's basically a stag do, a massive stag do. I hate stag dos. There's often about 80 of them, sometimes as many as 200. Remember, Peter is the Tsar of Russia and he's 17 years old. They will roam the land,

basically turning up at Russian nobleman's houses and saying, you know, put us up. And they'll have these enormous feasts. The feast normally starts at midday. It's actually very much like our working lunches at The Rest Is History with the production team. Yeah, it is. The feast starts at midday and it lasts till the next day. They have a pause every now and again to have a smoke

or to play bowls or to shoot muskets or let off fireworks. And isn't this kind of shenanigans with bears and bellows and things? Right, exactly. So there's a lot of beer drinking. It's very like the rest is history working lunches. There's a lot of beer drinking and toasts, but there's also pranks. We love a prank. So if there's a fat man there, they'll often strip the fat man and drag him across ice on his bear bottom. They would shove candles into you, insert candles and light them. At least one man is killed by having air blown up him with bellows. So they insert bellows into him and blow you up.

That's what I remember. The bellows jape. Would you burst? Do you think he burst? I mean, I don't know. Because if they're playing jakes on fat people, presumably if you blow a fat person up with the bellows, there's more capacity. Yeah. I mean, Dominic, I've mentioned it before, but the brilliant evocation of all this, the japs and the pranks. Yeah. And the frankly kind of murderous jollity of the jolly company is brilliantly evoked in The Great. Right. The Catherine the Great series. With Nicholas Holt, who is playing Peter the Great's grandson, but I think he's actually playing Peter the Great in this. Loads of toasts and going huzzah all the time. Yeah, this is what's happening now

There is a slight you could say there's a slight political side to this Because we talked last time about how Peter loves to kind of do this role-playing and quite subversive role-playing He loves giving people like fake titles and nicknames and stuff So the jolly company have their own sort of what's called a mock czar, a guy who he calls the Prince Caesar. Who's a friend of his called Fedor Romanovsky. And Peter calls him your majesty. When Peter writes a letter to him, he always sent signs himself.

You know, I'm your slave. I'm your bondsman and stuff. And this guy, Romanovsky has to preside over the meetings, the jolly company. He almost pretends to be the czar, but he loves a prank. So his great prank, you would love this time if you've turned up when you arrive, especially if you were kind of a newbie, you have to drink a large peppered brandy that is offered to you by a trained bear. And if you say, oh, it's not for me. I don't like.

I don't like trained bears either. While we're at it, the bear has been trained not just to offer you cups of brandy, but to strip you naked. Imagine being stripped by a bear. That's not the kind of thing that Voitech got up to. I'm glad to say. No, no. our previous bear. We don't know the name of this bear, but it sounds absolutely splendid. So as time goes on, this becomes more and more formalized and ritualized.

So by the 1690s, the Jolly Company has been organized into what Peter calls the, the all joking, all drunken synod of fools and jesters. This clearly does have a slight political edge because it's a parody of the, of the church. So they have cardinals, they have bishops, they have deacons. Peter is just a deacon. But Dominic, the fact that there are cardinals, which you don't get in the Orthodox church, but you do get in the Catholic church. I mean, he can say this is a parody of the heretical Caesarist Catholic church, can't he? Yeah, he can. I think what lies behind this.

So actually he started doing this, the all drunken synod after there was the accession of a new patriarch who was very anti-Western, very traditionalist. He was called Adrian and Peter despised Adrian. And I think he clearly wanted the all drunken synod to mock the Orthodox church, but he knew he couldn't do it directly. So the, the rituals are Catholic exactly as you say, because it would be far too subversive. Yeah. Just on Peter's attitude to the Orthodox Church, I mean, he is still a devout believer, isn't

he? Yes, he is. It's not like he is a kind of Frederick the Great or someone like that who is contemptuous of Christianity. No, he's not at all. He's very, he's still pious, but he's fascinated by other forms of Christianity as we'll see when he goes abroad, he wants to find out all about them. He's curious.

Yeah. So that's why he's talking to Gilbert Burnett. I think it's fair to say he's a very violent man. He's very impatient, but he's not intolerant of other ideas. He's interested in other ideas, I think, which makes them different from a lot of Russian Tsars, but you still wouldn't want to see him coming towards you with a pair of bellows. A pair of bellows and a bear. That's terrifying.

No. So he has a mock prince pope, who's his old tutor, who's a man called Nikita Zotov, who presides over this synod. So on feast days, on religious feast days, to mock the church, they have their biggest kind of antics and rituals. And the Pope wears gloves made of my skins. It's bonkers. So on Christmas they ride around on slays, a sleigh drawn by 12 bald men.

The mock Pope is wearing a tin hat and a costume made of playing cards, which seems bonkers and the others are all wearing their clothes inside out as you said gloves of mice skins. Oh I thought it was the paper war then so everyone's wearing it that's a lot of mice you've had to be killed. Oh yeah and their sleighs are pulled by pigs and bears. Such a lot of bears. I can't believe you could train a bear to pull it.

Well maybe you could. It's really not the same bear who's stripping people naked. Well I think if you can train a bear to strip you bare. If you don't want to, yeah. A mug of spice whiskey, whatever it was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway. So is Peter doing anything other than sort of blowing people up with bellows and things? Yes. He's doing loads of naval stuff. So he goes up to Archangel. You mentioned Archangel in the previous episode. It's on the white sea.

It's the only Russian outlet to the sea. It's, it's a little bit of a forerunner of St. Petersburg actually, because it has English and Dutch sailors who live there, it has sort of churches, Protestant churches. When you go to Archangel, there's taverns full of Dutch sea captains smoking pipes and talking about William of Orange, and he loves that and he goes up there and it's actually at this point that he designs a flag for his sort of Navy because he's very interested in Holland. He models it on the flag of the Dutch States General but he reorders the colors. So it's the white, blue and red flag of today's Russian Federation.

So it's basically Dutch. It's Dutch, exactly. So the Russian Navy's basically Dutch. It's Dutch. Exactly. So the Russian Navy is English and the flag is Dutch. Yeah. Putin keeps quiet about that, doesn't he? Yeah, he doesn't play that up as much as he could. So his first war, as he thinks, I'll have a little crack at the Ottomans because they'd still got this deal with the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and code.

They're meant to be fighting the Ottomans. So he decides he wants to capture Azov on the Black Sea. The first go at it in 1695 doesn't work, but in 1696 he goes down the River Don with loads of Cossacks and he captures Azov from the Ottomans. And this is the first Russian victory for 20 years. So it's a great moment. And he has his outlet now. It's not quite on the black sea. It's something on a sea of Azov. So he needs to go a little bit further to get into the black sea. However, it's a start.

He has a triumph in Moscow. And here again, you see his kind of Westernizing ambitions because previously when Russian czars had triumphs, they were very orthodox occasions. There's lots of sort of chanting and waving around of icons. So very second Rome. Exactly. But, um, Peter's is really very first Rome. He has statues of Hercules and of Mars.

They put Julius Caesar's I came, I saw I conquered Veney, Vidi, Viki, on a, on kind of classical gates. As always Peter, his role playing, his performative humility is on display. So he gets this bloke who was the Prince Pope who presumably is not now dressed in playing cards with kind of my skin gloves to lead the procession. And he walks with the captains of his galleys wearing an ordinary German captain's uniform. And he'd performed very bravely, hadn't he?

In the campaign against Azov as an artillery man. He had, he'd done well. He'd done very well. And then just weeks after this victory comes an unbelievable announcement from the foreign ministry. Peter is sending a great embassy to Europe, to England, to Denmark, to the Dutch States, to Brandenburg, to Venice. This embassy is going to be led by his mate, Franz LeFour, and they're

going to recruit officers and ship rights and sailors to come back to Russia and to build a fleet, and they're going to learn from the advanced nations of the West. This is an extraordinary thing for a Tsar to do, to send some of his closest mates. But then, a rumor goes around Moscow, Peter's actually going to go with them. And he's not going to go with them as the Tsar, He's going to go as a member of the diplomatic staff in disguise. So this is his business about pretending he's not the Tsar which he loves to do. Even though he's by miles the tallest member of the embassy. He's the tallest person.

So there are multiple reasons why he wants to do this because this is an extraordinary thing. No Russian Tsar has ever traveled outside Russia except when they're fighting before. It's unprecedented. Now one reason is he wants to get allies to strengthen the alliance against the Ottomans because he's very keen on this Black Sea kind of breakthrough. But the more obvious kind of personal reason is that he is just absolutely fascinated with the West with Holland and England in particular. He wants to to the dockyards he wants to study that ship building techniques. I need clearly knows i think so many Russians know that the gap between Russian the West has never been greater than in the West this is the age of newton of Leibniz of the financial and scientific revolutions of stock exchanges and newspapers and things.

And Russia is in danger of falling centuries behind. And he has seal made that has the inscription, I am a student and I'm looking for teachers. Yeah. You know, so he, he's pretty explicit about it. Why would the Dutch or the English or whoever be willing to teach a potential rival about the reasons for their lead? I mean, if you have a technological lead, why would you share it with somebody who is potentially quite a major threat?

A fairly obvious reason I would have thought is that he's Orthodox and he's not Catholic. So if you're a Protestant power, he could conceivably be an ally against Louis XIV, right? Who is the great figure of the ages, isn't he? Yeah. He doesn't go to France in this trip. He goes to the two great Protestant adversaries of France. I think they're flattered, England and the Dutch Republic, by Peter's attentions. And maybe they're hoping to, well, Gilbert Burnett, I mean, he's clearly trying to win Peter for Anglicanism. For Anglicanism, as we will see, as we will see people in England thought,

this is brilliant. We could basically get an ally in Russia. We could have an Anglican ally. Exactly. I know that sounds bonkers, but is it any more bonkers than the Tsar of Russia going in disguise on a massive gap year to the West? I don't think it is. I suppose not.

So he decides he's going to set off. His mother, by the way, is dead at this point. And actually his brother Ivan has died as well. So he leaves his mate Romanovsky, the guy who has the bear. So the Prince Caesar, the Prince Caesar, as he's called. He says, you're commanding the troops. You have basically command of law and order while I'm gone. As he leaves, he has a farewell banquet. And he hears that there's been some bitching among the Streltsy about him. They've been saying, oh, he has a farewell banquet and he hears that there's been some bitching among the Streltsy about him. They've been saying, oh, he's going off to the West, you know, he's going to betray us

all to foreigners. And he has this Streltsy colonel and two noblemen executed. He has their limbs cut off with an axe and then they're beheaded. And then he gets the coffin of Sofia's uncle. So one of the Miller Slavsky family, he gets this coffin dragged by pigs into red square pigs. There's obviously a whole kind of stables full of pigs who are trained to drag things. Right.

And the coffin is opened beneath the chopping block where these guys have been executed so that their blood will spatter the face of Sophia's dead uncle. I mean, this is by no means the most sadistic thing that Peter will do. He loves a really, really horrendous kind of sadistic jape. And there are a lot of them to come. So after he's done this, he sets off. He's traveling as Peter Mikhailov.

There's 250 people, loads of noblemen, musicians, coachmen, priests, secretaries, four dwarfs, of course, of course he's Peter Mikhailov. If you tell anybody who he is, he will kill you, but he all, he wants people to kind of recognize him and be polite to him at the same time. So he's using the incognito thing basically as a way to get out of formalities. Yeah. All the boring stuff, but he still wants to see fireworks displays in his honor and for people to present him with enormous goblets of wine.

He's a cakeist. Yeah. He's a total cakeist. He wants to have his cake and eat it. So they set off, they cross the frontier into what's then called Livonia, which is kind of Estonia, Latvia, which is part of the Swedish Empire and they arrive in Riga Peter does not like Riga at all and he hates the Swedes because the Swedes take the incognito thing very seriously And they say they don't have a banquet for him

You know their Swedes respond exactly as you would expect the Swedes to very sober very sober They so well if you're if you're not Peter the great great no fireworks The Swedes respond exactly as you would expect the Swedes to. Very sober. Very sober. They say, well, if you're not Peter the Great, great. No fireworks. By the way, you have to pay for your own board and lodging. This he's really offended by. The Swedish lack of hospitality. He's shocked at this.

But also he's fascinated by kind of fortifications and things. So he goes off to inspect the defenses of Riga. But because he's incognito, a Swedish sentry spots him and threatens to shoot him. Yeah, but also Dominic I mean even if they did This is a fortress next to a potential enemy and then the leader of that enemy is Sketching. Yeah, your fortress. Exactly. I mean the Russians they don't tend to like, you know Foreigners turning up and making sketches of their nuclear refineries or they're right

Exactly if I had a mere Putin turned up at a British submarine base in disguise, clearly, obviously Vladimir Putin, and then was offended when people challenged him. Yeah, but he hated this. He hated Riga. And 13 years later, when his army was attacking Riga, he insisted on firing the first shells into the city. I do like a man who bears a grudge. He said, I thank God for allowing me to see the beginning of our revenge on this accursed

place. I mean, you really wouldn't want him as an enemy, would you? You wouldn't want him as a friend either, frankly, if he comes at you with some bellows. He goes into a place called Courland, which is now kind of Lithuania. He goes through Königsberg, now Kaliningrad. He meets the elector of Brandenburg, who is the future Frederick the First of Prussia. They have a great time. They go hunting.

They have the fireworks display. They watch bears fighting. They stage a bear fight. Do you know, I mean, I had no idea that bear action played such a part in royal embassies and entertainment in the 18th century. When we get onto Augustus the strong, all kinds of activities with animals there. Well, foxes. So he meets Sophia of Hanover, who is the mother of George the first.

So she's going to be Queen Anne's heir to maintain the Protestant succession. Exactly. And this is a very funny scene because he'd never met aristocratic Western women before and he's shown in to see them. He's very embarrassed. He doesn't know what to say. He literally covered his face with his hands in embarrassment and he sort of muttered from behind his hands. I don't know what to say. He literally covered his face with his hands and embarrassment and he sort of muttered from behind his hands

I don't know what to say and Sophia and her daughter are very nice to him. They say oh, come on. It's fine They have some music they bring in some Hanoverian children including the future George the second and he loves George the second He hugs him and kisses him and puts him on his lap and stuff I mean George second is 14 he doesn't want to be kissed and hugged by a massive great Blake with a hairy mustache and also he dances, doesn't he? With German women and is startled to discover that they're wearing these strange contraptions called corsets because no Russian woman wears a corset.

No. So he's very taken with that. He cries out. These German women have devilish hard bones. And there's all much laughing. There's a lot of laughing and actually they are quite fond of him. They were worried that he would get very drunk and he always restrains himself in the presence of aristocratic women.

But then the people that he's traveling with, so all his mates and hangers on all the lads, Jolly Company, they get massively drunk and they make up for it. And this is definitely a theme of the trip. So eventually he gets to Holland and he is so excited about this. It's actually quite sweet. He goes on ahead of the rest of his party because he just can't wait. And his destination is a place called Zandam, which is a great kind of shipyard. And they claim in this place that the best shipyard in Holland, There are 50 different companies and they make more than 300 ships a year.

So this is like for Peter, this is Disneyland ship heaven. It is, it absolutely is. So he arrives on a Sunday and immediately he bumps into a bloke who'd once worked for him in Moscow, a blacksmith called Gerrit Kist and Peter hugs him, kisses him and stuff and kisses, come called Garrett kissed and Peter hugs him. That kisses him and stuff. And kiss says, come and stay in the house next door. I mean, kissed is just can't believe it.

It's just mind boggling to him that the czar of Russia has turned up in his town and says, I'll move in next door to you, which is what happens. And the next day is a Monday morning. Peter gets up. He's obviously got some money. He goes off and he buys a load of tools. And then he goes to a shipyard run by a man called lynched Roger. And he signs up to work in the shipyard under the name Peter Mikhailov. I mean, can you imagine Donald Trump doing

this? You know, signing up to work in a call center? No. Well, he did. He worked in McDonald's, didn't he? He did work. So yeah, for like an hour or something. But the thing is, of course, Peter is very conspicuous because he's so tall. And also he's got a very strong Russian accent. So crowds gather to watch him, you know, as he's walking to the shipyard. And this happens within days and he gets very upset.

And he's particularly upset because the youth of the town rather let Holland down, don't they? Because the boys pelt him with mud. Do you see this? Well, but you could say that that's an affirmation of their rugged Republican character. Maybe it is. So he has to hide in an inn and the town's burger master has to issue an order banning people from harassing and

I quote, distinguished persons who wish to remain unknown. That's a nicely phrased. It is. However, it doesn't really work because by the end of the week, he's only been there a week and it's absolutely ludicrous scenes because by now hundreds of people have come from Amsterdam to watch him working. When he gets up in the morning, he opens his front door and there are people sitting on the roofs of the neighboring houses kind of, you know, with picnics waiting to see him.

Everywhere he goes there are people basically mobbing him and stuff. By Sunday he's become a prisoner in his own cottage and he's very upset about this and eventually he says, right enough. I've given up on Zaandam, I'm going to go to Amsterdam. So he moves to Amsterdam with his entourage and they stay there for four months. He can work in a place that's kind of closed off, isn't it? So nobody, people can't spy him. The Dutch East India Company. Yeah.

So he would be canceled today for his associations with the Dutch East. Well, not just the beheading. I mean, I think there are other things as well. He'd be canceled. Yeah. The bellows. Yeah. So the Dutch East India Company is, is, is closed off.

The shipyard is barred to the public by these big high walls. And they say to him, look, come and work for us. We'll have a new frigate laid down specially so you can work on it. And you can observe our shipbuilding techniques from start to finish. He shares a house with the other Russians who say they'll come work at the yard with him. He arrives at work every day, like a normal shipbuilder with his tools. He says to everybody, call me Carpenter Peter.

Don't call me, you know, the Tsar or anything like that. And he works hard. It's not just kind of, you know, Mary Antoinette-ing. No, no, no, not at all. Not at all. So when he's not at the shipyard, he goes and meets one of his great heroes, William of Orange, William the third. Who by this point is also the king of England.

Also the king of England. Peter has grown up listening to stories about William of Orange fighting the French and he loves all these stories. He goes to see factories, he goes to laboratories, he goes to museums, he goes to botanical gardens. He's basically absorbing everything that he can. He particularly is very keen on anatomy. He makes all his mates go with him to watch the corpse being dissected. And one of many great lines in the Robert K Massey book, to the horror of the Dutch,

he ordered his comrades to approach the cadaver, bend down and bite off a muscle of the corpse with their teeth. Oh my God. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's all fun and games with Peter the great. And the other thing he's very keen on is the techniques that are being developed in by Dutch anatomists to preserve corpses. Yeah. He loves all that. So presumably it's not formaldehyde, but yeah, kind of whatever an 18th century equivalent of that 17th century equivalent of that. Well, as we will see, he loves a cabinet of curiosities, doesn't

he? He does. And so this is very important for later developments in St. Petersburg. Yeah. So anyway, he finally builds his frigate. The Dutch say we will give this to you as a gift. You can have it shipped to Archangel. They're going to call it the Amsterdam, which is all very nice.

However, he's a bit disappointed by his time in Holland because the Dutch, when they build a ship, they sort of do it intuitively. They don't have blueprints. They just know what they're doing. They're not big fans of the process. I think it's fair to say. So Peter is in the situation of the Romans in the first Punic War, right? Who have to learn chip building from scratch and like a kind of Ikea kit.

That's what he wants. Exactly. He says, come on, do you not have blueprints? And they and they say no we don't but that's not how we do it. They say maybe the english the english and more blueprint people so he says to william can i go and visit your other kingdom please and william says. I'd love nothing better and so on the eighth of january sixteen ninety eight peter set sail for god's own country, for England. Lucky man. And we will be back after the break to find out how he gets on in London. I'm David McClaskey, former CIA analyst turned spy novelist. And I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. And together we're the hosts of The Rest is Classified,

where we bring you brilliant stories from the world of spies. This week we're talking about one of the most significant stories of the 21st century, Edward Snowden, and how he orchestrated the biggest leak of classified secrets in modern American and British history. Snowden revealed that the American government was mass collecting data on its own citizens, and it was really the first time that Americans and so many others around the world understood the extent of the US government's mass surveillance. That's right, it's a story I covered at the time and it really gets to wider questions

about what privacy means, how technology has changed our lives, and what the government and companies can do with data we might have thought was private. And we'll take you through the whole story from Snowden's early career in the CIA and the NSA to his life in exile in Russia. So to hear more search for The Rest is Classified wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Rest is History. Peter the Great is sailing across the channel up the Thames estuary. And on the morning of the 11th of January, 1698,

he arrives in London. And Dominic, he is rowed ashore to a landing key on the Strand, joining the city of London to Westminster. And there the court chamberlain of William the third, who is also of course back in the Dutch Republic, the Prince of Orange is waiting to greet him and does so in Dutch, which Peter speaks. Yeah. It's great scene, Peter arriving in London.

London is a big city at this point, 750,000 people. It's a really interesting moment in London's history. Actually this, I think it's, if you're going to go back to London at any point in time this is as good as any because it's still a very kind of raucous disputatious city a city of kind of public flogging and cockfighting and stuff but we're at the point in history where the Bank of England has been created where party politics is starting where England is becoming a maritime kind of commercial empire. So it's interesting, it's coffee houses and newspapers. And a scientific power as well, Isaac Newton and Royal Society and all of that.

Exactly. There's Christopher Wren churches being built. There's all of this stuff. And Peter, when he arrives, he stays in a place called Norfolk Street, which doesn't exist, I think anymore, which is just off the Strand. And basically it's like a student house. He moves in with all his mates into the student house. There's a wonderful historian of Peter the Great, a biographer called Lindsay Hughes, and she describes how the Prince of Denmark heard that he was in town and went to visit

him and was horrified when he arrived at Peter's house to find Peter still in bed and four other people in the room as well. And, and I quote, they had to open all the windows to clear the terrible stench. They're very student digs. Very student digs. He goes around London. He meets the future Queen Anne at Kensington palace. William the third William of Orange introduces him.

The Thames is frozen. There's a great frost. So he can't get into shipbuilding straight away. So he goes shopping. He goes to a watchmaker to see how watches work and to get watches. He's very impressed by English coffins. That's good to know. He says, this is brilliant.

I never imagined people could make coffins like this. He has a coffin shipped specially to Moscow. He buys a swordfish, a stuffed swordfish and a stuffed crocodile. He wants to send them to Moscow as well. So that's testimony to the fact that the English are becoming a polite and commercial people, isn't it? That they have shops where you can buy a stuffed crocodile. Exactly. Our taxidermist is second to none, I think it's fair to say. He becomes friends with a bloke called the Marquis of Carmarthen

and he goes to the pub with this bloke so often that the pub is renamed the Tsar of Russia. And Carmarthen says, oh, I know who you'd like to meet. And he introduces him to an actress called Latisha cross Who becomes his mistress while he's in England and moves in with him in the student house and what language they speak Is it the language of love the language of love Tom they speak the language of love right? Anyway, he's off the strand. So he's very central and there's more trouble with crowds and so William the third's government say Look, we'll find you a house across the river. And this is where we come to a single favorite episode in all of history.

Yeah. So the essayist and kind of diarist and whatnot, John Evelyn has this house in Deptford and Charles the second had given John Evelyn a lease on this house and Evelyn had owned it for 45 years and he had set out what was regarded as arguably the greatest garden in England. His pride and joy. It had a bowling green, it had a terrace walk, it had kitchen gardens, it had a walled garden. Now when it was first mentioned to John Evelyn that Peter the Great might move in, he said

brilliant because he's actually been renting it to a man called Admiral Benbow. The pub in Treasure Island, as in the pub. Admiral Benbow had not been a good tenant. They'd been a little bit of wear and tear and he hadn't looked after the garden properly. So John even said, Oh, well, great. I mean, these Russians, they can't be any worse than Admiral Benbow. And we will find out later in the episode exactly what went on, but it's very clear something has gone wrong when Tony, after a few days says

the house is full of people and right nasty, but how nasty we will discover. Anyway, while he's not smashing up the house, we mentioned Bishop Burnett from Wiltshire in the Salisbury area. He's been trying to convert Peter to Anglicanism, but the people that Peter really loves meeting are very much friends of the show. Richard Nixon's favorite people, the Quakers. Always good to have a Quaker on the rest of history. So Peter can't get enough of the Quakers. He goes to prayer meetings. They're Quaking and doing what they do, being very sober and quaking. He says, this is absolutely amazing. Yeah.

I love this. He meets William Penn of Pennsylvania. Well, presumably if they're quaking and Peter is given to convulsions, he'd feel quite at home, wouldn't he? Yeah. He fits in for once. His twitching is not noticed. So William Penn of Pennsylvania fame, he is in between trips to Pennsylvania.

He goes to the house of Deptford to talk to Peter and they have a great chat in Dutch about Quakerism and afterwards Peter says to his Russian friends, whoever could live according to such a doctrine would be truly happy. I mean it's amazing isn't it because foreign visitors to London are impressed by the Quakers because Voltaire when he goes to London will be similarly kind of wowed by them. It's kind of interesting. It's clearly Something about London that foreigners find interesting. Yeah, but not in a sort of freak show way, right? No, they're impressed by them. They're impressed by he takes it really seriously He does loads of fun tourist things Yeah

He basically follows the itinerary that you would follow if you came to London on holiday now He goes to Greenwich he goes to the Tower of London and they hide the axe with which a child's the first to being Decapitated don't they? Because they're worried that if he finds it, he'll be so outraged he'll fling it in the Thames. Yes. And my favourite tourist thing that he does, he goes to Parliament and he says, I'd love to see it.

And he doesn't want to draw attention to himself. So he climbs up to the roof and he watches through a kind of upper gallery sort of skylight style window in the roof as William III is giving a cent to tax bills in the house of Lords. And he says afterwards to his friends and whatnot, he says, well, we obviously couldn't do this in Russia because you know, we have the absolute power of the czar in Russia. We couldn't have any limitations. However, and I quote, it is good to hear subjects speaking truthfully and openly to their king. This is what we must learn from the English. Now there's a lesson here for Vladimir Putin, isn't there?

Well, just on the topic of Vladimir Putin and London and Peter the Great. Oh yeah. I don't know if you've seen there's a statue of Peter the Great at Deptford. Yes. Very weird done by the sculptor who also did one that was put up in the Peter and Paul fortress in St. Petersburg. The sculptor is very keen on portraying Peter with very long elongated fingers and limbs. So he looks very peculiar. And a small head. Yes. So both those statues and the statue in Deptford was set up at the beginning of the 21st century. And Putin, when he came to London, went to visit it and he was escorted by Prince Andrew.

Wow, there's a couple. There's an interesting episode from history. Yeah, so I looked up what it actually said on the statue and it said, This monument is erected near the Royal Shipyard where Peter the Great studied the English science of shipbuilding. The monument is a gift from the Russian people and commemorates the visit of Peter the Great to this country in search of knowledge and experience. Oh, so that's nice. Well, Peter did get knowledge and experience to be fair.

I'll tell you one thing he picked up was smoking. Smoking previously banned in Russia, except in the German suburb. He signs a deal with this bloke, Carmarthen, that he goes drinking with so that Carmarthen can import tobacco to Russia. And also he does manage to get about 60 mathematicians, shipwrights, engineers, and he persuades them to come back with him to Russia as well as to Barber's right. So his westernizing brain is ticking over. Exactly.

So the 2nd of May, he says, look, I've been here for ages. It's time to go on. He loved England. We're used to the Russians being incredibly disobliging about our beloved country, aren't we? Well, I don't know. I mean, wealthy Russians, they tend to like London. They like our football clubs.

That's true. They like our Bijou West End houses. Nationalist commentators are always going on Russian state television, aren't they? And sort of doing mock-ups of how Britain would be annihilated by a nuclear weapon. Or a tsunami. Or a tsunami, exactly. But Peter the Great would not have approved of that because he told a captain later, he said it would be a much happier life to be an Admiral in England than a Tsar in Russia.

I mean, I'm so happy to be quoting this. He said England is the best, the most beautiful and the happiest place on earth. So although he's a brutal and murderous autocrat, he's clearly not all bad. No, he's a man of tremendous taste. Now, sadly, not all Englishmen are as keen on Peter the Great as he is on them. Because as soon as he's left, John Evelyn goes to see what's happened to his house. And it is most nasty. And it was very nasty. He's so appalled he then goes straight to the Royal Surveyor, Sir Christopher Wren and the Royal Gardener who's a man called Mr London, and he says come to my house immediately. You know the government's going to have to compensate me

for this. And when they get there they find it has been utterly trashed. Ink everywhere, grease everywhere. All the door knobs and locks have been pried off. The windows have been smashed. The chairs have all been smashed up and used as firewood. The pictures have been ripped up and the garden, Avery's Pride and Joy, the greatest garden in England, absolutely destroyed. The claim is is I think

there's some dispute among sort of scholars about whether this is invented or not, that they'd been having wheelbarrow races through the hedges. So to quote, the lawn was trampled into mud and dust as if a regiment of soldiers in iron shoes had drilled on it. And who knows? I mean, Peter loves a fake army. So maybe they've done that. The magnificent Holly hedge had been flattened by wheelbarrows rammed through it so presumably that's where

that story comes from exactly exactly and the government ended up paying john even more than three hundred and fifty pounds in compensation which if you use the calculators at the website measuring worth which is the one i always use because it's the most sophisticated that's basically an earnings terms more than a million pounds today that That everyone was given as compensation. That tells you just how much damage there was. So, um, Peter and that by now is long gone. He goes to Dresden. He goes to Vienna and Dominic in Dresden. Crucially, he, he sees the Kunstkammer museum, doesn't he? Yeah.

Which is a cabinet of curiosities. And so we talked about how in the Netherlands, Peter had seen ways to preserve corpses and now he's seen a cabinet of curiosities. And so we talked about how in the Netherlands, Peter had seen ways to preserve corpses. And now he's seen the cabinet of curiosities. And this is setting up, again, all kinds of ideas in his fertile and faintly dark brain. Exactly. Exactly. So he has a nice time in Vienna. And then he's preparing to move on to Venice in July when bombshell news he has a letter from Moscow from his mate Romanovsky. Terrible things have been happening in Russia. Four regiments of Streltsy were being transferred from the Sea of Azov to the Polish frontier and they have mutinied. They are now marching on Moscow and they are only 60 miles away.

And of course this letter has taken a long time to reach Peter. Peter can't believe it. So what this means is that while he's been messing around with Cabinets of Curaustis in Dresden and dancing at balls in Vienna, the Streltsy may well have taken Moscow. He may have been deposed and proclaimed a traitor. He says, oh my God. So he scraps his plan. The gap year is over, and he rushes east and he's riding through Poland day and night, stopping only to change horses.

And then he gets to crack off and another messenger comes riding up from the east. And Peter sort of rips open the message. A massive sigh of relief. Romanovsky reports that their troops have intercepted and defeated the Streltsy rebels. Although he's going to carry on going home, he can slow down a bit and he heads to meet somebody who will play a big part in the story who is Augustus the Strong. And you love him, don't you? I love Augustus the Strong.

He's one of your favourite characters from all of history. He is. So he was the elector of Saxony, Augustus, and he'd been elected King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1698. And we said we'd get into the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. It's this great sort of ramshackle state of 8 million people, vast, culturally fascinating, a real mix of Catholics, Jews and whatnot, fascinating kind of mosaic. Even Muslims. Even Muslims, exactly.

Because there are Muslims who've been settled there. Sort of heretics of various kinds go there because it's so tolerant. It's sort of an experiment in multiculturalism in some ways, but it's beginning to fall apart a bit and it's got a bonkers political system. Because diversity is not necessarily its strength. It's not its strength, I think it's beginning to fall apart a bit and it's got a bonkers political system because diversity is not necessarily it's not its strength I think it's fair to say now Augustus has been elected to rule this this kingdom He's a gigantic man like Peter's like a he looks like a bear his party trick. Well, he has multiple party tricks He likes to amuse his courtiers by snapping horseshoes with one hand

They do that, but he does it anyway. Presumably with fingers. It's reflection on the strength of his fingers, I guess. As fingers, you could just snap your fingers and snap a horseshoe. Maybe. Yeah, I guess. If you're just doing it with one hand. He loves collecting porcelain. He has dozens of mistresses.

He fathered 354 illegitimate children, which I think is a lot. Wow. He collected lions, hyenas, monkeys and meerkats. Meerkats. Yeah. Meerkats. Is he the first European Royal to collect a meerkat? I think it probably is.

They were always shipping animals to him and they'd open the box and the animal would be dead. That was the usual scenario. It was pretty tough on the animals. And he's not one of history's great animal lovers because his real, you know real party piece his specialism the thing for which he goes down in history is he's probably history's most proficient fox tosser so If you interested in tossing a fox Augustus the strong is the absolute model right so once when he was receiving the king of Prussia to greet the king, he tossed 200

foxes, six wildcats, two batches and two beavers. And when I say tossed, he tossed them to their deaths. That's what he does. Oh my God. So basically his servants will line up with these beavers and badgers. He just grabs them, throws them up in the air, throws them in the air so high that they come crashing down to earth and die. It's like brilliant.

So he doesn't catch them. No, but they splattered over the ceiling surely does this outdoors Oh, right. Okay. So you go into the garden. There's a menagerie there all lined up Just throwing foxes around I mean it seems bonkers hurrah for your majesty Yeah, the late 17th early 18th century. This is very high class entertainment. So don't knock it. And actually, to be fair, let's not knock it until we've done it because we've never tried it or seen it.

Peter loves this. Of course he does very much his thing, isn't it? Well, the strong will throw a beaver to his death and then Peter will embrace it and kiss him and say, oh, you're brilliant. I love this. I love you. Does Peter have a go at fox tossing? I don't know that he does actually.

Maybe he would use his bellows or something. I mean, it seems very much his kind of sport. I'd like to think he tried his hand at it, wouldn't you? Yeah. He'd try to toss a bear probably knowing him. Peter said to his nobleman, I prize Augustus more than the whole of you put together, not because he's a king, but merely because I like him. Which is quite

sweet. And actually, in between killing all these animals, Augustus takes the opportunity to pitch an idea to Peter that will have massive, massive long-term political consequences. Because both of them hate and fear their northern neighbors, the Swedes. They can't stand the Swedes. The Swedes, the most formidable and modern military power in Northern Europe. And Augustus says, listen, the Swedish king has died,

and his successor, who's a bloke called Charles XII, he's a total nobody. He's only 15. He's a teenager. Let's join forces against the Swedes and divide up their Baltic Empire between us. And Peter, who we know loves Augustus the Strong, says, you know, that sounds brilliant because actually my war against the Ottomans is a complete non-event, total damp squib.

I'm never going to beat the Ottomans. Forget the Black Sea and we'll move on to the Baltic. Let's keep working on this idea and one day let's do it. Now in the meantime, he has to go back to Moscow, which he does. He goes back to Moscow with all his kind of shipwrights and whatnot and all his sort of is fired with enthusiasm for his westernizing project. He goes to his estate at Praia Brzezanskoye. Very good.

I was looking forward to that. I could see it looming in the notes. I thought, okay, I've just got to go for it. Yeah. And he arrives on the night of the 4th of September 1698. And the next day, the fifth, all his noblemen say, oh, brilliant, you're back. They come to go and greet him. He embraces them. He kisses them.

And then out of his back pocket, he pulls out a razor. And then just starts shaving them, cutting off their beards. They are so stunned. They don't know how to react. And he's like very violently, forcibly shaving them. Now the thing is, we did an whole episode, didn't we, about beards and about this business. And for people who missed it, to very briefly explain, to Orthodox Russians, the beard was a gift from God. And to shave it was a sin.

Ivan the Terrible had specifically said, it's a sin that the blood of all the martyrs cannot cleanse because it is to deface the image of man created by God. And Peter says, no, this is nonsense. A beard is backwards and he makes everybody shave off their beards. And in the long run, if you want to have a beard, you have to pay a special tax and you get a medallion with a picture of a beard on it. I love that. And then you're allowed to have a beard.

And this is just one of a host of changes. So basically up to this point, Russian nobleman had worn these caftans, floppy colored boots, very exotic garb. But also appropriate to the cold weather. Right. I mean, it does keep you warm, right? Also layers. They believe in layers.

Peter does not believe in that. He says this is backwards. Again, it's Asiatic. It's not right. He cuts the sleeves of people's robes off. Like you turn up to a state reception or something. Peter the Great will come at you with a razor and a pair of scissors, probably Dutch or English scissors, and will be cutting off bits of your clothing.

He says, I want people to wear what they call French or German style coats. He says, I want to see waistcoats. I want to see britches. I want women to wear bonnets and skirts, all of this kind of thing. What about corsets? If you go to Moscow, they hang up models of the approved costumes. And Peter says, when people are coming into the city, the guards have to have pairs of scissors as well.

And if people are wearing long caftans, the guards will cut the snip, snip, snip, snip exactly. So it obviously didn't work among the great mass of the population at all. But among the elite, it did because foreign ambassadors say that by the mid, the middle of the sort of first decade of the 18th century at balls and at banquets and things people will be dressing in the German manner. I must have been so cold though. Imagine you know your stockings and your britches and the icy wind from the Urals. Yeah but that's fine but I mean would you rather do that or would you rather take your

chances with Peter the Great, Eraser, Scissors? No I wouldn't I mean it's an invidious choice. It's not the only thing he changes. He changes the calendar. So up till this point, the Russians have dated time from the creation of the world. And Peter says, well, that's rubbish. Let's do it from Jesus's birth, like everybody else does in Europe. So they adopt the Julian calendar. They don't really have very good coinage. They were just using bits of other people's coins.

They'd kind of cut up. And he says, come on. He loves the English coinage. Cause he'd studied the mint, hadn't he? In the tower of London, he'd been to the mint. Exactly. He says you must have coinage just like the English do now for him. Personally, there's a big change as well.

And all the time he'd been gone 18 months. He had not written once to his wife. You don't care So people may remember from the last episode. She's pink. Yes pink hopeless and helpless. I think was the description Yeah, he sees her as the embodiment of conservatism and orthodoxy and while he's been away. He's obviously thought to himself I can't stand her. She's got to go. So he basically summons her. She's like, oh great your home and he says well I am. You've got to go. I'm afraid you're off to a nunnery. And he takes his son, Alexis from her and gives him to his sister.

And this is, we will see in our final episode of this series is a very traumatic moment for young Alexis and their relationship will be difficult. I think it's fair to say. It's so interesting, isn't it? We've had so many series recently where unwanted women get packed off to nunneries. So it happened in our series on the Franks happened in our series on the road to 1066. Yeah. We've also had Japanese women going off and becoming nuns.

So very much a theme. It is. And poor Audie Docus, she was forced into a carriage and sent to a convent in Suzdal and her head was shaved. So like the Japanese. Exactly and she was renamed Helen and she had to become a nun with the name of Helen. Now of course he has come home because he's heard about this mutiny among the Streltsy. The people who had you know carried out that horrendous massacre in front of him when he

was 10 years old and he is clearly determined that he will use this as a pretext to finish them off forever. There's a really a paranoid side, I think to Peter, he reminds me of Henry the eighth, you know, an insecurity in Henry the eighth case, I guess it's because, you know, his father won the throne of Bosworth on the battlefield. And he's always worried about the dynasty and Peter's case is because he had to fight. Right. I mean, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get you. No.

And he is determined to make a massive example of the mutineers and to show that he believes that this is part of a massive conspiracy orchestrated by his sister Sophia, who's of course in a nunnery herself. And so he has all the mutineers brought to his estate at Praia Brazhanskoye. There you go, Tom. Loving it. I'm just going to do it unnecessarily now. Even when it's not relevant. I'm probably not even pronouncing it correctly, to be honest.

And at his estate, this is the dark side of Peter. He commissions his men to build 14 special torture chambers. So they bring the mutineers and every week for six days a week, the Streltsy mutineers are interrogated. They are beaten with sticks. They're roasted over open fires. And above all, they are lashed with a thing called the knout, which is this massive leather whip 25 strokes of

the canal will kill you and it literally kind of rips the skin from your back and it's kind of like an assembly line and Peter and his friends and his cronies and his jolly company are the people doing the torturing so not so jolly now not jolly now and he would absolutely join in and he will be beating these people with an ivory handled cane and it's so violent that the patriarch actually says to Peter this is too much stop and Peter is livid about this and he says to the patriarch no Russian society is infected with the disease and I am burning it out and Actually what he gets out of the Streltsy, they confess and they say we'd planned to

storm the capital. We were going to burn down the German suburb, we were going to get rid of the foreigners and we were going to get Sophia to rule over us again. But is there any truth to this? Because I mean, I guess they're just saying whatever. Yeah, they're saying what he wants to. Sophia almost certainly didn't know about this, right? It's not that she had instigated the plot, but Peter has never forgiven her. He goes and interrogates her person at her convent. He says

her head must be shaved, she must take religious vows and become a nun, and she basically is locked away and is never seen again. She dies when she's 47, 1704. She had previously, of course, been in the nunnery, but had been relatively well treated. And now she's effectively a political prisoner. And that's not the end of it. So Peter is determined. And here I think you see, you know, loads of countries have a violent history or a history of they have show trials or whatever. I mean, we've done series on the French Revolution and whatnot.

But there's a definite theme, I think, in Russian history of a kind of a fear of enemies within and a conspiracy and a foreign influence and a belief in show trials and public punishment. Yeah. Well show executions as well. Show executions. So he says, well, the Streltsy, you know, they've got to go and hundreds of them are arrested brought in in carts to his estate at Praia Brajanskoye and they are

hanged on a special gibbet in front of a crowd. Others are beheaded over an open trench. Quite a few are broken on the wheel aren't they, which is a hideous death. In Red Square, yeah, and actually a really sort of chilling thing. About 200 of them are taken to the convent, Novo Dvichy convent, where Sophia is locked up. And Peter has the most prominent members hanged and strung up outside her window. And they are dangling there. One of them is holding a piece of paper and that's meant to symbolize their petition that they were going to issue, asking her to rule over them. And they are left to hang there outside her window all winter kind of just dangling kind of swaying in the wind.

And when she whenever she looks out the window there they are. I mean you can only imagine how horrific the sight stench or whatever that must have been for her. I mean actually that isn't the most shocking thing. The most shocking thing is he says he insists that all his friends take part in the executions. So there's an Austrian diplomat who actually describes Peter himself wielding the axe, beheading five people, you know, in public so that everybody can see. I mean, an incredibly gruesome scene. So he did it, Dominic, but was he right to do it? Well, Robert K. Massey, his biographer, he doesn't say he was, but he says this was a

public demonstration of Peter's seriousness about his project. He eliminated the one great obstacle to his modernizing mission, which was the Streltsy, and effectively, yeah, he was right to do it. That it's a terrible thing, but he was right to do it. I mean, I personally don't think publicly beheading people is the way forward. And leaving corpses dangling outside the cell in which you've imprisoned your sister. No, I wouldn't do that. So he ends up disbanding the Streltsy completely the year later in 1699. That leaves him really in a position of absolute power.

And at first, how does he spend that political capital? He actually just has endless parties and feasts. Ah, yeah. How does he spend that political capital? He actually just has endless parties and feasts. Huzzah! Yeah, so there's a lot of like mad costumes, mocking religious rituals. They'll do the sign of the cross with two pipes. Is there bear action? Lots of bears. Bellows. Dwarfs jumping out of pies, all of this kind of thing.

And Peter often, he'll get incredibly drunk and then he'll have a massive fight with his friends. I mean there's stories of him kind of drawing his sword and attacking his friends. He's very, very hot-tempered. I do urge people to watch The Great if they want to see this on a television screen. Right. But what's on his mind clearly the whole time is this idea that Augustus the Strong had suggested, you know, why don't we have a crack at the Swedes? Why don't we try to carve up the Baltic between us? Now, the thing is, he's still nominally fighting the Ottomans. So he's got to finish that off first. And in July 1700, he agrees a 30 year truce with the Ottomans.

Peter will keep his conquest at Azov that we talked about at the beginning of this episode, but he will give up all hope of access to the Black Sea. Because now his eye is on the Baltic. Exactly. So the news of the treaty reaches Moscow on the 18th of August, 1700, and they have a massive fireworks display in celebration and the very next day, the 19th of August, 1700, Peter declares war on Sweden and with that the great northern war begins and for Peter for Russia and for the whole of northern and Eastern Europe the world will never be

the same again. And that is an epic story, written on a massive scale and it will be beginning next week and if you want to hear all of the episodes detailing the Great Northern War and its aftermath then you can sign up at the rest this history.com if you're not already a member of the club and if you don't want to do that then that's fine the episodes will be coming out in due course in the meanwhile Dominic thanks so much some wonderful stories and all that. Beards, corsets, wheelbarrows, it's all been kicking off. Yeah.

And as we say, next week, the Great Northern War. So bye bye. Goodbye. I'm David McCloskey, former CIA analyst turned spy novelist. And I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. And together we're the hosts of The Rest is Classified, where we bring you brilliant stories from the world of spies. This week we're talking about one of the most significant stories of the 21st century, Edward Snowden and how he orchestrated the biggest leak of classified secrets in

modern American and British history. Snowden revealed that the American government was mass collecting data on its own citizens and it was really the first time that Americans and so many others around the world understood the extent of the US government's mass surveillance. That's right, it's a story I covered at the time and it also really gets to wider questions about what privacy means, how technology has changed our lives and what the government and companies can do with data we might have thought was private. And we'll take you through the whole story from Snowden's early career in the CIA and

the NSA to his life in exile in Russia. So to hear more search for The Rest is Classified wherever you get your podcasts.