The Tsar is very tall, his features are fine, and his figure very noble. He has great vivacity of mind, and a ready and just repartee. But, with all the advantages with which nature has endowed him, it could be wished that his manners were a little less rustic. We immediately sat down at table. Herr Koppenstein, who did the duty as marshal, presented the napkin to His Majesty, who was greatly embarrassed, for at Brandenburg, instead of a table napkin, they had given him a ewer and basin [to clean his hands] after the meal. He was very gay, very talkative, and we established a great friendship for each other, and he exchanged snuff-boxes with my daughter. We stayed in truth a very long time at table, but we would gladly have remained there longer still without feeling a moment of boredom, for the Tsar was in very good humor, and never ceased talking to us. My daughter had her Italians sing. Their song pleased him though he confessed to us that he did not care much for music.
I asked him if he liked hunting. He replied that his father had been very fond of it, but that he himself, from his earliest youth, had had a real passion for navigation and fireworks. He told us that he worked himself in building ships, showed us his hands, and made us touch the callous places that had been caused by work. He brought his musicians, and they played Russian dances, which we liked better than the Polish ones. . . .
We regretted that we could not stay much longer, so that we could see him again, for his society gave us much pleasure. He is a very extraordinary man. It is impossible to describe him, or even to give an idea of him, unless you have seen him. He has a very good heart, and remarkably noble sentiments. I must tell you also, that he did not get drunk in our presence, but we had hardly left when the people of his suite began to make ample amends.
He is a prince at once very good and very bad; his character is exactly that of his country. If he had received a better education, he would be an exceptional man, for he has great qualities and unlimited natural intelligence.
Peter signaled his own pleasure at the evening by sending each of the Electresses a trunkful of Russian sables and brocade. Then he left immediately, ahead of the main party. For Holland was only a few miles farther down the Rhine.
14
PETER IN HOLLAND
In the second half of the seventeenth century, Holland, a term used to describe the seven United Provinces of the Northern Netherlands, was at the peak of its world power and prestige. With its dense, teeming population of two million hard-working Dutchmen crowded into a tiny area, Holland was by far the richest, most urbanized, most cosmopolitan state in Europe. Not surprisingly, the prosperity of this small state was a source of wonder and envy to its neighbors, and often this envy turned to greed. On such occasions, the Dutch drew on certain national characteristics to defend themselves. They were valiant, obstinate and resourceful, and when they fought—first against the Spaniards, then against the English and finally against the French—they fought in a way which was practical and, at the same time, desperately and sublimely heroic. To defend their independence and their democracy, a people of two million maintained an army of 120,000 and the second-largest navy in the world.
Holland's prosperity, like its freedom, rested on ingenuity and hard work. In most European nations of the day, the vast majority of the people were tied to the land, engaged in the simple process of feeding themselves and creating a small surplus to feed the towns and cities. In Holland, one Dutch peasant, by producing larger crop yields per acre, by somehow extracting more milk and butter from his cows and more meat from his pigs, was able to feed two of his non-farming fellow citizens. Thus, in Holland more than half the population was freed for other activities, and they bustled into commerce, industry and shipping.
Commerce and shipping were the source of Holland's enormous wealth. The seventeenth-century Dutch were a trading, sea-faring people. The great sister ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, situated at the twin mouths of the Rhine, were at the junction of Europe's canals, its most important rivers and the oceans of the world. Almost everything passing in and out of Europe, up and down Europe's coast and across the sea passed through Holland. English tin, Spanish wool, Swedish iron, French wines, Russian furs, Indian spices and teas, Norwegian timber and Irish wool flowed into the Netherlands to be graded, finished, woven, blended, sorted and shipped out again on the watery highways.
To carry these goods, the Dutch had a near-monopoly on the world's shipping. Four thousand Dutch merchantmen—more merchant ships than those possessed by the rest of the world combined—sailed the world's oceans. The Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602, and the newer West India Company had offices in every major port in the world. Dutch seamen, combining the vigor of the explorer with the calculation of the trader, were always seeking new markets and new ports. As ships sailed ceaselessly to and fro, goods and profits piled up and the Dutch merchant republic became richer and richer. New services were developed in the city of Amsterdam to protect and encourage trade: insurance was devised to spread the risks; banks and the stock exchange found ways to deal in credit and to float public loans on an unprecedented scale to finance great commercial enterprises; printers printed contracts and bills of lading and all the multiple paper forms necessary to organize, advertise and confirm the thousands of business transactions occurring daily. Wealth bred confidence, confidence bred credit, credit bred more wealth, and Holland's power and fame spread farther. Holland was the true model of the rich, successful mercantile state, a commerical paradise to which young men came from all over Protestant Europe, especially England and Scotland, to learn the commerical and financial techniques of Holland's supremacy.
It was to this glittering mecca of commerce, sea power, culture and world empire that an eager young Russian named Peter Mikhailov was hurrying across Germany in the late summer of 1697.
At Pereslavl, at Archangel, at Voronezh, talking with Dutch shipwrights and sea captains, Peter had often heard the name of Zaandam. This Dutch town on the banks of the great gulf of the Ij, ten miles north of Amsterdam, was said to build the finest ships in Holland. In the fifty private shipbuilding yards in and around the town, as many as 350 ships a year were constructed, and so rapid and expert were the Zaandamers reputed to be that from the moment a keej was laid until the vessel was ready for sea, not more than five weeks were allowed to pass. Over the years, Peter's desire to visit and learn to build ships in Zaandam had taken firm root. Now, as he traveled across Germany, he told his comrades that he meant to remain in Zaandam through the autumn and winter learning shipbuilding. When he reached the Rhine at Emmerich near the Dutch frontier, he was so impatient that he hired a boat and, leaving most of the Embassy behind, sailed straight down the river, passing through Amsterdam without even stopping to rest.
Early on Sunday morning, August 18, Peter and his six companions were sailing along a canal approaching Zaandam when the Tsar noticed a familiar figure sitting in a rowboat, fishing for eels. It was Gerrit Kist, a Dutch blacksmith who had worked with Peter in Moscow. Overjoyed to see a familiar face, Peter boomed out a greeting. Kist, snatched from his thoughts and raising his eyes to see the Tsar of Russia sailing by, almost fell out of his boat. Steering for the bank and jumping from his boat, Peter hugged Kist excitedly and swore him to secrecy regarding his presence. Then, finding that Kist lived nearby, the Tsar immediately announced that he would stay with the blacksmith. Kist had many objections, arguing that his house was too small and plain for a monarch, and proposing instead the house of a widow who lived just behind his own house. With an offer of seven florins, the widow was persuaded to move in with her father. Thus, within a few hours Peter was happily settled into a tiny wooden house consisting of two small rooms, two windows, a tiled stove and a curtained, airless sleeping closet so small that he could not fully stretch out. Two of his companions stayed with him; the other four found nearby quarters.