The informal interview was held in the Favorits Palace,
Leopold's summer villa on the outskirts of the city. Peter, in keeping with his incognito, was taken through a small door in the garden and up a back spiral staircase into the audience chamber. He had been carefully briefed by Lefort as to the agreed-on protocol for the meeting: the two monarchs were to enter the long audience hall simultaneously from doors at opposite ends; walking slowly, they were to meet exactly halfway, at the fifth window. Unfortunately, Peter, on opening the door and seeing Leopold, forgot what he had been told and, bounding toward the Emperor in long, quick strides, reached Leopold by the third window. The Austrian courtiers gasped. Protocol had been upset! What would happen to Peter? What would happen to them? But as the two sovereigns drew apart into a window recess to talk, with only Lefort as their interpreter, the courtiers were relieved to see that the Tsar was treating their master with great respect and deference. The two made quite a contrast: the short, pale, fifty-eight-year-old Emperor with his narrow, gloomy face framed by a large wig and a thick mustache hanging over his pendulous lower lip; and the abnormally tall, twenty-six-year-old Tsar with his vigorous, imperious, sometimes jerky gestures. The meeting was actually only an exchange of compliments and lasted fifteen minutes. Afterward, Peter descended into the palace garden and cheerfully rowed himself around a lake in a little rowboat.
This first meeting set the tone for Peter's two-week stay in Vienna, his only visit to the imperial capital. Despite the annoying cluckings of the Austrian protocol officers, Peter remained in a good-natured and deferential mood. He called on the Empress and the imperial princesses and tried to be pleasant. He genially refused the allotment by the imperial court of 3,000 gulden a week for the Russian Embassy's expenses in Vienna. This sum, Peter protested, was far too much for his "dear brother" to pay, having just borne the burden of long wars; Peter reduced the sum by half. The Austrians, who had been fully informed as to Peter's character both in Moscow and throughout the tour, could scarcely believe that the subdued, modest figure before them was the man they had heard about. Foreign ambassadors spoke of his "delicate and polished manners." The Spanish ambassador wrote to Madrid, "Here he appears quite unlike the description of other courts and far more civilized, intelligent, with excellent manners and modest."
In one important quarter in Vienna, Peter's surprising amiability and curiosity raised high hopes. The Catholic Church, especially the Jesuit College of Vienna, was aware from the reports of the imperial ambassador in London of Peter's lack of attachment to doctrinaire Orthodoxy and his interest in other religions. As the Archbishop of Canterbury and other Protestants had begun to think of converting the Tsar to Protestantism, so the Catholics began to hope that the monarch and, after him, his realm might be brought home to the Mother Church. These hopes were embodied in the Emperor's personal advisor, Father Woolf, a Jesuit priest who spoke some Russian. On St. Peter's Day, after attending an Orthodox service conducted by his own Russian priest traveling with the Embassy, Peter attended mass at the Jesuit College. There he heard Father Woolf preach "that the keys would be bestowed a second time, upon a new Peter, that he might open another door." Soon after, Peter attended a second mass, celebrated this time by Cardinal Kollonitz, the Primate of Hungary, and then joined the Cardinal for a lunch in the college refectory. From their conversation, it became clear that Peter was not thinking of conversion and the rumors that he was planning to go to Rome to be accepted into the church by the Pope himself were false. He was going to Venice to study galley building; if he went to Rome at all, it would be as a tourist, not as an applicant. After their meeting, the Cardinal described his visitor.
The Tsar is a tall young man from twenty-eight to thirty years of age, with a dark complexion, proud and grave, and with an expressive countenance. His left eye, his left arm and left leg were injured by the poison given him during the life of his brother; but there remains of this now only a fixed look in his eye and a constant movement of his arm and leg. To hide this, he accompanies this involuntary motion with continual movements of his entire body, which by many people, in the countries which he has visited, have been attributed to natural causes, but really they are artificial. His wit is alert and quick; his manners, closer to civil than savage. The journey he has made has improved him greatly, and the difference from the beginning of his present travels and the present time is obvious, although his native coarseness still appears; chiefly in his relations with his followers, whom he holds in check with great severity. He has a knowledge of history and geography and he desires to know more about these subjects; but his strongest interest is in the sea and ships, on which he himself works manually.
In the course of Peter's visit, Leopold staged one of his famous masked balls of the Viennese court. The setting was a supposed country inn, with the Emperor and Empress as innkeepers, and the court and foreign ambassadors all dressed as peasants in native costume. Prince Eugene of Savoy was there. Peter was dressed for the evening as a Frisian peasant, and his partner drawn by lot, Fraulein Johanna von Thurn, was dressed as his Frisian mate. At dinner, all precedence was discarded and the Emperor and Empress sat where they liked at the table. During the toasts,
Leopold found a happy formula for toasting his distinguished guest who was not officially there. Rising to face the masked young visitor, the Emperor said, "I believe you know the Tsar of Russia. Let us drink to his health." The following morning, the cup that the Emperor had used for the toast arrived at Peter's door as a gift. It was inlaid with rock crystal and worth 2,000 florins. The Tsar's pleasure in the company of his supper partner was measured the following day when she received a gift of four pairs of sables and 250 ducats.
Returning this hospitality, on St. Peter's Day the Russian Embassy entertained its hosts by giving an all-night ball for one thousand guests. Fireworks lit by the Tsar's own hand, dancing, drinking and chases through the summer gardens brought a touch of the German Suburb to Vienna. At a state dinner given after the Emperor's reception of the Embassy, the health of the two consorts, the Empress and the Tsaritsa, was not drunk. This omission, arranged at the request of the Russians, was a sign of what was in store for Eudoxia when Peter returned to Moscow. During the dinner, when the talk turned to wine, Baron Konigsacker insisted that Lefort immediately taste six specimens he recommended. When the wine arrived and Lefort had tasted it, he asked that his tall friend standing as a servant behind his chair might taste it, too.
Despite all the public amiability, Peter's mission to Vienna was a diplomatic failure. The Great Embassy had come to engage Austria's interest in resuming a more vigorous war against the Turks. Instead, they found themselves struggling to prevent an Austrian acceptance of a Turkish offer of peace which was highly favorable to Austria but not to Russia—a peace with all combatants agreeing to establishing the current status quo, each one keeping the territory he had won. For the Hapsburg monarch, this was a favorable settlement: Hungary and parts of Transylvania would remain under Hapsburg control. The idea of peace was enormously tempting. Besides, the shadow of Louis loomed once again in the West. It was time to disengage in the East, accept the fruits of victory, regroup and turn to face the Sun King.
The only party not happy about the prospect of peace was Peter. Having renewed the war against Turkey himself in 1695 and 1696 with his campaigns against Azov, having captured that fortress and tasted the ambition to sail on the Black Sea, having moved mountains to build a fleet at Voronezh and come himself to Europe to learn shipbuilding and hire shipwrights, naval captains and seamen to build and man his Black Sea fleet, he could not permit