end of December, 1700, Sheremétief sent a party against the fortified town of Marienburg, twenty miles from the frontier. The attack was unsuccessful. In revenge for this, Colonel Schlippenbach suddenly invaded the Russian territory, burned many villages, and laid siege to the Petchórsky monastery; but after an officer had been killed in trying to screw a petard to the gates, he retreated to Livonia. During the winter, other similar forays laid waste the territory on each side of the frontier. After King Charles had marched toward the Düna, in July, 1701, Sheremétief again attacked the detachment of Schlippenbach, who remained in Livonia, at Rauke. He was beaten back, but Schlippenbach sent an urgent message to the King, telling him of his position, and saying that Sheremétief had as many troops as the whole Swedish army. The King replied merely: "It cannot be," and ordered six hundred men to be sent to the village of Rappin, near the Russian border. This was in spite of the remonstrances of Schlippenbach, who said the force was too small, and proposed a more suitable point of attack. The King could not be moved, and Schlippenbach was obliged to report: "It happened as I foresaw. Out of the whole detachment only one captain returned; all the rest were killed or taken prisoners by the Russians, together with two cannon.' This was on the 15th of September, 1701, the Russians being commanded by the son of Sheremétief. This skirmish, for it was scarcely more, was the beginning of the Russian successes. In January, 1702, Sheremétief, with eight thousand infantry and dragoons, together with Cossacks, Kalmuks, and Tartars, and fifteen field-pieces, moved against Schlippenbach, who, with seven thousand men, was encamped on the estate of Erestfer, and on the 9th of January, after a battle which lasted four hours, until it became dark, inflicted a severe defeat on the Swedes, who lost, according to their own account, one thousand, and according to the Russian estimate, three thousand killed and wounded, and three hundred and fifty prisoners, together with six guns and eight standards. The Russian loss amounted to more than a thousand men. Sheremétief was glad of his victory, but he was still more pleased that the Swedes did not come out of the forests and attack him when he was in the midst of the deep snows and his men were too worn out to march further. Peter was delighted, and, after receiving Sheremétief's report, exclaimed: "Thank God!

we can at last beat the Swedes." He immediately appointed Sheremétief field-marshal, and sent Menshikóf to him with the blue ribbon of St. Andrew and his own portrait set in diamonds. All the officers were promoted, and the common soldiers were given a ruble apiece of the newly coined money. At Moscow there was great rejoicing. Te Deums were chanted in the churches, with the ringing of bells and the firing of cannon; a great banquet was given by the Tsar in a building erected for the purpose on the Red Place,—the Palace, we remember, had burned down that winter,— and the night closed with fire-works and illuminations. A fortnight later the Tsar made a triumphal entry, having in his train the Swedish prisoners, who were well treated. This was the first of a series of triumphs for small victories, which were indeed ridiculed by the foreign ministers, but which, nevertheless, served to keep up the spirits and arouse the patriotism of the people.

After the victory of Erestfer, Sheremétief made two pressing requests to be allowed to return to Moscow. His wife, he said, was living in the house of a neighbor, and he must find her a place to lay her head. The Tsar at first refused, but finally wrote from Archangel, leaving it to his judgment whether he could be spared from the army, and telling him, if he did go, to be back again by Holy Week. On his return, Sheremetief attacked Schlippenbach at Hummelshof, on the 29th of July, 1702, and inflicted on him a severe defeat. The Swedish infantry was almost annihilated, and Schlippenbach with the cavalry retreated to Pernau. The Swedes had only about five thousand men engaged, and lost at least two thousand five hundred in killed and wounded, besides three hundred prisoners, and all their artillery, standards, and drums. The Russian loss was four hundred killed, and about the same number wounded. After the battle of Hummelshof, Livonia remained entirely without defense. In Riga, Pernau, and Dorpat, there were comparatively large garrisons, which did not dare leave the fortresses, and in the smaller towns only a few hundred men each. Sheremétief then thoroughly devastated the whole of the country, destroying towns, villages, and farms, taking captive nearly the whole of the population, and sending them to the south of Russia. The Cossacks, Tartars, and Kalmuks in the Russian army had full swing, and Livonia was for a long time unable to recover from the effects of this campaign. Many rich and strong

castles built by the Teutonic knights were then destroyed. Sheremétief in his report

wrote:

"I send Cossacks and Kalmuks to different estates for the confusion of the enemy. But what am I to do with the people I have captured? The prisons are full of them, besides all those that the officers

have. There is danger because these people are so sullen and angry. You know what they have already done, careless of themselves. In order that such plots may not begin again, and that the men may not set fire to the powder in the cellars, or die from their close quarters, much must be done. Considerable money besides is necessary for their support, and one regiment would be too little to conduct them to

Moscow. I have selected a hundred families of the best of the natives who are good carpenters, or are skilled in some other branch of industry,-about four hundred souls in all,-to send to Azof."

That these prisoners included all classes of society may be seen from the fact that Patkul was obliged to petition the Tsar for the release of two daughters of his acquaintance, the Landrath Vietinghof, who had been taken prisoners and formed part of the booty of the Cossacks. So much cattle was taken that it could be bought at nominal prices, and according to the Austrian Agent Pleyer, a Swedish boy or girl of fifteen years old could be bought at Pskof for two grivnas, or twelve groschen. The towns of Menza, Smilten, Ronenburg, and Wolmar were reduced to ruins, as well as Marienburg, which was a strongly fortified place, and offered great resistance. It was to this Sheremétief referred in the above report, for, after the town had been captured, an ensign of artillery, Wulff, continued the defense, and finally set fire to the powdermagazines, and blew himself up. Many Swedes were killed as well as many Russians.

The siege of Marienburg is of interest to us because among the captives was the Provost Gluck, with his family, and in his family was the girl Catherine, who subsequently became the Empress Catherine I.

In the spring of 1702, Matvéief reported that the Swedes were intending again to attack Archangel. Not satisfied with the measures of protection and defense which had been taken in that region, considering that only nineteen hundred men were available there for military operations, Peter resolved to go himself to the north, and set out at the end of April, taking with him his son Alexis (then a boy of twelve), a numerous suite and five battalions of the guard, amounting to four thousand men.

He was

thirty days on the road from Moscow. In our times of rapid communication it is hard to realize how any regular plan of defense

or war could be carried out in a country where such enormous distances were required to be traveled, and where so much time had to be spent on the journey. In a stay of three months, which Peter made at Archangel, there was little which he could do in the way of military preparations. He occupied himself with ship-building, and on Trinity Sunday launched two frigates, the Holy Spirit and the Courier, constructed by Eleazar Ysbrandt, and laid the keel of a new twenty-six-gun ship, the St. Elijah, writing at the same time to Apráxin that he could do nothing more, as there was no more ship-timber. In August the early fleet of merchant ships arrived, much more numerous than usual, for all the trade which had before come through the Swedish ports on the Baltic naturally turned to Archangel. There were thirty-five English and fifty-two Dutch ships, with a convoy of three ships of war. These vessels brought the news that the Swedes had given up any attack on Archangel that summer. Peter therefore felt at liberty to depart, and went by sea to Niúktcha, on the Bay of Onéga, stopping by the way for a few days at the Solovétsky monastery. From Niúktcha to Povienétz, at the northern end of Lake Onéga, a road eighty miles long had been made through the swamps and thick forests by the energy and labor of Stchepótef, a sergeant of the Preobrazhénsky regiment. Over two of the rivers it was necessary to build long bridges, strong enough for the passage of the five battalions of guards which accompanied the Tsar. From Povienétz Peter sailed through Lake Onéga and down the river Svir, and finally arrived, about the end of September, at the town of Old Ládoga, on the river Volkhof, near Lake Ládoga. Here he was met by Field-Marshal Sheremétief with his army, who had sailed down the Vólkhof from Nóvgorod, and also by the artillery which Vinius had collected for him. With a force then of about twelve thousand men, Peter advanced on the 6th of October to lay siege to the fortress of Noteburg. Noteburg had been originally built by the people of Nóvgorod four centuries before, under the name of Orékhovo or Oréshek, on a small island of the river Neva, just where it leaves Lake Ládoga. The island was in shape like a hazel-nut, whence both the Russian and Swedish names. It served for a long time as a barrier against the incursions of the Swedes and Danes, and protected the commerce of Nóvgorod as well as of Ládoga. In 1323, peace was concluded there between

the Swedes and Russians. In the subsequent wars it was sometimes in the hands of the Swedes, sometimes in those of the Russians, and finally, in 1611, was captured again by the Swedes under de la Gardie, and had since that time belonged to Sweden. Noteburg was defended by a small garrison of four hundred and fifty men, with one hundred and forty-two cannon of small caliber, under the command of the old colonel Wilhelm von Schlippenbach, the brother of the Swedish general commanding in Livonia. The Russians took up a position on both sides of the river, and by a fleet of small boats, which they brought down from the river Svir through Lake Ládoga, succeeded in completely blockading the fort. On the 11th of October they opened fire, and on the 22d, after an unsuccessful storm by the Russians, in which Prince Michael Galítsyn displayed remarkable bravery and coolness, the commandant capitulated on honorable conditions. His whole garrison, with all their property, were allowed to depart to the next Swedish fort. On the third day of the cannonade, the wife of the commandant had sent a letter to the Russian field-marshal, in the name of the wives of the officers, asking that they be permitted to depart. Peter, wishing to lose no time, had himself replied to the letter that he could not consent to put Swedish ladies to the discomfort of a separation from their husbands, and if they desired to leave the fort, they could do so if they took their husbands with them.

According to Pleyer, only forty-one Swedes remained to take advantage of the capitulation. The Russians, however, lost more than the whole Swedish garrison, in all five hundred and thirty-eight men, besides nine hundred and twenty-five wounded. Peter immediately proceeded to repair the damages done to the fort, renamed it Schlüsselburg, and fastened up in the western bastion the key given him by the commandant, as a symbol that this fort was the key to the whole of the Neva. Ever afterward, when he was at St. Petersburg, he went to Schlüsselburg on the 22d of October and feasted the capitulation. Menshikóf, who had shown great military ability, was appointed governor of the newly named fort, and from this time date his intimate friendship with Peter and his prominence in public life.

When the dispatch announcing the fall of Noteburg was read to King Charles, who was then in Poland, Piper feared its effect, but the King said, with apparent calm: "Con

sole yourself, dear Piper. The enemy have not been able to drag the place away with them." But it evidently went to his heart, and on another occasion he said that the Russians should pay dearly for Noteburg.

Peter announced the event to his friends, and in a letter to Vinius said: "In very truth this nut was very hard; but, thank God! it has been happily cracked." He made another great entry into Moscow, when a laurel wreath was let down upon his head as he passed under the triumphal arch; but he spent only two months in the capital, and went off to Voronezh, troubled by reports that there might be difficulties with the Tartars, if not with the Turks. In consequence of these rumors, three regi ments of troops were sent from Novgorod to Kief, and battalions of the Preobrazhénsky and Semenofsky marched to Vorónezh. The winter was cold, but there was little snow, and it was therefore possible for Peter to stop at the Iván lake, to inspect the works which had been begun for connecting the Don with the Volga, by means of a canal which would join the Upá, one of the upper branches of the Don, with the Oká. The work had been begun in 1701, and was then being pressed vigorously forward. It was never finished. At Peter's death the work was stopped, and there is now scarcely a trace of it.

On the upper waters of the river Vorónezh, Peter, with all his suite, stopped at a large and handsome country place which he had given to Menshikóf, and in honor of his favorite founded here a city, which he called Oranienburg (now abbreviated to Ranenburg), in the province of Riazán, a town of about seven thousand inhabitants. He wrote to Menshikóf:

"MEIN HERZ: Here, thank God! we have been very merry, not letting a single place go by. We named the town with the blessing of Kief, with bulwarks and gates, of which I send a sketch in this letter. At the blessing we drank-at the first bastion, brandy, at the second, sec, at the third, Rhine wine, at the fourth, beer, at the fifth, mead, and at the gates, Rhine wine, about which the All goes on well, only grant, O God! to see you bearer of this letter will report to you more at length. in joy. You know why.'

Although Peter wrote the letter in his own hand, he signed it third as Pitirim Protodiacon, after Yaníki, the Metropolitan of Kief and Galicia (probably Ivan MussinPúshkin), and Gideon, Archdeacon (probably Prince Gregory Ramodanófsky). The letter was signed by twenty other persons

who were present at the foundation of the town. The sketch which Peter sent represents a nearly regular pentagon, with bastions at the corners named after the five senses respectively,-Seeing, Hearing, Smelling. Tasting, and Touching,- and gates called Moscow, Vorónezh, Schlüsselburg. Le Bruyn, the Dutch artist, accompanied the Tsar on this journey. He says:

"One could not enter the house without passing through the gate of the fort, both being surrounded by the same wall of earth, which, however, is not of great extent. There are several fine bastions well garnished with cannon, covered on the one side by a mountain, and on the other by a marsh or kind of lake. When I entered where the Tsar was, he asked me where I had been. I replied: Where it had pleased Heaven and our drivers, since I neither knew the language nor the road.' That made him laugh, and he told it to the Russian lords who accompanied him. He gave me a bumper to punish me, and regaled us in perfection, having a cannon fired at each toast. After the feast he took us upon the ramparts, and made us drink different liquors on each bastion. Finally, he had sledges prepared to cross the frozen marsh and see everything from there. He took me in his own sledge, without forgetting the liquor, which followed, and which we did not spare. We returned to the château, where the glasses began again to make the round and to warm us. As the fort had not yet been named, his Majesty gave it the name of Oranienburg."

After many festivities at Voronezh, le Bruyn asked permission of the Tsar to sketch, which he immediately granted, saying: "We have diverted ourselves well. After that we have reposed a little. Now it is time to work." In making his sketches, le Bruyn suffered much from the curiosity of the Russians, who had got up all sorts of stories about him, one being that he was one of the Tsar's servants, executed for some crime by being buried up to his waist at the top of a mountain, with a book in his hand. But when, a few days after, they found that the supposed criminal had changed place, it was necessary to get up another explanation. When he took leave of the Tsar to go back to Moscow, Peter was "amusing himself, as he frequently did, with an ice-boat. By a sudden change of course his boat was overturned, but he immediately picked himself up. Half an hour afterward he ordered me to follow him alone, and went out in a hired sledge with two horses. One of them fell into a hole, but they soon got it out. He made me sit next to him, saying: 'Let us go to the chaloupe. I want you to see a bomb fired, because you were not here when they were fired before." " After this had been shown,

Good

Peter staid at Voronezh but a month. He was unable to do much on the fleet in the very cold weather, and was troubled, besides, because the stock of iron had given out and that an epidemic and great mortality prevailed among the workmen. news having come from Constantinople, Peter left Vorónezh and went to Schlüsselburg, scarcely stopping at Moscow. Something there appears to have made him lose his self-control and give way to an outburst of temper, for on reaching Nóvgorod he wrote to Theodore Apráxin: "How I went away I do not know, except that I was very contented with the gift of Bacchus. For that reason I ask the pardon of all if I offended any one, and especially of those who were present to bid me good-bye."

In pursuance of his plan of gradual conquest, Peter now set out with an expedition of twenty thousand men, and moved down the right bank of the Neva to the little fort of Nyenskanz. This was on the Neva at the mouth of the little river Okhta, where now is a shipping-wharf, just opposite the Institute of Smolni and the Taurida Palace. The place, though small, was prosperous, deriving its importance from numerous saw-mills. On three sides of it, at a little distance, were unfinished earth-works, which had been begun the year before, and which now served excellently the purposes of the besiegers. Batteries were placed in position, and the bombardment began on the 11th of May. The next day the very small garrison capitulated. The fort was renamed Slotburg and became the nucleus of the future city of St. Petersburg.

That night came news that a Swedish squadron was coming up the gulf toward the Neva. It signified to the fort its arrival by firing two signal guns, which were immediately answered, in order to deceive the Swedes and draw them into a snare. boat was sent up the river, which was attacked by the Russians, and one sailor captured. He informed them that the fleet consisted of nine ships, under the command

A

of Vice-Admiral Nummers. Three days after, two Swedish vessels sailed up the river, but came to anchor off the Vassily Island on account of the darkness. The next day, Sheremétief sent Peter and Menshikóf, with two regiments of guards, down the river in thirty boats. They concealed themselves behind the islands, and after maturing a plan, attacked the Swedish vessels early on the morning of the 18th of May. After a sharp fight, the ships using their cannon and the Russians replying with hand-grenades and musketry, Peter and his comrades succeeded in boarding and capturing the vessels, and brought them up to Slotburg. Of the seventy-seven men that composed the crews, fifty-eight were killed. The remainder were taken prisoners. For this, the first Russian naval victory, both Peter and Menshikóf were created by Sheremétief, cavaliers of the order of St. Andrew.*

While Peter was laying the foundation of his new capital, Sheremétief was sent against the little fort of Kopórie and Yamburg, the latter on the river Lúga, only twelve miles from Narva. Both towns were soon taken.

Peter had now obtained the object for which he had declared war. He occupied the Neva, and could communicate with the sea. He had restored to Russia her ancient province of Ingria, which had so long been in the hands of the Swedes. It is not to be wondered, therefore, that at his triumphal entry into Moscow one of the banners represented the map of Ingria, with the apposite inscription from the Book of Maccabees: "We have neither taken other men's land nor holden that which appertaineth to others, but the inheritance of our fathers, which our enemies had wrongfully in possession a certain time. Wherefore we, having opportunity, hold the inheritance of our fathers."

As the capture of Narva at the beginning of the war would have facilitated the conquest of Ingria, so now it was necessary to get possession of this stronghold in order to be certain of retaining the provinces which had already been won. The latter part of the summer of 1703 Sheremétief devoted to a systematic devastation of Esthonia and Livonia as far as Reval and Pernau. The ruin was as great, and the

*Peter was the sixth knight of the order which he had founded in 1699, on his return from Europe. The others were Admiral Theodore Golovín, the Cossack Hetman Mazeppa, Sheremétief, the Prussian envoy Priutzen, and the Saxon Chancellor Beichling.

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amount of booty and the number of captives even greater than in his march of the preceding year. In the summer of 1704, after a little wavering as to whether he should not make a diversion into Curland in order to assist King Augustus, Peter decided on attacking both Dorpat and Narva. The Swedish flotilla on Lake Peipus was destroyed or captured, but the siege of Dorpat, -a town which had been founded 675 years before by the Russian Grand Duke Yaroslav, under the name of Yurief,-owing to the bad dispositions of Sheremétief, proceeded slowly, and Peter was obliged to go there in person. He found the troops in good enough position, but the batteries placed with an utter ignorance of engineering, so that all the ammunition spent was simply wasted. Every man, he says, threw the blame on some one else. He drew up and carried out a new plan of operations, and Dorpat, after a heavy bombardment, was taken by storm on the 24th of July. The siege had lasted five weeks, and 5000 bombs had been thrown into the town.

Peter Apráxin, the brother of Theodore Apráxin, the Director of the Admiralty, was in the autumn of 1703 given command of Yamburg. The recollections of the great defeat at Narva were still so vivid that both he and his brother were much troubled at this vicinity to the Swedes, and this was increased when he was sent to the mouth of the Naróva, to prevent a Swedish squadron from landing stores and men. Some did manage to slip by him, to the great anger of the Tsar. At the news of the arrival of the Swedish squadron, Peter changed his plan of attacking Kexholm, on Lake Ládoga, and hastened with all his force to Narva, where, about the middle of June, he took up his position in the same intrenchment which he had thrown up four years before. It was a blockade rather than a siege, for the Russian artillery had not yet come up, and Sheremétief and his troops were still detained at Dorpat. When the armies were joined, the Russians had fully 45,000 men and 150 pieces of artillery. The Swedish garrison consisted of 4500 men, with 432 guns in Narva and 128 in Ivángorod. The Russians were troubled by the frequent sorties of the garrison, as well as by the constant rumors which reached them that Schlippenbach, with a strong Swedish force, was advancing from Reval. In order to draw the enemy out of the town, on the advice of Menshikóf, the Russians resorted to the expedient of dressing up some of their