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October 9, 2020 - January 2, 2021
disastrous outcome of the second Crimean campaign.
When, in June 1689, Golitsyn returned from his second disastrous campaign, Peter was angry and contemptuous.
Vasily Golitsyn
By traditional counting, the reign of Peter the Great lasted for forty-two years, beginning in 1682, when he was crowned as a boy of ten, and continuing until his death in 1725 at the age of fifty-two.
German Suburb.*
After the advent of the first Romanov in 1613,
Andrew Vinius,
General Patrick Gordon
Francis Lefort.
Anna Mons
In Peter’s wake were anywhere from 80 to 200 followers.
An average banquet for the Jolly Company began at noon and ended at dawn.
Sometimes, these parties extended into a second or third day, with guests sleeping side by side on the floor, rising to consume further prodigious quantities of food and drink and then sinking back again into lazy slumber.
To be drunk was an essential feature of Russian hospitality.
“The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters,”
Drunken Synod,
Moiseev Island.
Moiseev Island
Solovetsky Monastery,
dwarf cavalry,
The most accurate image of Peter the Great is of a man who throughout his life was perpetually curious, perpetually restless, perpetually in movement.
focal epileptic seizures,
The most likely cause of this kind of epilepsy, however, especially in the absence of a hard blow which could leave permanent scar tissue on the brain, is high fever over an extended period.
Azov
The Azov campaign, then, was more than an elaborate war game mounted for the Tsar’s private education and amusement. The desire to suppress the Tatar raids and the need to make a military effort to satisfy the Poles were serious pressures to which any Russian government would have had to respond. These two factors happened to dovetail perfectly with Peter’s private desires.
There were two objectives: to harry the Turk and to suppress the Tatar.
February 8, 1696, Tsar Ivan suddenly died.
News of the Azov victory astonished Moscow.
Azov was only a beginning.
To Protestant Europe, Louis was an aggressive, brutal Catholic tyrant.
At the time of the Great Embassy, the gap between Russia and the West seemed far wider than anything measurable in terms of sea-going ships or superior military technology.
the telescope, the microscope, the thermometer, the barometer, the compass, the watch, the clock, champagne, wax candles, street lighting and the general use of tea and coffee all made their first appearance in these years.
Isaac Newton. Born in 1642,
he was fifty-five when Peter arrived in England.
law of universal gra...
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Golovin, the Governor-General of Siberia,
Frederick III.
the two monarchs agreed on a new treaty, promising generally to help each other against their mutual enemies.
Holland was by far the richest, most urbanized, most cosmopolitan state in Europe.
the Dutch had a near-monopoly on the world’s shipping.
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.
Anton van Leeuwenhoek,
William of Orange.
William, Prince of Orange, simultaneously Stadholder of Holland and the United Netherlands and King William III of England, was perhaps the most interesting political figure Peter was to meet in his lifetime.
Opposition to the great French King became William’s obsession.
William and Mary were proclaimed joint sovereigns by a Parliament which, in turn, extracted from them a Bill of Rights and other privileges which are today the centerpieces of the British constitution. Ironically, although the events of 1688 marked an overwhelming change in the political and constitutional history of England, and are referred to as the Glorious Revolution, William did not much care about
Predictably, within two years of William’s coronation, England was at war with France. The war lasted nine years,
War of the Spanish Succession,
In immediate terms, the war was won and William’s goal achieved: France was held within its boundaries, Holland preserved its freedom and the Protestant religion was maintained in Europe. But William did not live to see
Peter wanted to grasp the basic secrets of ship design; in effect, naval architecture.
