PETER I., called "the Great" (1672-1725), emperor of Russia, son of the tsar Alexius Mikhailovich and Natalia Naruish kina, was born at Moscow on May 3o, 1672. His earliest teacher (omitting the legendary Scotsman Menzies) was the dyak, or clerk of the council, Nikita Zotov, subsequently the court fool, who taught his pupil to spell out the liturgical and devotional books on which the children of the tsar were generally brought up. After Zotov's departure on a diplomatic mission, in 168o, the lad had no regular tutor. From his third to his tenth year Peter shared the miseries and perils of his family. His very election (1682) was the signal for a rebellion. He saw one of his uncles dragged from the palace and butchered by a savage mob. He saw his mother's beloved mentor, and his own- best friend, Artamon Matvyeev, torn, bruised and bleeding, from his retain ing grasp and hacked to pieces. The haunting memories of these horrors played havoc with the nerves of a supersensitive child. The convulsions from which he suffered so much in later years must be partly attributed to this violent shock.
During the regency of his half-sister Sophia (1682-1689) he occupied the subordinate position of junior tsar, and after the revolution of 1689 Peter was still left pretty much to himself. So long as he could indulge freely in his favourite pastimes—ship building, ship-sailing, drilling and sham fights—he was quite content that others should rule in his name. He now found a new friend in the Swiss adventurer, Francois Lefort, a shrewd and jovial rascal, who not only initiated him into all the mysteries of profligacy (at the large house built at Peter's expense in the German settlement), but taught him his true business as a ruler. His mother's attempt to wean her son from his dangerous pastimes, by forcing him to marry the beautiful but stupid Eudoxia Lopukhina (Jan. 27, 1689), was a disastrous failure. Peter prac tically deserted his consort about a year after their union.
The death of his mother (Jan. 25, 1694) left the young tsar free to follow his inclinations. Tiring of the great lake at Pereya slavl (he had seen the sea for the first time at Archangel in July 1683) he returned to Archangel on May 1, 1694, to launch a ship built by himself the year before. Shortly afterwards he nearly perished in a storm in an adventurous voyage to the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea. From the first the lad had taken an extraordinary interest in the technical and mechanical arts, and their application to military and naval science. He was taught
the use of the astrolabe (which Prince Yakov Dolgoruki, with intent to please, had brought him from Paris) by a Dutchman, Franz Timmerman, who also instructed him in the rudiments of geometry and fortifications.
Peter had begun to build his own boats at a very early age, and the ultimate result of these pastimes was the creation of the Russian navy. He had already surrounded himself with that characteristically Petrine institution "the jolly company," or "the company," consisting of his personal friends and acquaintances. "The company" was graduated into a sort of mock hierarchy, political and ecclesiastical, and shared the orgies and the labours of the tsar. Merit was the sole qualification for promotion, and Peter himself set the example to the other learners by gradually rising from the ranks. In 1695 he had only advanced to the post of "skipper" in his own navy and of "bombardier" in his own army. The disreputable Lefort, for the sake of his own interests, diverted the young tsar from mere pleasure to serious enterprises, by persuading him first to undertake the Azov expedition, and then to go abroad to complete his education.