Immediately after his return he sent to Austria and Prussia for as many sappers, miners, engineers and carpenters as money could procure. He meant to build a fleet strong enough to prevent the Turkish fleet from relieving Azov. The guards and all the workmen procurable were driven, forthwith, in bands, to fell timber in the forests of the Don, and the shipwrights worked day and night, turning out scores of vessels of all kinds. Peter himself lived among his workmen, himself the most strenuous of them all, in a small two-roomed wooden hut at Voronezh. By the middle of April two warships, twenty-three galleys, four fireships and numerous smaller craft were safely launched. On May 3, "the sea caravan" sailed from Voronezh, "Captain Peter Aleksyeevich" commanding the galley-flotilla from the galley "Principium," built by his own hand. The new Russian fleet pre vented the Turks from relieving Azov by sea; and on July 18 the fortress surrendered. Peter thereupon established a new naval station, named Taganrog, at the head of the Sea of Azov.
Turkey was too formidable to be fought single-handed, and it was therefore determined to send a grand embassy to the principal western powers to solicit their co-operation against the Porte. On March io, 1697 this embassy, under the leadership of Lefort, set out on its travels. Peter attached himself to it as a volunteer sailorman, "Peter Mikhailov," so as to have greater facility for learning ship-building and other technical sciences. As a political mission it failed utterly, the great powers being at that period far more interested in western than in eastern affairs. But person ally Peter learnt nearly all that he wanted to know—gunnery at Konigsberg, shipbuilding at Saardam and Deptford, anatomy at Leyden, engraving at Amsterdam—and was proceeding to Venice to complete his knowledge of navigation when the revolt of the stryeltsy, or musketeers (June 1698), recalled him to Moscow. This revolt has been greatly exaggerated. It was suppressed in an hour's time by the tsar's troops, of whom only one man was mortally wounded; and the horrible vengeance (September— October 1698) which Peter on his return to Russia wreaked upon the captive musketeers was due not to any actual fear of these antiquated warriors, but to his consciousness that behind them stood the reactionary majority of the nation who secretly sympa thized with, though they durst not assist, the rebels.
Peter's foreign tour had more than ever convinced him of the inherent superiority of the foreigner. Imitation had neces
sarily to begin with externals, and Peter at once fell foul of the long beards and Oriental costumes which symbolized the arch conservatism of old Russia. On the 26th of April 1698 the chief men of the tsardom were assembled round his wooden hut at Preobrazhenskoye, and Peter with his own hand deliberately clipped off the beards and moustaches of his chief boyars. The ukaz of the 1st of September 1698 allowed as a compromise that beards should be worn, but a graduated tax was imposed upon their wearers. The wearing of the ancient costumes was f or bidden by the ukaz of the 4th of January 2700 ; thenceforth Saxon or Magyar jackets and French or German hose were prescribed. That the people themselves did not regard the reform as a trifle is plain from the numerous rebellions against it. By the ukaz of the 20th of December 1699 it was next commanded that hence forth the new year should not be reckoned, as heretofore, from the 1st of September, supposed to be the date of the creation, but from the first day of January, anno domini.