Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/342

 304 Readings in Europea7i History Burnet's re- flections upon Russian autocracy. Peter's ven- geance upon the rebels. Princess Sophia's] intrigues. There was a mixture both of passion and severity in his temper. He is resolute, but understands little of war, and seemed not at all inquisitive that way. After I had seen him often, and had conversed much with him, I could not but adore the depth of the providence of God that had raised up such a furious man to so absolute an authority over so great a part of the world. David, consider- ing the great things God had made for the use of man, broke out into the meditation, " What is man, that thou art so mindful of him ? " But here there is an occasion for revers- ing these words, since man seems a very contemptible thing in the sight of God, while such a person as the tsar has such multitudes put, as it were, under his feet, exposed to his restless jealousy and savage temper. He went from hence to the court of Vienna, where he purposed to have stayed some time, but he was called home sooner than he had intended upon a discovery, or a sus- picion, of intrigues managed by his sister. The strangers, to whom he trusted most, were so true to him that those designs were crushed before he came back. But on this occasion he let loose his fury on all whom he suspected. Some hundreds of them were hanged all around Moskow, and it was said that he cut off many heads with his own hand ; and so far was he from relenting or showing any sort of tenderness that he seemed delighted with it. How long he is to be the scourge of that nation God only knows. As Burnet mentions, the old and mutinous Muscovite guard — the Streltsi (or Strelitz, as it is sometimes less ac- curately written) — took occasion during Peter's absence to rebel. Peter's sister Sophia was implicated, and the tsar hurried home to make a cruel investigation and take horri- ble vengeance upon the seditious. An Austrian secretary of legation, named Von Korb, who was in Moscow on the tsar's return, has left in his diary a painful but probably very accurate account of Peter's savage conduct.