Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/344

 3°6 Readings in European History Moscow adorned with corpses of rebels. 349. How Alexander Gordon was promoted by Peter. (From a brief biog- raphy pref- aced to his History of Peter the Great.) To prove to all people how holy and inviolable are those walls of the city which the Streltsi rashly meditated scaling in a sudden assault, beams were run out from all the embra- sures in the walls near the gates, in each of which two rebels were hanged. This day beheld about two hundred and fifty die that death. There are few cities fortified with as many palisades as Moscow has given gibbets to her guardian Streltsi. [In front of the nunnery where Sophia was confined] there were thirty gibbets erected in a quadrangle shape, from which there hung two hundred and thirty Streltsi ; the three princi- pal ringleaders, who tendered a petition to Sophia touching the administration of the realm, were hanged close to the windows of that princess, presenting, as it were, the petitions that were placed in their hands, so near that Sophia might with ease touch them. Peter, like his father, had a great number of foreign officers about him, German, French, Dutch, English, Scotch, in whom he placed great reliance. Patrick Gordon, a Scotchman, was made chief of the Russian forces, while the tsar made another Scot, Alexander Gordon, major general. The latter wrote an interesting History of Peter the Great. After serving for a short time under Louis XIV, Gordon had drifted to Russia about 1694, and appears to have gained his first pro- motion in the following manner : Soon after his arrival in Russia he was invited to a marriage, where a good many young gentlemen of the best families in the country were present. Few nations are fond of foreigners; and the Russians in particular are too apt to despise them. When these gentlemen were warm with their liquor some of them spoke very disrespectfully of foreigners, and of the Scots in particular; they even went the length of personal abuse. Mr. Gordon, who to his last hour had a strong passion for his country, could not hear it abused by