Page:The American encyclopedia of history, biography and travel (IA americanencyclop00blak).pdf/495

 jects which were to bring forth their fruits in peace. At this period he was founding hospitals and schools, erecting linen and paper factories, and importing sheep from Saxony, gathering together smiths, braziers, and artificers of every description, and having the mines of Siberia explored for ore.

It is not our purpose to detail the battles and sieges which took place in the course of the following year or two, although we must mention one of them more particularly, as it was the occasion of introducing to Peter a person who henceforth took part in his fortunes. Marienburg was a little town on the confines of Ingria and Livonia, which, besieged by Peter's army, surrendered at discretion. Either through accident or design, the Swedes who defended it set fire to the magazine, which so incensed the Russians, that they destroyed the town, and carried away all the inhabitants. Among the prisoners was a young girl of about sixteen years of age, a Livonian by birth, who had been brought up from charity in the house of a Lutheran minister. There is no reason to suppose she had occupied any higher station than that of servant in his family; but it is said that she had been married to a Swedish soldier, who fell in the siege, the very day before it took place. This widowed orphan was taken to the camp of one of the Russian generals. Precisely how or when Peter first saw her, can never be known; but the best authenticated and most likely story is, that while engaged in handing round dried fruits and liquors at the house, or in the tent of Prince Menzikoff, the Livonian slave, known only by the name of Martha, first attracted the attention of the czar. According to his invariable custom, when pleased by the manners or countenance of any one, he entered into conversation with her, and soon discovered that she possessed a mind of more than ordinary intelligence. To this she joined, as events proved, a cheerful and lively disposition, a kind heart, and an amiable temper. No doubt Peter had penetration enough to see that she was precisely the woman who could share his enthusiasm, sympathise in his plans, and be, in short, the wife he wanted. The meanness, or indeed obscurity of her birth, was no obstacle to him; he had absolute power to raise her to the loftiest condition in his empire; and, accordingly, by the name of Catherine, which she now adopted, he married her at first privately, but a few years afterwards with the state and ceremony of public nuptials. Thus was chosen the partner of his throne, and his successor upon it.

It was soon after these events—1700—that the death of 'the patriarch,' or supreme head of the Russian church, afforded the czar an opportunity of beginning some wholesome reforms in that quarter. He had thought it necessary to commence his military career by fulfilling the humblest duties of a soldier, and we have seen that he set about learning the art of ship-building by working with his own hands; but when he boldly annihilated the office of patriarch, and placed himself, without any preparatory steps, at the head of the church, he probably thought there was nothing the priests could teach him which he desired to learn. Certainly a set of men who believed that sanctity dwelt in a beard, and who were in the habit of placing letters of introduction to their patron saint in the hands of deceased persons when laid in their coffins, were not likely to meet with much respect from a great reformer like Peter I: and the few whose glimmer of intelligence raised them above the gross superstition and corruption of the mass, must have experienced all the temptations of self