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Rh the country, and fought hard to give it an outlet on the Swedish Baltic, where he created Petrograd. His successors, guided by Catherine the Second, endeavoured with equal energy to give Russia a second outlet to the sea in the south, at Turkey's cost, and apparently they carried out to the letter the recommendations contained in the political testament of Peter the Great. Prophecies are usually correct if they are made after the event. The famous political testament was apparently written, not in Peter the Great's lifetime, but a century after, when Russia had succeeded in acquiring the shores of the Black Sea and had become the leader of the Slav nations belonging to the Greek Church. Peter the Great's political testament was first published in a book, 'De la Politique et des Progrés de la Puissance Russe,' written by Lesur in 1811, at a time when Napoleon had resolved upon a war with Russia. It was published to influence European, and especially English, opinion against that country. According to Berkholz ('Napoleon I, Auteur du Testament de Pierre le Grand'), Napoleon himself was the author. The abrupt telegraphic style of the composition indeed greatly resembles that of its putative author. The best informed now generally consider the will of Peter the Great to be a forgery. Bismarck, who was on the most intimate terms with Czar Alexander the Second, described it as 'apocryphal' in the fifth chapter of his 'Memoirs.' The value of Peter the Great's will as a document revealing the traditional policy and traditions of Russia is nil.

The desire of Peter the Great's successors to conquer the Turkish territory to the south of Russia, and to acquire for the country an outlet on the Black Sea, was not unnatural, for at a time when transport by land was almost a physical impossibility in Russia the country could be opened up and developed only by means of her splendid natural waterways and of seaports. As Russia's most fruitful territories are in the south, access to the Black Sea was for her development far more important than an