very luxury and
every opportunity for vice and idleness. They did as they liked from
morning to night and no restraint of any kind or description was placed
upon them. Sophia hoped that they would all become worthless and
vicious and that Peter would do the same. Perhaps, she thought, he
might even weaken himself by drinking bouts and riotous orgies so that
he would not even live to claim the actual power of the throne.

It was in the company of these boys, however, that Peter gave the first
signs that he was not only bright and capable but possessed the
qualities of real greatness. Instead of doing nothing, as Sophia had
wickedly hoped, he soon became a natural leader among his companions.
Although he had no instructors he kept up his studies and made his
fellows do likewise, and he organized the group of boys into a military
company which he drilled with the greatest care, teaching them tactics
and the theories of soldiering, which he obtained from the officers of
the army, and organizing a military school of such excellence that it
continued on a practical basis long after he became Czar.

The constant efforts of the young Prince to improve himself, his zeal,
energy and ability soon attracted the attention of the Russian
noblemen, who said to themselves that here was a ruler worth having.
Many of them had been Sophia's friends, but now they began to turn
toward Peter, and Sophia soon saw that the design she had entertained
was a two-edged one, and that she had only injured herself.

Peter now was a youth of eighteen, and had a strong party of noblemen
ready to support him in his claims to power. His friends and counselors
desired that he marry, and soon the Princess Eudoxia Lopukhin became
his bride. Sophia, of course, had been unwilling that the marriage take
place, but she couldn't prevent it; and from that time onward her power
grew less each day.

The young Prince continued to show every indication of his energy and
ability. He worked in the shipyards to learn ship building, and he
studied military tactics at every opportunity. He had a company of
soldiers formed, who dressed in European uniform instead of in the
Asiatic garb of Russia. He himself had drilled as a private in this
company. He was fond of taking long trips for military purposes as well
as for shipbuilding, and continued to do so after his marriage.

At about this time Russia engaged in an unsuccessful war in the Crimea.
The Russian General, Go