he captives was a young peasant girl,
who eventually became the Empress Catharine, and to whose counsels
Peter was much indebted for his great success.

She was the daughter of a poor woman of Livonia; lost her mother at
the age of three years; and, at that early age, attracted the notice
of the parish clerk, a Lutheran clergyman: was brought up with his own
daughters, and married a young sergeant of the army, who was killed in
the capture of the city. She interested the Russian general, by her
intense grief and great beauty; was taken into his family, and, soon
after, won the favor of Prince Menzikoff, the prime minister of the
czar; became mistress of his palace; there beheld Peter himself,
captivated him, and was married to him,--at first privately, and
afterwards publicly. Her rise, from so obscure a position, in a
distant country town, to be the wife of the absolute monarch of an
empire of thirty-three millions of people, is the most extraordinary
in the history of the world. When she enslaved the czar by the power
of her charms, she was only seventeen years of age; two years after
the foundations of St. Petersburg were laid.

[Sidenote: Building of St. Petersburg.]

The building of this great northern capital was as extraordinary as
the other great acts of this monarch. Amid the marshes, at the mouth
of the Neva, a rival city to the ancient metropolis of the empire
arose in five months. But one hundred thousand people perished during
the first year, in consequence of the severity of their labors, and
the pestilential air of the place. The new city was an object of as
great disgust to the nobles of Russia and the inhabitants of the older
cities, as it was the delight and pride of the czar, who made it the
capital of his vast dominions. And the city was scarcely built, before
its great commercial advantages were appreciated; and vessels from all
parts of the world, freighted with the various treasures of its
different kingdoms and countries, appeared in the harbor of Cronstadt.

Charles XII. looked with contempt on the Herculean labors of his rival
to civilize and enrich his country, and remarked "that the czar might
amuse himself as he saw fit in building a city, but that he should
soon take it from him, and set fire to his wooden house;" a bombastic
boast, which, like most boasting, came most signally to nought.

[Sidenote: New War with Sweden.]

Indeed, success now turned in favor of Peter, whose forces had