t the Turks, with a combined army of two hundred and ten thousand
troops, were ravaging the province of Azof. Urging his troops
impetuously onward, he crossed the Pruth and entered Jassi, the
capital of Moldavia. The grand vizier, with an army three times more
numerous, crossed the Danube and advanced to meet him. For three days
the contending hosts poured their shot into each other's bosoms. The
tzar, outnumbered and surrounded, though enabled to hold his position
behind his intrenchments, saw clearly that famine would soon compel
him to surrender. His position was desperate.

Catharine had accompanied her husband on this expedition, and, at her
earnest solicitation, the tzar sent proposals of peace to the grand
vizier, accompanied with a valuable present of money and jewels. The
Turk, dreading the energies which despair might develop in so powerful
a foe, was willing to come into an accommodation, and entered into a
treaty, which, though greatly to the advantage of the Ottoman Porte,
rescued the tzar from the greatest peril in which he had ever been
placed. The grand vizier good-naturedly sent several wagons of
provisions to the camp of his humbled foes, and the Russians returned
to their homes, having lost twenty thousand men.

Alexis, the oldest son of Peter, had ever been a bad boy, and he had
now grown up into an exceedingly dissolute and vicious young man.
Indolent, licentious, bacchanalian in his habits, and overbearing, his
father had often threatened to deprive him of his right of succession,
and to shave his crown and consign him to a convent. Hoping to improve
his character, he urged his marriage, and selected for him a beautiful
princess of Wolfenbuttle, as the possessions of the dukes of Brunswick
were then called. The old ducal castle still stands on the banks of
the Oka about forty miles south-east of Hanover. The princess of
Wolfenbuttle, who was but eighteen years of age, was sister to the
Empress of Germany, consort of Charles VI. The young Russian prince
was dragged very reluctantly to this marriage, for he wished to be
shackled by no such ties. He was the son of Peter's first wife, not of
the Empress Catharine, whom the tzar had now acknowledged. Peter and
Catharine attended these untoward nuptials, which were celebrated in
the palace of the Queen of Poland, in which a princess as lovely in
character as in person was sacrificed to one who made the few
remaining months of her life a continued martyr