by a series of small, but
important additions to the Russian territory. In 1701-2, great part of
Livonia and Ingria were subdued, including the banks of the Neva, where
on May 27, 1703, the city of St. Petersburg was founded. It was not till
1710 that the conquest of Courland, with the remainder of Livonia,
including the important harbors of Riga and Revel, gave to Russia that
free navigation of the Baltic Sea which Peter had longed for as the
greatest benefit which he could confer upon his country.

After the battle of Pultowa Charles fled to Turkey, where he continued
for some years, shut out from his own dominions, and intent chiefly on
spiriting the Porte to make war on Russia. In this he succeeded; but
hostilities were terminated almost at their beginning by the battle of
the Pruth, fought July 20, 1711, in which the Russian army, not
mustering more than forty thousand men, and surrounded by five times
that number of Turks, owed its preservation to Catherine, first the
mistress, at this time the wife, and finally the acknowledged partner
and successor of Peter on the throne of Russia. By her coolness and
prudence, while the czar, exhausted by fatigue, anxiety, and
self-reproach, was laboring under nervous convulsions, to which he was
liable throughout life, a treaty was concluded with the vizier in
command of the Turkish army, by which the Russians preserved indeed
life, liberty, and honor, but were obliged to resign Azof, to give up
the forts and burn the vessels built to command the sea bearing that
name, and to consent to other stipulations, which must have been very
bitter to the hitherto successful conqueror. Returning to the seat of
government, his foreign policy for the next few years was directed to
breaking down the power of Sweden, and securing his new metropolis by
prosecuting his conquests on the northern side of the Gulf of Finland.
Here he was entirely successful; and the whole of Finland itself, and of
the gulf, fell into his hands. These provinces were secured to Russia by
the peace of Nieustadt, in 1721. Upon this occasion the senate or state
assembly of Russia requested him to assume the title of Emperor of all
the Russias, with the adjunct of Great, and Father of his Country.

If our sketch of the latter years of Peter's life appears meagre and
unsatisfactory, it is to be recollected that the history of that life is
the history of a great empire, which it would be vain to condense within
our lim