in his
employ,--navy captains, pilots, surgeons, gunners, boat-builders,
blacksmiths, and various other mechanics,--having an eye to the
industrial development of his country; which was certainly better than
driving out of his kingdom four hundred thousand honest people, as Louis
XIV. did because they were Protestants. But Peter did not tarry long in
Vienna, whose military establishments he came to study, being compelled
to return hastily to Moscow to suppress a rebellion. He returned a much
wiser man; I doubt if any person ever was more improved than he by his
travels. What an example to tourists in these times! All travelling
(except explorations) is a dissipation and waste of time unless
self-improvement is the main object. Pleasure-seeking is the greatest
vanity on this earth, for he who _seeks_ pleasure never finds it; but it
comes when it is a minor consideration.

The apprenticeship of Peter is now completed, and he enters more
seriously upon those great labors which have given him an immortality. I
am compelled to be brief in stating them.

The first thing he did, on his return, was finally to crush the
Streltzi, who fomented treasons and were hostile to reform. He had
wisely left General Gordon at Moscow with six thousand soldiers,
disciplined after the European fashion. In abolishing the turbulent and
prejudicial Streltzi, he is accused of great cruelties. He summarily
executed or imprisoned some four thousand of them caught in acts of
treason and rebellion, and drafted the rest into distant regiments. He
may have been unnecessarily cruel, as critics have accused Oliver
Cromwell of being in his treatment of the Irish. But, cruel or not, he
got rid of troops he could not trust, and organized soldiers whom he
could,--for he must have tools to work with if he would do his work. I
neither praise nor condemn his mode of working; I seek to show how he
performed his task.

After disbanding rebellious soldiers, he sought to make his army more
efficient by changing the dress of the entire army. He did away with the
long coat reaching to the heels, something like that which ladies wear
in rainy days; and the drawers not unlike petticoats; and the long,
bushy beards. He found more difficulty in making this reform than in
taking Azof, although aided by Mentchikof, his favorite,
fellow-traveller, and prime minister. He was not content with cutting
off the beards of the soldiers and shortening their coats,--he wished to