Peter the Great"
was written after Voltaire took up his residence at Ferney in
1758. This epitome is prepared from the French text.

_I.--All the Russias_

When, about the beginning of the present century, the Tsar Peter laid
the foundations of Petersburg, or, rather, of his empire, no one foresaw
his success. Anyone who then imagined that a Russian sovereign would be
able to send victorious fleets to the Dardanelles, to subjugate the
Crimea, to clear the Turks out of four great provinces, to dominate the
Black Sea, to set up the most brilliant court in Europe, and to make all
the arts flourish in the midst of war--anyone expressing such an idea
would have passed for a mere dreamer. Peter the Great built the Russian
Empire on a foundation firm and lasting.

That empire is the most extensive in our hemisphere. Poland, the Arctic
Ocean, Sweden, and China lie on its boundaries. It is so vast that when
it is mid-day at its western extremity it is nearly midnight at the
eastern. It is larger than all the rest of Europe, than the Roman
Empire, than the empire of Darius which Alexander conquered. But it will
take centuries, and many more such Tsars as Peter, to render that
territory populous, productive, and covered with cities, like the
northern lands of Europe.

The province nearest to our own realms is Livonia, long a heathen
region. Tsar Peter conquered it from the Swedes.

To the north is the province of Revel and Esthonia, also conquered from
the Swedes by Peter. The Gulf of Finland borders Esthonia; and here at
this junction of the Neva and Lake Ladoga is the city of Petersburg, the
youngest and the fairest of the cities of the empire, built by Peter in
spite of a mass of obstacles. Northward, again, is Archangel, which the
English discovered in 1533, with the result that the commerce fell
entirely into their hands and those of the Dutch. On the west of
Archangel is Russian Lapland. Then, ascending the Dwina from the coast,
we arrive at the territories of Moscow, long the centre of the empire. A
century ago Moscow was without the ordinary amenities of civilisation,
though it could display an Oriental profusion on state occasions.

West of Moscow is Smolensk, recovered from the Poles by Peter's father
Alexis. Between Petersburg and Smolensk is Novgorod; south of Smolensk
is Kiev or Little Russia; and Red Russia, or the Ukraine, watered by the
Dnieper, the Borysthenes of the Greeks--the country of the