Cossacks.
Between the Dnieper and the Don northwards is Belgorod; then Nischgorod,
then Astrakan, the march of Asia and Europe with Kazan, recovered from
the Tartar empire of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane by Ivan Vasilovitch.
Siberia is peopled by Samoeides and Ostiaks, and its southern regions by
hordes of Tartars--like the Turks and Mongols, descendants of the
ancient Scythians. At the limit of Siberia is Kamschatka.

Throughout this vast but thinly populated empire the manners and customs
are Asiatic rather than European. As the Janissaries control the Turkish
government, so the Strelitz Guards used to dispose of the throne.
Christianity was not established till late in the tenth century, in the
Greek form, and liberated from the control of the Greek Patriarch, a
subject of the Grand Turk, in 1588.

Before Peter's day, Russia had neither the power, the cultivated
territories, the subjects, nor the revenues which she now enjoys. She
had no foothold in Livonia or Finland, little or no control over the
Cossacks or in Astrakan. The White, Black, Baltic, and Caspian seas were
of no use to a nation which had not even a name for a fleet. She had to
place herself on a level with the cultivated nations, though she was
without knowledge of the science of war by land or sea, and almost of
the rudiments of manufacture and agriculture, to say nothing of the fine
arts. Her sons were even forbidden to learn by travel; she seemed to
have condemned herself to eternal ignorance. Then Peter was born, and
Russia was created.

_II.--At the School of Europe_

It was owing to a series of dynastic revolutions and usurpations that
young Michael Romanoff, Peter's grandfather, was chosen Tsar at the age
of fifteen, in 1613. He was succeeded in 1645 by his son, Alexis
Michaelovitch. Alexis, in his wars with Poland, recovered from her
Smolensk, Kiev, and the Ukraine. He waged war with the Turk in aid of
Poland, introduced manufactures, and codified the laws, proving himself
a worthy sire for Peter the Great; but he died in 1677 too soon--he was
but forty-six--to complete the work he had begun. He was succeeded by
his eldest son, Feodor. There was a second, Ivan; and Peter, not five
years old, the child of his second marriage. Dying five years later,
Feodor named Peter his successor. An elder sister, Sophia, intrigued to
place the incapable Ivan on the throne instead, as her own puppet, by
the aid of the turbulent Strelitz Guard. After a ser