This tragedy is regarded as the great stain on the reign of Peter.  It shocked the civilized world.  I do not wish to exculpate Peter from cruelty or hardheartedness; I would neither justify him nor condemn him.  In this matter, I think, he is to be judged by the supreme tribunal of Heaven.  I do not know enough to acquit or condemn him.  All I know is, that his treatment of his son was both a misfortune and a stain on his memory.  The people to decide this point are those rich fathers who have rebellious, prodigal, reckless, and worthless sons, hopelessly dissipated, and rendered imbecile by self-indulgence and wasteful revels; or those people who discuss the expediency and apparent state necessity for the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, when the welfare of a great kingdom was set against the ties of blood.

After the death of Alexis, a few more years are given to the Czar to follow out his improvements, centralize his throne, and extend his territories both on the Baltic and in the East.  The death of Charles XII. enabled him to take what Swedish provinces he needed to protect his mercantile interests, and to snatch from Persia the southern coast of the Caspian,—­the original kingdom of Cyrus.  “It is not land I want,” said he, “but water.”  This is the key to all his conquests.  He wanted an outlet to the sea, on both sides his empire.  He did not aim at territorial enlargement so much as at facilities to enrich and civilize his empire.

Having done his work,—­the work, I think, for which he was raised up,—­he sets about the succession to his throne.  Amid unprecedented pomp he celebrates the coronation of his faithful and devoted wife, to whom he also has been faithful.  It is she only who understands and can carry out his imperial policy.  He himself at Moscow, 1724, amid unusual solemnities, placed the imperial crown upon her brow, and proudly and yet humbly walked before her in the gorgeous procession as a captain of her guard.  Before all the great dignitaries of his empire he gives the following reasons for his course:—­

“The Empress Catherine, our dearest consort, was an important help to us in all our dangers, not in war alone, but in other expeditions in which she voluntarily accompanied us; serving us with her able counsel, notwithstanding the natural weakness of her sex, more particularly at the battle of Pruth, when our army was reduced to twenty-two thousand men, while the Turks were two hundred thousand strong.  It was in this desperate condition, above all others, that she signalized her zeal by a courage superior to her sex.  For which reasons, and in virtue of that power which God has given us, we thus honor our spouse with the imperial crown.”

Peter died in the following year, after a reign of more than forty years, bequeathing a centralized empire to his successors, a large and disciplined army, a respectable navy, and many improvements in agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and the arts,—­yea, schools and universities for the education of the higher classes.