There must be nine ships of the line, and twenty frigates carrying fifty guns, and bombships, and fireships.  That would require a great deal of money.  It was then that the utility of the system of serfdom became apparent.  The prelates and monasteries were taxed—­one vessel to every eighty thousand serfs!—­according to their wealth all the orders of nobility to bear their portion in the same way, and the peasants toiled on, never dreaming that they were building a great navy for the great Tsar.  Peter then sent fifty young nobles of the court to Venice, England, and the Netherlands to learn the arts of shipbuilding and seamanship and gunnery.  But how could he be sure of the knowledge and the science of these idle youths—­unless he himself owned it and knew better than they?  The time had come for his long-indulged dream of visiting the Western kingdoms.

But while there were rejoicings at the victory over the Turks, there was a feeling of universal disgust at the new order of things; with the militia (the Streltsui) because foreigners were preferred to them and because they were subjected to an unaccustomed discipline; with the nobles because their children were sent into foreign lands among heretics to learn trades like mechanics; and with the landowners and clergy because the cost of equipping a great fleet fell upon them.  All classes were ripe for a revolt.

Sophia, from her cloister, was in correspondence with her agents, and a conspiracy ripened to overthrow Peter and his reforms.  As the Tsar was one evening sitting down to an entertainment with a large party of ladies and gentlemen, word was brought that someone desired to see him privately upon an important matter.  He promptly excused himself and was taken in a sledge to the appointed place.  There he graciously sat down to supper with a number of gentlemen, as if perfectly ignorant of their plans.  Suddenly his guard arrived, entered the house, and arrested the entire party, after which Peter returned in the best of humor to his interrupted banquet, quite as if nothing had happened.  The next day the prisoners under torture revealed the plot to assassinate him and then lay it to the foreigners, this to be followed, by a general massacre of Europeans—­men, women, and children.  The ringleaders were first dismembered, then beheaded—­their legs and arms being displayed in conspicuous places in the city, and the rest of the conspirators, excepting his sister Sophia, were sent to Siberia.

With this parting and salutary lesson to his subjects in 1697, Peter started upon his strange travels—­in quest of the arts of civilization!