563. Peter the Great: Bloodbath in the Kremlin (Part 2)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rest Is History – Episode 563: Peter the Great: Bloodbath in the Kremlin (Part 2)

Released on May 7, 2025 by Goalhanger

In this riveting second installment of their deep dive into the life of Peter the Great, hosts Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook explore the tumultuous journey of one of Russia's most transformative and brutal rulers. This episode meticulously unpacks Peter's covert travels to Western Europe, his cultural immersions, and the ruthless consolidation of power upon his return to Russia. Below is a detailed summary capturing the key discussions, insights, and notable quotes from the episode.

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1. Peter the Great's Incognito Journey to Western Europe

The episode begins with Peter the Great assuming an incognito identity, "Peter Mikhailov," to embark on an unprecedented "gap year" across Western Europe. This daring move underscores his fervent desire to modernize Russia by immersing himself in Western culture and technology.

Notable Quote:

• Tom Holland [02:28]: "So he's... behaving in ludicrous ways. Wheelbarrow races. We both love a wheelbarrow race."

2. Cultural Observations and Modernizing Ambitions

During his travels, Peter engages with various Western practices and innovations. His fascination with shipbuilding in Holland leads him to design a Russian naval flag inspired by the Dutch States General, foreshadowing Russia's burgeoning naval ambitions.

Notable Quotes:

• Dominic Sandbrook [13:42]: "So it's Dutch, exactly."
• Tom Holland [28:05]: "And the other thing he's very keen on is the techniques that are being developed by Dutch anatomists to preserve corpses."

3. Challenges and Adaptations in England

Peter's arrival in London presents both cultural marvels and practical challenges. His attempts to integrate are met with public fascination, leading to unintentional notoriety. Despite his efforts to work anonymously, his towering stature and distinct accent make anonymity elusive.

Notable Quotes:

• Dominic Sandbrook [25:47]: "But by the end of the week, he's only been there a week. And it's absolutely ludicrous scenes because by now hundreds of people have come from Amsterdam to watch him working."
• Tom Holland [29:02]: "But Dominic, I've mentioned it before, but the brilliant evocation of all this, the japes and the pranks."

4. Return to Russia and Ruthless Reforms

Upon receiving alarming news of a potential mutiny by the Streltsi—elite soldiers loyal to his sister Sophia—Peter aborts his European sojourn to return to Moscow. His return is marked by extreme brutality as he swiftly eliminates threats to his authority, including the execution and public punishment of mutineers.

Notable Quotes:

• Dominic Sandbrook [54:17]: "He will absolutely join in and he will be beating these people with an ivory handled cane."
• Tom Holland [58:23]: "So not so jolly now."

5. Westernization of Russian Society

With the elimination of the Streltsi, Peter enforces sweeping cultural and societal reforms to Westernize Russia. This includes:

• Dress Code Overhaul: Shaving beards, banning traditional caftans, and enforcing Western attire such as waistcoats and britches.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Dominic Sandbrook [50:12]: "So basically, up to this point, Russian noblemen had worn these caftans... he cuts the sleeves of people's robes off."

• Calendar and Coinage Reformation: Adopting the Julian calendar and standardizing coinage based on Western models.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Dominic Sandbrook [51:04]: "He changes the calendar... they adopt the Julian calendar."

6. Alliance with Augustus the Strong and the Prelude to War

Peter's interactions with Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, lay the groundwork for the Great Northern War. Their mutual disdain for the Swedes catalyzes a strategic alliance aiming to dominate the Baltic region.

Notable Quotes:

• Dominic Sandbrook [45:20]: "He loves a cabinet of curiosities, doesn't he?"
• Tom Holland [60:15]: "Exactly. So the News of the treaty reaches Moscow on the 18th of August, 1700, and they have a massive fireworks display in celebration. And the very next day, the 19th of August, 1700, Peter declares war on Sweden."

7. Consolidation of Absolute Power

Peter's relentless pursuit of modernization is juxtaposed with his tyrannical methods. The episode highlights his capacity for both visionary leadership and extreme violence, illustrating the complex legacy he leaves behind.

Notable Quotes:

• Dominic Sandbrook [58:51]: "Robert K. Massey, his biographer, he doesn't say he was, but he says this was a public demonstration of Peter's seriousness about his project."
• Tom Holland [50:16]: "Dominic, when we talk about the stigma around mental health, it is tempting to think of it as a modern issue..."

8. Conclusion and Foreshadowing the Great Northern War

The episode concludes with Peter's declaration of war against Sweden, marking the onset of the Great Northern War. This pivotal moment signals a significant shift in Northern and Eastern European power dynamics, setting the stage for future episodes.

Notable Quotes:

• Tom Holland [61:17]: "And as we say next week, the Great Northern War. So bye. Bye."
• Dominic Sandbrook [61:18]: "Yeah. And as we say next week, the Great Northern War."

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Final Thoughts

Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook adeptly balance engaging storytelling with scholarly analysis, bringing to life the duality of Peter the Great as both a modernizer and a ruthless autocrat. This episode not only sheds light on Peter's complex personality and policies but also sets the groundwork for understanding the profound impact of the Great Northern War on Russia and Europe.

Listeners are encouraged to join the Rest Is History Club for exclusive content and early access to future episodes that continue to explore the intricate tapestry of historical events and figures.

Transcript

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Thank you for listening to the Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes ad free listening, early access to series and membership of our much loved chat community, go to thereestishory.com and join the club that is thereestishistory.com.

[Tom Holland]

The Tsar is a man of very hot temper, soon inflamed and very brutal in his passion. He raises his natural heat by drinking much brandy, which he rectified himself with great application. He is subject to convulsive motions all over his body and his head seems to be afflicted with these. He was desirous to understand our doctrine. He was indeed resolved to encourage learning and to polish his people by sending some of them to travel in other countries and to draw strangers to come and live among them. He seemed apprehensive still of his sister's intrigues. After I had seen him often and had conversed much with him, I could not but adore the depth of the providence of God that had raised up such a furious man to so absolute authority over so great a part of the world. So there we have a Scotsman. Dominic.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes.

[Tom Holland]

You could tell from my magnificent impression of a Scotsman, a man called Gilbert Burnett, who met with Peter the Great in London in 1698. But by far the most significant and interesting thing about Gilbert Burnett is that he was the Bishop of Salisbury.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He was.

[Tom Holland]

And how wonderful it is we are doing this series about Peter the Great, who we left as master of Moscow. He'd crushed his sister Sofia's resistance. He'd secured the loyalty of the Streltsi, these frankly sinister and faintly grotesque soldiers who wear yellow boots and caftans and who have a great fondness for jumping on the body parts of people that they've chopped and sliced into little bits. Yeah, but here he is in England.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

He's twitching uncontrollably. He's drinking brandy, he's chatting about Protestant doctrine, and he's doing it with a man from my neck of the woods. From. From Wiltshire, From Salisbury.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

From the Salisbury area, Yes. I mean, it's great to have Wiltshire in the Salisbury area on the show.

[Tom Holland]

Dominic, I'll be honest. My worry when you suggested doing Peter the Great was that Salisbury wouldn't get a look in. But how wrong I was.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The weirdest thing is not just that he's chatting about Christian doctrine with people from the Salisbury area, it's the fact that he's doing it under a false name. So he's traveled incognito. I mean, this is such a mad story. The Tsar of All the Russias, and has basically taken an extended gap year to travel anonymously to Western Europe and to hang around in shipyards and in taverns, interfering with actresses and kind of behaving in ludicrous ways. Wheelbarrow races. We both love a wheelbarrow race. We've only told that story 20 times on. The rest is history. And now we're going to tell us again. Brilliant. So should we get back to where we left off? So, the summer of 1689, Peter has deposed Sophia. He's 17 years old. He is. Now, we haven't actually described him physically. He is a massive bloke. He's six foot seven. He's very kind of angular. He's got long brown hair and he's got a moustache. Interestingly, not a beard.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, not a beard.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Now, Bishop Burnett mentioned his convulsive motions. So some people say, well, maybe he's just very restless, he's very impatient and stuff. But other people say maybe he's got a kind of a nervous tick. Because don't forget, when he was 10 years old, he saw his family chopped up and stamped on.

[Tom Holland]

That would give you bad mental health.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I think betterhelp or any mental health provider would have had a field day with Peter the Great, to be completely honest with you. But I think it's also possible he's mildly epileptic. There are lots of descriptions of him when he's in Europe, having sort of fits on the left hand side of his face or his arm, his eyes rolling back in his head, all of this sort of stuff. And I think it's also fair to say, Tom, he doesn't have the best and healthiest lifestyle.

[Tom Holland]

No.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Cause actually, although he's taken supreme power, he then sort of gives it away. Cause he says to his mother, you know, can you run Russia for me, please? Because I just want to hang around with my mates, with my soldiers.

[Tom Holland]

And his lathes.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And his lathes. And he wants to spend a lot of time. He loves the German suburb. So this place we talked about last time, which is full of kind of Scotsmen and Dutchmen and things, and they're all smoking pipes outside Protestant churches and talking to women, which the Orthodox Church.

[Tom Holland]

Doesn'T approve of at all.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The Orthodox Church doesn't approve of at all. And his closest friends, or some of them at least, come from the German suburb. So we talked last time. We promised we'd talk about General Gordon. We always liked General Gordon on the show. This is a different General Gordon, not the bloke who died in Khartoum but.

[Tom Holland]

Still a friend of the show.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, he's a Scottish mercenary who came from the Highlands. He came from a Catholic family, so he basically left Scotland. And then he had an amazing career, actually. He fought for the Swedes against the Poles, then he fought for the Poles against the Swedes, then he fought for the Swedes against the Poles again. And then he fought for the Poles against the Swedes again.

[Tom Holland]

And that's fine, isn't it? That's legitimate. Yeah. I mean, nobody really minds about that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

That's how 17th century warfare works. It's basically like being a star footballer. You transfer from team to team. I think you can't fight against your own country, but you can fight for others and that's completely legitimate. And he ended up serving the czars. And this guy, General Gordon, becomes basically Peter's chief military advisor, his tutor, I suppose. And then there's another mercenary who is called Franz Lafort, who's from Geneva, who basically is a massive drinker and a dancer. Charming. His house, we're told, is always full of women who Petersburg for Robert K. Massey describes as rollicking, buxom, sturdy wenches who did not take offense at barracks language or the admiring touch of rough male hands. So that kind of gives you a sense of the general vibe at these occasions, I think it's fair to say.

[Tom Holland]

Yes. And just on the topic of rough male hands, Peter's hands are very calloused, aren't they? Because he's been with his lathes and all of that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right. Because it's been like chopping stones or whatever he's doing.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. And so when, when he goes on his gap year and he meets with all these, you know, members of royalty and stuff, he's always showing off his calluses.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He is. He's very proud of them.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

In an age when people would be proud of not having calloused hands, he's quite the reverse. So over time, Peter and these. This bloke, Lefort and their pals. So actually he picks up Lefort's girlfriend, who's called Anna Mons, and she loves a drink and a laugh, and she becomes his mistress. Anyway, Peter and all these pals, they basically they form something that they call the Jolly Company. I feel I tend to actually think either of us would have really enjoyed life in the Jolly Company.

[Tom Holland]

I'd have hated it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I think you might enjoy it for a day. It's basically a stag do, a massive stag do.

[Tom Holland]

I hate stag dos.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

There's often about 80 of them, sometimes as many as 200. And remember, Peter is the czar of Russia and he's 17 years old. They will roam the land, basically turning up at Russian noblemen's houses and saying, you know, put us up. And they'll have these enormous feasts. The feast normally starts at midday. It's actually very much like our working lunches that. The rest is history with the production team.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, it is.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The feast starts at midday and it lasts till the next day. They have a pause every now and again to have a smoke or to play bowls or to shoot muskets or let off fireworks.

[Tom Holland]

And isn't this kind of shenanigans with bears and bellows and things?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right, exactly. So there's a lot of beer drinking. Very like the rest. It's history. Working lunches. There's a lot of beer drinking and toasts. But there's also pranks. We love a prank. So if there's a fat man there, they'll often strip the fat man and drag him across ice on his bare bottom. They would shove candles into you, insert candles and light them. At least one man is killed by having. By having air blown up him with bellows. So they insert bellows into you and blow you up.

[Tom Holland]

That's what I remember. The bellows jape.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Would you burst? Do you think he burst? I mean, that's.

[Tom Holland]

Well, I don't know, because if they're playing japes on fat people, presumably if you blow a fat person up with the bellows, there's more capacity.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, Dominic, I've mentioned it before, but the brilliant evocation of all this, the japes and the pranks.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And the, frankly, kind of murderous jollity of the Jolly Company is brilliantly evoked in the Great.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right. The Catherine the Great series with Nicholas.

[Tom Holland]

Hoult, who is playing Peter the Great's grandson. But I think he's actually playing Peter the Great in this. Loads of toasts and going huzzah all the time.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. This is what's happening now. There is a slight. You could say there's a slight political side to this, because we talked last time about how Peter loves to kind of do this role playing and quite subversive role playing. He loves giving people, like, fake titles and nicknames and stuff. So the Jolly Company have their own sort of, what's called a mock czar, a guy who he calls the Prince Caesar, who's a friend of his, called Fedor Romadonovsky, and Peter calls him your Majesty. When Peter writes a letter to him, he always signs himself, you know, I'm your slave, I'm your bondsman and stuff. And this guy Romadanowski has to preside over the meetings of the Jolly Company. He almost pretends to be the Tsar, but he loves a prank. So his great prank. You would love this, Tom. If you turned up when you arrive, especially if you're kind of a newbie, you have to drink a large cup of peppered brandy that is offered to you by a trained. A trained bear. And if you say, oh, that's not for me, I don't like beverage brandy.

[Tom Holland]

I don't like trained bears either.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

While we're at it, the bear has been trained not just to offer you cups of brandy, but to strip you naked. Imagine being stripped by the bear.

[Tom Holland]

That's not the kind of thing that Wojtek got up to, I'm glad to say.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, no, our previous bear. We don't know the name of this bear, but it sounds absolutely splendid. So as time goes on, this becomes more and more formalised and ritualized. So by the 1690s, the Jolly Company has been organised into what Peter calls the All Joking All Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters. This clearly does have a slight political edge because it's a parody of the Church. So they have cardinals, they have bishops, they have deacons. Peter is just a deacon.

[Tom Holland]

But Dominic, the fact that there are cardinals, which you don't get in the Orthodox Church but you do get in the Catholic Church. I mean, he can say this is a parody of the heretical Caesarist Catholic Church, can't he?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, he can, I think. What lies behind this? So actually he started doing this, the All Drunken Synod, after there was the accession of a new patriarch who was very anti Western, very traditionalist. He was called Adrian and Peter despised Adrian. And I think he clearly wanted the All Drunken Synod to mock the Orthodox Church, but he knew he couldn't do it directly. So the rituals are Catholic, exactly as you say. Because it would be far too subversive.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, just on Peter's attitude to the Orthodox Church. I mean, he is still a devout believer, isn't he?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes, he is.

[Tom Holland]

It's not like he is a kind of Frederick the Great or someone like that who is contemptuous of Christianity.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, he's not at all. He's still pious, but he's fascinated by other forms of Christianity, as we'll see when he goes abroad. He wants to find out all about them. He's curious.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. So that's why he's talking to Gilbert Burnett.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I think it's fair to say he's a very violent man. He's very impatient, but he's not intolerant of other ideas. He's interested in other ideas, I think, which makes him different from a lot of Russian tsars.

[Tom Holland]

But you still wouldn't want to see him coming towards you with a pair of bellows.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Pair of bellows and a bear. That's terrifying.

[Tom Holland]

No.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So he has a mock prince Pope, who's his old tutor, who's a man called Nikita Zotoff, who presides over this synod. So on feast days, on religious feast days, to mock the church, they have their biggest kind of antics and rituals.

[Tom Holland]

And the Pope wears gloves made of mice skins.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's bonkers. So on Christmas, they ride around on sleighs, a sleigh drawn by 12 bald men. The mock Pope is wearing a tin hat and a costume made of playing cards, which seems bonkers. And the others are all wearing their clothes inside out, as you said, gloves of mice skins.

[Tom Holland]

Oh, I thought it was the paper war, then. So everyone's wearing it. That's a lot of mice you've had to be killed.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, yeah. And their sleighs are pulled by pigs and bears.

[Tom Holland]

Such a lot of bears.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I don't believe you could train a bear to pull it. I mean, maybe you could. Surely not the same bear who's stripping people naked.

[Tom Holland]

Well, I think if you could, you can train a bear to, you know, strip you bare if you don't want a. Yeah, a mug of spiced whiskey or whatever it was.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so is Peter doing anything other than sort of blowing people up with bellows and things? Yes, he's doing loads of naval stuff. So he goes up to Archangel. You mentioned Archangel in the previous episode. It's on the White Sea. It's the only Russian outlet to the sea. It's a little bit of a forerunner of St Petersburg, actually, because it has English and Dutch sailors who live there. It has sort of churches, Protestant churches. When you go to Archangel, there's taverns full of Dutch sea captains smoking pipes and talking about William of Orange. And he loves that. And he goes up there and it's actually at this point that he designs a flag for his sort of navy, because he's very interested in Holland. He models it on the flag of the Dutch States General, but he reorders the colors, so it's the white, blue and red flag of today's Russian Federation.

[Tom Holland]

So it's basically Dutch.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's Dutch, exactly.

[Tom Holland]

So the Russian Navy is English and the flag is Dutch. Yeah, Putin keeps quiet about that, doesn't he?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, he doesn't play that up as much as he could. So his first war is he thinks, I'll have a little crack at the Ottomans because they'd still got this deal with the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and co. They're meant to be fighting the Ottomans. So he decides he wants to capture Azov on the Black Sea. The first go at it in 1695 doesn't work, but in 1696 he goes down the River Daun with loads of Cossacks and he captures Azov from the Ottomans. And this is the first Russian victory for 20 years. So it's a great moment and he has his outlet now. It's not quite on the Black Sea, it's on the Sea of Azov. So he needs to go a little bit further to get into the Black Sea. However, it's a start. He has a triumph in Moscow and here again you see his kind of Westernizing ambitions. Because previously when Russian czars had triumphs, they were very orthodox occasions. There's lots of sort of chanting and waving around of icons.

[Tom Holland]

So very second Rome.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. But Peter's is really very first Rome. He has statues of Hercules and of Mars. They put Julius Caesar's I came, I saw, I conquered, Veni, Vidi, Vicki on kind of classical gates. As always, Peter, his role playing, his performative humility is on display. So he gets this bloke who is the prince Pope, who presumably is not now dressed in playing cards with kind of my skin gloves to lead the procession. And he walks with the captains of his galleys wearing ordinary German captains uniform.

[Tom Holland]

And he'd performed very bravely, hadn't he, in the the campaign against Azov as an artillery man?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He had. He'd done well. He'd done very well. And then just weeks after this victory comes an unbelievable announcement from the Foreign Ministry. Peter is sending a great embassy to Europe, to England, to Denmark, to the Dutch states, to Brandenburg, to Venice. This embassy is going to be led by his mate, France Lafort, and they're going to recruit officers and shipwrights and sailors to come back to Russia and to build a fleet. And they're going to learn from the advanced nations of the West. Now this is an extraordinary thing for Tsar to do, to send some of his closest mates. But then a rumor goes around Moscow. Peter's actually going to go with them, and he's not going to go with them as the Tsar, he's going to go as a Member of the diplomatic staff in disguise. So this is his business about pretending he's not the Tsar, which he loves to do.

[Tom Holland]

Even though he's by miles, the tallest member of the embassy.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He's the tallest person. So there are multiple reasons why he wants to do this, because this is an extraordinary thing. No Russian czar has ever traveled outside Russia, except when they're fighting before. It's unprecedented. Now, one reason is he wants to get allies to strengthen the alliance against the Ottomans, because he's very keen on this Black Sea kind of breakthrough. But the more obvious kind of personal reason is that he is just absolutely fascinated with the west, with Holland and England in particular. He wants to go to their dockyards, he wants to study their ship building techniques. And he clearly knows, I think, as so many Russians know, that the gap between Russia and the west has never been greater that in the west, this is the age of Newton, of Leibniz, of the financial and scientific revolutions, of stock exchanges and newspapers and things. And Russia is in danger of falling centuries behind. And he has a seal made that has the inscription, I am a student and I'm looking for teachers. Yeah. You know, so he, he's pretty explicit about it.

[Tom Holland]

Why would the Dutch or the English or whoever be willing to teach a potential rival about the reasons for their, their lead? I mean, if you have a technological lead, why would you share it with somebody who is potentially quite a major threat?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

A fairly obvious reason I would have thought is that he's Orthodox and he's not Catholic. So if you're a Protestant power, he could conceivably be an ally against Louis xiv. Right.

[Tom Holland]

Who is the great figure of the age, isn't he?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. He doesn't go to France in this trip. He goes to the two great Protestant adversaries of France. I think they're flattered, England and the Dutch Republic by Peter's attentions and maybe they're hoping to.

[Tom Holland]

Well, Gilbert Burnett, I mean, he's clearly trying to win.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, yeah, Peter.

[Tom Holland]

For, for Anglicanism.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Anglicanism, as we will see. As we will see. People in England thought this is brilliant. We could basically get an ally in Russia. We could have an Anglican ally. Exactly. I know that sounds bonkers, but is it any more bonkers than the Tsar, Russia going in disguise on a massive gap year to the West? I don't think it is.

[Tom Holland]

I suppose not.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So he decides he's going to set off. His mother, by the way, is dead at this point and actually his brother Ivan has died as well. So he leaves his Mate Roma Danovsky, the guy who has the bear.

[Tom Holland]

So the Prince Caesar.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The Prince Caesar, as he's called, he says, you're commanding the troops. You have basically command of law and order while I'm gone. As he leaves, he has a farewell banquet, and he hears that there's been some bitching among the Streltsi about him. They've been saying, oh, he's going off to the west, you know, he's gonna betray us all to foreigners. And he has this Streltsi colonel and two noblemen executed. He has their limbs cut off with an axe, and then they're beheaded. And then he gets the coffin of Sophia's uncle. So one of the Miloslavski family, he gets this coffin dragged by pigs into Red Square. What is it with pigs?

[Tom Holland]

There's obviously a whole kind of stables full of pigs who are trained to drag things.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right. And the coffin is opened beneath the chopping block where these guys have been executed so that their blood will splatter the face of Sophia's dead uncle. I mean, this is by no means the most sadistic thing that Peter will do. No, he loves a really, really horrendous kind of sadistic jape, and there are a lot of them to come. So after he's done this, he sets off. He's traveling as Peter Mikhailov. There's 250 people, loads of noblemen, musicians, coachmen, priests, secretaries, four dwarfs.

[Tom Holland]

Of course.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Of course he's Peter Mikhailov. If you tell anybody who he is, he will kill you. But he wants people to kind of recognize him and be polite to him at the same time. So he's using the incognito thing basically, as a way to get out of formalities.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, all the boring stuff.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But he still wants to see fireworks displays in his honor and for people to present him with enormous goblets of wine.

[Tom Holland]

He's a cakist.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, he's a total cakeist. He wants to have his cake and eat it. So they set off. They cross the frontier into what's then called Livonia, which is kind of Estonia, Latvia, which is part of the Swedish Empire. And they arrive in Riga. Peter does not like Riga at all, and he hates the Swedes, because the Swedes take the incognito thing very seriously. And they say they don't have a banquet for him, you know, The Swedes respond exactly as you would expect the Swedes to.

[Tom Holland]

Very sober.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Very sober. They say, well, if you're. If you're not Peter the Great, great. No fireworks, by the Way you have to pay for your own board and lodging. This. He's really offended the Swedish lack of hospitality. He's shocked at this, but also he's fascinated by kind of fortifications and things. So he goes off to inspect the defenses of Riga, but because he's incognito, a Swedish sentry spots him and threatens to shoot him.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, but also, Dominic, I mean, even if they did, this is a fortress next to a potential enemy, and then the leader of that enemy is sketching your fortress.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, the Russians, they don't tend to like, you know, foreigners turning up and making sketches of their nuclear refineries or their.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, right, exactly. If Vladimir Putin turned up at a British submarine base in disguise, clearly, obviously, Vladimir Putin, and then was offended when people challenged him. Yeah, but he hated this. He hated Riga. And 13 years later, when his army was attacking Riga, he insisted on firing the first shells into the city.

[Tom Holland]

I do like a man who bears a grudge.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He said, I thank God for allowing me to see the beginning of our revenge on this accursed place.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, you really wouldn't want him as an enemy, would you?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

You wouldn't want him as a friend either, frankly, if he comes at you with some bellows.

[Tom Holland]

No.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He goes into a place called Courland, which is now kind of Lithuania. He goes through Konigsberg, now Kaliningrad. He meets the Elector of Brandenburg, who is the future Frederick I of Prussia. They have a great time. They go hunting, they have some fireworks display. They watch bears fighting. They stage a bear fight.

[Tom Holland]

Do you know, I mean, I had no idea that bear action played such a part in royal embassies and entertainment in the 18th century.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

When we get onto Augustus the Strong, all kinds of activities with animals there.

[Tom Holland]

Well, foxes.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So he meets Sophia of Hanover, who is the mother of George I.

[Tom Holland]

So she's going to be Queen Anne's heir to maintain the Protestant succession.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. And this is a very funny scene because he'd never met aristocratic Western women before and he's shown in to see them. He's very embarrassed. He doesn't know what to say. He literally covered his face with his hands in embarrassment and he sort of muttered from behind his hands, I don't know what to say. And Sophia and her daughter are very nice to him. They say, oh, come on, it's fine. They have some music. They bring in some Hanoverian children, including the future George ii. And he loves George ii. He hugs him and kisses him and sort of puts him on his lap and stuff. I mean, George II is 14, he probably doesn't want to be kissed and.

[Tom Holland]

Hugged by a massive great blade with a hairy moustache. And also he dances, doesn't he, with German women and is startled to discover that they're wearing these strange contraptions called corsets, because no Russian woman wears a corset.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No. So he's very taken with that.

[Tom Holland]

HE CRIES OUT these German women have devilish hard bones. And there's all much laughing.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

There's a lot of laughing. And actually they are quite fond of him. They were worried that he would get very drunk and he, he always restrains himself in the presence of aristocratic women. But then the people that he's traveling with, so all his mates and hangers.

[Tom Holland]

On, all the lads, jolly company, they.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Get massively drunk and they make up for it. And this is a. Definitely a theme of the trip. So eventually he gets to Holland and he is so excited about this. It's actually quite sweet. He goes on ahead of the rest of his party because he just can't wait. And his destination is a place called Zaandam, which is a great place, kind of shipyard. And they claim in this place they're the best shipyard in Holland. There are 50 different companies and they make more than 300 ships a year. So this is like, for Peter, this is Disneyland ship heaven. It is, it absolutely is. So he arrives on a Sunday and immediately he bumps into a bloke who'd once worked for him in Moscow, a blacksmith called Garrett Kist. And Peter hugs him, like, kisses him and stuff and kiss, says, come and stay in the house next door. I mean, Kist is just can't believe it. It's just mind boggling to him that the czar of Russia has turned up in his town and says, I'll move in next door to you. Which is what happens. And the next day is a Monday morning. Peter gets up, he's obviously got some money, he goes off and he buys a load of tools and then he goes to a shipyard run by a man called Linstrogger, and he signs up to work in the shipyard under the name Peter Mikhailoff. I mean, can you imagine Donald Trump doing this, you know, signing up to work in a call center?

[Tom Holland]

No. Well, he did. He worked in McDonald's, didn't he?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He did work at McDonald's, yeah, for like an hour or something. But the thing is, of course, Peter is very conspicuous because he's so tall and also he's got a very strong Russian accent. So crowds gather to watch him, you know, as he's walking to the shipyard and this happens within days. And he gets very upset. And he's particularly upset because the youth of the town rather let Colin down, don't they? Because the boys pelt him with mud.

[Tom Holland]

Do you see this? Well, but you could say that that's an affirmation of their rugged republican character.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Maybe it is. So he has to hide in an inn, and the town's burgomaster has to issue an order banning people from harassing, and I quote, distinguished persons who wish to remain unknown.

[Tom Holland]

That's nicely phrased.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It is. However, it doesn't really work because by the end of the week, he's only been there a week. And it's absolutely ludicrous scenes because by now hundreds of people have come from Amsterdam to watch him working. When he gets up in the morning, he opens his front door and there are people sitting on the roofs of the neighboring houses, kind of, you know, with picnics, waiting to see him. Everywhere he goes, there are people basically mobbing him and stuff. By Sunday, he's become a prisoner in his own cottage. And he's very upset about this. And eventually he says, right enough, I've given up on Zaandam. I'm going to go to Amsterdam. So he moves to Amsterdam with his entourage and they stay there for four months.

[Tom Holland]

He can work in a place that's kind of closed off, isn't it, so people can't spy him.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The Dutch East India Company.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So he would be cancelled today for his associations with the Dutch East India? Well, not just the beheading.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, I think there are other things as well. He'd be cancelled.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. The bellows.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So the Dutch East India Company is closed off. The shipyard is barred to the public by these big high walls. And they say to him, look, come and work for us. We'll have a new frigate laid down specially so you can work on it and you can observe our shipbuilding techniques from start to finish. He shares a house with the other Russians who say they'll come work at the yard with him. He arrives at work every day like a normal shipbuilder with his tools. He says to everybody, call me carpenter Peter. Don't call me, you know, the Tsar or anything like that. And he works hard.

[Tom Holland]

It's not just kind of, you know, Marie Antoinetting.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, no, no, not at all. Not at all. So when he's not at the shipyard, he goes and meets one of his great heroes, William of Orange, William iii.

[Tom Holland]

Who by this point is also the King of England.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Also The King of England. Peter has grown up listening to stories about William of Orange fighting the French. And he loves all these stories. He goes to see factories, he goes to laboratories, he goes to museums, he goes to botanical gardens, he goes. He's basically absorbing everything that he can. He particularly is very keen on anatomy.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He makes all his mates go with him to watch a corpse being dissected. And one of many great lines in the Robert K Massey book, to the horror of the Dutch, he ordered his comrades to approach the cadaver, bend down and bite off a muscle of the corpse with their teeth.

[Tom Holland]

Oh, my God.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So, yeah, I mean, it's all fun and games of Peter the Great.

[Tom Holland]

And the other thing he's very keen on is the techniques that are being developed by Dutch anatomists to preserve corpses.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, he loves all that.

[Tom Holland]

So presumably it's not formaldehyde, but, yeah, kind of whatever. An 18th century equivalent of that. 17th century equivalent to that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, as we will see. He loves a cabinet of curiosities, doesn't he?

[Tom Holland]

He does. And so this is very important for later developments in St Petersburg.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. So, anyway, he finally builds his frigate. The Dutch say, we will give this to you as a gift. You can have it shipped to Archangel. They're going to call it the Amsterdam, which is all very nice. However, he's a bit disappointed by his time in Holland because the Dutch, when they build a ship, they sort of do it intuitively. They don't have blueprints, they just know what they're doing. They're not big fans of the process, I think it's fair to say.

[Tom Holland]

So Peter is. Is in the situation of the Romans in the First Punic War, Right, who have to learn shipbuilding from scratch and. Like a kind of IKEA kit. That's what he wants.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. He says, come on, do you not have blueprints? And they say, no, we don't. That's not how we do it. They say, maybe the English. The English are more blueprint people. And so he says to William, can I go and visit your other kingdom, please? And William says, I'd love nothing better. And so, on the 8th of January, 1698, Peter sets sail for God's own country, for England. Lucky man.

[Tom Holland]

And we will be back after the break to find out how he gets on in London. This is a paid advertisement from BetterHelp.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

It has Dominic Lunatic Asylums where people with bad mental health would be locked up were places of public entertainment. They were like zoos. So people would go to somewhere like Bedlam and laugh at the lunatics.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

A recent British survey found that 37% of people still feel uncomfortable discussing mental health because sadly, they they fear being.

[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

I'm David McCloskey, former CIA analyst turned spy novelist. And I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. And together we're the hosts of the Rest Is Classified, where we bring you brilliant stories from the world of spies. This week we're talking about one of the most significant stories of the 21st century. Edward Snow. Snowden. And how he orchestrated the biggest leak of classified secrets in modern American and British history. Snowden revealed that the American government was mass collecting data on its own citizens. And it was really the first time that Americans and so many others around the world understood the extent of the US Government's mass surveillance. That's right. It's a story I covered at the time.

[Tom Holland]

And it also really gets to wider.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Questions about what privacy means, how technology is true, changed our lives, and what the government and companies can do with data we might have thought was private. And we'll take you through the whole story, from Snowden's early career in the CIA and the NSA to his life in exile in Russia. So to hear more, search for the Rest Is Classified wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tom Holland]

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Rest Is History. Peter the Great is sailing across the Channel up the Thames estuary, and on the morning of the 11th of January, 1698, he arrives in London. And Dominic, he is rowed ashore to a landing quay on the Strand, joining the City of London to Westminster. And there the Court Chamberlain of William iii, who is also, of course, back in the Dutch Republic, the Prince of Orange is waiting to greet him and does so in Dutch, which Peter speaks.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, it's a great scene, Peter arriving in London. London is a big city at this point. 750, 000 people. It's a really interesting moment in London's history, actually. This. I think it's. If you're going to go back to London at any point in time, this is as good as any, because it's. It's still a very kind of raucous, disputatious city, a city of kind of public flogging and cockfighting and stuff. But we're at the point in history where the bank of England has been created, where party politics is starting, where England is becoming a maritime, kind of commercial empire. So it's interesting. It's coffee houses and newspapers and a.

[Tom Holland]

Scientific power as well. Isaac Newton and Royal Society and all of that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. There's Christopher Wren, churches being built, there's all of this stuff. And Peter, when he arrives, he stays in a place called Norfolk street, which doesn't exist, I think, anymore, which is just off the Strand. And basically it's like a student house. He moves in with all his mates into the student house. There's a wonderful historian of Peter, the great biographer called Lindsay Hughes, and she describes how the Prince of Denmark heard that he was in town and went to visit him and was horrified when he arrived at Peter's house to find Peter still in bed and four other people in the room as well. And. And I quote, they had to open all the windows to clear the terrible stench.

[Tom Holland]

They're very student digs.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Very student digs. He goes around London. He meets the future Queen Anne at Kensington Palace. William iii, William of Orange introduces him. The Thames is frozen. There's a great frost, so he can't get into shipbuilding straight away, so he goes shopping. He goes to a watchmaker to see how watches work and to get watches. He's very impressed by English coffins.

[Tom Holland]

That's good to know.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He says, this is brilliant. I never imagined people could make coffins like this. He has a coffin shipped specially to Moscow. He buys a swordfish, a stuffed swordfish and a stuffed crocodile. He wants to send them to Moscow as well.

[Tom Holland]

So that's testimony to the fact that the English are becoming a polite and commercial people, isn't it? That they have shops where you can buy a stuffed crocodile.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. Our taxidermists are second to none, I think it's fair to say. He becomes friends with a bloke called the Marquis of Carmarthen, and he goes to the pub with this bloke so often that the pub is renamed the Tsar of Russia. And Carmarthen says, oh, I know who you'd like to meet. And he introduces him to an actress called Letitia Cross, who becomes his mistress while he's in England and moves in with him in the student house.

[Tom Holland]

And what language do they speak? Is it the language of love?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The language of love, Tom. They speak the language of love.

[Tom Holland]

Right.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Anyway, he's off the Strand, so he's very central. And there's more trouble with crowds. And so William III's government say, look, we'll find you a house across the river. And this is where we come to.

[Tom Holland]

Our single favorite episode in all of history.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. So the essayist and kind of diarist and whatnot, John Evelyn has this house in Deptford. And Charles II had given John Evelyn a lease on this house, and Evelyn had owned it for 45 years. And he had set out what was regarded as arguably the greatest garden in.

[Tom Holland]

England, his pride and joy.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It had a bowling green, it had a terrace walk, it had kitchen gardens, it had a wall garden. Now, when it was first mentioned to John Evelyn that Peter the Great might move in, he said, brilliant, because he's actually been renting it to a man called Admiral Benbow.

[Tom Holland]

The pub in Treasure island, as in.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The pub, Admiral Benbow had not been a good tenant. There'd been a little bit of wear and tear and he hadn't looked after the garden properly. So John even said, oh, well, great. I mean, these Russians, they can't be any worse than Admiral Benbow. And we will find out later in the episode exactly what went on. But it's very clear something has gone wrong when Tony Prince Stewart, after a few days, says, the house is full of people and. Right. Nasty. Yeah. But how nasty we will discover. Anyway, while he's not smashing up the house, we mentioned Bishop Burnett from Wiltshire and the Salisbury area. He's been trying to convert Peter to Anglicanism. But the people that Peter really loves meeting are very much friends of the show. Richard Nixon's favourite people, the Quakers.

[Tom Holland]

Always good to have a Quaker on. The rest is history.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So Peter can't get enough of the Quakers. He goes to prayer meetings. They're quaking and doing what they do, being very sober and quaking. He says, this is absolutely amazing. I love this. He meets William Penn of Pennsylvania.

[Tom Holland]

Well, presumably, if they're quaking and Peter is given to convulsions, he'd feel quite at home, wouldn't he?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, he fits in. For once. His twitching is not noticed. So William Penn of Pennsylvania fame, he is. In between trips to Pennsylvania, he goes to the House of Deptford to talk to Peter and they have a great chat in Dutch about Quakerism. And afterwards, Peter says to his Russian friends, whoever could live according to such a doctrine would be truly happy.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, it's amazing, isn't it? Because foreign visitors to London are impressed by the Quakers, because Voltaire, when he goes to London, will be similarly kind of wowed by them. It's kind of interesting. It's clearly something about London that foreigners find interesting.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, but not in a sort of freak show way, right?

[Tom Holland]

No, they're impressed by them.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

They're impressed by it. He takes it really seriously. He does loads of fun tourist things. Yeah, he basically follows the itinerary that you would follow if you came to London on holiday. Now he goes to Greenwich, he goes to the Tower of London and they.

[Tom Holland]

Hide the ax with which Charles the First have been decapitated, don't they? Because they're worried that if he finds it, he'll be so outraged he'll fling it in the Thames.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes. And my favorite tourist thing that he does, he goes to Parliament and he says, I'd love to see it. And he doesn't want to draw attention to himself, so he climbs up to the roof and he watches through a kind of upper gallery, sort of skylight style window in the roof as William III is giving assent to tax bills in the House of Lords. And he says afterwards to his friends and whatnot, he says, well, we obviously couldn't do this in Russia because, you know, we have the absolute power of the Tsar in, in Russia, we couldn't have any limitations. However, and I quote, it is good to hear subjects speaking truthfully and openly to their king. This is what we must learn from the English. Now, there's a lesson here for Vladimir Putin, isn't there?

[Tom Holland]

Well, just on the topic of Vladimir Putin and London and Peter the Great.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, yeah.

[Tom Holland]

I don't know if you've seen. There's a statue of Peter the Great at Deptford. Yes, very weird. Done by this sculptor who also did one that was put up in the Peter and Paul fortress in St. Petersburg. The sculptor is very keen on portraying Peter with very long elongated fingers and limbs. So he looks very peculiar.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And a small head.

[Tom Holland]

Yes. So both those statues and the statue in Deptford was. Was set up at the beginning of the 21st century and Putin, when he came to London, went to visit it and he was escorted by Prince Andrew.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, my word. Wow.

[Tom Holland]

There's a couple.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

There's an interesting episode from history.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. So I looked up what it actually said on the statue and it said, this monument is erected near the Royal Shipyard. Where Peter the Great studied the English science of shipbuilding. The monument is a gift from the Russian people and commemorates the visit of Peter the Great to this country in search of knowledge and experience. Oh, so that's nice.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, Peter did get knowledge and experience, to be fair. I'll tell you, one thing he picked up was smoking. Smoking previously banned in Russia, except in the German suburb. He signs a deal with this bloke, Carmarthen, that he goes drinking with so that Carmarthen can import tobacco to Russia. And also he does manage to get about 60 mathematicians, shipwrights, engineers, and he persuades them to come back with him to Russia, as well as two barbers.

[Tom Holland]

Right, so his Westernizing brain is ticking over.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. So second of May, he says, look, I've been here for ages. It's time to go on. He loved England. We're used to the Russians being incredibly disobliging about our beloved country, aren't we?

[Tom Holland]

Well, I don't know. I mean, wealthy Russians, they tend to like London. They like our football clubs.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

That's true.

[Tom Holland]

They like our bijou West End houses.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Nationalist commentators were always going on Russian state television, aren't they, and sort of doing mock ups of how Britain would be annihilated by a nuclear weapon.

[Tom Holland]

Or a tsunami.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Or tsunami. Exactly. But Peter the Great would not have approved of that, because he told a captain later, he said, it would be a much happier life to be an admiral in England than a tsar in Russia. I mean, I'm so happy to be quoting this. He said, england is the best, the most beautiful and the happiest place on earth.

[Tom Holland]

So although he's a brutal and murderous autocrat, he's clearly not all bad.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, he's a man of tremendous taste. Now, sadly, not all Englishmen are as keen on Peter the Great as he is on them, because as soon as he's left, John Evelyn goes to see what's happened to his house.

[Tom Holland]

And it is most nasty.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And it was very nasty. He's so appalled, he then goes straight to the Royal Surveyor, Sir Christopher Wren, and the royal gardener, who's a man called Mr. London, and he says, come to my house immediately. Yeah. The government's going to have to compensate me for this. And when they get there, they find it has been utterly trashed. Ink everywhere, grease everywhere, all the doorknobs and locks have been pried off, the windows have been smashed, the chairs have all been smashed up and used as firewood, the pictures have been ripped up. And the garden Avelin's pride and joy the greatest garden in England, absolutely destroyed. The claim is, I think there's some dispute among sort of scholars about whether this is invented or not, that they'd been having wheelbarrow races through the hedges.

[Tom Holland]

So to quote, the lawn was trampled into mud and dust as if a regiment of soldiers in iron shoes had drilled on it. And who knows? I mean, Peter loves, you know, a fake army, so maybe they'd done that. The magnificent holly hedge had been flattened by wheelbarrows rammed through it. So presumably that's where that story comes from.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly, exactly. And the government ended up paying John evelyn More than 350 pounds in compensation, which, if you use the calculators at the website measuring Worth, which is the one I always use, because it's the most sophisticated, that's basically, in earnings terms, more than a million pounds today that Evelyn was given as compensation. That tells you just how much damage there was. So Peter Nutt, by now is long gone. He goes to Dresden, he goes to Vienna.

[Tom Holland]

And Dominic, in Dresden, crucially, he sees the Kunstkammer Museum, doesn't he?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Which is a cabinet of curiosities. And so we talked about how in the Netherlands Peter had seen ways to preserve corpses, and now he's seen a cabinet of curiosities and this is setting up again all kinds of ideas in his fertile and faintly dark brain.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly, exactly. So he has a nice time in Vienna and then he's preparing to move on to Venice in July when bombshell news. He has a letter from Moscow from his mate Romadanovsky. Terrible things have been happening in Russia. Four regiments of Streltsi were being transferred from the Sea of Azov to the Polish frontier and they have mutinied. They are now marching on Moscow and they are only 60 miles away. And of course, this letter has taken a long time to reach Peter. Peter can't believe it. So what this means is that while he's been messing around with cabinets of curiosities in Dresden and dancing at balls in Vienna, the Streltsi may well have taken Moscow. He may have been deposed and proclaimed a traitor. He says, oh, my God. So he scraps his plan, the gap year is over and he rushes east and he's riding through Poland day and night, stopping only to change horses. And then he gets to crack off and another messenger comes riding up from the east and Peter sort of rips open the message. A massive sigh of relief. Romadanovsky reports that their troops have intercepted and defeated the Streltsi rebels. Although he's going to Carry on going home. He can slow down a bit. And he heads to meet somebody who will play a big part in this story. Who is Augustus the Strong?

[Tom Holland]

And you love him, don't you?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I love Augustus the strongest.

[Tom Holland]

He's one of your favorite characters from all of history.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He is. So he was the Elector of Saxony, Augustus, and he'd been elected King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1698. And we said we'd get into the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. It's this great sort of ramshackle state of 8 million people. Vast, culturally fascinating. A real mix of Catholics, Jews and whatnot. Fascinating kind of mosaic.

[Tom Holland]

Even Muslims.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Even Muslims, exactly.

[Tom Holland]

Because there are Muslims who've been settled there.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Sort of heretics of various kinds go there because it's so tolerant. It's sort of an experiment in multiculturalism in some ways, but it's beginning to fall apart a bit and it's got a bonkers political system because diversity is not necessarily. It's not its strength, I think it's fair to say. Now Augustus has been elected to rule this. This kingdom. He's a gigantic man, like Peter is like a. He looks like a bear. His party trick, well, he has multiple party tricks. He likes to amuse his courtiers by snapping horseshoes with one hand. Dunno how you do that, but he does it anyway, presumably with fingers.

[Tom Holland]

It's reflection on the strength of his. Of his fingers, I guess.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

His fingers. You could just snap your fingers and snap a horseshoe, maybe.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, I guess, if you're just doing it with one hand.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He loves collecting. Poor Slim. He has dozens of mistresses. He fathered 354 illegitimate children, which I think is a lot.

[Tom Holland]

Wow.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He collected lions, hyenas, monkeys and meerkats.

[Tom Holland]

Meerkats?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, meerkats.

[Tom Holland]

Is he the first European royal to collect a meerkat?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I think he probably is. They were always shipping animals to him and they'd open the box and the animal would be dead. That was the usual scenario. It's pretty tough on the animals. And he's not one of history's great animal lovers, because his real, you know, his real party piece, his specialism, the thing for which he goes down in history is he's probably history's most proficient fox tosser. So he would. If you interested in tossing a fox, Augustus the Strong is the absolute model, Right. So once, when he was receiving the King of Prussia, to greet the King of Prussia, he tossed 200 foxes, six wildcats, two badgers and two beavers. And when I say tossed he, he tossed them to their deaths. That's what he does.

[Tom Holland]

Oh, my God.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So basically his servants will line up with these beavers and badgers. He just grabs them, throws them up.

[Tom Holland]

In the air, throws him in the.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Air so high that they come crashing down to earth and die. Is that brilliant?

[Tom Holland]

So he doesn't catch them?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No.

[Tom Holland]

Are they splattered over the ceiling?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Surely he does this outdoors.

[Tom Holland]

Oh, right. Okay.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So you go into the garden, there's a menagerie there all lined up and everyone applauds politely. It's just throwing foxes around. I mean, it seems bonkers.

[Tom Holland]

Hurrah for your majesty.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. In the late 17th, early 18th century, this is very high class entertainment. So don't knock it. And actually, to be fair, let's not knock it until we've done it because we've never tried it or seen it. Peter loves this. Of course he does.

[Tom Holland]

Very much his thing, isn't it?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Augustus the strong will throw a beaver to his death and then Peter will embrace him, kiss him and say, oh, you're brilliant. I love this, I love you.

[Tom Holland]

Does Peter have a go at the fox tossing?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I don't know that he does, actually. Maybe he would use his bellows or something.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, it seems very much his kind of sport.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I'd like to think he tried his hand at it, wouldn't you? Yeah, he'd try to toss a bear. Probably. Knowing him, Peter said to his nobleman, I prize Augustus more than the whole of you put together. Not because he's a king, but merely because I like him. Which is, which is quite sweet. And actually, in between killing all these animals, Augustus takes the opportunity to pitch an idea to Peter that will have massive, massive long term political consequences. Because both of them hate and fear their northern neighbors, the Swedes. They can't stand the Swedes. The Swedes, the most formidable and modern military power in northern Europe. And Augustus says, listen, the Swedish king has died and his successor, who's a bloke called Charles XII, he's a total nobody. He's only 15, he's a teenager. Let's join forces against the Swedes and divide up their Baltic empire between us and Peter, who we know loves Augustus the strong, says, do you know, that sounds brilliant because actually my war against the Ottomans is a complete non event, total damp squib. I'm never going to beat the Ottomans. Forget the back sea and we'll move on to the Baltic. Let's keep working on this idea and one day, let's do it now. In the meantime, he has to go back to Moscow, which he does. He goes back to Moscow with all his kind of shipwrights and whatnot and all his sort of. He's fired with enthusiasm for his Westernizing project. He goes to his estate at Prea Brzhanskoye.

[Tom Holland]

Very good.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I was looking forward to that. I could see it looming in the notes. I thought, okay, I've just got to go for it. And he arrives on the night of the 4th of September, 1698. And the next day, the 5th, all his noblemen say, oh, brilliant, you're back. They come to go and greet him. He embraces them, he kisses them, and then out of his back pocket, he pulls out a razor and then just starts shaving them, cutting off their beards. They are so stunned, they don't know how to react. And he's like, very violently forcibly shaving them. Now, the thing is, we did a whole episode, didn't we, about beards and about this business. And for people who missed it to very briefly explain to Orthodox Russians the beard was a gift from God and to shave it was a sin. Ivan the Terrible had specifically said, it's a sin that the blood of all the martyrs cannot cleanse because it is to deface the image of man created by God. And Peter says, no, this is nonsense. A beard is backwards. And he makes everybody shave off their beards. And in the long run, if you want to have a beard, you have to pay a special tax and you get a medallion with a picture of a beard on it.

[Tom Holland]

I love that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And then you're allowed to have a beard. And this is just one of a host of changes. So basically, up to this point, Russian noblemen had worn these caftans, floppy colored boots. Very exotic garb, but also appropriate to.

[Tom Holland]

The cold weather, right? I mean, it does keep you warm, right?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Lots of layers. They believe in layers. Peter does not believe in that. He says, this is backwards again. It's Asiatic. It's not right. He cuts the sleeves of people's robes off. Like you turn up to a state reception or something, Peter the Great will come at you with a razor and a pair of scissors. Probably Dutch or English scissors, and we'll be cutting off bits of your clothing. He says, I want people to wear what they call French or German style coats. He says, I want to see waistcoats, I want to see britches, I want women to wear bonnets and skirts, all of this kind of thing.

[Tom Holland]

What about corsets?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

If you go to Moscow, they hang up models of the approved costumes. And Peter says when people are coming into the city, the guards have to have pairs of scissors as well. And if people are wearing long caftans, the guards will cut the snip, snip, snip, snip. Exactly. So it obviously didn't work among the great mass of the population at all, but among the elite it did. Because foreign ambassadors say that by the mid. The middle of the sort of first decade of the 18th century, at balls and at banquets and things, people will be dressing in the German manner.

[Tom Holland]

It must have been so cold, though. Imagine, you know, your stockings and your britches and the icy wind from the Urals.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, but that's fine. But I mean, would you rather do that or would you rather take your chances with Peter the Great eraser scissors?

[Tom Holland]

No, I wouldn't. I mean, it's an Nvidia's choice.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's not the only thing he changes. He changes the calendar. So up till this point, the Russians have dated time from the creation of the world. And Peter says, well, that's rubbish. Let's do it from Jesus's birth, like everybody else does in Europe. So they adopt the Julian calendar. They don't really have very good coinage. They were just using bits of other people's coins they'd kind of cut up. And he says, come on. He loves the English coinage because he'd.

[Tom Holland]

Studied the mint, hadn't he, in the Tower of London?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He'd been to the mint. Exactly. He says, you must have coinage just like the English do. Now, for him personally, there's a big change as well. And all the time he'd been gone 18 months, he had not written once to his wife Eudocia, so people may remember from the last episode.

[Tom Holland]

She's pink.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes, pink. Hopeless and helpless, I think was the description.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He sees her as the embodiment of conservatism and orthodoxy. And while he's been away, he's obviously thought to himself, I can't stand her, she's got to go. So he basically summons her. She's like, oh, great, you're home. And he says, well, I am. You've got to go, I'm afraid you're off to a nunnery. And he takes his son Alexis from her and gives him to his sister. And this, as we will see in our final episode of this series, is a very traumatic moment for young Alexis. And their relationship will be difficult, I think it's fair to say.

[Tom Holland]

But it's so interesting, isn't it? We've had so many series recently where Unwanted women get packed off to nunneries. So it happened in our series on the Franks, happened in our series on the road to 1066. We've also had Japanese women going off and becoming nuns. So very much a theme it is.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And poor old Eudocis, she was forced into a carriage and sent to a convent in Suzdahl, and her head was shaved.

[Tom Holland]

So, like the Japanese.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. And she was renamed Helen and she had to become a nun with the name of Helen. Now, of course, he has come home because he's heard about this mutiny among the Streltsi, the people who had, you know, carried out that horrendous massacre in front of him when he was 10 years old. And he is clearly determined that he will use this as a pretext to finish them off forever. There's a really a paranoid side, I think, to Peter. He reminds me of Henry VIII, you know, an insecurity. In Henry VIII's case, I guess it's because, you know, his father won the throne at Bosworth on the battlefield, and he's always worried about the dynasty. In Peter's case, it's because he had to fight.

[Tom Holland]

Right. I mean, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get you.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No. And he is determined to make a massive example of the mutineers and to show that it was. He believes that this is part of a massive conspiracy orchestrated by his sister Sophia, who's of course, in a nunnery herself. And so he has all the mutineers brought to his estate at prayer. Brzanskoje. There you go, Tom. Loving it. I'm just going to do it unnecessarily now, even when it's not relevant. I'm probably not even pronouncing it correctly, to be honest. And at his estate, this is the dark side of Peter, he commissions his men to build 14 special torture chambers. So they bring the mutineers. And every week, for six days a week, the Streltsi mutineers are interrogated. They are beaten with sticks, they're roasted over open fires, and above all, they are lashed with a thing called the knout, which is this massive leather whip. 25 strokes of the knout will kill you, and it literally kind of rips the skin from your back, and it's kind of like an assembly line. And Peter and his friends and his cronies and his jolly company are the people doing the torturing.

[Tom Holland]

So not so jolly now.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Not jolly now. And he will absolutely join in and he will be beating these People with an ivory handled cane. And it's so violent that the patriarch actually says to Peter, this is too much, Stop. And Peter is livid about this. And he says to the patriarch, no Russian society is infected with the disease and I am burning it out. And actually what he gets out of the Strelts, they confess and they say, we'd planned to storm the capital, we were gonna burn down the German suburb, we were gonna get rid of the foreigners, and we were going to get Sophia to rule over us again.

[Tom Holland]

But is there any truth to this? Because, I mean, I guess they're just saying whatever.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, they're saying what he wants to. Sophia almost certainly didn't know about this. Right. It's not that she had instigated the plot, but Peter has never forgiven her. He goes and interrogates her personally at her convent. He says her head must be shaved, she must take religious vows and become a nun. And she basically is locked away and is never seen again. She dies when she's 47, in 1704. She had previously, of course, been in the nunnery, but had been relatively well treated. And now she's effectively a political prisoner. And that's not the end of it. So Peter is determined. And here I think, you see, you know, loads of countries have a violent history or a history of. They have show trials or whatever. I mean, we've done series on the French Revolution and whatnot. But there's a definite theme, I think, in Russian history of a kind of a fear of enemies within and a conspiracy and a foreign influence and a belief in show trials and public punishment.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, well, show executions as well.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Show executions. So he says, well, the Streltsi, you know, they've got to go. And hundreds of them are arrested, brought in carts to his estate at Preobrazhenskoe, and they are hanged on a special gibbet in front of a crowd. Others are beheaded over an open trench.

[Tom Holland]

Quite a few are broken on the wheel, aren't they? Which is a hideous death in Red Square. Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And actually a really sort of chilling thing. About 200 of them are taken to the convent, Novodevichi Convent, where Sophia is locked up. And Peter has the most prominent members hanged and strung up outside her window. And they are dangling there. One of them is holding a piece of paper, and that's meant to symbolize their petition that they were going to issue asking her to rule over them. And they are left to hang there outside her window all winter, kind of just dangling, kind of swaying in the wind. And whenever she looks out the window, there they are. I mean, you can, can only imagine how horrific the sight, stench or whatever that must have been for her. I mean, actually, that isn't the most shocking thing. It's the most shocking thing is he says, he insists that all his friends take part in the executions. So there's an Austrian diplomat who actually describes Peter himself wielding the ax, beheading five people, you know, in public, so that everybody can see. I mean, an incredibly gruesome scene.

[Tom Holland]

So he did it dominate. But was he right to do it?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, Robert K. Massey, his biographer, he doesn't say he was, but he says this was a public demonstration of Peter's seriousness about his project. He eliminated the one great obstacle to his modernizing mission, which was the Streltsi. And effectively, yeah, he was right to do it, that it's a terrible thing, but he was right to do it. I mean, I personally don't think publicly beheading people is the way forward.

[Tom Holland]

And leaving corpses dangling outside the cell in which you've imprisoned your sister.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, I wouldn't do that. So he ends up disbanding the Streltsi completely the year later, in 1699. That leaves him really in a position of absolute power. And at first, how does he spend that political capital? He actually just has endless parties and feasts.

[Tom Holland]

Huzzah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, so there's a lot of like mad costumes, mocking religious rituals. They'll do the sign of the cross with two pipes.

[Tom Holland]

It's a bear action, lots of bears.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Bellows, dwarfs jumping out of pies, all of this kind of thing. And Peter, often, he'll get incredibly drunk and then he'll have a massive fight with his friends. I mean, there's stories of him kind of drawing his sword and attacking his friends. He's very, very hot tempered.

[Tom Holland]

I do urge people to watch the Great if they want to see this on a television screen.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right. But what's on his mind, clearly the whole time is this idea that Augustus the Strong had suggested. You know, why don't we have a crack at the Swedes? Why don't we try to carve up the Baltic between us? Now, the thing is, he's still nominally fighting the Ottomans, so he's got to finish that off first. And in July 1700, he agrees a 30 year truce with the Ottomans. Peter will keep his conquest at Azov that we talked about at the beginning of this episode, but he will give up all hope of access to the.

[Tom Holland]

Black Sea, because now his eye is on the Baltic.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. So the News of the treaty reaches Moscow on the 18th of August, 1700, and they have a massive fireworks display in celebration. And the very next day, the 19th of August, 1700, Peter declares war on Sweden. And with that, the Great Northern War begins. And for Peter, for Russia, and for the whole of Northern Europe and Eastern Europe, the world will never be the same again.

[Tom Holland]

And that is an epic story writ on a massive scale. And it will be beginning next week. And if you want to hear all of the episodes detailing the Great Northern War and its aftermath, then you can sign [e-mail] if you're not already a member of the club. And if you don't want to do that, then that's fine. The episodes will be coming out in due course. In the meanwhile, Dominic, thanks so much. Some wonderful stories. And all that, beards, corsets, wheelbarrows, it's all been kicking off.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And as we say next week, the Great Northern War. So bye. Bye.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Goodbye. I'm David McCloskey, former CIA analyst turned spy novelist. And I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. And together we're the hosts of the Rest Is Classified, where we bring you brilliant stories from the world of spies. This week, we're talking about one of the most significant stories of the 21st century, Edward Snowden, and how he orchestrated the biggest leak of classified secrets in modern American and British history. Snowden revealed that the American government was mass collecting data on its own citizens, and it was really the first time that Americans and so many others around the world understood the extent of the US Government's mass surveillance. That's right. It's a story I covered at the time.

[Tom Holland]

And it also really gets to wider.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Questions about what privacy means, how technology has changed our lives, and what the government and companies can do with data we might have thought was private. And we'll take you through the whole story, from Snowden, Putin's early career in the CIA and the NSA to his life in exile in Russia. So to hear more, search for the Rest Is Classified. Wherever you get your podcasts.