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From Lefort, a Swiss, and other foreigners, Peter derived information about foreign lands, and was led to visit them in order to instruct himself, and to introduce into his own country the arts and inventions of civilized peoples. He invited into Russia artisans, seamen, and officers from abroad. On his way to Venice, he was called home by a revolt of the streltzi, which he put down.
The first thing he did, on his return, was finally to crush the Streltzi, who fomented treasons and were hostile to reform. He had wisely left General Gordon at Moscow with six thousand soldiers, disciplined after the European fashion. In abolishing the turbulent and prejudicial Streltzi, he is accused of great cruelties.
There were territories belonging to Sweden which each of the confederates coveted. Frederick IV. of Denmark expected to incorporate Sweden itself in his dominions. Through the machinations of his half-sister Sophia, who contrived to get the armed aid of the streltzi, the native militia, he had to share the throne with a half-brother, Ivan, who was older than himself, and lived until 1696.
So these two young men took counsel together; and the conviction was settled in the minds of each that there could be no military discipline and no efficient military power so long as the Streltzi those antiquated and turbulent old guards could depose and set up monarchs.
Lefort raised another corps of twelve thousand, from the Streltzi chiefly. These were the forces, in conjunction with the navy, with which he reduced Azof. He now returns to Moscow, and receives the congratulations of the boyars, or nobles, that class who owned the landed property of Russia and cultivated it by serfs.
He made heavy contributions on these nobles, and also on the clergy, for it takes money to carry on a war, and money he must have somehow. These forced contributions and the changes which were made in the army were not beheld with complacency. The old guard, the Streltzi, were particularly disgusted.
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