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Bands of fugitive serfs were fleeing from their masters and joining the community of free Cossacks on the Don. Lands were untilled, there was misery, and at last there was famine, and then discontent and demoralization extending to the upper classes, and a diminished income which finally bore upon the Tsar himself.
One must not go to Rimsky-Korsakoff for works of another character. For, at heart, he ignored the larger sort of speech, and was content to have his music picturesque and colorful. The childish, absurd Tsar in "Le Coq d'or," who desires only to lie abed all day, eat delicate food, and listen to the fairy tales of his nurse, is, after all, something of a portrait of the composer.
They had considered it no disgrace to receive corporal punishment, and had been jealous of their honour, not as gentlemen or descendants of Boyars, but as Brigadiers, College Assessors, or Privy Counsellors. Their dignity had rested not on the grace of God, but on the will of the Tsar.
To enforce his autocratic will, a system of police was organized on a militia basis, its chiefs being made dependent on the central authority. In these, as in all his other reforms, the tsar encountered a good deal of opposition, and for a while was obliged to rely largely on foreigners to carry them out.
Shuiski, skilled in intrigue, went to work in his underground, burrowing fashion. He wrought upon the clergy, who in their turn wrought upon the populace, and presently all was seething disaffection under a surface apparently calm. The eruption came in the following May, when Maryna, the daughter of the Palatine of Sandomir, made her splendid entry into Moscow, the bride-elect of the young Tsar.
The scale was turned probably by learning that the Cossacks in Little Russia were growing impatient and were ripe for rebellion against the Tsar. Peter was anxious to prevent the invasion. He had a wholesome admiration for the terrible Swedish army, not much confidence in his own, and his empire was in disorder.
They talked of their country, for that was the dearest subject to both of them, they were intelligent men for their class, and when Father Mikko told how the Russian Tsar was taking their liberties away from them, and was beginning to break all his oaths and promises and would no doubt end up by making them as badly off as the people on the south side of the Finnish Gulf when Father Mikko related all this, Erik's eyes flashed and he longed to be able to draw the sword to defend his beloved country's liberty.
'No, no, no! replied the Tsar, equally repeatedly. At length, worn out by her pleading, the poor woman fell asleep. It was dawn when the Tsar, stepping over her recumbent form, bade her a silent good-bye and went out to face unknown horror. Half an hour later Anna was flung into a dungeon, preceding her long and tiring journey to Siberia."
After all, there was no doubt that the East presented an obvious possibility of concluding peace, and all our efforts were turned in that direction, for we were anxious to seize the first available moment to make peace with the Russian Revolutionary Party, a peace which the Tsar, faced by his coming downfall, had not been able to achieve.
But his rush to Petersburg and appeal to the Tsar met with rebuff and refusal. Russia was not yet ready for another war, as Lobatcheff sadly admitted. We became used to reports several times a week that war had begun somewhere or other.
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