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The battle of Poltava was selected by Sir Edward Creasy as one of the fifteen great decisive contests which have altered the fate of nations. His able narrative of the battle has been superseded in scholars' eyes by the more modern work of the great Russian authority, Waliszewski; but the importance of the event remains.
"Suddenly," says Waliszewski, "a fearful explosion overthrew the dancers, cut the music short, and left the servant-maid, fainting with terror, in the arms of a dragoon." Thus did Martha, the "Siren of the Kitchen," dance her way into Russian history, little dreaming, we may be sure, to what dizzy heights her nimble feet were to carry her.
His Plan of a University for Russia, which had an appreciable influence on education elsewhere, "has never to this day," says Waliszewski, "been translated into Russian." How natural again, and with what vivid abandon, she presents herself in her correspondence with Grimm! He lives in Paris, factotum and confidant, passes his life in executing her commissions.
His standard of taste, as of manners, has not inaptly been likened to that of a Dutch sailor. When Catherine took up her residence in her new home, Waliszewski tells us, "her eye shortly fell on certain magnificent jewels. Forthwith, bursting into tears, she addressed her new protector: 'Who put these ornaments here?
On the Russian sovereigns: R. N. Bain, The First Romanovs, 1613-1725 , and, by the same author, Pupils of Peter the Great: a History of the Russian Court and Empire from 1697 to 1740 ; Eugene Schuyler, Peter the Great, 2 vols. , a scholarly work; Kazimierz Waliszewski, Peter the Great, an admirable study trans. from the French by Lady Mary Loyd , and, by the same author, though not as yet translated, L'heritage de Pierre le Grand: regne des femmes, gouvernement des favoris, 1725-1741 and La derniere des Romanov, Elisabeth R ; Alexander Bruckner, Peter der Grosse , and, by the same author, Katharina die Zweite , important German works, in the Oncken Series; E. A. B. Hodgetts, The Life of Catherine the Great of Russia , a recent fair-minded treatment in English.
"Elle brillait surtout par le caractère," says Waliszewski, whose volumes, collecting most of what is known about Catharine, I have freely consulted. It is only natural that her biographer should regard her as a strikingly complex and exceptional being. Nous sommes tous des exceptions. Yet she is not essentially different from the "woman of character" you may meet in every street.
Even in his saner moods, as Waliszewski tells us, he "joined to the roughness of a Russian barin all the coarseness of a Dutch sailor." Such in brief suggestion was Peter I. of Russia, half-savage, half-sovereign, the strangest jumble of contradictions who has ever worn the Imperial purple "a huge mastodon, whose moral perceptions were all colossal and monstrous."
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