Peter The Great

Peter I Alekseyevich Romanov, Tzar and Emperor of All Russia, Grand-Colonel of The Preobrazhensky Regiment. Peter is a tall Protogen with brown fur, blue LED eyes and mouth displayed on his visor face, pointed ears and a fluffy tail. Obsessed with western European fashion, Peter often wears a green military coat with red cuffs and collar, a row of gold buttons and a red undershirt, white trousers, black knee high boots, along with a straight, thin double edged saber with a brass hilt and guard, and a silver sword knot. Born May 30th 1672, Peter grew up at Izmaylovo Estate and was educated at the Amusement Palace from an early age by several tutors commissioned by his father, most notably Nikita Zotov, Patrick Gordon, and Paul Menesius. When his father died in 1676, he left the sovereignty to Peter's elder half-brother, the crippled Feodor III. Throughout this period, the government was largely run by Artamon Matveyev, an enlightened friend of Alexis, the political head of the Naryshkin family and one of Peter's greatest childhood benefactors. This position changed when Feodor died in 1682. As Feodor did not leave any children, a dispute arose between the Miloslavsky family (Maria Miloslavskaya was the first wife of Alexis I) and Naryshkin family (Natalya Naryshkina was his second wife) over who should inherit the throne. He jointly ruled with his elder half-brother, Ivan V, until 1696. Ivan was next in line but was weakminded and blind. Consequently, the Boyar Duma chose the 10-year-old Peter to become Tzar, with his mother as regent. Peter grew to be extremely tall, especially for the time period, reportedly standing 6 ft 8 in He was seen as a "second Goliath" Originally just Tzar of Russia, ruling jointly with his half-brother Ivan V until 1696. From this year, Peter was an absolute monarch, an autocrat who remained the ultimate authority and organized a well-ordered police state. In 1721, Peter replaced the title Tzar of Russia with his current title Tzar and Emperor of All Russia, formally changing The Tzardom of Russia into The Russian Empire. In 1683, Peter took some of his most loyal soldiers and formed The Preobrazhensky Regiment, creating a personal guard for him and his family. The Preobrazhensky Regiment didn't just guard Peter's palaces, but they also accompanied him in battle, such as The Battle of Poltava, where they bravely faced off against Swedish forces in northern Ukraine. To show his new position as Grand-Colonel of The Preobrazhensky Regiment, Peter wears a silver badge depicting Saint Andrew's Cross with a two headed eagle perched above it. Much of Peter's reign was consumed by lengthy wars against the Ottoman and Swedish empires. His Azov campaigns were followed by the foundation of the Russian Navy; after his victory in the Great Northern War despite initial difficulties, Russia annexed a significant portion of the eastern Baltic coastline and was officially renamed from a tsardom to an empire. Peter led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, Westernized, and based on radical Enlightenment. In December 1699, he introduced the Julian calendar, which replaced the Byzantine calendar that was long used in Russia, but the Russian Orthodox Church was particularly resistant to this change. In 1703, he introduced the first Russian newspaper, Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, and ordered the civil script, a reform of Russian orthography largely designed by himself. On the shores of The Neva River, he founded Saint Petersburg, a city famously dubbed by Francesco Algarotti as the "window to the West". In 1712, Peter relocated the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, a status it retained until 1918. Peter had a great interest in plants, animals and minerals, in malformed creatures or exceptions to the law of nature for his cabinet of curiosities. He encouraged research of deformities, all along trying to debunk the superstitious fear of monsters. He promoted industrialization in the Russian Empire and higher education. The Russian Academy of Sciences and the Saint Petersburg State University were founded in 1724, and invited Christian Wolff and Willem's Gravesande. Peter is primarily credited with the modernization of the country, quickly transforming it into a major European power. His administrative reforms, creating a Governing Senate in 1711, the Collegium in 1717 and the Table of Ranks in 1722 had a lasting impact on Russia, and many institutions of the Russian government trace their origins to his reign. To improve his nation's position on the seas, Peter sought more maritime outlets. His only outlet at the time was the White Sea at Arkhangelsk. The Baltic Sea was at the time controlled by Sweden in the north, while the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea were controlled by the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Empire respectively in the south. The country's need for metal was exacerbated by the outbreak of wars for access to the Black and Baltic Seas. Peter attempted to acquire control of the Black Sea, which would require expelling the Tatars from the surrounding areas. As part of an agreement with Poland that ceded Kiev to Russia, Peter was forced to wage war against the Crimean Khan and against the Khan's overlord, the Ottoman Sultan. Peter's primary objective became the capture of the Ottoman fortress of Azov, near the Don River. In the summer of 1695 Peter organized the Azov campaigns to take the fortress, but his attempts ended in failure. Peter studied saw-mills, manufacturing and shipbuilding in Zaandam but left after a week. He sailed to Amsterdam after he was recognized and attacked. The log-cabin he rented became The Tzar Peter House. He sailed to Texel to see a fleet. Through the mediation of Nicolaas Witsen, an expert on Russia, The Tzar was given the opportunity to gain practical experience in a shipyard, belonging to the Dutch East India Company, for a period of four months, under the supervision of Gerrit Claesz Pool. The diligent and capable Tzar assisted in the construction of an East Indiaman Peter and Paul specially laid down for him. Peter felt that the ship's carpenters in Holland worked too much by eye and lacked accurate construction drawings. During his stay Peter engaged many skilled workers such as builders of locks, fortresses, shipwrights, and seamen—including Cornelis Cruys, a vice-admiral who became, under Franz Lefort, The Tzar's advisor in maritime affairs; engineer Menno van Coehoorn refused. Peter put his knowledge of shipbuilding to use in helping build Russia's navy. In 1714, Peter began construction of The Monplaisir Palace based on his own sketches. He "сhalked out not only the site but also the inside layout, some elements of the decorative finish, etc". Later, he expanded his plans to include a vaster royal château of palaces and gardens further inland, on the model of Versailles which would become Peterhof Palace. The initial design of the palace and its garden was done by the French architect Jean-Baptiste Le Blond. The dominant natural feature of Peterhof is a 16-m-high bluff lying less than 100 m from the shore. The so-called Lower Gardens, at 1.02 km2 comprising the better part of Peterhof's land area, are confined between this bluff and the shore, stretching east and west for roughly 200 m. The majority of Peterhof's fountains are contained here, as are several small palaces and outbuildings. East of the Lower Gardens lies the Alexandria Park with 19th-century Gothic Revival structures such as the Kapella. Atop the bluff, near the middle of the Lower Gardens, stands the Grand Palace. Behind it are the comparatively small Upper Gardens. Upon the bluff's face below the palace is the Grand Cascade. This and the Grand Palace are the centrepiece of the entire complex. At its foot begins the Sea Channel, one of the most extensive waterworks of the Baroque period, which bisects the Lower Gardens. The Grand Cascade is modelled on one constructed for Louis XIV at his Château de Marly, which is likewise memorialised in one of the park's outbuildings. At the centre of the cascade is an artificial grotto with two stories, faced inside and out with hewn brown stone. It currently contains a modest museum of the fountains' history. The fountains of the Grand Cascade are located below the grotto and on either side of it. There are 64 fountains. Their waters flow into a semicircular pool, the terminus of the fountain-lined Sea Channel. In the 1730s, the large Samson Fountain was placed in this pool. It depicts the moment when Samson tears open the jaws of a lion, representing Russia's victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War, and is doubly symbolic. The lion is an element of the Swedish coat of arms, and one of the great victories of the war was won on St Sampson's Day. From the lion's mouth shoots a 20-metre-high vertical jet of water, the highest in all of Peterhof. Perhaps the greatest technological achievement of Peterhof is that all of the fountains operate without the use of pumps. Water is supplied from natural springs and collects in reservoirs in the Upper Gardens. The elevation difference creates the pressure that drives most of the fountains of the Lower Gardens, including the Grand Cascade. In the winter of 1723, Peter, whose overall health was never robust, began having problems with his urinary tract and bladder. In the summer of 1724, a team of doctors performed surgery releasing upwards of four pounds of blocked urine. Peter remained bedridden until late autumn. In the first week of October, restless and certain he was cured, Peter began a lengthy inspection tour of various projects. Rastrelli finished his monument to Peter I. According to legend, in November, at Lakhta along the Gulf of Finland to inspect some ironworks, Peter saw a group of soldiers drowning near shore and, wading out into near-waist deep water, came to their rescue. This icy water rescue is said to have exacerbated Peter's bladder problems and caused his death. The story, however, has been viewed with skepticism by some historians, pointing out that the German chronicler Jacob von Staehlin is the only source for the story. In early January 1725, Peter was struck once again with uremia or azotemia. Legend has it that before lapsing into unconsciousness Peter asked for a paper and pen and scrawled an unfinished note that read: "Leave all to ..." and then, exhausted by the effort, asked for his daughter Anna to be summoned. Peter died between four and five in the morning 8 February. An autopsy revealed his bladder to be infected with gangrene. He was fifty-two years, seven months old when he died, having reigned forty-two years. He is interred in Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral.