XX

INTRODUCTION

practical spirit, is revealed with exceptional clearnessin his naval policy. The future of his empiredepended on his ability to fashion, and to teach anon-maritime people to wield, that formidableweapon—a naval force. That he could even con-ceive the idea of effecting this, seems the moreextraordinary when we remember that, for twocenturies and a quarter, the Russians had beenunder the yoke of a people, if possible, lessmaritime than themselves—the Mongol Tartars ;all traces of whose dominion were far from havingdisappeared.

Though less cruel in disposition than the mem-bers of the bloodthirsty group which predominatedin the Reign of Terror, he was as ruthless as theworst of them in his methods of exterminatingopponents. Still, he was no Jacobin fanatic towhom a tabula rasa seemed the most desirable ofpolitical acquisitions, preliminary to the formationof a new people and new institutions. As beforesuggested, Peter the Great admitted the conditionsof fact and possibility. This was a passive virtue.He was conspicuously endowed with an active one—the faculty of perceiving and assuming control ofgreat existing forces. He was a practical states-man and not a doctrinaire. The Russians longedfor more intimate relations with the West, now thatescape from Tartar subjugation had resulted inattaching them to the European instead of to theAsiatic state system. To resume in Lithuaniawhat had once been theirs; to drive the Polesbeyond what they persisted in believing to be thetrue Russian frontier; to regain the lost provinces