as not carried
away by either prospect. He did indeed send a fleet down the Volga,
and another down the Don. He conquered the Persian coast of the
Caspian, but resisted the temptation of pushing his arms to the Indian
Ocean. He was repeatedly at war with the Turk; but he contented
himself with a humble measure of success.

Poland, for reasons of race and religion, was the national enemy; and
from the death of Sobieski in 1696 there were symptoms that it was
likely to break up. The next king, Augustus of Saxony, in 1702,
proposed the partition of the Polish dominions. His agent, Patkul,
renewed the idea at Berlin in 1704, and Austria did the same in 1712.
At the height of his military success, in 1710, Peter entertained the
idea, only to dismiss it. He preferred to wait. Poland would be
convenient as a helpless neighbour, covering his frontier on a
dangerous side; and its constitution prevented it from becoming
formidable. He was content to make sure that the feeble government
should never undergo reform. He resolutely fixed his thoughts in
another direction, and chose, not the easiest, but the most difficult
line of attack.

Tartars, or Persians, or Zaporogue Cossacks supplied no new element
that could be of service to his people. The Russians had issued from
the long subjection to the Golden Horde, indigent, ignorant,
prejudiced, dishonest and false. A mighty future lay before them, but
they were unfit for such a destiny. The civilising influences they
required could come only from contact with superior races. From them
they must import the goods, they must import the men, that were needed
to raise them, in the arts of peace and war, to a level with others.
The route for both species of commerce was by sea. But Russia touched
the sea only in the North, where it is closed by ice. The way to the
countries that were most advanced, intellectually and socially, to
France and England, especially to Holland and the empire behind it,
was by the Baltic.

There the Swedes stopped the way. Gustavus had conquered the Baltic
provinces, and all the way from Poland to Finland the coast was
inaccessible to the interior of Russia. Sweden was still esteemed a
great Power; and although it was not yet discovered, the new king was,
what Peter never became, a capable and ambitious commander. The main
argument of Peter's reign was the struggle for supremacy with Charles
XII.

Before it broke out, he undertook a journe