d were compelled to accept quietly and uncomplainingly
whatever burdens their master chose to place upon them. "Though our
country," they said, "is in no danger of invasion, no sooner is peace
concluded than plans are laid for a new war, which has generally no
other foundation than the ambition of the Sovereign, or perhaps merely
the ambition of one of his Ministers. To please him our peasants are
utterly exhausted, and we ourselves are forced to leave our homes and
families, not as formerly for a single campaign, but for long years. We
are compelled to contract debts and to entrust our estates to thieving
overseers, who commonly reduce them to such a condition that when we
are allowed to retire from the service, in consequence of old age or
illness, we cannot to the end of our lives retrieve our prosperity. In
a word, we are so exhausted and ruined by the keeping up of a standing
army, and by the consequences flowing therefrom, that the most cruel
enemy, though he should devastate the whole Empire, could not cause us
one-half of the injury."*

* These complaints have been preserved by Vockerodt, a
Prussian diplomatic agent of the time.

This Spartan regime, which ruthlessly sacrificed private interests to
considerations of State policy, could not long be maintained in its
pristine severity. It undermined its own foundations by demanding too
much. Draconian laws threatening confiscation and capital punishment
were of little avail. Nobles became monks, inscribed themselves as
merchants, or engaged themselves as domestic servants, in order to
escape their obligations. "Some," says a contemporary, "grow old in
disobedience and have never once appeared in active service. . . . There
is, for instance, Theodore Mokeyef. . . . In spite of the strict orders
sent regarding him no one could ever catch him. Some of those sent
to take him he belaboured with blows, and when he could not beat the
messengers, he pretended to be dangerously ill, or feigned idiocy, and,
running into the pond, stood in the water up to his neck; but as soon
as the messengers were out of sight he returned home and roared like a
lion." *

* Pososhkof, "O skudosti i bogatstve."

After Peter's death the system was gradually relaxed, but the Noblesse
could not be satisfied by partial concessions. Russia had in the
meantime moved, as it were, out of Asia into Europe, and had become
one of the great European Powers. The upper classes had been