PETER I, czar or tsar, and afterwards emperor, of Russia, was the founder of the Russian empire. That country was indeed well known, and of great antiquity; but it had no extent of power, of political influence, or of general commerce in Europe, until the time of Peter. He was born in 1672, and proclaimed czar when only ten years of age, in exclusion of John his eldest brother, who, being of a sickly constitution, was at the same time equally deficient in understanding. The Princess Sophia, his sister by the half-blood, raised an insurrection in favour of John; but, to put an end to the civil war, it was at last agreed that the two brothers should jointly share the imperial dignity. Peter had been very ill brought up, not only through the general defects of education in Russia, but likewise through the arts of the Princess Sophia, who surrounded him with every thing calculated to stifle his natural desire of knowledge and to deprave his mind. But notwithstanding this, his inclination for military exercises discovered itself in his tenderest years. He formed a company of fifty men, commanded by foreign officers, and clothed and exercised after the German manner. He himself entered into the lowest post, that of a drummer, and never rose otherwise than as a soldier of fortune. His design in this was to teach his nobility, that merit, and not birth, formed the only solid title to military employments. He reinforced his company with several others, until at last he had got together a considerable body of soldiers. As he had then no war on his hands, he exercised them in all sorts of mock engagements, and by this means secured to himself a body of well-disciplined troops. The sight of a Dutch vessel, which he had met with upon a lake belonging to one of his pleasure-houses, made such an impression on his mind, that he conceived the almost impracticable design of forming a navy. His first care was to get some Hollanders to build small vessels at Moscow; and he passed two successive summers on board of English or Dutch ships, which sailed out from Archangel, that he might instruct himself in every branch of nautical affairs. In the year 1696, the Czar John died, and Peter now became sole master of the empire. In 1698 he sent an embassy to Holland, and having gone incognito in the retinue, he visited England as well as Holland, to inform himself fully respecting the art of ship-building. At Amsterdam he worked in the yard as a private ship-carpenter, under the name of Peter Michaelof; but he has been often heard to say, that if he had never gone to England, he would still have remained ignorant of the art of ship-building. In 1700 he had got together a body of regular troops, amounting to thirty thousand infantry; and now the vast project he had formed displayed itself in all its parts. He opened his dominions, which till then had been closed, having first sent the principal nobility of his empire into foreign countries to improve themselves in knowledge and in learning. He invited to Russia all the foreigners he could meet with, who were capable of instructing his subjects in any respect, and offered them great encouragement to settle in his dominions. This raised many discontents; and the despotic authority which he exerted on all such occasions was scarcely sufficient to suppress them. In 1700, being strengthened by the alliance of Augustus king of Poland, he made war on Charles XII. king of Sweden.
His ill success at first did not discourage him; for he used to say, "I know that my armies must be overcome for a great while; but even this will at last teach them to conquer." He afterwards gained considerable advantages, and founded St Petersburg in 1703. In 1709 he gained a complete victory over the Swedes at Pultowa. In 1712 he was surrounded by the Turks on the banks of the Pruth, and seemed inevitably lost, had not the Czarina Catherine bribed the grand vizier, and the czar's prudence completed his deliverance. In 1716 he made a tour through Germany and Holland, and visited the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris. It would be endless to enumerate all the various establishments for which the Russians are indebted to him. He formed an army according to the tactics of the most experienced nations; he fitted out fleets in all the four seas which border upon Russia; he caused many strong fortresses to be raised according to the best plans, and made convenient harbours; he introduced arts and sciences into his dominions, and freed religion from many superstitious abuses; he made laws, built cities, cut canals, and executed many other works; he was generous in rewarding, and impartial in punishing; faithful, laborious, and humble, yet not free from a certain roughness of temper natural to his countrymen. He had indeed cured himself of excess in drinking; but he has been branded with several other vices, particularly cruelty. He published the unfortunate history of his son Prince Alexis, towards whom some blame his severity, whilst others think it no greater than was absolutely necessary. He perfectly knew the respect due to persons of merit; and not only heaped honours upon them during their life, but paid to their memory marks of esteem after their death. He died of the strangury in 1725, and is said to have left the world with the magnanimity of a hero and the piety of a Christian.
PETER the Wild Boy. This extraordinary creature at one time occasioned a great deal of speculation amongst the learned; but we do not know that any satisfactory causes have been assigned for the striking difference observed between him and other human beings.
The following account of him is extracted from the parish register of North Church, in the county of Hertford. "Peter, commonly known by the name of Peter the Wild Boy, lies buried in this church-yard, opposite to the porch. In the year 1725 he was found in the woods near Hamelen, a fortified town in the electorate of Hanover, when his majesty George I. with his attendants, was hunting in the forest of Hertswood. He was supposed to be then about twelve years of age, and had subsisted in those woods upon the bark of trees, leaves, berries, &c. for some considerable length of time. How long he had continued in that wild state is altogether uncertain; but that he had formerly been under the care of some person, was evident from the remains of a shirt collar about his neck at the time when he was found. As Hamelen was a town where criminals were confined to work upon the fortifications, it was then conjectured at Hanover that Peter might be the issue of one of those criminals, who had either wandered into the woods and could not find his way back again, or, being discovered to be an idiot, was inhumanly turned out by his parents, and left to perish, or shift for himself. In the following year, 1726, he was brought over to England, by the order of Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales, and put under the care of Dr Arbuthnot, with proper masters to attend him. But notwithstanding there appeared to be no natural defect in his organs of speech, after all the pains that had been taken with him he could never be brought distinctly to articulate a single syllable, and proved totally incapable of receiving any instruction. He was afterwards intrusted to the care of Mrs Titchbourn, one of the queen's bedchamber
women, with a handsome pension annexed to the charge. Mrs Titchbourn usually spending a few weeks every summer at the house of Mr James Fenn, a yeoman farmer at Axter's End, in this parish, Peter was left to the care of the said Mr Fenn, who was allowed thirty-five pounds a year for his support and maintenance. After the death of James Fenn he was transferred to the care of his brother Thomas Fenn, at another farm-house in this parish, called Broadway, where he lived with the several successive tenants of that farm, and with the same provision allowed by government, to the time of his death, 22d of February 1785, when he was supposed to be about seventy-two years of age."
PETER'S PENCE, the name applied to an annual tribute of one penny, paid at Rome by every family at the festival of St Peter. In the Saxon king, when he went in pilgrimage to Rome about the year 740, paid this contribution to the pope, partly as alms and partly in recompense of a house erected in Rome for English pilgrims; and the same continued to be paid generally until the time of Henry VIII., when it was enacted, that henceforth no person should pay any pensions, Peter's pence, or other impositions, for the use of the bishop or see of Rome.