Peter the Great, Czar of Russia
Peter was born May 30, 1672 to the Romanov family, a dynasty that ruled Russia from 1613 to 1917. Peter was the grandson of Czar Michael Romanov, who founded the dynasty and was a distant relative of Ivan the Terrible.
In 1682, at the age of 10, Peter was proclaimed Czar, but due to a power struggle between different political forces he had to rule together with his feeble-minded brother Ivan. Ivan died in 1696, and Peter became the sole monarch of Russia. Peter was a huge man, standing nearly seven feet tall, with a commanding presence. In Peter, Russia had a leader who not only looked powerful, but carried a force of will to set about reforming the entire nation.
As czar, Peter engineered a series of reforms that were to put Russia among the major European powers. Peter opened Russia to the West. He invited the best European engineers, shipbuilders, architects, craftsmen and merchants to come to Russia. Hundreds of Russians were sent to Europe to get the best education and learn different arts and crafts.
He initiated sweeping reforms in the military. Prior to his rule, the Russian army had been an amateur, volunteer military. Beginning in 1699, Peter made the army a profession, paid for by the state, and instituted a draft that could call nobles and peasants alike to service, which would sometimes last for life. By 1725 the Russian army boasted over 125,000 soldiers, and was armed as well as any in Europe. With the shipbuilders he had brought from the west, he began construction of a Russian navy, which the nation had never had before. One of the Peter's main goals was to regain access to the Baltic Sea and Baltic trade. In 1700 he started the Northern War with Sweden, which lasted for 21 years. In the course of the war St. Petersburg was founded (1703) in the NevaRiver delta. At the end of the war Russia was victorious and conquered the vast lands on the Baltic coast. Russia gained access to European trade and St. Petersburg became her major sea port.
Domestically, Peter engaged in sweeping reforms in education, starting state-run schools in medicine, engineering, and science. The educational quality in Russia was so backward, that the schools had to be staffed by foreigners, as there were no Russians qualified to teach.
Peter’s main goal was to “westernize” Russia, to make it more like other European nations and less like Asian nations, which he viewed as primitive. To do this, he started a newspaper (he edited the first edition himself), and ordered his nobles to dress in European fashion. He began to include women in social gatherings, which elevated their status within the nation. In agriculture, he introduced the potato to the Russian diet, which greatly assisted in feeding the multitude of citizens under his control.
In 1712 Peter the Great moved the Russian capital to St. Petersburg and continued paying special attention to the swift construction of the city - his European "paradise". From here he attempted to force the rest of Russia to follow his will. He was not always popular with the Russian people, and there were many attempts to end his life while he served as ruler. Peter responded to such threats with ruthless vengeance, even going so far as ordering his own son to be tortured in killed when Peter suspected his son of plotting against the throne.
When the Northern War ended in 1721 Russia was declared an Empire and Peter the Great proclaimed himself Emperor. He began constructing a huge palace in St. Petersburg, which was called Peterhof, or “Peter’s Court.” The elaborate building was finished in 1724, and became known as the Russian Versailles.
Peter caught a chill and took to his bed in the winter of that year. While the exact nature of his illness is unknown (it is believed he might have had pneumonia), it was serious enough that Peter died in his be on January 28, 1725.
Peter had continued his efforts at “westernization” until the time of his death. While some were more successful than others, during the time of Peter’s reign, Russia took a huge leap toward becoming a European and a world power.
Source: World History, Patterns of Interaction
Charles I, King of England
Charles I was born in 1600, the second son of James I and Anne of Denmark. After several unsuccessful attempts at arranging a marriage, Charles married the 15 year-old daughter of France's King Henry IV, Henrietta Maria. Three years of coldness and indifference ensued, but the pair finally became devoted to each other, producing four sons and five daughters.
Charles ascended the throne at the age of 25; after a weak, sickly childhood, he became an excellent horseman and a strong-willed king. His strong will, however, proved to be his undoing. Charles was soon at war with both Spain and France, and constantly in need of money to finance these efforts. Parliament often refused to give him the funds he desired.
Charles inherited the incessant financial problems of his father: the refusal of Parliament to grant funds to a king who refused to address the grievances of the nobility. In 1628 Parliament agreed to grant him the funds he desired only if he would sign a document called the Petition of Right. In this document, the king agreed to four points:
- He would not imprison his subjects without due cause
- He would not levy taxes with Parliament’s permission
- He would not house soldiers in private homes
- He would not impose martial law in a time of peace
After signing and getting his money, however, he promptly began to ignore the document and the four points. Charles I would not summon Parliament for another 11 years, and Parliament would not give him money again during that time. Charles began to finance his reign by selling commercial monopolies and extracting ship money (a fee demanded from towns for building naval warships).
Charles' marriage to the devoutly Catholic French princess further incensed the increasingly Puritan nobility, as her Catholic friends flooded into the royal court. She was a meddlesome woman who put her wants (and those of her friends) above the needs of the realm.
A problem in Scotland brought an abrupt end to Charles' 11 years of personal rule and unleashed the forces of civil war upon England. Charles attempted to force a new prayer book on the Scots, which resulted in rebellion. Charles' forces were ill prepared due to lack of proper funds, causing the king to call, first, the Short Parliament, and finally the Long Parliament. King and Parliament again reached no agreement; Charles foolishly tried to arrest five members of Parliament on the advice of Henrietta Maria, which brought matters to a head. The struggle for supremacy led to civil war. Charles raised his standard against Parliamentary forces at Nottingham in 1642.
Religious and economic issues added to the differences between the supporters of the monarchy (Cavaliers) and the supporters of Parliament (Roundheads). The lines of division were roughly as follows: Cavalier backing came from peasants and nobility of Episcopalian roots while Roundhead backing came from the emerging middle class and tradesmen of the Puritanical movement. Geographically, the northern and western provinces aided the Cavaliers, with the more financially prosperous and populous southern and eastern counties lending aid to the Roundheads. The bottom line is that the Roundheads, with deeper pockets and more population from which to draw, were destined to win the battle. Oliver Cromwell and his New Model Army soundly beat the Cavaliers in 1645. Barely a year later, Charles surrendered to Scottish forces, which turned the king over to Parliament.
In 1648, Charles was put on trial for treason, the first time a reigning monarch had ever been put on trial for his actions. The tribunal, by a vote of 68 to 67, found the king guilty. Charles I was publicly executed in 1649, a move that shocked the other monarchs of Europe.
The legacy of Charles I is one of poor judgment, poor money management, and poor rule. While he possessed a strong will, he insisted on attempting to be an absolute monarch when in fact he was not. Parliament constantly refused to do what he said, and his battles with them ended up leading to his own death.
Source: World History, Patterns of Interaction
Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England
Oliver Cromwell was born into a family which was for a time one of the wealthiest and most influential in the area. Educated at CambridgeUniversity, he became a minor East Anglian landowner. He made a living by farming and collecting rents, first in his native Huntingdon, then from 1631 in St Ives and from 1636 in Ely. Cromwell's inheritances from his father, who died in 1617, and later from a maternal uncle were not great, his income was modest and he had to support an expanding family - widowed mother, wife and eight children. He ranked near the bottom of the landowning class often labeled 'the gentry.' Until 1640 he played only a small role in local administration and no significant role in national politics. It was the civil wars of the 1640s which lifted Cromwell from obscurity to power.
From the outbreak of war in summer 1642, Cromwell was an active and committed officer in the parliamentary army. Initially a captain in charge of a small body of mounted troops, in 1643 he was promoted to colonel and given command of his own cavalry regiment.
He was successful in a series of sieges and small battles which helped to secure East Anglia and the East Midlands against the royalists. At the end of the year he was appointed second in command of the Eastern Association army, parliament's largest and most effective regional army, with the rank of lieutenant-general. During 1644 he contributed to the victory at Marston Moor, which helped secure the north for parliament, and also campaigned with mixed results in the south Midlands and Home Counties.
In 1645-6, as second in command of the newly formed main parliamentary army, the New Model Army, Cromwell played a major role in parliament's victory in the Midlands, sealed by the battle of Naseby in June 1645, and in the south and south-west. When civil war flared up again in 1648 he commanded a large part of the New Model Army which first crushed rebellion in South Wales and then at Preston defeated a Scottish-royalist army of invasion.
After the trial and execution of the King, Cromwell led major military campaigns to establish English control over Ireland (1649-50) and then Scotland (1650-51), culminating in the defeat of another Scottish-royalist army of invasion at Worcester in September 1651. In summer 1650, before embarking for Scotland, Cromwell had been appointed lord general - that is, commander in chief - of all the parliamentary forces.
Cromwell's military standing gave him enhanced political power, just as his military victories gave him the confidence and motivation to intervene in and to shape political events. An obscure and inexperienced Member of Parliament for Cambridge in 1640, by the late 1640s he was one of the power-brokers in parliament and he played a decisive role in the 'revolution' of winter 1648-9 which saw the trial and execution of the King, and the disbanding of the monarchy and the House of Lords.
It was a remarkable achievement for a man who probably had no military experience before 1642. Cromwell consistently attributed his military success to God's will. Historians point to his personal courage and skill, to his care in training and equipping his men and to the tight discipline he imposed both on and off the battlefield.
Eventually, in December 1653, he became head of state as Lord Protector, though he held that office under a written constitution which ensured that he would share political power with parliaments and a council. As Lord Protector for almost five years, until his death on 3 September 1658, Cromwell was head of a tolerant, inclusive and largely civilian regime, which sought to restore order and stability at home and thus to win over much of the traditional political and social elite. Abroad, the army and navy were employed to promote England's interests in an expansive and largely successful foreign policy.
Cromwell’s life and actions had a radical edge springing from his strong religious faith. A conversion experience some time before the civil war, strengthened by his belief that during the war he and his troops had been chosen by God to perform His will, gave a religious tinge to many of his political policies as Lord Protector in the 1650s. Cromwell sought 'Godly reformation', a broad program involving reform of the most inhumane elements of the legal, judicial and social systems and clamped down on drunkenness, immorality and other sinful activities. He instituted a policy of religious toleration for all faiths except Catholics, even allowing Jews to practice their faith openly in England.
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