Peter the Great wanted a navy. "Peter, " they said, "you don't have any boats." He said "Fuck you, I'll build them." They said "Peter, you don't have a port." (At the time, Russia's only port was Arkhangelsk, which is so far north that it's usually frozen.) He said "Fuck you, I'll get one."
And he did.
He took an entourage of friends and hangers-on and giants and midgets (he loved midgets) to Holland, the world navy power at the time. They left epic mass destruction in their drunken wake, but somehow amid the debauchery Peter also learned how to build ships. He fought a war with Sweden to get Russia a better port. Not that wars are so great but man, talk about determination. He sort of built the Russian navy with his bare hands. Before Peter the Great, people made change by cutting coins into smaller pieces until eventually there was nothing left, and infanticide was fairly common. (I hate babies, but I don't actually condone killing them.) He was nice to the Old Believers, who had previously been persecuted horribly for not playing along when the Orthodox Church decided to change how many fingers are used to make the sign of the cross, and to his sickly half brother Ivan, with whom he technically shared the throne until Ivan died. And I already said he loved midgets, right?
Ok, so St. Petersburg was built largely with slave labor and thousands of people died in the process, and he he may or may not have had his own son tortured to death. A saint he was not, but he's the closest thing to a(n?) historical hero I have.
No comments:
Post a Comment