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00:00I'm making my first trip to Russia, a country I've been wanting to visit for years.
00:17Because if you're fascinated by stories of royalty and royal power, there's nowhere better than this.
00:23This is Red Square. It's a vast and diverse place.
00:30This is the huge, scary-looking fortress of the Kremlin.
00:34This is an absolutely ginormous department store, and over there is the Cathedral of St Basil.
00:41Red Square is the centre of a country that goes all the way to China.
00:47Now, how do you rule over a place that's that enormous and that confusing?
00:52Well, in Russia, for more than 300 years, one family managed to do just that, the Romanov dynasty.
00:59That's as if, in Britain, the Stuarts had hung on to power right into the 20th century.
01:08Now, I'll be following in the footsteps of the Romanovs, the most powerful monarchs in modern European history.
01:15It's a roll call of extraordinary characters.
01:22Peter the Great, the visionary who built a navy from nothing.
01:26Ready for attack!
01:27And transformed a country into an empire.
01:30Catherine the Great, Empress of the Glittering Palaces.
01:40The minor princess from Germany, who became the mightiest woman in the world.
01:47Alexander the First, who led his country through its darkest hour.
01:54He defeated Napoleon and took the triumphant Russian army all the way to Paris.
02:02But behind the spectacular façades lie stories of intrigue, betrayal, scandal, even murder.
02:15And for all their efforts to place themselves at the forefront of modern Europe.
02:19The Romanovs failed to change a system that kept millions of their subjects in medieval servitude.
02:27Until it was far too late.
02:29When their end came, it was astonishingly brutal.
02:39Slaughtered by the revolution that shook the world.
02:44To understand the end of the Romanovs, you need to understand their whole story.
02:50Of a royal family with unparalleled control over their people.
02:54And you might ask yourself what you would have done in their shoes with such absolute personal power.
03:24For anyone who grew up during the Cold War, it's hard to shake off the image of Russia as intimidating and impregnable.
03:39A bona fide superpower under the iron rule of the Gremlin.
03:44Images of military might on display in Red Square have been seared into our minds.
03:55Yet the age of the Romanovs began in a power vacuum.
04:03And in this programme, we'll see how in little more than a century, this dynasty turned around Russia's fortunes.
04:10Back in 1613, Russia was leaderless.
04:20There'd been years of anarchy since the previous royal dynasty, the Ruriks, had collapsed.
04:26The country was so weakened that the Polish army had marched right in and occupied the Kremlin.
04:31Once the Poles had finally been driven out, the great and good of Russia realised that they needed to stop squabbling and unite around a leader.
04:42What they wanted, the Romans had called a Caesar, the Germans a Kaiser and in Russian a Tsar.
04:49They argued for weeks about who it should be, but finally they made their choice.
04:55The only problem was that nobody had asked this prospective Tsar if he actually wanted the job.
05:00A high-powered delegation set out from Moscow to find their hoped-for leader and bring him the good news.
05:14Their number included nobles and leading churchmen, the power brokers of Russia, or Muscovy as it was also known.
05:22Their journey took them more than 200 miles north, across countryside that was still dangerous and largely lawless.
05:34And this was their destination, the Ipatiev Monastery, overlooking the mighty River Volga.
05:51It was still winter, and with no bridge back then, the delegation had to cross the ice to get to the monastery.
06:04Sheltering here was the object of the delegation's quest, a 16-year-old boy called Mikhail Romanov.
06:21But although the Romanov's were a well-known noble family, power was the last thing that he wanted.
06:40It's said that when Mikhail Romanov was offered the crown, he burst into tears.
06:45He didn't feel equal to accepting it, and his mother was furious with the delegation.
06:50She said,
06:52No, you shouldn't have offered my son such a dangerous responsibility.
06:57But the delegation said,
06:58It's not up to us, it's not up to you.
07:01It's God who wants you to do this thing.
07:07After several hours of deliberation, Mikhail and his mother caved in.
07:12They accepted.
07:13Of course, regardless of what God wanted, other considerations had played a role in Mikhail's selection.
07:24Mikhail Romanov came from a well-established noble family.
07:28The family had long dynastic connections with the previous dynasty.
07:33His father, Filaret, was the nephew of the last wife of Ivan the Terrible.
07:39During the election of Mikhail, Filaret was in Polish captivity.
07:44So different groups in Russian society were satisfied with Mikhail's position, with his social status.
07:54And at the same time, they thought it would be easy to manipulate him because his father, who was a very influential figure, was not around.
08:03Under heavy protection, Mikhail now travelled to his coronation in Moscow.
08:13Here, in a lavish ceremony before the massed ranks of Russia's nobility and churchmen, he was given the all-important divine seal of approval.
08:23At the Kremlin's Cathedral of the Assumption.
08:27This is the Russian equivalent of Westminster Abbey.
08:30All the Tsars and Emperors came here for their coronations.
08:34Mikhail Romanov was just short of seventeen when he was presented with the crown, the orb, and the scepter.
08:41Presumably, to a great big sigh of relief from the Russian people.
08:45The coronation conferred absolute power on the Tsar.
09:01Although the different noble families and the church were keen to influence Mikhail, they agreed that a strong leader was essential to prevent the kind of chaos from which Russia had just emerged.
09:16And they were proved right.
09:20More than half a century of relative stability and reconstruction followed.
09:29Under Mikhail, and then his successor, his son, Alexis.
09:34The idea that the Tsars ruled as part of a divinely ordered system helps justify their immense power.
09:48I've come to the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow to see an icon from the reign of Alexis, which features the Tsar himself.
09:57Painted by an influential Russian artist, Simon Ushakov, it's called the Tree of the Muscovite State.
10:05Say, Philip, this picture reminds me of Jack and the Beanstalk, because we've got an enormous tree growing right out of the cathedral that's planted in the middle of the fortress of the Kremlin.
10:18Yes, and the roots are common.
10:20You see, there's one, there's a common root for both church bar and state bar.
10:28They grow together, they act together.
10:34A very central idea for medieval Russia.
10:38And here we've got the first Archbishop of Moscow.
10:41The first Archbishop of Moscow.
10:42And the first Prince of Moscow.
10:43And the first Prince of Moscow.
10:44Planting the tree together.
10:45Yes, yes.
10:46I'm more interested in this person.
10:48Yes, he's the monarch, Alexis, or Alexei in Russian.
10:52And there's Zarina, there's Zarina, his wife.
10:55And the two little children, look at them.
10:57Yes, two children.
10:59Where did power really lie at this point in the 17th century?
11:03Symbolically, it was hand in hand with the civil power.
11:10But in reality, of course, the civil power was much stronger, which is not depicted here.
11:19Secretly, he's the most important person in the picture.
11:22He is the most important.
11:23Of course, political power belonged to the Tsar.
11:28But something else about the painting is very telling.
11:34For all its beauty, by Western European standards, it looks pre-Renaissance.
11:43Even by the late 17th century, foreign visitors considered Russia to be almost medieval.
11:49And not just in its art and its religious piety.
11:58Beyond the walls of Moscow lay a vast, sparsely populated, backward country.
12:04Russian territory stretched from the southern steppes to the Arctic.
12:11And thousands of miles east into Siberia.
12:14In the late 17th century, Russia was a hundred times the area of England and Wales.
12:26But it had less than twice the population.
12:28And this overwhelmingly rural country was hugely underdeveloped.
12:35Apart from churches and fortifications, stone buildings were virtually unknown in Russia.
12:44Peasant huts and clothes barely changed for hundreds of years.
12:57At the Museum of Wooden Architecture in Kostroma, they've preserved some examples.
13:02I'm modelling a traditional dress called a sour fun.
13:09While village life looks idyllic on a sunny day, for most of the year it was quite the opposite.
13:21Russia's climate was notoriously harsh.
13:25Imagine trudging along here through the mud in the wet or the snow in winter.
13:30But despite the inhospitable terrain, the majority of Russians, right into the 19th century,
13:37had to scratch out a living from the land.
13:40They also had to cope with the social reality of serfdom.
13:44This was a practice that was dying out in Western Europe.
13:48But in 17th century Russia, it was actually on the rise.
13:52And if you were somebody's serf, you were effectively their property to be bought or sold.
13:58Agriculture was the mainstay of Russia's economy.
14:05And serfdom guaranteed the landowning nobility a captive workforce.
14:12The peasants couldn't just up and leave in search of better pay or conditions elsewhere.
14:18Serfdom lasted and increased in the 17th century simply because it was found in the interest of both nobles and state to do so.
14:29The nobles had already established that they needed to have control over the movement of the serfs.
14:33And to some extent it was in the interest of the state as well, to keep people in one place, to tax them, to control them and to reward the nobility for their service.
14:43So, serfs were wealth in a way that they weren't in the West. Bodies were wealth.
14:54But towards the end of the 17th century, it looked like things might change.
14:59Russia gained a new Tsar.
15:07Driven by an obsessive desire to modernize the country, he was convinced that Russia's future depended on it looking westwards to Europe.
15:15Hey, meet Peter the Great. Or at least the next best thing.
15:27Because this is a super accurate wax effigy, made just after his death.
15:33And using his actual death mask for the face.
15:36These are Peter's real clothes, and that's even his real hair.
15:40You might be thinking, it must be larger than life, because his arms are so freakishly long.
15:47But no, he was six and a half feet tall.
15:55I think he looks pretty terrifying.
15:58And in real life, he was absolutely terrifying.
16:01But Peter the Great was Russia's most fast-sighted and hard-working sovereign.
16:07Peter's ruthlessness was a result of his traumatic childhood.
16:14In 1682, his accession to the throne at the age of nine was followed by a brief but bloody revolt.
16:24A faction at court regarded Peter's half-brother Ivan as the rightful Tsar.
16:32When rumours spread that Ivan had been killed, a mob stormed into the Kremlin, and they were led by the Royal Guards themselves.
16:46To calm the situation, Peter's mother walked out onto the palace balcony at the top of this staircase.
16:52She was holding hands with both Peter and Ivan to prove to them all that they were very much still alive.
17:01It must have been a terrifying moment for the little boys, for Peter and his brother.
17:11But when the rebels saw that they were still alive, everything calmed down. It seemed to work.
17:19But then a second wave of violence came sweeping through the palace.
17:24The rebels came rushing up this staircase.
17:26And when they got to the top, they seized the family's closest advisers and leading noblemen.
17:33And they threw them down over that balustrade, so they fell and were impaled upon the spears of the guards below.
17:41Eventually, the rebels agreed a compromise, but not before they'd slaughtered two of Peter's uncles.
17:52Peter would have to wait for his revenge.
17:57The revolt left Peter with a loathing of Moscow.
18:02As soon as he could get away, he did.
18:05This is Lake Plasheva, 90 miles north of the capital.
18:29And it's on these waters that the teenage Peter felt truly at home.
18:43So where did Peter the Great get his very un-Russian passion for sailing?
18:49Well, he discovered an old boat lying around on one of the royal estates near Moscow.
18:54But in order to learn how to use it, he had to come up here to the nice big lake where he could get up some speed.
19:03And it was on the waters at this lake that a new vision of the future of Russia began to take shape in Peter's mind.
19:11Peter took every opportunity to come up to the lake.
19:20He employed foreign experts to teach him not just how to sail the boats, but how to build them.
19:28This is the only survivor of Peter the Great's flotilla of little boats that he had made here on the shores of Lake Plasheva.
19:41He and his friends would go out onto the water and amuse themselves with mock sea battles.
19:48The small ships became known as Peter's toy navy.
19:53But his ambition went much further than simply messing about with boats.
19:57Peter realised that if Russia was to have prosperity, security and influence in the wider world, then it needed to be powerful at sea.
20:16There's a saying that a ruler with an army has one hand, but a ruler with a navy has two.
20:26Whether or not this saying really was coined by Peter the Great, there's no question that he believed it.
20:33European powers, like the English and Dutch, were making fortunes for maritime trade.
20:45But despite its size, Russia was effectively landlocked.
20:50It had just the one proper seaport in the far north, and that was frozen up for half the year.
20:56More urgently, Russia's two most threatening neighbours, Sweden to the west and Turkey to the south, both had formidable navies.
21:10Russia needed a fleet of its own.
21:14It needed maritime expertise.
21:18It needed a major new seaport that could be its gateway to the world.
21:27Peter the Great made it his mission to get these things for Russia.
21:35And to fulfil that mission, he took an extraordinary step.
21:39In 1697, at the age of 24, Peter left his kingdom in the hands of his advisers and set off to spend a gap year in Europe.
21:57Here he was to study shipbuilding and the latest developments in maritime science.
22:02The journey became known as Peter's Grand Embassy.
22:09He spent several months in Holland working in a shipyard.
22:15Then, early in 1698, Peter and his entourage pitched up in London.
22:30And one of the first places he visited was the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.
22:39Here at the observatory, Peter the Great was shown around by John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal.
22:44Together, they looked through a telescope at the planet of Venus.
23:00But this wasn't just sightseeing.
23:04Peter wanted to check out Britain's first purpose-built scientific research facility.
23:11It's hard to think of a building that could have appealed to Peter more.
23:15It had the express purpose of using astronomy to improve navigation at sea.
23:31Over the coming months, Peter gorged himself on the best of English science and technology.
23:37He visited the Royal Society, the Royal Mint in the Tower of London, Oxford University and the Cannon Foundry at the Woolwich Arsenal.
23:53During his time in London, Peter the Great stayed just around the bend in the river from Greenwich at Deptford.
23:59He liked it there because it was near the shipyards.
24:02And he was spotted joining in the work.
24:04It was said that the Tsar of Muscovy works with his own hands as hard as any man in the yard.
24:11But Peter wasn't your regular shipbuilder.
24:13He was the special guest of King William III, who now gave him a special gift.
24:19It was the ultimate boy's toy, a modern, high-speed ship called the Royal Transport.
24:25One of several English Royal yachts, the ship was a fairly naked bribe.
24:37William saw Russia as a lucrative potential trading partner.
24:41Peter soon befriended the ship's designer, the Marquess of Carmarven.
24:53And this Marquess also shared another much-loved hobby of the young Tsars.
24:58This man who designed the ship, he and Peter became drinking buddies, didn't they?
25:03I think they really found some kindred spirits in each other.
25:05They became very close and spent a lot of time together during Peter's visit.
25:09And yes, drinking was a big part of that.
25:12Well, I think we know what their favourite tipple was.
25:15Brandy laced with peppers.
25:16With peppers.
25:17That's an interesting idea.
25:19Indeed.
25:20Let's see what that tastes like.
25:25Probably fair to say that the English couldn't teach the Russians much about drinking.
25:30But at the same time, Carmarven did actually introduce Peter to this drink.
25:37So this is the special drink of the shipbuilders of Deptford?
25:41Indeed.
25:42And Peter the Great got a taste for it?
25:43Yes.
25:44OK.
25:45Randy.
25:48Oh, that's foul.
25:50That's really not very nice at all.
25:52Oh, you swallowed that.
25:56Yeah, that's not as bad as I was expecting.
26:01When Peter and his friends were in London, they were staying in Deptford on the river,
26:06they got up to some other naughty tricks, didn't they?
26:08They certainly did.
26:09And they were described by one of the Say's court servants as, where they were staying,
26:13as being right nasty in their behaviour.
26:16They basically trashed the place completely.
26:18They used portraits and paintings as target practice.
26:22They burnt all the chairs as firewood.
26:25They destroyed the furniture, tore up the beds, knocked a hole in the wall so that Peter could get out to the river easily.
26:33And they used to race wheelbarrows with people inside them through the hedges.
26:38Is that because they hadn't seen wheelbarrows before?
26:41That's exactly right.
26:42Yes, these were entirely new to them, so this seems a great sport.
26:45Peter is beginning to sound like he's a complete mess of contradictions. Is that fair?
26:49I think it is. We see, on the one hand, his scientific interests, and alongside that he's behaving like a complete lunatic.
27:00During his year in Europe, Peter not only acquired a royal yacht, he also purchased several shiploads of the latest maritime equipment.
27:09And who knows, maybe a few wheelbarrows to remind him of good times in Deptford.
27:18He hired European shipbuilders and sailors to bring their expertise to Russia and to teach the skills that he and his retinue had learnt for themselves in Holland and England.
27:28Peter also got a feel for life in prosperous modern European cities.
27:37He saw how their citizens behaved, where they lived, how they dressed.
27:43The contrast with his superstitious, conservative homeland couldn't have been more marked.
27:48And as if to underline the point, in August 1698, he was forced to hurry back to Moscow.
28:01The palace guards had rebelled again.
28:04The revolt was quickly crushed, and this time there were no deals or compromises.
28:18Peter was merciless in his retribution.
28:21He had more than a thousand of his guards beheaded or hanged.
28:26Hundreds more were tortured, flogged and banished.
28:29The fate of the guards, known in Russian as the Streltsi, is depicted in this picture by Vasily Surikov, one of the great Russian history painters of the 19th century.
28:44This is Red Square on the morning of the execution of the Streltsi.
28:49You know which ones they are because they have immensely long beards.
28:53And they're in their shirts because their uniforms have been stripped off them.
28:59And each of them is holding a little candle.
29:03That's his life that's about to be snuffed out.
29:07All the rest of the people here, and there's a huge mass of humanity, are their families.
29:13He's got his wife weeping on his lap.
29:17And that must be his little boy who's crying on his knee.
29:20There's a huge amount of suffering going on.
29:24You'd think that somebody would take pity, but no.
29:28Here's the man in charge, Peter the Great, and he is implacable.
29:33Look at him.
29:37He's saying this lot are absolutely going to that gallows in the background.
29:43And the reason that Peter is so determined is that he was once the weeping little boy himself.
29:55These are the men who murdered Peter's own uncles.
30:01But the real message of the picture is that the Streltsi represent the old Russia.
30:11They're messy and dirty and superstitious.
30:15And Peter the Great is the wind of change.
30:18He's going to sweep them all away.
30:20Peter's next move was to quash any lingering opposition to his rule.
30:29He was convinced that the rebellion had been orchestrated by his half-sister Sophia.
30:34He didn't execute Sophia, but he did what was considered the next best thing.
30:46He forced her to become a nun and spend the rest of her life largely in solitary confinement here at the Novodovici Convent in Moscow.
30:57But initially, at least, Peter did provide Sophia with some company.
31:11He strung up the corpses of the Streltsi rebels right outside her windows.
31:20Peter now turned to the Moscow elite.
31:22These were the same class of people who'd put the Romanovs on the throne nearly 90 years before.
31:28But Peter considered them to be reactionary and lazy.
31:33It was time they caught up with the present day.
31:36Peter decided that the best way to make them behave like modern Europeans was to make them look like modern Europeans.
31:45This is rather good, isn't it?
31:47A bit czarish, a bit furry, a bit velvety too.
31:50Very nice.
31:51To see just how revolutionary this was, I've come to the famous Moss Film Studios in Moscow.
32:07Many a historical epic has been filmed here.
32:09And while I admire the vast costume department, our translator Misha has volunteered to model some traditional Russian clothes to show what Peter's new rules on dress actually meant.
32:23Misha, you've been quite a long time in there. Are you ready?
32:27I think I am.
32:29Let's have a look then.
32:31Oh, look at you. Come out.
32:34You look like a lovely little czar.
32:37Well, I am.
32:38You're dressed for the 17th century. You're warm for the Moscow winters, I guess.
32:42Absolutely.
32:43And is it practical? Can you move about in this one?
32:46Well, of course it's practical because this is how people were dressed.
32:49Yes.
32:50And it also is, well, a little bit not really European.
32:53Let's see your boots.
32:54Maybe somewhat oriental.
32:57Sexy. Very nice.
32:58Oh, are they? Thank you.
33:00Yes, you do have a touch of the Orient about you, I would say.
33:03Well, I would say it's old Russian style.
33:05Old Russian style, yes.
33:07Rather than oriental, it could have some influence of the Orient, just like a lot of old Russian architecture, for example, does.
33:15So the clothing also may reflect that.
33:17Yes, yes.
33:18So along comes Peter the Great at the end of the 17th century, and he doesn't want to see his subjects dressed like this anymore.
33:23He wants to see them as Europeans.
33:24Absolutely.
33:25And the first thing to go, I'm sorry to say, is...
33:29Don't.
33:30Now, don't.
33:31Because the beard for every old Russian is a sacred thing.
33:36Right, yes.
33:37It's a very religious thing.
33:38Yes.
33:39And the people in those days said that the man without a beard is naked.
33:45But Peter the Great, he'd been to Europe, he'd seen all of these clean-shaven people, and he thought it was very important that his subjects should lose the beards.
33:53And there's stories of him ripping them out by the roots. Is this possible?
33:56Well, you can try, of course, but he wouldn't...
33:58That's going to hurt you.
33:59He wouldn't rip them off, but he cut them with an axe. That's what the legend says.
34:03Now, I actually know the secret of getting your beard off you. Are you ready for this, Misha?
34:08I don't know.
34:10Come on, take it like a man.
34:11I am afraid.
34:14Whee!
34:18You're laughing.
34:19No, I'm laughing. I've still got my moustache.
34:21It's a cheers to the laughing.
34:22It's not that bad yet.
34:23No, you haven't.
34:24Oh, no.
34:25Now, we've Europeanised your facial hair. Peter the Great would also have wanted to change your clothes, wouldn't he?
34:32Yeah, he didn't stop with the beards. Just, he went the full way.
34:37Go on. Back into your cubicle.
34:39Ta-Dam!
34:46Very good! Fantastic!
34:49Oh, fantastic.
34:51So, here you are, all European'd up.
34:54Now, it strikes me that your shoes are better for dancing, but not so good for walking across a snowy plain.
35:00Absolutely right. For snow, this is horrible. I would freeze my feet off.
35:07And how are you feeling about it, as a Russian nobleman?
35:10I, for one, am extremely unhappy, because I was used to my warm, good Russian clothes.
35:15Yes.
35:16Where I can wander around.
35:17In the snow?
35:18In the snow, without doing a single thing.
35:21Yes.
35:22Just direct my hundreds of thousands of serfs, and do nothing.
35:26And are you feeling a bit drafty in the chin department?
35:28Absolutely naked, Lucy.
35:30What can you do about this, as an early 18th century nobleman?
35:34Well, the thing is that the nobleman had really no choice.
35:38The clergy and the people in the fields, the peasants, as they were called at the time,
35:43they continued having beards.
35:45They could actually pay for their beards.
35:49And there is a little token here, and it shows that I have paid, or whoever, paid a beard tax.
35:57And once you wear it around your neck to show that you have paid for it, you can have your proud Russian beard.
36:05Tiny little beard on it. Look at that.
36:08I think there's something that I owe you, as you're clearly a beard tax payer.
36:17You can have your beard back.
36:18Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.
36:20Enjoy your facial hair.
36:22Do svidania.
36:24And all this applied to the ladies, too.
36:38Although they're said to have enjoyed wearing their elegant European dresses rather more than the men did.
36:44The
36:48Peter's assault on the traditions of old Moscow left the capital reeling.
36:53But the Tsar was already planning what was to be his boldest move yet.
37:00In 1703, Peter packed up and left Moscow once again.
37:05Dear passengers, please prepare your tickets to be checked and listen to the information announcements.
37:23Peter was leading a military expedition west, towards the Gulf of Finland, the gateway to the Baltic Sea.
37:30On the high-speed train, it takes me less than four hours.
37:36On horseback, though, it took Peter weeks.
37:45He was venturing into barely chartered territory.
37:49Swampland, with just a few isolated fishing settlements.
37:52Most dangerously of all, this was land claimed by Sweden, the most powerful country in the Baltic region.
38:07It was when Peter reached the banks of the Niva River that the objective of the exercise became clear.
38:13Peter had found his gateway to the sea, the ground zero of a new maritime Russia.
38:27Legend has it that this is pretty much the exact spot where Peter the Great got off his horse and declared,
38:33here will be a city.
38:34Luckily, there was even an eagle hovering over his head as he spoke, to make it even more like an epic Bible story.
38:45And Peter did have pharaoh-like powers over his subjects.
38:50He was able to bend his serfs, his nobles and even nature to his will.
38:54And so, with frightening speed, what had been a mosquito-ridden marshland over there, was turned into this great city.
39:15Peter christened his city St Petersburg.
39:18And it would become the home of the Romanov dynasty, eclipsing Moscow for more than two centuries.
39:28The first building Peter constructed was the Peter and Paul Fortress.
39:35St Petersburg began as a military base, because Peter had declared war on Sweden.
39:43The timing seemed right.
39:45Sweden had a new and teenage king, Charles XII.
39:51And Peter hoped to take advantage of Charles's inexperience to establish Russia as a Baltic power.
40:01I think there was the thought that the young Charles XII might prove an easier target than his more celebrated ancestors had done.
40:10But it was still quite a risky project to take on.
40:12There was no sense that Sweden was in any sense a declining power.
40:16And, of course, behind Sweden, this was the crucial Swedish advantage, lay the diplomatic power of Louis XIV, the greatest international power of all.
40:25The Swedes were French clients in diplomacy.
40:28So it was certainly risky to try anything on.
40:30War with Sweden gave Peter the excuse to fulfil perhaps the longest held of all his dreams.
40:41With its easy access to the Baltic Sea, St Petersburg became the base for Peter's next grand project.
40:47The building of a navy.
40:48Hello.
40:49Are you Captain Vladimir?
40:50Hello.
40:51Welcome on board Stander.
40:52Ah, thank you.
40:53The fine ship, the Stander.
40:54Thank you very, very much.
40:55Please come on board.
40:57Let's have a look.
40:58Guns, cannons, ropes.
40:59This is a replica of Peter the Great's flagship frigate.
41:04His pride and joy.
41:05The Stander.
41:06Peter sailed in the 1703 original himself.
41:07It was modelled on the Royal Transport.
41:08The Stander.
41:09The Stander.
41:10Thank you very much.
41:11Thank you very much.
41:12Please come on board.
41:15Let's have a look.
41:16Guns, cannons, ropes.
41:17Please come on board.
41:18Stand by for departure.
41:21Hello.
41:22Stand by for departure.
41:23To the Stander.
41:26The Stander.
41:27This is a replica of Peter the Great's flagship frigate.
41:28His pride and joy.
41:29The Stander.
41:30The Stander.
41:31Peter sailed in the 1703 original himself.
41:32It was modelled on the Royal Transport.
41:34The English ship he was given by William the third.
41:36Stand by for departure.
41:41The Stander was the biggest of the sea.
41:42The Stander was the biggest of the ships.
41:45The standard was the biggest of 10 ships that Peter managed to build in just five months.
41:54As the war with Sweden escalated, the fleet had to be constructed at breakneck speed.
42:01She's brave.
42:06What's the word for fantastic?
42:09Fantastic.
42:10Fantastic!
42:15Now Peter's time in the shipyards of Amsterdam and London really paid off.
42:26He set his imported Dutch and English experts to work, alongside Russians who'd learnt shipbuilding during the Grand Embassy.
42:34Above all, it was probably Peter's own hands-on involvement that ensured the standard was completed so quickly.
42:47We ships now.
42:48Yes, Captain Vladimir.
42:49Peter's new and untested navy would be like David taking on the Swedish Goliath.
43:00The standard had to be more powerful and more manoeuvrable than anything the Swedes could muster.
43:06Captain Vladimir, in 1703, when the standard was completed, was she a very state-of-the-art vessel?
43:18For that time, the steering wheel was a kind of technological innovation, very advanced.
43:24The steering wheel could come on the stage in 1700, 1701.
43:28And in 1703, the Russian fleet was equipped with a steering wheel, which makes ships very manoeuvrable and very well-controlled.
43:37So that was something very special.
43:39And artillery, the cannons were very powerful.
43:42That was six-pounders.
43:43And for the ship of that size, that is quite powerful cannons.
43:47Yes.
43:48What was it like then, when Peter the Great and his crew were sailing?
43:53Who would be here?
43:53What would be happening?
43:54150 people, 28 cannons, four person per cannon.
44:00So they would be standing by next to the cannons.
44:02Yes.
44:03And the sailors, they would have to operate all sails at once.
44:07So in battle, during the manoeuvres, the sailors would be standing by on lines for bracing the yards, for hoisting sails, for setting sails.
44:18Peter was gambling, but his new ships and their crews would give the Swedes a nasty surprise.
44:25And they did.
44:25Ready for attack!
44:29The Standard soon saw action, exchanging fire with Swedish warships, while defending Kronstadt, the Russian naval base in the Gulf of Finland.
44:39Over the next six years, in what became known as the Great Northern War, Peter used sea and land forces to consolidate his position in the Baltic region.
44:51And on several occasions, he led his own men into battle.
44:55Do you admire him?
45:00He is my hero.
45:02And that is because he was thinking more about the country, not about himself.
45:07His own wealth was not that important.
45:11His life has a really clear target, goal and mission.
45:15The Great Northern War dragged on for two decades.
45:23And in the early years, Peter was sorely tested.
45:28Charles XII of Sweden may have been young, but he proved to be a formidable military commander.
45:34Charles was preoccupied with war.
45:38War was his main passion.
45:42Peter was also very interested in war.
45:44And there is an argument that all reforms initiated by Peter were actually dictated by his interest in war.
45:50So we have two figures who had very strong interest in war, very deep sense of involvement in international affairs.
45:59So the conflict was unavoidable.
46:07Despite the length of the war, Peter's decisive battle with Charles came as early as 1709.
46:14And it wasn't at sea, it was hundreds of miles inland at Poltava in the Ukraine.
46:25The viciousness of the battle is captured in this 18th century mural in St. Petersburg.
46:32As you get closer, you realise that it's a mosaic.
46:36It was painstakingly assembled from thousands of tiny pieces of stained glass by an artist and scientist called Mikhail Lomonosov.
46:53Here is Peter the Great with his very distinctive mullet haircut.
46:58And he's got his sword out, ready to cut the heads off some Swedes.
47:01And he's leading the troops in person, as he did in 1709.
47:07The leader at the other side is King Charles XII of Sweden, up there.
47:13He's riding in a sedan chair because he'd hurt his foot before the battle.
47:18You might also notice that he's much, much, much smaller than Peter the Great in this image.
47:24And in this little scene, a bloodthirsty Russian, showing his white teeth, is about to skewer this poor Swede with his sword.
47:36It was a decisive victory for the Russians, but not just because of their bravery.
47:42They also completely outnumbered the Swedes.
47:45Poltava was a pivotal battle for Peter the Great, because it allowed Russia to overtake Sweden, to become the dominant power in Baltic Europe.
48:03The security of St. Petersburg was now assured.
48:12And in 1712, just three years after his victory at Poltava, Peter made St. Petersburg the new capital of Russia.
48:21The city had grown rapidly in its first decade.
48:29Large numbers of nobles and wealthy citizens had relocated there from Moscow.
48:35Not out of choice.
48:36Peter had demanded it.
48:38With its canals and stone buildings resembling Venice or Amsterdam, St. Petersburg presented foreign visitors with Peter's vision of a modern, European-ized Russia,
48:56one full of thriving commerce and rational order.
49:00But the great irony was that the city only existed because of Peter's autocratic and despotic powers,
49:13and because of the medieval institution of serfdom, which he actually reinforced.
49:23Thousands of serfs and forced labourers perished while constructing his new capital.
49:31It's famously said, of course, that St. Petersburg was a city built on human bones,
49:36and there's no doubt that it was an extraordinary business to get it off the ground,
49:41because most of the ground was totally unsuitable for building on it.
49:44It's a swamp.
49:45The climate is very severe.
49:49The ground is very damp.
49:51So a vast effort had to be put in by the state, by the troops, and by the state peasantry,
49:56in order to achieve what Peter wanted to achieve.
50:01St. Petersburg was built at an enormous human cost,
50:04so much so that it's almost obscene to discuss whether it was worth it or not.
50:09We don't know how many people died.
50:11It could have been up to 100,000.
50:13What we do know is that every year, 40,000 peasants were conscripted to work on St. Petersburg.
50:20Now, some of them may not have arrived.
50:21They may have fled before they got there.
50:23They may have fled into the forest once they were in St. Petersburg.
50:26But the population of the city itself rose very slowly.
50:30So I think we have to assume that many of those peasants died.
50:38Peter's ruthlessness didn't stop at the palace gates.
50:42When he got bored of his first wife, Evdokia, he packed her off to the convent in Moscow.
50:52With her love of hard drinking and dwarf entertainers, Evdokia's replacement, Catherine, was far more to Peter's taste.
51:05Peter's eldest son and his putative successor, Alexei, presented a more intractable problem.
51:19Now in his 20s, Alexei seemed incapable of, and uninterested in, following in his father's footsteps.
51:27Peter was willing to give Alexei one last chance.
51:39He wrote him a letter full of admonitions, telling Alexei to get his act together.
51:44And if Alexei failed, well then Peter had a threat to make.
51:48I will cut you off like a gangrenous member.
51:53For if I have not spared myself in the service of our country, why should I spare you?
52:05In 1716, poor old Alexei fled Russia for Vienna.
52:12Peter was furious.
52:14He suspected a conspiracy.
52:16He knew the elements of the nobility resented the way he'd unilaterally declared war on Sweden and moved the court to St. Petersburg.
52:27Might they now be rallying around his son?
52:32Peter enticed Alexei back to St. Petersburg.
52:35He promised him clemency.
52:40But then, he had him locked up.
52:43Here at the fortress, Alexei was interrogated under torture.
52:49He was whipped.
52:50And when his back was all covered in blood, he admitted, as anybody would do, that he had conspired and plotted against his father.
52:58A court sentenced poor Alexei to execution, but before this could happen, he was discovered mysteriously dead.
53:07Some people think that this was the effects of the torture, others, that he'd been poisoned in order to spare Peter the Great the humiliation of having to publicly execute his own son.
53:19Every single day, at noon, a gun fires from the Peter and Paul fortress.
53:36This tradition stretches right back to the early days of St. Petersburg, when cannon shots served as a warning of floods or marked important state occasions.
53:49In 1725, Peter the Great heard the sound for the last time.
53:53One, two, three, four, five, fire!
54:00He took ill and died on February the 8th.
54:10An autopsy reveals that Peter had gangrene at the bladder.
54:14He was just fifty-two.
54:18Russia had lost more than a czar.
54:22Just three years earlier, on the back of his Baltic conquests, Peter had been proclaimed emperor.
54:28The Russian Empire would now last as long as the Romanov dynasty itself.
54:34In little more than a century of Romanov rule, Russia had undergone an extraordinary transformation.
54:52Mikhail I had inherited a war-torn backwater.
54:56But he and his son Alexis used their absolute power to bring stability and continuity.
55:04But Russia would have remained obscure and backward if Peter the Great hadn't developed a boundless vision.
55:14And then let nothing stand in his way.
55:21He gave his country a navy.
55:24A new capital.
55:26An empire.
55:28And above all, a future.
55:34Peter reinvented Russia.
55:38And that's why they call him Peter the Great.
55:52Half a century after Peter's death, this statue was erected to him in St. Petersburg.
55:58It was designed by a French sculptor, but the face was done by his 18-year-old female assistant.
56:12Who modelled it on Peter's own real-life death mask.
56:16The enormous granite boulder on which the bronze horseman sits is said to be the largest stone ever moved by human hands.
56:31It's hard not to think of all the broken backs and crushed limbs involved in transporting it.
56:37But then, perhaps that's appropriate.
56:41For all of Peter the Great's tremendous achievements, I think it's hard to warm to him.
56:47He may have dragged Russia, kicking and screaming, into the modern world.
56:52But he did so with ruthlessness and sometimes with downright cruelty.
56:57It's hard to think of another sovereign who worked so hard for his people, yet who treated them with so little compassion.
57:09Nevertheless, Peter changed Russia forever.
57:13And he set the benchmark against which all future Romanov rulers had to be measured.
57:19But one of them would unashamedly claim Peter's mantle.
57:29She was the woman who erected this monument to him.
57:38Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great.
57:42But if you look at their names on the base of the monument, you might think that Catherine's is in a slightly bigger font than Peter's.
57:52Does this mean that she was even greater?
57:59Next time, we meet Catherine the Great, the small-time German princess who becomes a big-time Russian empress.
58:07We'll explore a golden age of imperial architecture and culture.
58:17And we'll see how everything that the Romano's have achieved ends up hanging in the balance when Napoleon invades Russia.
58:25We'll see how everything that the Romano's has been in the back of the Methodist and the дальше of turns.
58:47And we'll see how everything that's been under the end of this world.
58:49Transcription by CastingWords
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