For
in all his plan and work to advance the mass of men was one supreme
lack--lack of any account of the worth and right of the individual man.
Lesser examples of this are seen in his grim jest at Westminster
Hall--"What use of so many lawyers? I have but two lawyers in Russia,
and one of those I mean to hang as soon as I return;" or when at Berlin,
having been shown a new gibbet, he ordered one of his servants to be
hanged in order to test it; or in his review of parade fights, when he
ordered his men to use ball, and to take the buttons off their bayonets.
Greater examples are seen in his Battle of Narva, when he threw away an
army to learn his opponent's game; in his building of St. Petersburg,
where, in draining marshes, he sacrificed a hundred thousand men the
first year. But the greatest proof of this great lack was shown in his
dealings with the serf system. Serfage was already recognized in Peter's
time as an evil. Peter himself once stormed forth in protestations and
invectives against what he stigmatized as "selling men like beasts;
separating parents from children, husbands from wives; which takes place
nowhere else in the world, and which causes many tears to flow.
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