Voltaire F. Histoire de L`Empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand

Paris. Garnier . 1878. c.401Voltaire’s interest in Peter the Great was first aroused in 1717, when, as a young man of twenty-two, he saw the Russian monarch strolling informally in the streets of Paris.The personality and achievements of the Tsar continued to exert a growing fascination on Voltaire. In 1731, he portrayed Peter as the chief antagonist in his History of Charles XII.
Subsequently Voltaire came to see him as a figure of far deeper historical significance than the romantic, but essentially unconstructive King of Sweden. Charles, though a man of spectacular personal courage, had left his country ruined and exhausted after twenty years of war. Peter, on the other hand, though also embroiled in war throughout his reign, had succeeded, despite many setbacks, in securing Russia’s place among the modern nations. He had wrenched from Sweden the provinces of Livonia, Estonia, Ingria and Carelia, together with dominion over the Baltic. He had founded the new capital of St. Petersburg, Russia’s ‘window into Europe’. He had, within a quarter of a century, transformed and modernized a backward country, and had placed her on an economic and political level with the Great Powers.