Piotr Alexeïevitch Romanov (ПётрАлексе́евичРоман́ов), also called Pierre Grand' (ПётрВели́кий, Pyotr Velikiy) was born the June 9th 1672 (the May 30th in the Calendrier Julien) and died the February 8th 1725 (January 28th).

He is the son of Alexis I {{er}} says “the very peaceful tsar” (1629-1676) and of Natalia Narychkina (1651-1694). He was the Tsar of Russia as of 1682 and the first emperor of the Russian Empire of 1721 with 1725. In 1689, he married Eudoxia Lopoukina (1672-1731) which he divorced in 1698. It gave him a son: the first tsarévitch Alexis Pétrovitch (1690-1718). In 1707 he married Catherine Ire of Russia (Marthe Skavronski, 1664-1727).

He deeply reformed his country and followed an expansionist policy which transformed Russia into European power importante.
As of 1731, Voltaire wrote of Pierre Ier who it was much more great man that the king of Sweden Charles XII, which was its large adversary.

Accession with the capacity and personal life

He was proclaimed Tsar of Russia in 1682, with his half-brother Ivan V. The first seven years of their reign were led by their sister Sophia Alexeievna, then regent. In 1689, Pierre and Ivan forced Sophia to give up its post of regent and to return in a convent. Pierre and Ivan peacefully divided the throne until the death of Ivan, become invalid in 1696. Pierre Ier is the son of the tsar Alexis Ier of Russia, died in 1676, and of Natalia Narychkina.

Pierre was very tall (it measured two Mètre S) and was a powerful man. “ His gangly legacy and arms prevented him from being handsome, however. ”

Very early in his reign, Pierre reformed Russia, pushing the country towards modernity. Strongly influenced by its Western advisers, it reorganized the Russian army along the European lines and dreamed to make of Russia an important maritime power. It faced many oppositions of Russian politicians and repressed all brutally the rebellions towards its authority.

In 1697, being anonymously registered under the name of Pierre Mikhaïlov in a called diplomatic continuation the “Large Embassy”, it went initially in Prussia, where it studied primarily artillery, then in the Empire of the Habsbourg, with the Netherlands, where it worked like simple workman in the shipyards of the Dutch Compagnie of the Eastern Indies, and in England to look further into its theoretical knowledge as regards naval construction. He studied naval construction with Amsterdam and Deptford (London). Although received in a friendly way at the time of its voyages, he was not always regarded as the equal one of the crowned big bosses of Europe. One of the most important objectives of the “Large Embassy” was to recruit specialists and professionals, especially for the navy of war. Each visit was the occasion of various projects. When it accomplishes a stay in Principauté of Liege, with Spa, in 1714, “to take there water”, it bought a multitude of objects of local arts and crafts (Jolités de Spa), and made the project open a Russian Spa with Olonets. The the most famous source of Spa, bears the name of Pierre the Large one. A bust of the tsar, offered by the prince Anatole Demidoff, was placed there in 1856.

After being turned over in Russia, it reformed science by including the inventions of Isaac Newton (which it had learned in Western Europe) and repressed the rebellion of the Streltsy (Russian guards imperial) which had helped his/her Sophia sister to try to eliminate it.

The November 2nd 1721, the Sénat of Russia granted to Pierre the title Empereur of all Russies, and he was quickly recognized like such by the kings of Poland, Prussia and Sweden. In 1724, it crowned his second Catherine wife of the title of impératrice.
The couple was together since 1703, year when Pierre had met it in his best friend, Aleksandr Menshikov (1673 - 1729). She was then known under the name of Martha Skavronskaya, former country-woman, servant and mistress of Menshikov. They quickly fell in love and married in 1712. Martha then took the name of Catherine and already mother of a child of Pierre gave to the emperor another child. After the death of Pierre in 1725, it went up on the throne as a Catherine Ire of Russia and died two years afterwards.

The military policy

In 1697 Pierre then put his new army at the test for the first time by beating Tatars of the Crimea dependant on the Ottoman Empire and while seizing the port Azov and melting the fortress and the port of Taganrog in 1698. By the treaty of Constantinople, the Russians obtain Azov and Taganrog, and the right to have a permanent minister in Turkey. This countryside marked the first military offensive successful by the Russian army on a foreign ground since several centuries, and establishes Russia as being an important country in the European policy. Taganrog was the first base of the Russian Navy ordered by the admiral Golovin and vice-admiral Cornelius Cruys who became the first governor of Taganrog, 1698-1702 and in 1711.

Russia, allied to the Denmark and the Poland, enters in war against the Sweden of the young person Charles XII in 1700. The Sweden had seized Russian territories of the the Baltic fifty years before. By doing this, he wanted to wash what was for him an affront and wanted to prepare its dream of Russia naval power (the occupied area was an obstacle). Sweden having an important army and being led by the young person but shining strategist Charles XII of Sweden (it was an important adversary of Pierre), the war was longer and harder than Pierre envisaged it.

The Russian army not prepared with the war was to face a professional Swedish army and the first attempt to seize the Baltic coast ended in the Bataille of Narva in 1700, during which Charles XII, with the head of 8.000 Swedish, beat 38000 Russian . Charles attacked then Pierre and his ally, the king Auguste II of Poland. During the eight years which followed, the Swedes devastated the Poland and the Saxony and forced Auguste to give up his throne. Finally in 1708, Charles invades Russia in order to take Moscow and of détrôner Pierre.
In same time, Pierre engaged a new campaign in the Baltic States against a reduced number Swedish soldiers. He then conquered the grounds of current the Estonia and the mouth of the river Neva, where he founded the town of Saint-Pétersbourg in 1703. Thinking that it could beat Pierre constantly, Charles was unaware of these campaigns.

After meethaving met it in Russia in 1708, Charles beat Pierre with Golovchin the July 3rd 1708 but essuya its first defeat with the Bataille of Lesnaya the September 28th 1708, when Pierre crushed the left wing of the Swedish army which was being gone from there to join the principal army of Charles with Rīga. Because of this defeat, Charles was forced to give up his walk on Moscow. Not being able more to advance towards the East, Charles invades the Ukraine.
Pierre then used the technique of the “burned ground” which had like consequence impossibility for the Swedish army of being supplied. The Swedish army suffered considerably from the particularly cold winter of 1708 - 09, but took again the Ukrainian countryside during the summer 1709, hoping to force Pierre to abdicate.

When Charles had taken again the countryside, it found Pierre much more quarrelsome and the two armies devoted battle to Poltava, the June 27th 1709. The years of labor of Pierre to improve the Russian army were rewarded when it inflicted a defeat crushing with the Swedes, causing close to 10  000 dead and capturing the majority of the remaining soldiers in the enemy army. Charles flees then in the Ottoman Empire hitherto a41dernier $c-b1, e,10 $c-b26 ce $c-b16 $c-b43, bn,84 neutral and requested of the assistance from the Sultan Ahmet III for a new campaign.

Pierre launched an attack against the Othomans in 1711 but undergoes a heavy defeat. In the peace treaty signed then, Russia conceded the ports Azov and Taganrog which it had seized in 1697. However, the Sultan never united in Charles XII. He expelled even the Swedish king of his empire in 1714.

In north the armies of Pierre conquered the Swedish province of Livonie (the northern half of the modern Latvia and the southernmost Estonia) and again attacked the Swedes in current the Finland then Swedish territory. Charles always refused to sign a peace treaty and it was its death in 1718 which allowed the cessation of hostilities. His/her sister, Ulrique Eléonore succeeded to him and in 1721, the Traité of Nystad put an end to the " Great War of North " and the coasts of the Baltic which go to the Finnish border and which belonged then to Sweden were given to Russia.

The modernization of Russia

To change the old Russian habits, Pierre applied drastic measures: He imposed as of the September 5th 1698, a particular tax for richest of the Russians. Those, except the priests, were to pay hundred Rouble S per annum whereas the remainder of the population was to discharge only Kopeck per capita. This tax, with good of others, was used for modernization of Russie.Néanmoins they were so important that a ditch grew hollow between the Russian elite and the peasants involving the reinstauration of the Servage.

One of the significant developments induced by Pierre was the creation of the Tableau of the rows: While the other tsars from time to time granted the nobility to thenoble ones, Pierre founded a regular and formalized base: the common peoples could improve their social position in the society based on the merit with the service of the emperor.

Pierre Large the, conscious one of the delays of Russia in the legal field tried into 1700 to modernize the code of 1649 by incorporating the ukases promulgated in it since. He with this intention joins together a first commission which does not end. One second commission joined together in 1714 did not manage either to write a body of laws sufficiently clair.
In 1720, Pierre the Large one joins together a third commission of which the goal was to write a general code of Russian laws on the Swedish model, then Danish. It was again a failure.

He encouraged also industry, the trade and the school - he sent the young people in Western Europe in order to improve their knowledge. Its reign in addition knew the adoption of the Calendrier Julien, the simplification of the Cyrillic alphabet, the introduction of the Arab numerals and the publication of the first Journal in Russian language.

It ordered, as of 1703, the construction of a city on the Neva. Initially, they were to be only fortifications intended for the army in the war against the Sweden. Then the idea to build a city on a marsh, as the Dutchmen did it, seemed to him a challenge to take up. The new city, Saint-Pétersbourg became his capital, resolutely turned towards the occident and modernity. On the whole, a hundred and thousand workmen perished in the marshes for the construction of the city.

the orthodoxe Église Russian was strongly opposed to the reforms of Pierre. It considered them harmful for the survival of the old Russian and dangerous traditions for its power (Pierre ordered even the dismantling of the bell-towers of the churches to recover copper of it in order to manufacture guns). After the death of the Adrian patriarch in 1700, Pierre did not name a successor, and in January 1721, it establishes the Saint Synod to govern the Church, which was in addition the final stage of its reforms.

Simple: Peter I off Russia