The man in the iron mask, dog shelters and other things that Peter I found as a contemporary

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Peter I is one of the most famous Russian sovereigns in the world. Still - he occupied the royal throne for a long time, actively contacted Europe and, in general, was an ambiguous, but bright figure. But few people think that many stories known from books and films took place, although not near Peter, but with his figure as a historical background. For example, Peter's contemporary was the Man in the Iron Mask, who was hidden in a French prison.

If we refer specifically to literature, then in the time of Peter (he officially became king in 1682, and died in 1725) the action of Hugo's historical novel "The Man Who Laughs" and the cycle of Sabatini's novels about Captain Blood takes place. In Peter's times, Daniel Defoe wrote his books "The Life and the Strange Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" and "The Joy and Sorrow of the Famous Moll Flanders." In Peter's times, the action of the film "Forty-seven Ronin" takes place, based on the true story of revenge of the samurai who lost their master. By the way, at the same time, a collection of adapted fairy tales from Charles Perrault came out, and Madame de Villeneuve wrote “Beauty and the Beast” in the form in which we know her, using one of the wandering plots. And even then, Jonathan Swift was published, although it was still far from writing books about Gulliver.

Popes and Japanese shoguns

During his official reign, Peter found six popes. Among them were those who were not famous for their colossal historical gestures. So, Pope Innocent XII became the last of the popes who wore a beard (to be precise, it was a goatee). Pope Innocent XIII never offered or allowed anyone to sit down in his presence, but died of a burst hernia. And Pope Clement XI blessed the French "sun king" (yes, he was a contemporary of Peter) to destroy the Huguenots, which led to terrible atrocities during the suppression of one of the uprisings. The king's soldiers destroyed over 450 villages, often killing everyone they saw, regardless of age. In one of the villages, they managed to drive three hundred people into a barn - and set them on fire.

This is in contrast to the fact that at the same time in Japan, which was traditionally considered by Europeans to be a land of cruel customs, the Tokugawa Tsunayoshi shogun passed an animal welfare law. According to this law, it was forbidden to kill stray dogs and cats - a rather popular activity among careless young men. In addition, from now on, horses exhausted by work could no longer be killed just for the fact that they were weakened.

The following laws banned the killing of cows and some other animals, which forced the country to switch to forced vegetarianism, as well as shouting and throwing objects at stray dogs, even if they were running around the crops or chewing them in a flock. One village was subjected to an illustrative punishment - beating with sticks - for breaking the latter law.

And so that the streets were not swarming with stray dogs, crazed with permissiveness, the world's first network of shelters was created for them. The largest housed tens of thousands of animals. However, this did not help - the dogs were still running around the streets. Some attacked people, and no one dared to recapture their victim. This is the testimony of a German traveler who at that time was able to visit Edo. All Tsunayoshi's laws were canceled ten days after his death, shelters were disbanded, and stray dogs were massacred.

By the way, it was the shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi who ordered the owners of forty-seven samurai to open their stomachs because he attacked an elderly official with a sword from around the corner. The samurai took revenge on the official, not the shogun. Even in the era of Peter, there was a short reign of a little shogun from the Tokugawa clan. He knew how at the age of six, having caught a cold.

As for Clement XI, he, among other things, sent a mission to the court of the ruler of China, whose goal was to persuade to ban traditional Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian domestic rituals throughout China, because they are pagan. Surprisingly or not, the mission failed, and the ruler of China forbade Catholic monks represented by the Jesuits from being present in China anywhere other than Beijing. And Pope Alexander VIII contributed to the preservation of books and other texts written by the ruling Swedish queen Christina - he bought them for the Vatican library. This was unusual because popes rarely bought books written by women. Almost never.

Science and education

Many things that seem more modern to us actually appeared in the times of Peter the Great. It was then that mercury instead of oils began to be used in liquid thermometers, in England Queen Anne personally issued a patent for a typewriter, in France they built the first steam pump for pumping water from mines, and the German mathematician Gersten created that calculating machine, which, after some improvements, for centuries will be used under the name "adding machine". It was actually a mechanical calculator.

In the same years, a mechanical fire pump, a piano (more precisely, a piano - a harpsichord with a sound that could be made louder or quieter), a seismograph were invented. Edmund Halley tested a diving bell. Electric lovers built the first electric cars, so far more entertaining the public (and potential sponsors) than benefiting from their work. Color printing appeared in the printing house - with the use of red, blue, yellow and black ink, which was enough to convey all the necessary shades.

In Europe, Lady Mary Wortley Montague is spreading vaccinations against smallpox - she learned it from Europeans who lived in Turkey, where the variolation method had existed for a long time. In France, Madame de Maintenon, first a favorite, then the secret wife of the king, organized the first secular boarding school for girls - Peter I also came to get acquainted with its arrangement.

In mathematics, meanwhile, they came up with icons for the number "pi" and for the integral, which we now study in school. It must be said that there were many outstanding scientists among Peter's contemporaries, such as Newton, Leibniz, Leeuwenhoek and Halley. In the same era, a treatise on pistils and stamens was first published. Literally.

And also an extensive theological work was published, proving why it is not necessary to hunt witches. This is probably related to the fact that the last witch in England was burned in that era.

Alden hermit

It was not only Tsar Peter who was cruel to his women. Europe has long recalled the unprecedented case of her husband's abuse of a noble lady. We are talking about the history of the prisoner of the Alden castle. The future King of England George I was originally the Elector (Prince) of Hanover. He married his cousin Sophia Dorothea, but was careless and impolite with her, and his mother openly treated her daughter-in-law.

As a result, Sophia Dorothea started an affair with a childhood friend of the same age, the Duke of Königsberg. He tried to steal her from her husband's house at night - and disappeared without a trace. There is no doubt that he was simply killed. But as a result, half of Europe was looking for him - the disappearance of the young duke made a lot of noise. Georg Ludwig answered all questions in the spirit that he was not obliged to keep an eye on some kind of dukes.

At the same time, he openly called his wife unfaithful, took all her property from her, gave her a divorce and imprisoned her in Alden Castle. He forbade her to communicate with relatives, including children. After many years of a sad life (even walks were forbidden!) Sofia Dorothea died of stones in her gallbladder. The story did not end there. The corpse was not buried for a long time, simply folded in the basement. In addition, being already the king of England, her ex-husband expressed outrage to their common daughter, the Queen of Prussia, for the fact that she dared to declare mourning for her mother.

East (and South) is a delicate matter

The famous detachment of Dahomey Amazons - an army of only women warriors - was created by the first king of African Dahomey after the creation of Dahomey as a country. Since, according to African beliefs, only women of royal families had the right to keep weapons from women, they were admitted to the detachment through a wedding: each Amazon was considered the king's wife. With some, he even really entered into an intimate relationship. Popular rumor preferred to say that with everyone, but in fact, the king, it seems, was not up to revelry with a crowd of ladies. Not all neighbors were ready to accept the emergence of a new independent state.

It was during the reign of Peter in Japan that the translation of some European books was allowed - but only those devoted to the exact and natural sciences. A breakthrough also occurred in fiction: the writers Asai Ryoi and Ihara Saikaku invented new directions in prose. At the same time, Asai actually invented the novel the way we understand this genre. Moreover, it was a social novel dedicated to the injustice of social attitudes (at least some of them). Saikaku, on the other hand, began to write stories completely devoted to the sense of the frailty of all things. This genre has become a classic in Japanese literature.

In India Gobind Singh founded Sikhism, a remarkably progressive religion at its time. Sikhism forbade forcing widows to commit suicide, allowed women to learn to wield weapons, and introduced a fashion for underwear among its followers. Alas, even in memory, Peter Singh was killed - the Sikhs rebelled against the power of the Great Mughals, a Muslim dynasty of Turkic origin, and the uprising was brutally suppressed.

In the Ottoman Empire, several sultans were replaced on the throne. Two of them were particularly noteworthy. Suleiman II, before becoming a sultan, spent less than forty years in a special comfortable prison for princes, where he was exclusively engaged in the census and decoration of the Koran. Having become the sultan, he only did what he begged to be returned back to captivity. However, he died four years later.

Ahmed III, who ruled two sultans from Suleiman, went the same way as Peter I, only without getting involved personally. He sent loyal people to Paris, whose mission was to study local technologies and institutions to bring them home. Scientific works in various fields were purposefully translated into Turkish, and the translations were printed in newly created printing houses. The ambassadors also brought tulips and tulip mania to Istanbul. For many years, the love of the Turks for these flowers became almost hotter than that of the Dutch.

By the way, during the era of Peter the Great Turkish War, which began with the Cossack hetman Peter Doroshenko, wishing to maintain independence from the Poles and Great Russians, declared himself a vassal of Turkey.

New World

Newspapers began to be published in the American British colonies, as in Russia and Austria. A resident of one of the colonies, Mary Rowlandson, was stolen by the Indians. She was held captive for eleven weeks until she was ransomed. Mary was not taken aback and wrote a large book about her experience entitled "God's Power and Kindness: A Story of the Abduction and Release of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson." This way of reworking traumatic experiences has become traditional in America, and the book itself has proven to be a valuable source of information for future ethnographers. By the way, not only about the indigenous people of America, but also about the customs of the Puritan colonialists.

In Brazil, the main troll in the history of this country, the poet Gregorio de Matus Guerra, has come to the end of the earthly journey. He constantly wrote poetry criticizing and ridiculing literally all strata of society, as well as their individual representatives. For poetry he was even exiled to Angola (to Africa - this is in the other hemisphere from Brazil), but he soon managed to return back. True, he was officially forbidden to study poetry. And by that time he was very ill.

A few minutes before his death, the poet asked two priests to stand on both sides of his bed, after which he said with a satisfied face that “he was dying between two robbers, like Jesus Christ during the crucifixion,” and gave up his ghost, not allowing the priests to properly express their indignation jokes like that.

Not only Peter I was the king-era: What happened in Europe and Asia when Ivan the Terrible ruled in Russia.