Grand Embassy of Peter the Great

War dominates much of Peter's reign.

At first Peter attempts to secure the principality's southern borders against the Tatars and the Ottoman Turks.

His campaign against a fort on the Sea of Azov fails initially, but after he creates Russia's first navy, Peter is able to take the port of Azov in 1696.

To continue the war with the Ottoman Empire, Peter travels to Europe to seek allies.

The first tsar to make such a trip, Peter visits Brandenburg, Holland, England, and the Holy Roman Empire during his so-called Grand Embassy.

Peter learns a great deal and enlists into his service hundreds of West European technical specialists.

The embassy is cut short by the attempt to place Sofia on the throne instead of Peter, a revolt that is crushed by Peter's followers.

As a result, Peter has hundreds of the participants tortured and killed, and he publicly displays their bodies as a warning to others.

Peter conducts negotiations with the Duke of Courland, where the Jelgava palace and its court leave a great impression.

The duchy and Russia hold diplomatic talks on mutual cooperation against the Swedes.

Peter’s Grand Embassy, after unsuccessful negotiations in the Netherlands, has to limit itself to acquiring different equipment and hiring foreign specialists.

Peter launches the Grand Embassy, a Russian diplomatic mission to Western Europe in 1697.

The goal of this mission is to strengthen and broaden the Holy League, Russia's alliance with a number of European countries against the Ottoman Empire, in its struggle for the northern coastline of the Black Sea, hire foreign specialists for Russian service, order and acquire military supplies and weapons.

Officially, the Grand Embassy is headed by the "grand ambassadors" Franz Lefort, Fedor Golovin and Prokopy Voznitsyn.

It is in fact led by Peter himself, who goes along incognito under the name of Peter Mikhailov.

Peters's Grand Embassy concludes an alliance with the Elector of Brandenburg.

Peter and part of the Russian mission also go to England for three months, where the tsar conducts negotiations with William III of England, acquaints himself with shipbuilding, visits shipyards and artillery plants, and recruits foreign specialists.

On the way back to Russia, tTe Grand Embassy had conducted fruitless negotiations in Vienna with Russia's former allies in the Holy League, the Austrian foreign minister and the Venetian ambassador, trying to prevent Austria's separate peace treaty with Turkey.

An intended visit to Venice had been canceled due to the news about the Streltsy Uprising in Moscow and Peter's hasty return to Russia.

The Grand Embassy had failed to accomplish its main goal, but it has gathered valuable information about the international situation, ascertained the impossibility of strengthening the anti-Turkish coalition due to the imminent War of the Spanish Succession, and has brought back the plans for gaining access to the Baltic Sea.

On his way back to Russia, Peter the Great had met with Augustus II of Poland and conducted negotiations with him, which will form the basis for the Russo-Polish alliance against Sweden in the Great Northern War.

The government of Tsar Peter had engaged in a process of gradual limitation of the Sstreltsy’s military and political influence after the fall in 1689 of Sophia Alekseyevna.

Eight Moscow regiments had been removed from the city and transferred to Belgorod, Sevsk, and Kiev.

In spite of these measures, the streltsy had revolted yet again while Peter was on his Great Embassy in Europe.

Some Russian historians believe that the Streltsy uprising was a reactionary rebellion against Peter’s progressive innovations; others suggest that it was a riot against the yoke of the serfdom oppression, military service hardships and harassment.

The Moscow Streltsy, which had participated in Peter’s Azov campaigns in 1695–1696, had been left in Azov as a garrison.

In 1697, however, the four regiments of Streltsy had unexpectedly been sent to Velikiye Luki instead of Moscow.

On their way there, they were starving and carrying their ordnance by themselves due to absence of horses.

One hundred and seventy-five Streltsy had left their regiments in March 1698 and fled to Moscow to file a complaint.

They secretly established contact with Sophia Alekseyevna, who has been incarcerated at the Novodevichy Monastery, and hoped for her mediation.

The runaway Streltsy, despite their resistance, had been sent back to their regiments, giving rise to discontent among the rest of them.

The Streltsy on June 6 remove their commanding officers, choose four electives from each regiment, and make their way to Moscow, getting ready to punish the boyars and foreign advisers and blaming them for all adversities.

The rebels (approximately four thousand men) intend to install Sophia or, in case of her refusal, her alleged lover Vasili Golitsyn, who has been in exile.

Four regiments (twenty-three hundred men) and a cavalry unit under the command of Aleksey Shein and the Scottish general Patrick Gordon (who had entered Russian service under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1661) attack the Streltsy.

The Streltsy are defeated on June 18, not far from the New Jerusalem Monastery (Voskresensky Monastery) forty kilometers west of Moscow.

As a result of a major investigation, fifty-seven Streltsy are executed and the rest sent into exile.