When he was 17 Peter's boyar backers overthrew Sophia as regent and confined her to a convent. Although officially czar, Peter did not actually reign until 1694 when he was 22 and in the meantime administration of Russia deteriorated rapidly. There was reaction again against all foreigners and they were stopped at the borders unless permission was obtained from the central government. The patriarch ordered all Jesuits out and even wanted all Protestant churches in the German suburbs destroyed, but Peter spent much time there and prevented that. Peter, as all Russians before and after, was a heavy drinker, often drinking all night long. He even formed "Peter's Jolly Company" in which the primary requisite for membership was a capacity for drink and like the lowest Russian worker, they simply drank every night until they became unconscious. The Jolly Company even created the "Drunken Synod", a thinly veiled mockery of the Church. Married at 16 1/2 years, he soon had a male child but thereafter ignored his wife Eudoxia. At about the time he actually assumed his duties as a czar, he developed what was apparently focal epilepsy, frequently having severe spasms about the left side of his face and neck with occasional radiation to the left arm. This may have resulted from a high fever in l693, now speculated to have been encephalitis. By 1695 Peter's war games had progressed up to the use of 30,000 grown men and as czar he then decided to attack the Ottomans at Azov and promptly took an army there. He failed, partly because he had no ships to control the River Don, bordering Azov. So he next built a shipyard at Voronezh, getting shipbuilding experts sent in by the Doge of Venice, while he cut up and transported a galley previously ordered from Holland from its docking at Archangel down to Voronezh to serve as a model.
Peter's co-czar, crippled half-brother Ivan V, died in the same year that Peter made a second strike at Azov with 46,000 Russian soldiers, 15,000 Ukranian Cossacks, 5,000 Don Cossacks and 3,000 Kalmucks, semi-Asiatic horsemen who could ride with any Tatar, along with hundreds of new barges and 29 war galleys. Af ter a 2 month seige, the Turks surrendered the city. Peter was in the midst of all the fighting and at the end he reorganized and fortified the city and then constructed a new fort, harbor and naval base some 30 miles from the Don on the north shore of the Sea of Azov, at Tagonrog, using some 20,000 Ukranian laborers. He sent 3,000 peasant families and 3,000 Streltsy and their families to Azov as colonizers. The state then undertook to build 10 large ships, but great landowners and monasteries were to supply everything except the timber. Western shipbuilders were imported and Russians were sent west to learn shipbuilding, seamanship and navigation. It is obvious that Russians were not seamen, although wild Cossacks in boats crammed with sails, had pirated the Black Sea throughout this century. (Ref. 131 , 260 )
Young Czar Peter then took off to western Europe on what has been called "The Great Embassy". The real purpose of this trip was to strengthen the old alliance against the Turks, as Peter had decided he could not f ight them alone. King Sobieski of Poland had died in 1696 and France was possibly preparing for new wars with the Habsburg Empire. In addition, Peter wanted to educate himself concerning his new navy. The czar went incognito, although with his towering height of 6' 7", he was hard to hide and although some deception was kept, the ruling powers of Europe knew his identity. Officially the top ambassador in the group was Peter's Swiss friend and confidant, Lefort, and he was assisted by Fedor Golovin and Prokof y Voznitsyn. There was an additional escort of 20 noblemen and 35 young Russians, chiefly old friends and previous "play" soldiers. Chamberlains, priests, secretaries, interpreters, musicians, cooks and soldiers made up the rest of the party of 250. The trek started in 1697 through Livonia, thence through the Duchy of Courland to Brandenburg and then to Hanover. The embassy's first extended stop was in Holland, where Peter studied and worked in the shipbuilding yards of both Zaandam and Amsterrdam. In the latter city he lived in a small house and cooked his own meals, while he worked each day in the yards. But he also visited engineers, printers, anatomist Fredik Ruysch, botanist Boerhaave and naturalist van Leeuwenhoek, inventor of the microscope. After meeting William of Orange, who was King William of England as well as Stadholder of Holland, the czar was invited with a small party to visit England for 4 months. Although still incognito, he did visit with the King and Princess Anne. His residence in England was Sayes Court, a large, elegant house with great gardens opening onto the dockyard on a river. After 3 months Peter's Russians had practically destroyed the house, the furniture (apparently used for firewood), pictures and portraits (used for target practice) and the garden. Peter paid 28,000 pounds for permission to import a limited amount of tobacco into Russia, although the use of this plant had been accompanied by the death penalty under Czar Michael.
In the meantime the remainder of the embassy in Holland had recruited 640 Dutchmen, including one Rear-Admiral and other navy officers, seamen, engineers, physicians and others along with ten ship loads of equipment to go to Russia. Returning home the embassy went through Saxony to Vienna, where Leopold I reigned as emperor and where Peter was considered scarcely better than other eastern princes who lived in tents. The embassy made great efforts to try to get Austria to push harder against the Turks, but Leopold, becoming more nervous about the French king, was about to make peace with Turkey. Peter then tried to get the emperor to have the Ottomans yield Kerch (controlling the entrance to the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov) to Russia and again Leopold would not accommodate.
At about that time the czar received news from Moscow of a revolt of 4 regiments of Streltsy. The revolters had already all been killed or taken prisoner by an army under General Patrick Gordon, an old Scots friend and advisor of Peter's, but the czar decided to go on home anyway. He had determined to transform Russia into a modern state on western principles. He initially decreed such superficial changes as the cutting off of beards, change to western clothing by abolishing the long cloaks and sleeves going below the finger tips, etc. Women were to use petticoats, skirts, bonnets and western shoes.
The calendar was changed to the Julian one so that the old Russian year 7,206 then became the year 1698. Russian coinage was revised and instead of giving large estates or money for service to the state, one would henceforth get the "Order of St. Andrew" - a ribbon to wear diagonally across the chest. The prisoners remaining from the Streltsy rebellion, numbering 1714, were now "examined" under terrible torture by knout (a type of lash) and fire and then most were executed. A few of the young ones were not killed but were either branded on the right cheek and exiled or had their noses or ears cut off. The Streltsy were no more.
Peter the Great's southern fleet, built at Voronezh on the Don, was never used, because in the Peace of Carlowitz between Austrians, Poles, Turks and indirectly Russi ans, the Turks did concede Azov but not Kerch to the Russians. In June, 1700 the Russian ambassador in Constantinople negotiated a 30 year truce with a demilitarized zone supposedly to be established between the Crimean Tatars and Russia, proper. This agreement infuriated the Tatar Khan, Devlet Gerey. In the meantime, Peter's two most trusted foreign advisors, the Swiss Lefort and the Scot General Gordon, had died. And then the Great Northern War came towards Russia. (Ref. 131 )