276 Ch. 7 • The Age of Absolutism, 1650-1720
In the meantime, Peter the Great pushed back the neighbors who had
blocked Muscovy’s expansion: Sweden, Poland, and the Ottoman Turks. He
added territory beyond the Ural Mountains, and along the Caspian Sea at
the expense of the Turks (see Map 7.3). Peter dreamed of conquering the
Turkish capital of Constantinople, which would give him control over its
straits, the crucial passage between Europe and Asia leading to the Black
Sea. Peter’s new fleet sailed down the Don River in 1696, taking the Turkish
port of Azov on the Sea of Azov, which gives access to the Black Sea. How
ever, he was forced to surrender Azov back to the Turks after an unsuccessful
war against them (1710-1711), thus remaining without access to the Black
Sea.
Russia’s role in European affairs, however, had remained minimal, despite
its participation, with Habsburg Austria, Poland, and Venice, in the long
series of wars against the Turks in the last decades of the seventeenth cen
tury. Russia joined Denmark and Saxony in attacking Sweden in the Great
Northern War (1700—1721). The Russian ambassador in Vienna reported
that once the news of Peter’s victory arrived, “people begin to fear the tsar as
formerly they feared Sweden.’’ Peter’s goal was to win a “window on the
Baltic Sea” at Sweden’s expense. The Swedes turned back the assault of a
much larger Russian army at Narva (1700) in Estonia. But after Charles XII
of Sweden passed up the opportunity to pursue the Russian army in order to
invade Poland and Saxony, the Russian army conquered the mouth of the
Neva River in 1703.
There Peter ordered the construction of a new capital city, where he
forced nobles and wealthy merchants to build elegant townhouses. Saint