The first use the Czar made of his liberty was to hasten to Archangel. There, deaf to the advice and prayers of his mother, who was astounded at this unexpected taste for salt water, he gazed on that sea which no czar had ever looked on. He ate with the merchants and the officers of foreign navies; he breathed the air which had come from the West. He established a dockyard, built boats, dared the angry waves of this unknown ocean, and almost perished in a storm, which did not prevent the "skipper Peter Alexeievitch" from again putting to sea, and bringing the Dutch vessels back to the Holy Cape. Unhappily, the White Sea, by which, since the time of Ivan IV, the English had entered Russia, is frost-bound in winter. In order to open permanent communications with the West, with civilized countries, it was necessary for Peter to establish himself on the Baltic or the Black Sea. Now the first belonged to the Swedes, and the second to the Turks, as the Caspian did to the Persians. Who was first to be attacked? The treaties concluded with Poland and Austria, as well as policy and religion, urged the Czar against the Turks, and Constantinople has always been the point of attraction for orthodox Russia.
Peter shared the sentiments of his people, and had the enthusiasm of a crusader against the infidel. Notwithstanding his ardent wish to travel in the West, he took the resolution not to appear in foreign lands till he could appear as a victor. Twice had Galitsyne failed against the Crimea; Peter determined to attack the barbarians by the Don, and besiege Azov. The army was commanded by three generals, Golovine, Gordon, and Lefort, who were to act with the "bombardier of the Preobrajenski regiment, Peter Alexeievitch." This regiment, as well as three others which had sprung from the "amusements" of Preobrajenskoe--the Semenovski, the Botousitski, and the regiment of Lefort--were the heart of the expedition. It failed because the Czar had no fleet with which to invest Azov by sea, because the new army and its chiefs wanted experience, and because Jansen, the German engineer, ill-treated by Peter, passed over to the enemy. After two assaults the siege was raised. This check appeared the more grave because the Czar himself was with the army, because the first attempt to turn from the "amusements" of Preobrajenskoe to serious warfare had failed, and because this failure would furnish arms against innovations, against the Germans and the heretics, against the new tactics. It might even compromise, in the eyes of the people, the work of regeneration (1695).