reaty of Stolbovo. After Tsar Alexis failed during the Northern War of 1655-1660 with Poland and Russia to push the Swedes back, their Baltic conquests were reconfirmed by the Peace of Kardis in 1664. The net result was that "Russia was . . . cut off completely from the Gulf of Finland" (Fuller 2).
Between 1689 and 1699, Peter was preoccupied with the consolidation of his power internally and his two wars with the Crimean Tartar Khanate which was allied with the Ottoman Turks. During his early childhood, internal dynastic struggles and family disputes weakened the monarchy. At the age of three, Peter witnessed the first revolt of the Streltsy, the elite palace guard, which in a drunken frenzy had burst into the Kremlin and killed several of his relatives. According to Troyat, "those who knew him [Peter] well said that he could not forget the scenes of torture he had witnessed and that sometimes in the middle of the night he woke up screaming" (20). When the Streltsy revolted again in 1697-8, Peter brutally suppressed th
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