That there was any large profit in this minute study of ships and sailors may be confidently denied. Monarchs and statesmen have built fleets without knowing the difference between port and starboard. Peter was enjoying himself. But in his wild mind there was inevitably growing a recognition of his position and opportunities. He was now more than twenty years old, and intelligent. It was quite time that he recollected that the destiny of Russia was entrusted to him. Of its internal condition he does not seem to have had the glimmer of an idea, but it suited his passion to believe that Russia needed a fleet, and must first have a sea to put the fleet on. The powerful Swedes dominated the Baltic, so he turned south and decided to take Azoff, on the Black Sea, from the Tatars. He may have known that the country was disgusted and scandalised at his idleness, and that Sophia watched eagerly from her convent. His expedition against Azoff was crudely conceived and a total failure. He saw at least that he and his amateur foreign friends were inadequate, and on his return to Moscow, he sent abroad for skilled men: sailors and shipwrights from Holland and England, soldiers and engineers from Austria and Prussia. Some came, and many of these, when they saw the crowds and the country, returned. All drank copiously. But Peter’s mighty energy was roused, and in a remarkably short time he had a sea-going fleet built on the Don, ready to co-operate with his land-attack upon Azoff. He took it, and returned in triumph to Moscow. The one vague imperial idea in his wild and much-abused brain fed on his success and grew larger. Russia must have a mighty fleet, like Holland and England, and must learn this western art of doing things. He sent fifty officers abroad for education. But he must see these wonderful lands himself--he must know everything himself--and he began the preparations for the famous melodramatic journey which shocked Russia, and scandalised Europe, and undoubtedly brought great profit to him and his country. Boyish in all things, he would go incognito. Russian historians have invented a score of interpretations of every weird action of the hero. He hated pomp and ceremony, it is said; but the truth is that he sulked heavily when he was not recognised. The simple fact is that he had a boyish, impulsive, muddled mind, its great strength and originality marred by a wicked education and by debauch. He would pretend that it was a deputation of Russian envoys, and he made a sort of prince of his friend Lefort, giving him a suite of forty-four gentlemen and servants. He would hide his own figure--he was six feet eight inches in height, and wore disguises that would attract attention at a hundred yards--in the crowd under the modest title of Peter Mikhailoff, a non-commissioned officer of the Preobrajenshote regiment.