Many of his internal reforms belong to this period. In 1698, we saw, he had fallen, scissors in hand, upon the Russian beard, and desecrated it. A ukase ordered all Russians to shave the chin, and even this change cost a mighty struggle. Ancient texts of Scripture plainly sanctioned the beard: sacred ikons showed that the saints, and even Christ, had always worn beards: and, in fine, it was not comfortable to have to face the piercing Russian winds in the winter with a clean-shaven face. Peter fought for years against this symbol of the power of antiquity. Soldiers were put at the doors of churches and instructed to _pull out_ the beards of rebels. Heavy fines were imposed. With this went a reform of the clothing. Long, skirted coats were traditional, and had become sacred; and they were considered warmer in a Russian winter. Peter ordered shorter and more workman-like coats, and patterns were exhibited in the streets to the outraged people. The nobles were, as a rule, not unwilling to dress in western fashion. The poor were allowed a few years in which to wear out their long coats. But it was a long and futile struggle, as pictures of Russian peasants show to-day. Even women were ordered to trail less cloth and, to the boisterous amusement of the crowd, the skirts of the recalcitrant were lifted up in the street by officials and torn or sheared. The position of woman was a more direct religious concern. The customs which made the Russian woman, especially of the middle and better class, a slave of her menfolk and easy victim of the clergy, had been elaborated and codified by the clergy themselves, though in substance the zealous enclosure of women was, we saw, borrowed alike from Tatars and Greeks. A girl lived in terror behind locked doors, growing fat for the marriage-mart. The way out from her quarters was through the father’s room, and, whenever she was suffered to go out, she was heavily veiled. Marriages were arranged by deputies. Even during the ceremony bride and bridegroom were separated by a curtain. The bride went to bed while her new husband was thoroughly intoxicated below--the worse the bargain his relatives had made for him the more carefully he was stupefied with drink--and when he at length reeled into the room, she showed her face for the first time. Usually he did not examine her face closely. If he were sober enough to find that he had a pock-marked, cross-eyed, lean and skinny spouse, he might there and then bully her into a promise to enter a nunnery and leave him free. The marriage was generally consummated before he came to dislike her, but the resource was still open to a resourceful man. The stick was a powerful instrument of persuasion, and it was used generally and brutally. Women drank heavily in their miserable quarters, and remained in the last degree of ignorance and superstition.