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A CURIOUS AND NEW ACCOUNT OF MUSCOVY IN THE YEAR 1689 FOY DE LA NEUVILLE Edited and introduced by Lindsey Hughes Translated from the French by J.A. Cutshall Published by the School of Slavonic and East European Studies University of London Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) https://archive.org/details/SSEES0007 A CURIOUS AND NEW ACCOUNT OF MUSCOVY IN THE YEAR 1689 By FOY DE LA NEUVILLE Edited and introduced by Lindsey Hughes Translated from the French by J.A. Cut shall School of Slavonic and East European Studies University of London, 1994 A CURIOUS AND NEW ACCOUNT OF MUSCOVY IN THE YEAR 1689 A CURIOUS AND NEW ACCOUNT OF MUSCOVY IN THE YEAR 1689 by Foy de la Neuville Edited and introduced by Lindsey Hughes. Translated from the French by J.A. Cutshall. A Curious and New Account of Muscovy in the Year 1689 © School of Slavonic and East European Studies 1994 Occasional Papers No. 23 ISBN: 0 903425 34 3 Printed by Quom Litho, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 1HH, UK. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface vii Abbreviations and List of Illustrations x Chronology of Events xi Introduction xiii CHAPTER 1: To the King 1 CHAPTER 2: An Account of my Journey 5 CHAPTER 3: The State of Muscovy from 1682 until 1687 15 CHAPTER 4: The Muscovite Expedition to the Crimea from 1687 to 1689 25 CHAPTER 5: The Muscovite Campaign or Expedition to the Crimea in 1689 31 CHAPTER 6: An Account of the Revolution 37 CHAPTER 7: The Causes of the Revolution 47 CHAPTER 8: The Present State of Muscovy 53 CHAPTER 9: The Manners and Religion of the Muscovites 57 CHAPTER 10: Conversations with Spafarius on the Journey to and Trade with China 65 Extract from the Royal Licence 72 Select Bibliography 73 Index 75 v Preface The text below is an unabridged translation of Pierre Aubouin’s 1698 Paris edition of Relation curieuse et nouvelle de Moscovie. Significant differences between this text and the Bibliotheque Nationale manuscript Relation curieuse de mon voyage en Moscovie de V an 1689 and an untitled manuscript from the Niedersachsische Landesbibliothek are indicated in footnotes, but we have not attempted to make an exhaustive comparison of the three texts. (An annotated edition of the French texts is in preparation by A.S. Lavrov at the University of St Petersburg.) Where Aubouin’s edition contains an obvious misreading (for example, in the chapter on the first Crimean campaign the printer has skipped a line which appears in both of the manuscripts), the manuscript wording is substituted and the difference footnoted. A number of editorial insertions (mostly names and dates) have been made for the sake of clarity. These have been placed in square brackets. As far as is possible, seventeenth-century French has been rendered into modem English. This has entailed taking certain liberties. For example, both the book and the manuscripts are only sparsely punctuated. Sentences are often a whole paragraph long, and many begin with a participle construction (eg ‘The council of war having finished and the hetman having been placed under heavy guard ...’). For the sake of readability, long sentences have been divided and as much variety introduced into their structure as is consistent with preserving the meaning. No attempt has been made to reproduce the different registers of the three texts referred to (for example, the language of the Paris manuscript is more archaic than that of the other two). However, a number of rhetorical devices of the time, such as Neuville’s famous list of epithets describing Muscovites, have been preserved. For a rendering of the text into seventeenth-century English, readers are referred to the British Library’s copy of Edward Castle’s edition of An Account of Muscovy as it was in the year 1689 (London, 1699), which is, to the best of our knowledge, the only one available in this country. Names of places and people and the Russian terms with which the text is dotted, have, where appropriate, been given their modem spellings. This is necessary for reasons of clarity. For example, the term prikaz (Russian for chancellery or office) variously appears in the manuscripts as ‘Precache’, ‘Prekache’ ‘Precaz’ and ‘Prekeiz’. With the exception of some conventionally Anglicized personal names (Peter, Sophia), Russian names and words have been transliterated using a modified Library of Congress system (e.g. -yi and -ii at the end of names in the text are replaced by -y, hence Dolgoruky, Iury). In most circumstances, the vii PREFACE viii published French text garbles Russian words and names to a remarkable extent, while the manuscripts offer a phonetic or Polonized spelling. Master of the Household Tolochanov becomes, in the Paris and Hanover manuscripts, ‘Talachanaw’, but in the 1698 edition a barely recognisable ‘Talakorou’. The placename Chernaia Dolina (‘Black Valley’) is ‘Tehorna Doliva’ in the Paris manuscript, ‘Thorna-Doliva’ in the Hanover version and ‘Thoma-d’Oliva’ in the 1698 edition. Names of Polish origin and other foreign names have been restored as far as possible to their original spelling. For example, Chancellor Oginski (‘Ogwenski’ in the manuscripts) becomes ‘Oquenoki’ in the 1698 edition. Those names which could not be traced have been footnoted accordingly. Neuville uses a wide range of Western weights, measures and monetary units in explaining their Russian equivalents to his readers. In the late seventeenth century the French monetary system was based on the livre, which was composed of twenty sous. The sou was divided into four Hards, in turn composed of four deniers. The highest-value gold coin was the louis d’or, worth either twenty-four or forty-eight livres. The highest- value silver coin, the ecu, was worth either three or six livres. London 1699 does not translate livre (literally, a pound), but renders ecu as ‘crown’, and sou as penny. Later in the text, Neuville states that a rouble was worth roughly five livres. The basic Russian unit of currency was the kopeck, which was further subdivided into two dengas. 100 kopecks equalled one rouble. (The fact that the modem kopeck has virtually disappeared from circulation as a result of inflation in Russia in the early 1990s makes the translator's task all the harder.) In order to preserve a sense of comparative values for readers who remember pre¬ decimalisation British coinage, we have preferred to translate ecu as ‘pound’, livre as ‘crown’ and sou as ‘shilling’, even though in modem usage sou tends to denote a negligible sum. Neuville also refers to the ducat, a gold coin used in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire and worth about three roubles (or approximately fifteen livres). Neuville uses both Russian and Western units of distance, often in a very approximate manner. For example, at one point, he mentions a distance of ‘ten versts, or two German leagues’. In another place he refers to ‘a verst or Italian half-mile’. In the seventeenth century the Russian verst (versta) was usually equal to 2.1336 kilometers, although from the eighteenth century onwards it had a value of only 1.06 kilometers. Probably the only reliable way for the reader to gain an idea of the distances involved is to consult a map. Thanks are due to Professor Isabel de Madariaga, who presented a microfilm of the Paris MS, to Dr Anke Holzer of the Niedersachsische Landesbibliothek, who supplied the Hanover text, to Roger Bartlett and Radojka Miljevic, who read our text, and especially to Alexander Lavrov,