Author: Daniel Defoe
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7089]
[This file was first posted on March 9, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of the project gutenberg
EBOOK, the consolidator ***
Produced by Lance Purple and Andrew Sly.
The Consolidator: or,
Memoirs of Sundry Transactions
From the World in the Moon.
Translated from the Lunar Language,
By the Author of The True-born English Man.
It cannot be unknown to any that have travell’d
into the Dominions of the Czar of Muscovy, that this
famous rising Monarch, having studied all Methods
for the Encrease of his Power, and the Enriching as
well as Polishing his Subjects, has travell’d
through most part of Europe, and visited the Courts
of the greatest Princes; from whence, by his own Observation,
as well as by carrying with him Artists in most useful
Knowledge, he has transmitted most of our General Practice,
especially in War and Trade, to his own Unpolite People;
and the Effects of this Curiosity of his are exceeding
visible in his present Proceedings; for by the Improvements
he obtained in his European Travels, he has Modell’d
his Armies, form’d new Fleets, settled Foreign
Negoce in several remote Parts of the World; and we
now see his Forces besieging strong Towns, with regular
Approaches; and his Engineers raising Batteries, throwing
Bombs, &c. like other Nations; whereas before, they
had nothing of Order among them, but carried all by
Ouslaught and Scalado, wherein they either prevailed
by the Force of Irresistible Multitude, or were Slaughter’d
by heaps, and left the Ditches of their Enemies fill’d
with their Dead Bodies.
We see their Armies now form’d into regular
Battalions; and their Strelitz Musqueteers, a People
equivalent to the Turks Janizaries, cloath’d
like our Guards, firing in Platoons, and behaving themselves
with extraordinary Bravery and Order.
We see their Ships now compleatly fitted, built and
furnish’d, by the English and Dutch Artists,
and their Men of War Cruize in the Baltick. Their
New City of Petersburgh built by the present Czar,
begins now to look like our Portsmouth, fitted with
Wet and Dry Docks, Storehouses, and Magazines of Naval
Preparations, vast and Incredible; which may serve
to remind us, how we once taught the French to build
Ships, till they are grown able to teach us how to
use them.
As to Trade, our large Fleets to Arch-Angel may speak
for it, where we now send 100 Sail yearly, instead
of 8 or 9, which were the greatest number we ever
sent before; and the Importation of Tobaccoes from
England into his Dominions, would still increase the
Trade thither, was not the Covetousness of our own
Merchants the Obstruction of their Advantages.
But all this by the by.
