Nagy Péter pozsonyi látogatásáról
Peter the Great in Pressburg

Summary/Abstract: Russian tsar Peter the Great visited Pressburg for a few days during the summer of 1698. This study aims to reconstruct the exact date of the visit based on various sources and tries to answer the question why the tsar visited this particular city, even though he passed near Prague during the trip, and didn’t visit the city at all. The first reason is probably that by the order of the young tsar a wooden fortress was built in the village of Preobrazhenskoye on the left bank of the Yauza River in 1684, which was named Pressburg. It was most likely named after the famous imperial castle, about which the tsar might have heard from his teacher or the builders of his “toy fortress”. The plan to equip the Pressburg castle with state-of-the-art defences came up in the preceding decades, and maybe this piqued the Russian monarch’s interest. Another reason behind his trip might have been to see the Emperor’s Danube fleet. In Pressburg he could visit the shipyard while new ships were being built. It is likely that Peter was not only interested in the process of building ships, but also wanted to recruit builders for his own ships. The “great diplomatic tour” (which included the visit to Pressburg) had well-defined political aims as well: furthering the goals of the Holy Alliance, strengthening the relationship between the allies, and gathering support for the fight against the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate. Further goals included getting loans, recruiting professionals, ordering and buying weapons and munitions, and acquiring new training methods.

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