Page images
PDF
EPUB

will second my designs, by joining study to obedience. The arts circulate in this globe, as the blood does in the human body; and perhaps they may establish their empire amongst us, on their return back to Greece, their mother country; and I even venture to hope, that we may one day put the most civilized nations to the blush, by our noble labours and the solid glory resulting therefrom."

Here is the true substance of this speech, so every way worthy of a great founder, and which has lost its chief beauties in this, and every other translation: but the principal merit of this eloquent harangue is, its having been spoken by a victorious monarch, at once the founder and lawgiver of his empire.

The old boyards listened to this speech with greater regret for the abolition of their ancient customs, than admiration of their master's glory; but the young ones could not hear him without tears of joy.

Sept. 15. 1714.

The splendour of these times were further heightened by the return of the Russian ambassa⚫dors from Constantinople, with a confirmation of the peace with the Turks: an ambassador sent by Sha Hussein from Russia, had arrived some time before with a present to the czar of an elephant and five lions. He received, at the same time, an ambassador from Mahomet Bahadir, khan of the Usbeck Tartars, requesting his protection against another tribe of Tartars; so that both extremities of Asia and Europe seemed to join to offer him homage and add to his glory.

The Regency of Stockholm, driven to despair by the desperate situation of their affairs, and the absence of their sovereign, who seemed to have abandoned his dominions, had come to a resolution no more to consult him in relation to their proceedings; and, immediately after the victory the czar gained over their navy, they sent to the conqueror to demand a passport, for an officer charged with proposals of peace. The passport was sent; but, just as the person appointed to carry on the negotiation was on the point of setting out, the princess Ulrica Eleonora, sister to Charles XII. received advice from the king her brother, that he was preparing, at length, to quit Turkey, and return home to fight his own battles. Upon this news the regency did not dare to send the negotiator (whom they had already privately named) to the czar; and, therefore, resolved to support their ill-fortune till the arrival of Charles to retrieve it.

In effect, Charles, after a stay of five years and some months in Turkey, set out from that kingdom in the latter end of October, 1714. Every one knows that he observed the same singularity in his journey, which characterized all the actions of his life. He arrived at Stralsund the 22d of November following. As soon as he got there, ba

ron de Goertz came to pay his court to him; and, though he had been the instrument of one part of his misfortunes, yet he justified his conduct with so much art, and filled the imagination of Charles with such flattering hopes, that he gained his confidence, as he had already done that of every other minister and prince with whom he had entered into any negotiations. In short, he made him believe, that means might be found to draw off the czar's allies, and thereby procure an honourable peace, or at least to carry on the war upon an equal footing; and from this time Goertz gained a greater ascendency over the mind of the king of Sweden than ever count Piper had.

The first thing which Charles did after his arrival at Stralsund, was to demand a supply of money from the citizens of Stockholm, who readily parted with what little they had left, as not being able to refuse any thing to a king, who asked only to bestow, who lived as hard as the meanest soldier, and exposed his life equally in defence of his country. His misfortunes, his captivity, his return to his dominions, so long deprived of his presence, were arguments which prepossessed alike his own subjects and foreigners in his favour, who could not forbear at once to blame and admire, to compassionate and to assist him. His reputation was of a kind totally differing from that of Peter the Great: it consisted not in cherishing the arts and sciences, in enacting laws, in establishing a form of government, nor in introducing commerce among his subjects; it was confined entirely to his own person. He placed his chief merit in a valour superior to what is commonly called courage. He defended his dominions with a greatness of soul equal to that valour, and aimed only to inspire other nations with awe and respect for him hence he had more partisans than allies.

:

CHAPTER XXV.

State of Europe at the return of Charles XII. Siege of Stralsund.

WHEN Charles XII. returned to his dominions in the year 1714, he found the state of affairs in Europe very different from that in which he had left them. Queen Anne of England was dead, after having made peace with France. Lewis XIV. had secured the monarchy of Spain for his grandson, the duke of Anjou, and had obliged the emperor Charles VI. and the Dutch to agree to a peace, which their situation rendered necessary to them; so that the affairs of Europe had put on altogether a new face.

Those of the North had undergone a still greater change. Peter was become sole arbiter in that part of the world: the elector of Hanover, who

79

had been called to fill the British throne, had views of extending his territories in Germany, at the expense of Sweden, who had never had any possessions in that country, but since the reign of the great Gustavus. The king of Denmark aimed at recovering Scania, the best province of Sweden, which had formerly belonged to the Danes. The king of Prussia, as heir to the dukes of Pomerania, laid claim to a part of that province. On the other hand, the Holstein family, oppressed by the king of Denmark and the duke of Mecklenburg almost at open war with his subjects, were suing to Peter the Great to take them under his protection. The king of Poland, elector of Saxony, was desirous to have the duchy of Courland annexed to Poland; so that, from the Elbe to the Baltic Sea, Peter the First was considered as the support of the several crowned heads, as Charles XII. had been their greatest terror.

Many negotiations were set on foot after the return of Charles to his dominions, but nothing had been done. That prince thought he could raise a sufficient number of ships of war and privateers, to put a stop to the rising power of the czar by sea; with respect to the land-war, he depended upon his own valour; and Goertz, who was on a sudden become his prime minister, persuaded him that he might find means to defray the expense by coining copper money, to be taken at ninetysix times less than its real value, a thing unparalleled in the histories of any state; but, in the month of April, 1715, the first Swedish privateers that put to sea were taken by the czar's men of war, ,and a Russian army marched into the heart of Pomerania.

The Prussians, Danes, and Saxons, now sat down with their united forces before Stralsund, and Charles XII. beheld himself returned from his confinement at Demirtash, and Demirtoca on the Black Sea, only to be more closely pent up on the borders of the Baltic,

We have already shown, in the history of this extraordinary man, with what haughty and unembarrassed resolution he braved the united forces of his enemies in Stralsund; and shall therefore, in this place, only add a single circumstance, which, though trivial, may serve to show the peculiarity of his character. The greatest part of his officers having been either killed or wounded during the siege, the duty fell hard upon the few who were left. Baron de Reichal, a colonel, having sustained a long engagement upon the ramparts, and being tired out with repeated watchings and fatigues, had thrown himself upon a bench to take a little repose; when he was called up to mount guard again upon the ramparts. As he was dragging himself along, hardly able to stand, and cursing the obstinacy of the king his master, who subjected all those about him to such insufferable and fruitless fatigues, Charles happened to overhear him. Upon which, stripping off his own cloak, he spread it on the ground before him, say

ing, "My dear Reichel, you are quite spent ; come, I have had an hour's sleep, which has refreshed me, I'll take the guard for you, while you finish your nap, and will wake you when I think it is time;" and so saying, he wrapt the colonel up in his cloak; and, notwithstanding all his resistance, obliged him to lie down to sleep, and mounted the guard himself.

It was during this siege that the elector of Hanover, lately made king of England, purchased of the king of Denmark the province of Bremen and Verden, with the city of Oct. 1715. Stade, which the Danes had taken from Charles XII. This purchase cost king George eight hundred thousand German crowns. In this manner were the dominions of Charles bartered away, while he defended the city of Stralsund, inch by inch, till at length nothing was left of it but a heap of ruins, which his officers compelled him to leave; and, when he Dec. 1713. was in a place of safety, general Duker delivered up those ruins to the king of Prussia.

Some time afterwards, Duker being presented to Charles, that monarch reproached him with having capitulated with his enemies ; when Duker replied, "I had too great a regard for your majesty's honour, to continue to defend a place which you was obliged to leave." However, the Prussians continued in possession of it no longer than the year 1721, when they gave it up at the general peace.

During the siege of Stralsund, Charles received another mortification, which would have been still more severe, if his heart had been as sensible to the emotions of friendship, as it was to those of fame and honour. His prime minister, count Piper, a man famous throughout all Europe, and of unshaken fidelity to his prince (notwithstanding the assertions of certain rash persons, or the authority of a mistaken writer): this Piper, I say, had been the victim of his master's ambition ever since the battle of Pultowa. As there was at that time no cartel for the exchange of prisoners, subsisting between the Russians and Swedes, he had remained in confinement at Moscow; and although he had not been sent into Siberia, as the other prisoners were, yet his situation was greatly to be pitied. The czar's finances at that time were not managed with so much fidelity as they ought to be, and his many new establishments required an expense which he could with difficulty answer. In particular he owed a considerable sum of money to the Dutch, on account of two of their merchant-ships which had been burnt on the coast of Finland in the descent the czar had made on that country. Peter pretended that the Swedes were to make good the damage, and wanted to engage count Piper to charge himself with this debt: accordingly he was sent for from Moscow to Petersburg, and his liberty was offered him in case he could draw upon Sweden letters of exchange to the amount of sixty thousand crowns. It

is said he actually did draw bills for this sum upon his wife at Stockholm, but that she being either unable or unwilling to take them up, they were returned, and the king of Sweden never gave himself the least concern about paying the money. Be this as it may, count Piper was closely confined in the castle of Schlusselburg, where he died the year after, at the age of seventy. His remains were sent to the king of Sweden, who gave them a magnificent burial; a vain and melancholy return to an old servant, for a life of suffering, and so deplorable an end!

Peter was satisfied with having got possession of Livonia, Esthonia, Carelia, and Ingria, which he looked upon as his own provinces, and to which he had, moreover, added almost all Finland, which served as a kind of pledge, in case his enemies should conclude a peace. He had married one of his nieces to Charles Leopold, duke of Mecklen

burg, in the month of April of the same 1715. year, so that all the sovereigns of the north were now either his allies or his creatures. In Poland, he kept the enemies of king Augustus in awe; one of his armies, consisting of about eight thousand men, having without any loss quelled several of those confederacies which are so frequent in that country of liberty and anarchy: on the other hand, the Turks, by strictly observing their treaties, left him at full liberty to exert his power, and execute his schemes in their ut

most extent.

In this flourishing situation of his affairs, scarcely a day passed without being distinguished by new establishments, either in the navy, the army, or the legislature: he himself composed a military code for the infantry.

Nov. 8. He likewise founded a naval academy at Petersburg; despatched Lange to China and Siberia, with a commission of trade; set mathematicians to work in drawing charts of the whole empire; built a summer's palace at Petershoff, and at the same time built forts on the banks of the Irtish, stopped the incursions and ravages of the Bukari on the one side, and on the other suppressed the Tartars of Kouban.

1715. His prosperity seemed now to be at its zenith, by the empress Catherine's being delivered of a son, and an heir to his dominions being given him in a prince born to the czarowitz Alexis; but the joy for these happy events, which fell out within a few days of each other, was soon damped by the death of the empress's son; and the sequel of this history will show us, that the fate of the czarowitz was too unfortunate for the birth of a son to this prince to be looked upon as an happiness.

The delivery of the czarina put a stop for some time to her accompanying, as usual, her royal consort in all his expeditions by sea and land; but,

* Inhabitants of a small town of Hungarian Dalmatia, with a harbour, from whence the neighbouring sea takes the name of Golfo di Bickariga.

as soon as she was up again, she followed him to new adventures.

CHAPTER XXVI.

New Travels of the Czar.

WISMAR was at this time besieged by the czar's allies. This town, which belonged of right to the duke of Mecklenburg, is situated on the Baltic, about seven leagues distant from Lubec, and might have rivalled that city in its extensive trade, being once one of the most considerable of the Hans Towns, and the duke of Mecklenburg exercised therein a full power of protection, rather than of sovereignty. This was one of the German territories yet remaining to the Swedes, in virtue of the peace of Westphalia: but it was now obliged to share the same fate with Stralsund. The allies of the czar pushed the siege with the greatest vigour, in order to make themselves masters of it before that prince's troops should arrive; but Peter himself coming before the place in per

son, after the capitulation, which had Feb. 1716, been made without his privacy, made the garrison prisoners of war. He was not a little incensed that his allies should have left the king of Denmark in possession of a town which was the right of a prince who had married his niece; and his resentment on this occasion (which that artful minister, de Goertz, soon after turned to his own advantage,) laid the first foundation of the peace, which he meditated to bring about between the czar and Charles XII.

Goertz took the first opportunity to insinuate to the czar that Sweden was sufficiently humbled, and that he should be careful not to suffer Denmark and Prussia to become too powerful. The czar joined in opinion with him, and as he had entered into the war merely from motives of policy, whilst Charles carried it on wholly on the principles of a warrior; he, from that instant, slackened in his operations against the Swedes, and Charles, every where unfortunate in Germany, determined to risk one of those desperate strokes which success only can justify, and carried the war into Norway.

In the mean time Peter was desirous to make a second tour through Europe. He had undertaken his first, as a person who travelled for instruction in the arts and sciences: but this second he made as a prince, who wanted to dive into the secrets of the several courts. He took the czarina with him to Copenhagen, Lubec, Schwerin, and Nystadt. He had an interview with the king of Prussia at the little town of Aversburg, from thence he and the empress went to Hamburg, and to Altena, which had been burned by the Swedes, and which they caused to be rebuilt. Descending the Elbe

as far as Stade, they passed through Bremen, where the magistrates prepared a firework and illuminations for them, which formed in a hundred different places, these words-" Our deliverDec. 17. er is come amongst us." At length he 1716. arrived once more at Amsterdam, and visited the little hut at Saardam where he had first learned the art of ship-building, about eighteen years before, and found his old dwelling converted into a handsome and commodious house, which is still to be seen, and goes by the name of the Prince's House.

It may easily be conceived with what a kind of idolatry he was received by a trading and seafaring set of people, whose companion he had heretofore been, and who thought they saw in the conqueror of Pultowa, a pupil who had learned from them to gain naval victories; and had, after their example, established trade and navigation in his own dominions. In a word, they looked upon him as a fellow-citizen, who had been raised to the imperial dignity.

The life, the travels, the actions of Peter the Great, as well as of his rival, Charles of Sweden, exhibit a surprising contrast to the manners which prevail amongst us, and which are, perhaps, rather too delicate; and this may be one reason that the history of these two famous men so much excites our curiosity.

The czarina had been left behind at Schwerin, indisposed, being greatly advanced in her pregnancy; nevertheless, as soon as she was able to travel, she set out to join the czar in Holland, but

was taken in labour at Wesel, and there Jan. 14, delivered of a prince, who lived but one 1717. day. It is not customary with us for a ly

ing-in-woman to stir abroad for some time; but the czarina set out, and arrived at Amsterdam in ten days after her labour. She was very desirous to see the little cabin her husband had lived and worked in. Accordingly, she and the czar went together, without any state or attendance, excepting only two servants, and dined at the house of a rich ship-builder of Saardam, whose name was Kalf, and who was one of the first who had traded to Petersburg. His son had lately arrived from France, whither Peter was going. The czar and czarina took great pleasure in hearing an adventure of this young man, which I should not mention here, only as it may serve to show the great difference between the manners of that country and ours.

Old Kalf, who had sent this son of his to Paris, to learn the French tongue, was desirous that he should live in a genteel manner during his stay there; and accordingly had ordered him to lay aside the plain garb which the inhabitants of Saardam are in general accustomed to wear, and to provide himself with fashionable clothes at Paris, and to live, in a manner, rather suitable to his fortune than his education; being sufficiently well acquainted with his son's disposition to know

that this indulgence would have no bad effect on his natural frugality and sobriety.

As a calf is in the French language called vean, our young traveller, when he arrived at Paris, took the name of De Veau. He lived in a splendid manner, spent his money freely, and made several genteel connexions. Nothing is more common at Paris, than to bestow, without reserve, the title of count and marquis, whether a person has any claim to it or not, or even if he is barely a gentleman. This absurd practice has been allowed by the government, in order that, by thus confounding all ranks, and consequently humbling the nobility, there might be less danger of civil wars, which, in former times, were so frequent and destructive to the peace of the state. In a word the title of marquis and count, with possessions equivalent to that dignity, are like those of knight, without being of any order; or abbé, without any church preferment; of no consequence, and not looked upon by the sensible part of the nation.

Young Mr. Kalf was always called the count de Veau by his acquaintance and his own servants: he frequently made one in the parties of the princesses; he played at the duchess of Berri's, and few strangers were treated with greater marks of distinction, or had more general invitations among polite company. A young nobleman, who had been always one of his companions in these parties, promised to pay him a visit at Saardam, and was as good as his word: when he arrived at the village, he inquired for the house of count Kalf; when being shown into a carpenter's workshop he there saw his former gay companion, the young count, dressed in a jacket and trowsers, after the Dutch fashion, with an axe in his hand, at the head of his father's workmen. Here he was received by his friend, in that plain manner to which he had been accustomed from his birth, and from which he never deviated. The sensible reader will forgive this little digression, as it is a satire on vanity, and a panegyric on true

manners.

The czar continued three months in Holland, during which he passed his time in matters of a more serious nature than the adventure just related. Since the treaties of Nimeguen, Ryswic, and Utrecht, the Hague had preserved the reputation of being the centre of negotiations in Europe. This little city, or rather village, the most pleasant of any in the North, is chiefly inhabited by foreign ministers, and by travellers, who come for instruction to this great school. They were, at that time, laying the foundation of a great revolution in Europe. The czar, having gotten intelligence of the approaching storm, prolonged his stay in the Low Countries, that he might be nearer at hand, to observe the machinations going forward both in the North and South, and prepare himself for the part which it might be necessary for him to act therein.

[blocks in formation]

HE plainly saw that his allies were jealous of his power, and found that there is often more trouble with friends than with enemies.

Mecklenburg was one of the principal subjects of those divisions, which almost always subsist between neighbouring princes, who share in conquests. Peter was not willing that the Danes should take possession of Wismar for themselves, and still less that they should demolish the fortifications, and yet they did both the one and the other.

He openly protected the duke of Mecklenburg, who had married his niece, and whom he regarded like a son-in-law, against the nobility of the country, and the king of England as openly protected these latter. On the other hand, he was greatly discontented with the king of Poland, or rather with his minister, count Fleming, who wanted to throw off that dependence on the czar, which necessity and gratitude had imposed.

The courts of England, Poland, Denmark, Holstein, Mecklenburg, and Brandenburg, were severally agitated with intrigues and cabals.

Towards the end of the year 1716, and beginning of 1717, Goertz, who, as Bassevitz tells us in his memoirs, was weary of having only the title of counsellor of Holstein, and being only private plenipotentiary to Charles XII. was the chief promoter of these intrigues, with which he intended to disturb the peace of all Europe. His design was to bring Charles XII. and the czar together, not only with a view to finish the war between them, but to unite them in friendship, to replace Stanislaus on the crown of Poland, and to wrest Bremen and Verden out of the hands of George I. king of England, and even to drive that prince from the English throne, in order to put it out of his power to appropriate to himself any part of the spoils of Charles XII.

There was at the same time a minister of his own character, who had formed a design to overturn the two kingdoms of England and France; this was cardinal Alberoni, who had more power at that time in Spain than Goertz had in Sweden, and was of as bold and enterprising a spirit as himself, but much more powerful, as being at the head of affairs, in a kingdom infinitely more rich, and never paid his creatures and dependents in copper money.

Goertz, from the borders of the Baltic Sea, soon formed a connexion with Alberoni in Spain. The cardinal and he both held a correspondence with all the wandering English who were in the interest of the house of Stuart. Goertz made visits to every place where he thought he was likely to find any enemies of king George, and went suc

cessively to Germany, Holland, Flanders, and Lorrain, and at length came to Paris, about the end of the year 1716. Cardinal Alberoni began by remitting to him in Paris a million of French livres, in order (to use the cardinal's own expression) to set fire to the train.

Goertz proposed, that Charles XII. should yield up several places to the czar, in order to be in a condition to recover all the others from his enemies, and that he might be at liberty to make a descent in Scotland, while the partisans of the Stuart family should make an effectual rising in England: after their former vain attempts to effect these views, it was necessary to deprive the king of England of his chief support, which at that time was the regent of France. It was certainly very extraordinary, to see France in league, with England, against the grandson of Lewis XIV. whom she herself had placed on the throne of Spain at the expense of her blood and treasure, notwithstanding the strong confederacy formed to oppose him; but it must be considered that every thing was now out of its natural order, and the interests of the regent not those of the kingdom. Alberoni, at that time, was carrying on a confederacy in France against this very regent.*

*The conspiracy carried on in France by cardinal Alberoni, was discovered in a very singular manner. The Spanish ambassador's secretary, who used frequently to go to the house of one La Follon, a famous procuress of Paris, to amuse himself for an hour or two after the fatigues of business, had appointed a young nymph, whom he was fond of, to meet him there at nine o'clock in the evening, but did not come to her till near two o'clock in the morning. The lady, as may be supposed, reproached him with the little regard he paid to her charms or his own promise; but he excused himself, by saying, that he had been obliged to stay to finish a long despatch in ciphers, which was to be sent away that very night by a courier to Spain: so saying, he undressed and threw himself into bed, where he quietly fell asleep. In pulling off his clothes, he had, by accident, dropped a paper out of his pocket, which, by its bulk, raised in the nymph that curiosity so natural to her sex. She picked it up, and read it partly over, when the nature of its contents made her resolve to communicate them to La Follon; accordingly, she framed some excuse for leaving the room, and immediately went to the apartment of the old lady, and opened her budget. La Follon, who was a woman of superior understanding to most in her sphere, immediately saw the whole consequence of the affair; and, after having recommended to the girl to amuse her gallant as long as possible, she immediately went to waken the regent, to whom she had access at all hours, for matters of a very different nature to the present. This prince, whose presence of mind was equal to every exigency, immediately despatched different couriers to the frontiers; in consequence of which, the Spanish ambassador's messenger was stopped at Bayonne, and his despatches taken from him; upon deciphering of which, they were found exactly to agree with the original delivered to the regent by La Follon: upon this the prince of Cellamar, the Spanish ambassador, was put under an arrest, and all his papers seized; after which he was sent under a strong guard to the frontiers, where they left. him to make the best of his way to his own country. Thus an event, which would have brought the kingdom of France to the verge of destruction, was frustrated by a votary of Venus and a priestess of the temple of pleasure.

« PreviousContinue »