CO
SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Demy 8v0, pp. 656, xvi. los. 6d.
THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Letters written 1853-1856 dealing with the events of the
Crimean War.
By KARL MARX.
Edited by ELEANOR MARX AVELING and EDWARD AVELING.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
With all Marx s faults and his extravagant abuse of high political person
ages, one cannot but admire the man s strength of mind," the courage of his
opinions, and his scorn and contempt for everything small, petty, and mean.
Although many and great changes have taken place since these papers ap
peared, they are still valuable not only for the elucidation of the past, but also
for throwing a clearer light upon the present as also upon the future." West
minster Review.
"All that Marx s hand set itself to do, it did with all its might, and in this
volume, as in the rest of his work, we see the indefatigable energy, the wonder
ful grasp of detail, and the keen and marvellous foresight of a master mind."
Justice.
" A very masterly analysis of the condition, political, economic and social,
of the Turkish Empire, which is as true to-day as when it was written." Daily
Chronicle.
" The letters contain an enormous amount of well-digested information, and
display great critical acumen, amounting in some cases almost to prevision.
The biographical interest of the volume is also pronounced, for prominent men
of that period are dissected and analysed with a vigour and freedom which are
as refreshing to readers as they would be disconcerting to their subjects were
they alive. A perusal of the book must greatly tend to a clearer perception of
the later Eastern issues, which are now engaging the attention and testing the
diplomatic talents of the ambassadors at Constantinople." Liverpool Post.
LONDON ; SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIMITED.
SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
OF
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
KARL MARX
g ns
ELEANOR MARX AVELING
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PATERNOSTER SQUARE
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PUBLISHER S PREFACE
IN the Preface to " The Eastern Question," by Karl Marx,
published in 1897, the Editors, Eleanor Marx Aveling and
Edward Aveling, referred to two series of papers entitled
"The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston," and " Secret
Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century," which
they promised to publish at an early date.
Mrs. Aveling did not live long enough to see these
papers through the press, but she left them in such a
forward state, and we have had so many inquiries about
them since, that we venture to issue them without Mrs.
Aveling s final revision in two shilling pamphlets.
THE PUBLISHERS.
Secret Diplomatic History of the
Eighteenth Century
CHAPTER I
No. 1. ME. RONDEAU TO HOEACE WALPOLE.
" PETEESBUEG, 17th August, 1736. 1
" . . . I heartily wish . . . that the Turks could
be brought to condescend to make the first step, for this
Court seems resolved to hearken to nothing till that is
done, to mortify the Porte, that has on all occasions spoken
of the Russians with the greatest contempt, which the
Czarina and her present Ministers cannot bear. Instead of
being obliged to Sir Everard Fawkner and Mr. Thalman
(the former the British, the latter the Dutch Ambassador
at Constantinople), for informing them of the good disposi
tions of the Turks, Count Oestermann will not be persuaded
that the Porte is sincere, and seemed very much surprised
that they had written to them (the Russian Cabinet) with
out order of the King and the States-General, or without
being desired by the Grand Vizier, and that their letter
had not been concerted with the Emperor s Minister at Con
stantinople. ... I have shown Count Biron and Count
Oestermann the two letters the Grand Vizier has written to
the King, and at the same time told these gentlemen that
as there was in them several hard reflections on this Court,
1 This letter relates to the war against Turkey, commenced by the Empress Ann
in 1735. The British diplomatist at St. Petersburg is reporting about his endeavours
to induce Russia to conclude peace with the Turks. The passages omitted are
irrelevant.
SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
I should not have communicated them if they had not been
so desirous to see them. Count Biron said that was no
thing, for they were used to be treated in this manner by
the Turks. I desired their Excellencies not to let the
1 orte know that they had seen these letters, which would
sooner aggravate matters than contribute to make them
up. ..."
No. 2. SIR GEORGE MACARTNEY TO THE EARL OF
SANDWICH.
" ST. PETERSBURG, 1st (12th) March. 1765.
" Most Secret. 2
" . . . Yesterday M. Panin 3 and the Vice-Chan
cellor, together with M. Osten, the Danish Minister, signed
a treaty of alliance between this Court and that of Copen
hagen. By one of the articles, a war with Turkey is made
a casus fcederis ; and whenever that event happens, Denmark
binds herself to pay Eussia a subsidy of 500,000 roubles per
annum, by quarterly payments. Denmark also, by a most
secret article, promises to disengage herself from all French
connections, demanding only a limited time to endeavour
to obtain the arrears due to her by the Court of France.
At all events, she is immediately to enter into all the views
of Eussia in Sweden, and to act entirely, though not
openly, with her in^ that kingdom. Either I am deceived
or M. Gross 4 has misunderstood his instructions, when he
told your lordship that Eussia intended to stop short, and
leave all the burden of Sweden upon England. However
desirous this Court may be that we should pay a large pro
portion of every pecuniary engagement, yet,"l am assured,
2 England was at that time negotiating a commercial treaty with Eussia.
rottuatame it has remained among historians a point of controversy, whether
v r i?t ?f lu i w , as c m ^ the ? ay of Fred erick II. of Prussia, and whether he was so
behind the back of Catherine, or at her bidding. There can exist no doubt that
Catherine II., m order to identify foreign Courts with Eussian Ministers, allowed
Knssian Ministers ostensibly to identify themselves with foreign Courts As to
lamnm particular, the question is, however, decided by an authentic document
which we believe has never been published. It proves that, having once become the
man ot Frederick II., he was forced to remain so at the risk of his honour, fortune
and life.
4 The Eussian Minister at London.
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 9
she will always CHOOSE to take the lead at Stockholm. Her
design, her ardent wish, is to make a common cause with
England and Denmark, for the total annihilation of the
French interest there. This certainly cannot be done with
out a considerable expense ; but Eussia, at present, does not
seem unreasonable enough to expect that WE SHOULD PAY
THE WHOLE. It has been hinted to me that 1,500 per
annum, on our part, would be sufficient to support our
interest, and absolutely prevent the French from ever
getting at Stockholm again.
" The Swedes, highly sensible of, and very much morti
fied at, the dependent situation they have been in for many
years, are extremely jealous of every Power that inter
meddles in their affairs, and particularly so of their neigh
bours the Eussians. This is the reason assigned to me for
this Court s desiring that we and they should act upon
SEPARATE bottoms, still preserving between our respective
Ministers a confidence without reserve. That our first care
should be, not to establish a faction under the name of a
Eussian or of an English faction ; but, as even the wisest
men are imposed upon by a mere name, to endeavour to
have OUR friends distinguished as the friends of liberty and
independence. At present we have a superiority, and the
generality of the nation is persuaded how very ruinous
their French connections have been, and, if continued, how
very destructive they will be of their true interests. M.
Panin does by no means desire that the smallest change
should be made in the constitution of Sweden. 6 He wishes
that the royal authority might be preserved without being
augmented, and that the privileges of the people should be
continued without violation. He was not, however, with
out his fears of the ambitious and intriguing spirit of the
Queen, but the great ministerial vigilance of Count Oester-
mann has now entirely quieted his apprehensions on that
head.
" By this new alliance with Denmark, and by the success
in Sweden, which this Court has no doubt of, if properly
seconded, M. Panin will, in some measure, have brought to
5 The oligarchic Constitution set up by the Senate after the death of Charles XII.
io SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
bear his grand scheme of uniting the Powers of the North 6
INotnmg, then, will be wanted to render it entirely perfect
but the conclusion of a treaty alliance with Great Britain
1 am persuaded this Court desires it most ardently The
Empress has expressed herself more than once, in terms
that marked it strongly. Her ambition is to form, by such
an union, a certain counterpoise to the family compact 7
and to disappoint, as much as possible, all the views of the
Courts o Vienna and Versailles, against which she is irri
tated with uncommon resentment. I am not, however to
conceal from your lordship that we can have no hope of
any such alliance, unless we agree, by some secret article
n P t y 5 s . ub ^ id y in case f a Turkish war, for no money
will be desired from us, except upon an emergency of that
nature. I natter myself I have persuaded this Court of the
unreasonableness of expecting any subsidy in time of peace,
and tnat an alliance upon an equal footing will be more
sate and more honourable for both nations. I can assure
your lordship that a Turkish war s being a casus fcederis
inserted either in the body of the treaty or in a secret
article, will be a sine qua non in every negotiation we may
have to open with this Court. The obstinacy of M Paiiin
upon that point is owing to the accident I am going to
mention When the treaty between the Emperor and the
King of Prussia was in agitation, the Count Bestoucheff
who is a mortal enemy to the latter, proposed the Turkish
clause, persuaded that the King of Prussia would never
submit to it, and flattering himself with the hopes of blow
ing up that negotiation by his refusal. But this old poli
tician, it seemed, was mistaken in his conjecture for his
Majesty immediately consented to the proposal on condition
that Kussia should make no alliance with any other Power
but on the same terms. 8 This is the real fact, and to con-
ri?o^ llU ^ W learn ,f r0m Sir ? eorge Ma cartney that whatis commonly known as Lord
Chatham s -grand conception of the Northern Alliance," was, in fact PanTn s
*&^^$* P WerS f ^ North " Ch * tham ~ duped* ^
August! 1761 PaCt between the Boui> bons of France and Spain concluded at Paris on
s This was a subterfuge on [the part of Frederick II. The manner in which
Frederick was forced mto the arms of the Russian Alliance is plainly told by M
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 11
firm it, a few days since, Count Solme, the Prussian
Minister, came to visit me, and told me that if this Court
had any intention of concluding an alliance with ours
without such a clause, he had orders to oppose it in the
strongest manner. Hints have been given me that if
Great Britain were less inflexible in that article, Russia
will be less inflexible in the article of export duties in
the Treaty of Commerce, which M. Gross told your lordship
this Court would never depart from. I was assured at the
same time, by a person in the highest degree of confidence
with M. Panin, that if we entered upon the Treaty of Alli
ance the Treaty of Commerce would go on with it passibus
cequis ; that then the latter would be entirely taken out of
the hands of the College of Trade, where so many cavils
and altercations had been made, and would be settled only
between the Minister and myself, and that he was sure it
would be concluded to our satisfaction, provided the Turk
ish clause was admitted into the Treaty of Alliance. I was
told, also, that in case the Spaniards attacked Portugal, we
might have 15,000 Russians in our pay to send upon that
service. I must entreat your lordship on no account to
mention to M. Gross the secret article of the Danish Treaty.
. . . That gentleman, I am afraid, is no well-wisher to
England." 9
Koch, the French professor of diplomacy and teacher of Talleyrand. " Frederick
II.," he says, " having been abandoned by the Cabinet of London, could not but
attach himself to Eussia." (See his History of the Revolutions in Europe.)
9 Horace Walpole characterises his epoch by the words "It tt as the^node of
tlie times to l>e paid by one favour for receiving another." At all events, it will be
seen from the text that such was the mode of Eussia in transacting business with
England. The Earl of Sandwich, to whom Sir George Macartney could dare to
address the above despatch, distinguished himself, ten years later, in 1775, as First
Lord of the Admiralty, in the North Administration, by the vehement opposition
he made to Lord Chatham s motion for an equitable adjustment of the American
difficulties. " He could not believe it (Chatham s motion) the production of a
British peer; it appeared to him rather the work of some American." In 1777> we
find Sandwich again blustering : " he would hazard every drop of blood, as well as
the last shilling of the national treasure, rather than allow Great Britain to be de
fied, bullied, and dictated to, by her disobedient and rebellious subjects." Foremost
as the Earl of Sandwich was in entangling England in war with her North Ameri
can colonies, with France, Spain, and Holland, we behold him constantly accused
in Parliament by Fox, Burke, Pitt, etc., of keeping the naval force inadequate to the
defence of the country ; of intentionally opposing small English forces where he
knew the enemy to have concentrated large ones ; of utter mismanagement of the
service in all its departments," etc. (See debates of the House of Commons of
12 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
No. 3. SIR JAMES HARRIS TO LORD GRANTHAM.
" Petersburg, 16 (27 August), 1782.
" (Private.)
"... On my arrival here I found the Court very
different from what it had been described to me. So far
from any partiality to England, its bearings were entirely
French. The King of Prussia (then in possession of the
Empress ear) was exerting his influence against us. Count
Panin assisted him powerfully; Lacy and Corberon, the
Bourbon Ministers, were artful and intriguing ; Prince
Potemkin had been wrought upon by them ; and the whole
tribe which surrounded the Empress the Schuwaloffs,
Stroganoffs, and Chernicheffs were what they still are,
gargons perruquiers de Paris. Events seconded their endea
vours. The assistance the French affected to afford Russia
in settling its disputes with the Porte, and the two Courts
being immediately after united as mediators at the Peace of
Teschen, contributed not a little to reconcile them to each
other. I was, therefore, not surprised that all my negotia
tions with Count Panin, from February, 1778, to July, 1779,
should be unsuccessful, as he meant to prevent, not to pro
mote, an alliance. It was in vain we made concessions to
obtain it. He ever started fresh difficulties ; had ever fresh
obstacles ready. A very serious evil resulted, in the mean
while, from my apparent confidence in him. He availed
llfch March, 1778; 31st March, 1778; February, 1779; Fox s motion of censure
on Lord Sandwich ; 9th April, 1779, address to the King for the dismissal of Lord
Sandwich from his service, on account of misconduct in service; 7th February,
1782, Fox s motion that there had been gross mismanagement in the administration
of naval affairs during the year 1781.) On this occasion Pitt imputed to Lord Sand
wich "all our naval disasters and disgraces." The ministerial majority against the
motion amounted to only 22 in a House of 388. On the 22nd February, 1782, a
similar motion against Lord Sandwich was only negatived by a majority of 19 in
a House of 453. Such, indeed, was the character of the Earl of Sandwich s Ad
ministration that more than thirty distinguished officers quitted the naval service,
or declared they could not act under the existing system. In point of fact, during
his whole tenure of office, serious apprehensions were entertained of the conse
quences of the dissensions then prevalent in the navy. Besides, the Earl of Sandwich
was openly accused, and, as far as circumstantial evidence goes, convicted of PECU
LATION. (See debates of the House of Lords, 31st March, 1778 ; 9th April, 1779,
and seq.) When the motion for his removal from office was negatived on April 9th
1779, thirty-nine peers entered their protest.
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 13
himself of it to convey in his reports to the Empress, not
the language I employed, and the sentiments I actually
expressed, but the language and sentiments he wished I
should employ and express. He was equally careful to
conceal her opinions and feelings from me ; and while he
described England to her as obstinate, and overbearing, and
reserved, he described the Empress to me as displeased, dis
gusted, and indifferent to our concerns ; and he was so
convinced that, by this double misrepresentation, he had
shut up every avenue of success that, at the time when I
presented to him the Spanish declaration, he ventured to
say to me, ministerially, That Great Britain had, by its own
haughty conduct, brought down all its misfortunes on itself ;
that they were now at their height; that we must consent to
any concession to obtain peace; and that we, could expect
neither assistance from our friends nor forbearance from our
enemies, , I had temper enough not to give way to my
feelings on this occasion. ... I applied, without loss
of time, to Prince Potemkin, and, by his means, the Em
press condescended to see me alone at Peterhoff. I was so
fortunate in this interview, as not only to efface all bad
impressions she had against us, but by stating in its true
light, our situation, and THE INSEPARABLE INTEKESTS OF
GREAT BRITAIN AND RUSSIA, to raise in her mind a decided
resolution to assist us. This resolution she declared to me in
express words. When this transpired and Count Panin
was the first who knew it he became my implacable and
inveterate enemy. He not only thwarted by falsehoods
and by a most undue exertion of his influence my public
negotiations, but employed every means the lowest and
most vindictive malice could suggest to depreciate and
injure me personally ; and from the very infamous accusa
tions with which he charged me, had I been prone to fear,
I _ might have apprehended the most infamous attacks at
his hands. This relentless persecution still continues ; it
has outlived his Ministry. Notwithstanding the positive
assurances I had received from the Empress herself, he
found means, first to stagger, and afterwards to alter her
resolutions. He was, indeed, very officiously assisted by his
14 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
Prussian Majesty, who, at the time, was as much bent on
oversetting our interest as he now seems eager to restore it.
I was not, however, disheartened by this first disappoint
ment, and. by redoubling my efforts, / have twice more,
during the course of my mission, brought the Empress to the
verge (!) of standing forth our professed friend, and, each
time, my expectations were grounded on assurances from Tier
own mouth. The first was when our enemies conjured up the
armed neutrality ; 10 the other WHEN MINORCA WAS OFFERED
HEE. Although, on the first of these occasions, I found the
same opposition from the same quarter I had experienced
before, yet I am compelled to say that the principal cause of
my failure was attributable to the very awkward manner
in which we replied to the famous neutral declaration of
February, 1780. As I well knew from what quarter the
blow would come, I was prepared to parry it. My opinion
was : < If England feels itself strong enough to do without Russia,
let it reject at once these new-fangled doctrines; but if its situa
tion is such as to want assistance, let it yield to the necessity of
the hour, recognise them as far as they relate to EUSSIA ALONE,
and by a well-timed act of complaisance insure itself a power-
ful friend. n My opinion was not received ; an ambiguous
and trimming answer was given ; we seemed equally afraid
to accept or dismiss them. I was instructed secretly to oppose,
but avowedly to acquiesce in them, and some unguarded ex
pressions of one of its then confidential servants, made use
of in speaking to Mr. Simolin, in direct contradiction to
the temperate and cordial language that Minister had heard
from Lord Stormont, irritated the Empress to the last
degree, and completed the dislike and bad opinion she enter-
10 Sir James Harris affects to believe that Catherine II. was not the author of,
but a convert to, the armed neutrality of 1780. It is one of the grand stratagems
of the Court of St. Petersburg to give to its own schemes the form of proposals
suggested to and pressed on itself by foreign Courts. Russian diplomacy delights
in those quce pro quo. Thus the Court of Florida Bianca was made the responsible
editor of the armed neutrality, and, from a report that vain-glorious Spaniard ad
dressed to Carlos III., one may see how immensely he felt flattered at the idea of
having not only hatched the armed neutrality but allured Russia into abetting it.
1 This same Sir James Harris, perhaps more familiar to the reader under the
name of the Earl of Malmesbury, is extolled by English historians as the man who
prevented England from surrendering the right of search in the Peace Negotiations
of 1/82-83.
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 15
tained of that Administration. 12 Our enemies took advan
tage of these circumstances. ... I SUGGESTED THE IDEA
OP GIVING UP MINOKCA TO THE EMPRESS, because, as it was
evident to me we should at the peace be compelled to make
sacrifices, it seemed to me wiser to make them to our friends
than to our enemies. THE IDEA WAS ADOPTED AT HOME IN
ITS WHOLE EXTENT, 13 and nothing could be more perfectly
12 It might be inferred from this passage and similar ones occurring in the text,
that Catherine II. had caught a real Tartar in Lord North, whose Administration
Sir James Harris is pointing at. Any such delusion will disappear before the simple
statement that the first partition of Poland took place under Lord North s Admin
istration, without any protest on his part. In 1773 Catherine s war against Turkey
still continuing, and her conflicts with Sweden growing serious, France mado
preparations to send a powerful fleet into the Baltic. D Aiguillon, the French
Minister of Foreign Affairs, communicated this plan to Lord Stormont, the then
English Ambassador at Paris. In a long conversation, D Aiguillon dwelt largely on
the ambitious designs of Russia, and the common interest that ought to blend
France and England into a joint resistance against them. In answer to this confi
dential communication, he was informed by the English Ambassador that, " if
France sent her ships into the Baltic, they would instantly be followed by a British
fleet ; that the presence of two fleets would have no more effect than a neutral
ity; and however the British Court might desire to preserve the harmony now
subsisting between England and France, it was impossible to foresee the contingen
cies that might arise from accidental collision." In consequence of these represen
tations, D Aiguillon countermanded the squadron at Brest, but gave new orders for
the equipment of an armament at Toulon. " On receiving intelligence of these
renewed preparations, the British Cabinet made instant and vigorous demonstra
tions of resistance ; Lord Stormont was ordered to declare that every argument
used respecting the Baltic applied, equally to the Mediterranean. A memorial also
was presented to the French Minister, accompanied by a demand that it should be
laid before the King and Council. This produced the desired effect ; the armament
was countermanded, the sailors disbanded, and the chances of an extensive warfare
avoided."
" Lord North," says the complacent writer from whom we have borrowed the
last lines, " thus effectually served the cause of his ally (Catherine II.), and
facilitated the treaty of peace (of Kutchuk-Kainardji) between Russia and the
Porte." Catherine II. rewarded Lord North s good services, first by withholding
the aid she had promised him in case of a war between England and the North
American Colonies, and in the second place, by conjuring up and leading the armed
neutrality against England. Lord North DARED NOT repay, as he was advised ly
Sir James Harris, this treacherous breach of faith by giving up to Russia, and to
Russia alone, the maritime rights of Great Britain. Hence the irritation in the
nervous system of the Czarina ; the hysterical fancy she caught all at once of
"entertaining a bad opinion" of Lord North, of "disliking" him, of feeling a
"rooted aversion" against him, of being afflicted with "a total want of confidence,"
etc. In order to give the Shelburne Administration a warning example, Sir James
Harris draws up a minute psychological picture of the feelings of the Czarina, and
the disgrace incurred by the North Administration, for having wounded these same
feelings. His prescription is very simple : surrender to Russia, as our friend, every
thing for asking which we would consider every other Power our enemy.
13 It is then a fact that the English Government, not satisfied with having made
Russia a Baltic power, strove hard to make her a Mediterranean power too. The
offer of the surrender of Minorca appears to have been made to Catherine II. at the
1 6 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
calculated to the meridian of this Court than the judicious
instructions 1 received on this occasion from Lord Stormont.
Why this project failed I am still at a loss to learn. / never
Imew the Empress incline so strongly to any one measure as
she did to this, before I had my full powers to treat, nor was
I ever more astonished than when I found her shrink from
her purpose when they arrived. I imputed it at the same
time, in my own mind, to the rooted aversion she had for our
Ministry, and her total want of confidence in them ; but I
since am more strongly disposed to believe that she con
sulted the Emperor (of Austria) on the subject, and that he
not only prevailed on her to decline the offer, but betrayed
the secret to France, and that it thus became public. I
cannot otherwise account for this rapid change of sentiment
in the Empress, particularly as Prince Potemkin (whatever
he might be in other transactions) was certainly in this
end of 1779, or the beginning of 1780, shortly after Lord Stormont s entrance into
the North Cabinet the same Lord Stormont we have seen thwarting the French
attempts at resistance against Russia, and whom even Sir James Harris cannot
deny the merit of having written " instructions perfectly calculated to the meri
dian of the Court of St. Petersburg." While Lord North s Cabinet, at the sugges
tion of Sir James Harris, offered Minorca to the Muscovites, the English Common
ers and people were still trembling for fear lest the Hanoverians (?) should wrest
out of their hands "one of the keys of the Mediterranean." On the 26th of
October, 1775, the King, in his opening speech, had informed Parliament, amongst
other things, that he had Sir James Graham s own words, when asked why they
should not have kept up some blockade pending the settlement of the "plan,"
" They did not take that responsibility upon themselves." The responsibility of
executing their orders ! The despatch we have quoted is the only despatch read,
except one of a later date. The despatch, said to be sent on the 5th of April, in
which "the Admiral is ordered to use the largest discretionary power in blockad
ing the Russian ports in the Black Sea," is not read, nor any replies from Admiral
Dundas. The Admiralty sent Hanoverian troops to Gibraltar and Port Mahon
(Minorca) , to replace such British regiments as should be drawn from those garri
sons for service in America. An amendment to the address was proposed by Lord
John Cavendish, strongly condemning " the confiding such important fortresses as
Gibraltar and Port Mahon to foreigners." After very stormy debates, in which
the measure of entrusting Gibraltar and Minorca, " the keys of the Mediterranean,"
as they were called, to foreigners, was furiously attacked ; Lord North, acknow
ledging himself the adviser of the measure, felt obliged to bring in a bill of indem
nity. However, these foreigners, these Hanoverians, were the English King s own
subjects. Having virtually surrendered Minorca to Russia in 1780, Lord North
was, of course, quite justified in treating, on November 22, 1781, in the House of
Commons, " with utter scorn the insinuation that Ministers were in the pay of
France."
Let us remark, en passant, that Lord North, one of the most base and mischievous
Ministers England can boast of, perfectly mastered the art of keeping the House
in perpetual laughter. So had Lord Sunderland. So has Lord Palmerston,
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 17
cordial and sincere in his support, and both from what I
saw at the time, and from what has since come to my
knowledge, had its success at heart as much as myself. You
will observe, my lord, that the idea of bringing the Empress
forward as a friendly mediatrix went hand-in-hand with the
proposed cession of Minorca. As this idea has given rise to
what has since followed, and involved us in all the dilemmas
of the present mediation, it will be necessary for me to ex-
pjain what my views then were, and to exculpate myself
from the blame of having placed my Court in so em
barrassing a situation, my wish and intention was that she
should be sole mediatrix without an adjoint ; if you have
perused what passed between her and me, in December,
1780, your lordship will readily perceive how very potent
reasons I had to imagine she would be a friendly and
even a partial one. 14 I knew, indeed, she was unequal to
the task ; but I knew, too, how greatly her vanity would
be nattered by this distinction, and was well aware that
when once engaged she would persist, and be inevitably
involved in our quarrel, particularly when it should appear
(and appear it would) that we had gratified her with
Minorca. The annexing to the mediation the other
(Austrian) Imperial Court entirely overthrew this plan.
It not only afforded her a pretence for not keeping her
word, but piqued and mortified her ; and it was under
this impression that she made over the whole business to
the colleague we had given her, and ordered her Minister
at Vienna to subscribe implicitly to whatever the Court
proposed. Hence all the evils which have since arisen, and
hence those we at this moment experience. I myself could
14 Lord North having been supplanted by the Kockingham Administration, on
March 27, 1782, the celebrated Fox forwarded peace proposals to Holland
through the mediation of the Russian Minister. Now what were the consequences
of the Russian mediation so much vaunted by this Sir James Harris, the servile
account keeper of the Czarina s sentiments, humours, and feelings ? While prelim
inary articles of peace had been convened with France, Spain, and the American
States, it was found impossible to arrive at any such preliminary agreement with
Holland. Nothing but a simple cessation of hostilities was to be obtained from it.
So powerful proved the Russian mediation, that on the 2nd September, 1783, just
one day before the conclusion of definitive treaties with America, France, and
Spain, Holland condescended to accede to preliminaries of peace, and this not in
consequence of the Russian mediation, but through the influence of France.
B
1 8 SECRE T DIPLOMA TIC HIS TOR Y
never be brought to believe that the Court of Vienna, as
long as Prince Kaunitz directs its measures, can mean Eng
land any good or France any harm. It was not with that
view that I endeavoured to promote its influence here, but
because I found that of Prussia in constant opposition to me ;
and because I thought that if I could by any means smite
this, I should get rid of my greatest obstacle. I was mis
taken, and, by a singular fatality, the Courts of Vienna
and Berlin seem never to have agreed in anything but in
the disposition to prejudice us here by turns. 15 The proposal
relative to Minorca was the last attempt I made to induce
the Empress to stand forth. I had exhausted my strength
and resources ; the freedom with which I had spoken in my
last interview with her, though respectful, had displeased] and
from this period to the removal of the late Administration, I
have been reduced to act on the defensive. ... I have had
more difficulty in preventing the Empress from doing harm
than I ever had in attempting to engage her to do us good.
It was to prevent evil, that I inclined strongly for the
acceptation of her single mediation between us and Holland,
when her Imperial Majesty first offered it. The extreme dis
satisfaction she expressed at our refusal justified my opinion;
and I TOOK UPON ME, when it was proposed a second time,
to urge the necessity of its being agreed to (ALTHOUGH I KNEW
IT TO BE IN CONTEADICTION OF THE SENTIMENTS OF MY PKIN-
CIPAL), since I firmly believed, had we again declined it, the
Empress would, in a moment of anger, have joined the
Dutch against us. As it is, all has gone on well , our judi
cious conduct has transferred to them the ill-humour she
originally was in with us, and she now is as partial to our
cause as she was before partial to theirs. Since the new
Ministry in England, my road has been made smoother ; the
great and new path struck out by your predecessor, 16 and
15 How much was England not prejudiced by the Courts of Vienna and Paris
thwarting the plan of the British Cabinet of ceding Minorca to Eussia, and by
Frederick of Prussia s resistance against the great Chatham s scheme of a
Northern Alliance under Muscovite auspices.
* 6 The predecessor is Fox. Sir James Harris establishes a complete scale of
British Administrations, according to the degree in which they enjoyed the favour
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 19
which you, my lord, pursue, has operated a most advanta
geous change in our favour upon the Continent. Nothing,
indeed, but events which come home to her, will, I believe,
ever induce her Imperial Majesty to take an active part ;
but there is now a strong glow of friendship in our favour ;
she approves our measures ; she trusts our Ministry, and she
gives way to that predilection she certainly has for our nation.
Our enemies know and feel this ; it keeps them in awe.
This is a succinct but accurate sketch of what has passed
at this Court from the day of my arrival at Petersburg to
the present hour. Several inferences may be deduced from
it. 17 That the Empress is led by her passions, not by
reason and argument ; that her prejudices are very strong,
easily acquired, and, when once fixed, irremovable ; while,
on the contrary, there is no sure road to her good opinion ;
that even when obtained, it is subject to perpetual fluctua
tion, and liable to be biassed by the most trifling incidents ;
that till she is fairly embarked in a plan, no assurances can
be depended on ; but that when once fairly embarked, she
never retracts, and may be carried any length ; that with
very bright parts, an elevated mind, an uncommon sagacity,
she wants judgment, precision of idea, reflection, and L ESPEIT
DE COMBINAISON (! !) That her Ministers are either ignorant
of, or indifferent to, the welfare of the State, and act from
a passive submission to her will, or from motives of party
and private interests." 18
pE bis almighty Czarina. In spite of Lord Stprmont, the Earl of Sandwich, Lord
North, and Sir James Harris himself; in spite of the partition of Poland, the
bullying of D Aiguillon, the treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji, and the intended cession
of Minorca Lord North s Administration is relegated to the bottom of the heavenly
ladder ; far above it has climbed the Rpckingham Administration, whose soul was
Fox, notorious for his subsequent intrigues with Catherine ; but at the top we
behold the Shelburne Administration, whose Chancellor of the Exchequer was the
celebrated William Pitt. As to Lord Shelburne himself, Burke exclaimed in the
House of Commons, that " if he was not a Catalina or Borgia in morals, it must
not be ascribed to anything but his understanding."
17 Sir James Harris forgets deducing the main inference, that the Ambassador of
England is the agent of Russia.
18 In the 18th century, English diplomatists despatches, bearing on their front
the sacramental inscription, " Private," are despatches to be withheld from the
King by the Minister to whom they are addressed. That such was the case may
be seen from Lord Mahon s History of England.
20 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
4. (MANUSCRIPT) ACCOUNT OF RUSSIA DURING THE COM
MENCEMENT OF THE REIGN OF THE EMPEROR PAUL,
DRAWN UP BY THE REV. L. K. PlTT, CHAPLAIN TO THE
FACTORY OF ST. PETERSBURG, AND A NEAR RELATIVE
OF WILLIAM PiTT. 19
Extract.
" There can scarcely exist a doubt concerning the real sentiments of
the late Empress of Eussia on the great points which have, within the
last few years, convulsed the whole system of European politics. She
certainly felt from the beginning the fatal tendency of the new prin
ciples, but was not, perhaps, displeased to see every European Power
exhausting itself in a struggle which raised, in proportion to its
violence, her own importance. It is more than probable that the state
of the newly acquired provinces in Poland was likewise a point which
had considerable influence over the political conduct of Catherine.
The fatal effects resulting from an apprehension of revolt in the late
seat of conquest seem to have been felt in a very great degree by the
combined Powers, who in the early period of the Revolution were so
near reinstating the regular Government in France. The same dread
of revolt in Poland, which divided the attention of the combined
Powers and hastened their retreat, deterred likewise the late Empress
of Eussia from entering on the great theatre of war, until a combina
tion of circumstances rendered the progress of the French armies a
more dangerous evil than any which could possibly result to the
Eussian Empire from active operations. . . . The last words
which the Empress was known to utter were addressed to her Secre
tary when she dismissed him on the morning on which she was
seized : Tell Prince (Zuboff), she said, to come to me at twelve, and
to remind me of signing the Treaty of Alliance with England. "
Having entered into ample considerations on the Emperor
Paul s acts and extravagances, the Rev. Mr. Pitt continues
as follows :
" When these considerations are impressed on the mind, the nature
of the late secession from the coalition, and of the incalculable indigni
ties offered to the Government of Great Britain, can alone be fairly
estimated. . . . BUT THE TIES WHICH BIND HER (GREAT BRITAIN)
TO THE EUSSIAN EMPIRE ARE FORMED BY NATURE, AND INVIOLABLE.
United, these nations might almost brave the united world ; divided,
19 " To be burnt after my death." Such are the words prefixed to the manuscript
by the gentleman whom it was addressed to.
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 21
fin A qfrpnffth and importance of each is FUNDAMENTALLY impaired.
England has reason t P o regret with Kussia that the imperial sceptre
should be thus inconsistently wielded, but it is the sovereign of Eussia
alone who divides the Empires."
The reverend gentleman concludes his account by the
words :
"As far as human foresight can at this moment penetrate, the
despair of an enraged individual seems a more probable means to
Sinate the present scene of oppression than any more systematic
combkiation of measures to restore the throne of Eussia to its dignity
and importance."
22 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
CHAPTEE II
THE documents published in the first chapter extend from
the reign of the Empress Ann to the commencement of the
reign of the Emperor Paul, thus encompassing the greater
part of the 18th century. At the end of that century it
had become, as stated by the Rev. Mr. Pitt, the openly pro
fessed and orthodox dogma of English diplomacy, " that the
ties which bind Great Britain to the Russian Empire are
formed by nature, and inviolable."
In perusing these documents, there is something that
startles us even more than their contents viz., their form.
All these letters are " confidential/ " private," " secret,"
" most secret " ; but in spite of secrecy, privacy, and confi
dence, the English statesmen converse among each other
about Russia and her rulers in a tone of awful reserve,
abject servility, and cynical submission, which would strike
us even in the public despatches of Russian statesmen. To
conceal intrigues against foreign nations secrecy is recurred
to by Russian diplomatists. The same method is adopted
by English diplomatists freely to express their devotion to
a foreign Court. The secret despatches of Russian diplo
matists are fumigated with some equivocal perfume. It is
one part the fumee de faussete, as the Duke of St. Simon
has it, and the other part that coquettish display of one s own
superiority and cunning which stamps upon the reports of
the French Secret Police their indelible character. Even
the master despatches of Pozzo di Borgo are tainted with
this common blot of the literature de mauvais lieu. In this
point the English secret despatches prove much superior.
They do not affect superiority but silliness. For instance,
can there be anything more silly than Mr. Rondeau inform
ing Horace Walpole that he has betrayed to the Russian
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 23
Minister the letters addressed by the Turkish Grand Vizier
to the King of England, but that he had told " at the same
time those gentlemen that as there were several hard
reflections on the Eussian Court he should not have com
municated them, if they had not been so anxious to see them"
and then told their excellencies not to tell the Porte that
they had seen them (those letters) ! At first view the
infamy of the act is drowned in the silliness of the man.
Or, take Sir George Macartney. Can there be anything
more silly than his happiness that Russia seemed " reason
able " enough not to expect that England " should pay the
WHOLE EXPENSES " for Russia s " choosing to take the lead
at Stockholm"; or his "flattering himself" that he had
"persuaded the Russian Court" not to be so "unreason
able " as to ask from England, in a time of peace, subsidies
for a time of war against Turkey (then the ally of Eng
land) ; or his warning the Earl of Sandwich "not to
mention " to the Russian Ambassador at London the
secrets mentioned to himself by the Russian Chancellor at
St. Petersburg ? Or can there be anything more silly than
Sir James Harris confidentially whispering into the ear of
Lord Grantham that Catherine II. was devoid of " judgment ,
precision of idea, reflection, and V esprit de combinaison " ? l
On the other hand, take the cool impudence with which
Sir George Macartney informs his minister that because
the Swedes were extremely jealous of, and mortified at,
their dependence on Russia, England was directed by the
Court of St. Petersburg to do its work at Stockholm, under
the British colours of liberty and independence ! Or Sir
James Harris advising England to surrender to Russia
Minorca and the right of search, and the monopoly of
mediation in the affairs of the world not in order to gain
any material advantage, or even a formal engagement on
the part of Russia, but only " a strong glow of friendship
from the Empress, and the transfer to France of her " ill
humour."
1 Or, to follow this affectation of silliness into more recent times, is there anything
in diplomatic history that could match Lord Palmerston s proposal made to Marshal
Soult (in 1839), to storm the Dardanelles, in order to afford the Sultan the support
of the Anglo-French fleet against Russia ?
24 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
The secret Russian despatches proceed on the very plain
line that Eussia knows herself to have no common interests
whatever with other nations, but that every nation must
be persuaded separately to have common interests with
Eussia to the exclusion of every other nation. The English
despatches, on the contrary, never dare so much as hint
that Eussia has common interests with England, but only
endeavour to convince England that she has Eussian
interests. The English diplomatists themselves tell us
that this was the single argument they pleaded, when
placed face to face with Eussian potentates.
If the English despatches we have laid before the public
were addressed to private friends, they would only brand
with infamy the ambassadors who wrote them. Secretly
addressed as they are to the British Government itself, they
nail it for ever to the pillory of history ; and, instinctively,
this seems to have been felt, even by Whig writers, because
none has dared to publish them.
The question naturally arises from which epoch this
Eussian character of English diplomacy, become tradi
tionary in the course of the 18th century, does date its
origin. To clear up this point we must go back to the
time of Peter the Great, which, consequently, will form the
principal subject of our researches. "We propose to enter
upon this task by reprinting some English pamphlets,
written at the time of Peter I., and which have either
escaped the attention of modern historians, or appeared to
them to merit none. However, they will suffice for refuting
the prejudice common to Continental and English writers,
that the designs of Eussia were not understood or suspected
in England until at a later, and too late, epoch ; that the
diplomatic relations between England and Eussia were but
the natural offspring of the mutual material interests of the
two countries ; and that, therefore, in accusing the British
statesmen of the 18th century of Eussianism we should
commit an unpardonable hysteron-proteron. If we have
shown by the English despatches that, at the time of the
Empress Ann, England already betrayed her own allies to
Eussia, it will be seen from the pamphlets we are now
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 25
about to reprint that, even before the epoch of Ann, at the
very epoch of Russian ascendency in Europe, springing up
at the time of Peter I., the plans of Russia were understood,
and the connivance of British statesmen at these plans was
denounced by English writers.
The first pamphlet we lay before the public is called^ The
Northern Crisis. It was printed in London in 1716, and
reiE7ts~~T6~ the intended Dano-Anglo-Russian invasion of
SJcana (Schonen).
During the year 1715 a northern alliance for the partition,
not of Sweden proper, but of what we may call the Swedish
Empire, had been concluded between Russia, Denmark,
Poland, Prussia, and Hanover. That partition forms the
first grand act of modern diplomacy the logical premiss to
the partition of Poland. The partition treaties relating to
Spain have engrossed the interest of posterity because they
were the forerunners of the War of Succession, and the
partition of Poland drew even a larger audience because its
last act was played upon a contemporary stage. However,
it cannot be denied that it was the partition of the Swedish
Empire which inaugurated the modern era of international
policy. The partition treaty not even pretended to have a
pretext, save the misfortune of its intended victim. For
the first time in Europe the violation of all treaties was not
only made, but proclaimed the common basis of a new
treaty. Poland herself, in the drag of Russia, and per
sonated by that commonplace of immorality, Augustus II.,
Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, was pushed into the
foreground of the conspiracy, thus signing her own death-
warrant, and not even enjoying the privilege reserved by
Polyphemus to Odysseus to be last eaten. Charles XII.
predicted her fate in the manifesto flung against King
Augustus and the Czar, from his voluntary exile at Bender.
The manifesto is dated January 28, 1711.
The participation in this partition treaty threw England
within the orbit of Russia, towards whom, since the days of
the " Glorious Revolution," she had more and more gravi
tated. George J.^J^King._ of .England, was bound to a
defensive. alliance with Sweden by the treaty of 1700. Not
26 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
only as King of England, but as Elector of Hanover, lie
was one of the guarantees, and even of the direct parties
to the treaty of Travendal, which secured to Sweden what
the partition treaty intended stripping her of. Even his
German electoral dignity he partly owed to that treaty.
However, as Elector of Hanover he declared war against
Sweden, which he waged as King of England.
In 1715 the confederates had divested Sweden of her
German provinces, and to effect that end introduced the
Muscovite on the German soil. In 1716 they agreed to
invade Sweden Proper to attempt an armed descent upon
bchonen the southern extremity of Sweden now consti
tuting the districts of Malmoe and Christianstadt. Conse
quently Peter of Russia brought with him from Germany
a Muscovite army, which was scattered over Zealand,
thence to be conveyed to Schonen, under the protection of
the English and Dutch fleets sent into the Baltic, on the
false pretext of protecting trade and navigation. Already
in 1715, when Charles XII. was besieged in Stralsund, eight
English men-of-war, lent by England to Hanover, and by
Hanover to Denmark, had openly reinforced the Danish
navy, and even hoisted the Danish flag. In 1716 the Brit
ish navy was commanded by his Czarish Majesty in person.
Everything being ready for the invasion of Schonen,
there arose a difficulty from a side where it was least
expected. Although the treaty stipulated only for 30,000
Muscovites, Peter, in his magnanimity, had landed 40,000
on Zealand ; but now that he was to send them on the
errand to Schonen, he all at once discovered that out of the
40,000 he could spare but 15,000. This declaration not
only paralysed the military plan of the confederates, it
seemed to threaten the security of Denmark and of
Frederick IV., its king, as great part of the Muscovite
army, supported by the Russian fleet, occupied Copenhagen.
One of the generals of Frederick proposed suddenly to fall
with the Danish cavalry upon the Muscovites and to
exterminate them, while the English men-of-war should
burn the Russian fleet. Averse to any perfidy which
required some greatness of will, some force of character, and
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
some contempt of personal danger, Frederick IV. rejected
the bold proposal, and limited himself to assuming an
attitude of defence. He then wrote a begging letter to the
Czar, intimating that he had given up his Schonen fancy,
and requested the Czar to do the same and find his way
home: a request the latter could not but comply with.
When Peter at last left Denmark with his army, the
Danish Court thought fit to communicate to the Courts of
Europe a public account of the incidents and transactions
which had frustrated the intended descent upon Schonen
and this document forms the starting point of The
Northern Crisis.
In a letter addressed to Baron Gortz, dated from London,
January 23, 1717, by Count Gyllenborg, there occur some
passages in which the latter, the then Swedish ambassador
at the Court of St. James s, seems to profess himself the
author of The Northern Crisis, the title of which he does
not, however, quote. Yet any idea of his having written
that powerful pamphlet will disappear before the slightest
perusal of the Count s authenticated writings, such as his
letters to Gortz.
^^J J& "** *\
r^,^-<
" THE NORTHERN CRISIS ; OR IMPARTIAL BEFLECTIONS ON
THE POLICIES OF THE CzAR ; OCCASIONED BY MYNHEER
VON STOCKEN S EEASONS FOR DELAYING THE DESCENT
UPON SCHONEN. A TRUE COPY OF WHICH is PREFIXED,
VERBALLY TRANSLATED AFTER THE TENOR OF THAT IN
THE GERMAN SECRETARY S OFFICE IN COPENHAGEN,
OCTOBER 10, 1716. LONDON, 1716.
1. Preface . . . Tis (the present pamphlet)
not fit for lawyers clerks, but it is highly convenient to be
read by those who are proper students in the laws of nations ;
twill be but lost time for any stock-jobbing, trifling dealer
in Exchange-Alley to look beyond the preface on t, but
every merchant in England (more especially those who
trade to the Baltic) will find his account in it. The Dutch
(as the courants and postboys have more than once told us)
2 8 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
are about to mend their hands, if they can, in several
articles of trade with the Czar, and they have been a long
time about it to little purpose. Inasmuch as they are
such a frugal people, they are good examples for the
imitation of our traders ; but if we can outdo them for
once, in the means of projecting a better and more expedi
tious footing to go upon, for the emolument of us both, let
us, for once, ba wise enough to set the example, and let
them, for once, bs our imitators. This little treatise will
show a pretty plain way how we may do it, as to our trade
in the Baltic, at this juncture. I desire no little coffee-house
politician to meddle with it; but to give him even a dis
relish for my company. I must let him know that he is
not fit for mine. Those who are even proficients in state
science, will find in it matter highly fit to employ all their
powers of speculation, which they ever before past negli
gently by, and thought (too cursorily) were not worth the
regarding. No outrageous party-man will find it at all for
his purpose ; but every honest Whig and every honest Tory
may each of them read it, not only without either of their
disgusts, but with the satisfaction of them both. . . Tis
not fit, in fine, for a mad, hectoring, Presbyterian Whig, or
a raving, fretful, dissatisfied, Jacobite Tory."
2. THE REASONS HANDED ABOUT BY MYNHEER VON STOCKEN
FOR DELAYING THE DESCENT UPON ScHONEN.
" There being no doubt, but most courts will be surprised
that the descent upon Schonen has not been put into execu
tion, notwithstanding the great preparations made for that
purpose ; and that all his Czarish Majesty s troops, who were
in Germany, were transported to Zealand, not without
great trouble and danger, partly by his own gallies, and
partly by his Danish Majesty s and other vessels ; and that
the said descent is deferred till another time. His Danish
Majesty hath therefore, in order to clear himself of all
imputation and reproach, thought fit to order, that the
following true account of this affair should be given to
all impartial persons. Since the Swedes were entirely
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 29
driven out of their German dominions, there was, according
to all the rules of policy, and reasons of war, no other way
left, than vigorously to attack the still obstinate King of
Sweden, in the very heart of his country ; thereby, with
God s assistance, to force him to a lasting, good and advan
tageous peace for the allies. The King of Denmark and his
Czarish Majesty were both of this opinion, and did, in order
to put so good a design in execution, agree upon an inter
view, which at last (notwithstanding his Danish Majesty s
presence, upon the account of Norway s being invaded,
was most necessary in his own capital, and that the Mus
covite ambassador, M. Dolgorouky, had given quite other
assurances) was held at Ham and Horn, near Hamburgh,
after his Danish Majesty had stayed there six weeks
for the Czar. In this conference it was, on the 3rd of June,
agreed between both their Majesties, after several debates,
that the descent upon Schonen should positively be under
taken this year, and everything relating to the forwarding
the same was entirely consented to. Hereupon his Danish
Majesty made all haste for his return to his dominions, and
gave orders to work day and night to get his fleet ready to
put to sea. The transport ships were also gathered from all
parts of his dominions, both with inexpressible charges and
great prejudice to his subjects trade. Thus, his Majesty
(as the Czar himself upon his arrival at Copenhagen owned)
did his utmost to provide all necessaries, and to forward
the descent, upon whose success everything depended. It
happened, however, in the meanwhile, and before the
descent was agreed upon in the conference at Ham and
Horn, that his Danish Majesty was obliged to secure his
invaded and much oppressed kingdom of Norway, by send
ing thither a considerable squadron out of his fleet, under
the command of Vice- Admiral Gabel, which squadron could
not be recalled before the enemy had left that kingdom,
without endangering a great part thereof ; so that out of
necessity the said Vice- Admiral was forced to tarry there
till the 12th of July, when his Danish Majesty sent him
express orders to return with all possible speed, wind and
weather permitting ; but this blowing for some time con-
30 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
trary, he was detained. . . . The Swedes were all the
while powerful at sea, and his Czarish Majesty himself did
not ^think it advisable that the remainder of the Danish, in
conjunction with the men-of-war then at Copenhagen,
should go to convoy the Eussian troops from Eostock, before
the above-mentioned squadron under Vice-Admiral Gabel
was arrived. This happening at last in the month of
August, the confederate fleet put to sea; and the trans
porting of the said troops hither to Zealand was put in
execution, though with a great deal of trouble and danger,
but it took up so much time that the descent could not be
ready till September following. Now, when all these pre
parations, as well for the descent as the embarking the
armies, were entirely ready, his Danish Majesty assured
himself that the descent should be made within a few days,
at farthest by the 21st of September. The Eussian Generals
and Ministers first raised some difficulties to those of Den
mark, and afterwards, on the 17th September, declared in
an appointed conference, that his Czarish Majesty, consider
ing the present situation of affairs, was of opinion that
neither forage nor provision could be had in Schonen, and
that consequently the descent was not : advisable to be
attempted this year, but ought to be put off till next spring.
It may easily be imagined how much his Danish Majesty
was surprised^at this; especially seeing the Czar, if he had
altered his opinion, as to this design so solemnly concerted,
might have declared it sooner, and thereby saved his Danish
Majesty several tons of gold, spent upon the necessary pre
parations. His Danish Majesty did, however, in a letter
dated the 20th of September, amply represent to the Czar,
that although the season was very much advanced, the
descent ^ might, nevertheless, easily be undertaken with such
a superior force, as to get a footing in Schonen, where being
assured there had been a very plentiful harvest, he did not
doubt but subsistence might be found ; besides, that having
an open communication with his own countries, it might
easily be transported from thence. His Danish Majesty
alleged also several weighty reasons why; the descent was
either to be made this year, or the thoughts of making it
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 31
next spring entirely be laid aside. Nor did lie alone make
these moving remonstrances to the Czar ; BUT HIS BRITISH
MAJESTY S MINISTER RESIDING HERE, AS WELL AS ADMIRAL
NORRIS, seconded the same also in a very pressing manner ;
AND BY EXPRESS ORDER OF THE KlNG, THEIR MASTER, endea-
voured to bring the Czar into their opinion, and to persuade
Mm to go on with the descent ; but his Czarish Majesty
declared by his answer, that he would adhere to the resolu
tion that he had once taken concerning this delay of mak
ing the descent ; but if his Danish Majesty was resolved to
venture on the descent, that he then, according to the treaty
made near Straelsund, would assist him only with the 15
battalions and 1,000 horse therein stipulated ; that next
spring he would comply with everything else, and neither
could or would declare himself farther in this affair. _ Since
then, his Danish Majesty could not, without running so
great a hazard, undertake so great a work alone with his
own army and the said 15 battalions ; he desired, in
another letter of the 23rd September, his Czarish Majesty
would be pleased to add 13 battalions of his troops, in which
case his Danish Majesty would still this year attempt the
descent; but even this could not be obtained from his
Czarish Majesty, who absolutely refused it by his ambas
sador on the 24th ditto : whereupon his Danish Majesty, in
his letter of the 26th, declared to the Czar, that since things
stood thus, he desired none of his troops, but that they
might be all speedily transported out of his dominions ; that
so the transport, whose freight stood him in 40,000 ^ rix
dollars per month, might be discharged, and his subjects
eased of the intolerable contributions they now underwent.
This he could not do less than agree to; and accordingly, all
the Eussian troops are already embarked, and intend for cer
tain to go from here with the first favourable wind. It must
be left to Providence and time, to, discover what may have
induced the Czar to a resolution so prejudicial to the
Northern Alliance, and most advantageous to the common
enemy.
If we would take a true survey of men, and lay them
open in a proper light to the eye of our intellects, we must
32 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
first consider their natures and then their ends ; and by this
method of examination, though their conduct is, seemingly,
full of intricate mazes and perplexities, and winding round
with infinite meanders of state-craft, we shall be able to
dive into the deepest recesses, make our way through the
most puzzling labyrinths, and at length come to the most
abstruse means of bringing about the master secrets of
their minds, and to unriddle their utmost mysteries.
The Czar ... is, by nature, of a great and enterprising
spirit, and of a genius thoroughly politic ; and as for his
ends, the manner of his own Government, where he sways
arbitrary lord over the estates and honours of his people,
must make him, if all the policies in the world could by
far-distant aims promise him accession and accumulation of
empire and wealth, be everlastingly laying schemes for the
achieving of both with the extremest cupidity and ambi
tion. Whatever ends an insatiate desire of opulency, and
a boundless thirst for dominion, can ever put him upon, to
satisfy their craving and voracious appetites, those must,
most undoubtedly, be his.
The next questions we are to put to ourselves are these
three :
1. By what means can he gain these ends ?
2. How far from him, and in what place, can these ends
be best obtained ?
3. And by what time, using all proper methods and
succeeding in them, may he obtain these ends ?
The possessions of the Czar were prodigious, vast in
extent ; the people all at his nod, all his downright arrant
slaves, and all the wealth of the country his own at a
word s command. But then the country, though large in
ground, was not quite so in produce. Every vassal had his
gun, and was to be a soldier upon call ; but there was never
a soldier among them, nor a man that understood the
calling ; and though he had all their wealth, they had no
commerce of consequence, and little ready money ; and con
sequently his treasury, when he had amassed all he could,
very ^ bare and empty. He was then but in an indifferent
condition to satisfy those two natural appetites, when he
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 33
had neither wealth to support a soldiery, nor a soldiery
trained in the art of war. The first token this Prince
gave of an aspiring genius, and of an ambition that is noble
and necessary in a monarch who has a mind to flourish, was
to believe none of his subjects more wise than himself, or
more fit to govern. He did so, and looked upon his own
proper person as the most fit to travel out among the other
realms of the world and study politics for the advancing
of his dominions. He then seldom pretended to any war
like dispositions against those who were instructed in the
science of arms ; his military dealings lay mostly with the
Turks and Tartars, who, as they had numbers as well as he,
had them likewise composed, as well as his, of a rude, un
cultivated mob, and they appeared in the field like a raw,
undisciplined militia. In this his Christian neighbours
liked him well, insomuch as he was a kind of stay or stop
gap to the infidels. But when he came to look into the
more polished parts of the Christian world, he set out to
wards it, from the very threshold, like a natural-born
politician. He was not for learning the game by trying
chances and venturing losses in the field so soon ; no, he
went upon the maxim that it was, at that time of day, ex
pedient and necessary for him to carry, like Samson, his
strength in his head, and not in his arms. He had then, he
knew, but very few commodious places for commerce of his
own, and those all situated in the White Sea, too remote,
frozen up the most part of the year, .and not at all fit for a
fleet of men-of-war ; but he knew of many more com
modious ones of his neighbours in the Baltic, and within
his reach whenever he could strengthen his hands to lay
hold of them. He had a longing eye towards them ; but
with prudence seemingly turned his head another way, and
secretly entertained the pleasant thought that he should
come at them all in good time. Not to give any jealousy,
he endeavours for no help from his neighbours to instruct
his men in arms. That was like asking a skilful person,
one intended to fight a duel with, to teach him first how to
fence. He went over to Great Britain, where he knew that
potent kingdom could, as yet, have no jealousies of his
34 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
growth of power, and in the eye of which his vast extent
of nation lay neglected and nnconsidered and overlooked,
as I am afraid it is to this very day. He was present at all
our exercises, looked into all our laws, inspected our mili
tary, civil, and ecclesiastical regimen of affairs ; yet this was
the least he then wanted ; this was the slightest part of his
errand. But by degrees, when he grew familiar with our
people, he visited our docks, pretending not to have any
prospect of profit, but only to take a huge delight (the
effect of curiosity only) to see our manner of building ships.
He kept his court, as one may say, in our shipyard, so
industrious was he in affording them his continual Czarish
presence, and to his immortal glory for art and industry be
it spoken, that the great Czar, by stooping often to the
employ, could handle an axe with the best artificer of them
all ; and the monarch having a good mathematical head of
his own, grew in some time a very expert royal shipwright.
A ship or two for his diversion made and sent him, and
then two or three more, and after that two or three more,
would signify just nothing at all, if they were granted to
be sold to him by the Maritime Powers, that could, at will,
lord it over the sea. It would be a puny inconsiderable
matter, and not worth the regarding. "Well, but then, over
and above this, he had artfully insinuated himself into
the goodwill of many of our best workmen, and won their
hearts by his good-natured familiarities and condescension
among them. To turn this to his service, he offered many
very large premiums and advantages to go and settle in
his country, which they gladly accepted of. A little after
he sends over some private ministers and officers to
negotiate for more workmen, for land officers, and likewise
or picked and chosen good seamen, who might be advanced
and promoted to offices by going there. Nay, even to this
day, any expert seaman that is upon our traffic to the port
of Archangel, if he has the least spark of ambition and any
ardent desire to be in office, he need but offer himself to the
sea-service of the Czar, and he is a lieutenant immediately.
Over and above this, that Prince has even found the way
to take by force into his service out of our merchant ships
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 35
as many of their ablest seamen as lie pleased, giving the
masters the same number of raw Muscovites in their place,
whom they afterwards were forced in their own defence to
make fit for their own use. Neither is this all ; he had,
during the last war, many hundreds of his subjects, both
noblemen and common sailors, on board ours, the French
and the Dutch fleets ; and he has all along maintained, and
still maintains numbers of them in ours and the Dutch
yards.
But seeing he looked all along upon all these endeavours
towards improving himself and his subjects as superfluous,
whilst a seaport was wanting, where he might build a fleet
of his own, and from whence he might himself export the
products of his country, and import those of others ; and
finding the King of Sweden possessed of the most con
venient ones, I mean Narva and Revel, which he knew
that Prince never could nor would amicably part with,
he at last resolved to wrest them out of his hands by force.
His Swedish Majesty s tender youth seemed the fittest time
for this enterprise, but even then he would not run the
hazard alone. He drew in other princes to divide the spoil
with him. And the Kings of Denmark and Poland were
weak enough to serve as instruments to forward the great
and ambitious views of the Czar. It is true, he met with
a mighty hard rub at his very first setting out ; his whole
army being entirely defeated by a handful of Swedes at
Narva. But it ^was his good luck that his Swedish Majesty,
instead of improving so great a victory against him, turned
immediately his arms against the King of Poland, against
whom he was personally piqued, and that so much the more,
inasmuch as he had taken that Prince for one of his best
friends, and was just upon the point of concluding with him
the strictest alliance when he unexpectedly invaded the
Swedish Livonia, and besieged Riga. This was, in all
respects, what the Czar could most have wished for ; and
foreseeing that the longer the war in Poland lasted, the
more time should he have both to retrieve his first loss,
and to gain Narva, he took care it should be spun out to as
great a length as possible ; for which end he never sent
36 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
the King of Poland succour enough to make him too strong
for the King of Sweden ; who, on the other hand, though
he gained one signal victory after the other, yet never could
subdue his enemy as long as he received continual rein
forcements from his hereditary country. And had not his
Swedish Majesty, contrary to most people s expectations,
marched directly into Saxony itself, and thereby forced the
King of Poland to peace, the Czar would have had leisure
enough in all conscience to bring his designs to greater
maturity. This peace was one of the greatest disappoint
ments the Czar ever met with, whereby he became singly
engaged in the war. He had, however, the comfort of
having beforehand taken Narva, and laid a foundation to
his favourite town Petersburg, and to the seaport, the
clocks, and the vast magazines there ; all which works, to
what perfection they are now brought, let them tell who,
with surprise, have seen them.
He (Peter) used all endeavours to bring matters to an
accommodation. He proffered very advantageous condi
tions ; Petersburg only, a trifle as he pretended, which he
had set his heart upon, he would retain ; and even for that
he was willing some other way to give satisfaction. But
the King of Sweden was too well acquainted with the
importance of that place to leave it in the hands of an
ambitious prince, and thereby to give him an inlet into the
Baltic. This was the only time since the defeat at Narva
that the Czar s arms had no other end than that of self-
defence. They might, perhaps, even have fallen short
therein, had not the King of Sweden (through whose per
suasion is still a mystery), instead of marching the shortest
way to Novogorod and to Moscow, turned towards Ukrain,
where his army, after great losses and sufferings, was at
last entirely defeated at Pultowa. As this was a fatal
period to the Swedish successes, so how great a deliverance
it was to the Muscovites, may be gathered from the Czar s
celebrating every year, with great solemnity, the anni
versary of that day, from which his ambitious thoughts
began to soar still higher. The whole of Livonia, Estland,
and the best and greatest part of Finland was now what
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 37
he demanded, after which, though he might for the present
condescend to give peace to the remaining part of Sweden,
he knew he could easily even add that to his conquests
whenever he pleased. The only obstacle he had to fear
in these his projects was from his northern neighbours;
but as the Maritime Powers, and even the neighbouring
princes in Germany, were then so intent upon their war
against France, that they seemed entirely neglectful of that
of the North, so there remained only Denmark and Poland
to be jealous of. The former of these kingdoms had, ever
since King William, of glorious memory, compelled it to
make peace with Holstein and, consequently, with Sweden,
enjoyed an uninterrupted tranquillity, during which it had
time, by a free trade and considerable subs dies from the
maritime powers to enrich itself, and was in a condition, by
joining itself to Sweden, as it was its interest to do, to stop
the Czar s progresses, and timely to prevent its own danger
from them. The other, I mean Poland, was now quietly
under the government of King Stanislaus, who, owing in a
manner his crown to the King of Sweden, could not, out
of gratitude, as well as real concern for the interest of his
country, fail opposing the designs of a too aspiring neigh
bour. The Czar was too cunning not to find out a remedy
for all this : he represented to the King of Denmark how
low the King of Sweden was now brought, and how fair
an opportunity he had, during that Prince s long absence,
to clip entirely his wings, and to aggrandize himself at his
expense. In King Augustus he raised the long-hid resent
ment for the loss of the Polish Crown, which he told him
he might now recover without the least difficulty. Thus
both these Princes were immediately caught. The Danes
declared war against Sweden without so much as a tolerable
pretence, and made a descent upon Schonen, where they
were soundly beaten for their pains. King Augustus re-
entered Poland, where everything has ever since continued
in the greatest disorder, and that in a great measure owing
to Muscovite intrigues. It happened, indeed, that these new
confederates, whom the Czar had only drawn in to serve his
ambition, became at first more necessary to his preservation
38 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
than he had thought ; for the Turks having declared a war
against him, they hindered the Swedish arms from joining
with them to attack him ; but that storm being soon over,
through the Czar s wise behaviour and the avarice and folly
of the Grand Vizier, he then made the intended use both of
these his friends, as well as of them he afterwards, through
hopes of gain, persuaded into his alliance, which was to
lay all the burthen and hazard of the war upon them, in
order entirely to weaken them, together with Sweden,
whilst he was preparing himself to swallow the one after the
other. He has put them on one difficult attempt after the
other ; their armies have been considerably lessened by
battles ^and long sieges, whilst his own were either em
ployed in easier conquests, and more profitable to him, or
kept at the vast expense of neutral princes near enough
at hand to come up to demand a share of the booty without
having struck a blow in getting it. His behaviour has
been as cunning at sea, : where his fleet has always kept
out of harm s way and at a great distance whenever there
was any likelihood of an engagement between the Danes
and the Swedes. He hoped that when these two nations
had ruined one another s fleets, his might then ride master
in the Baltic. All this while he had taken care to make
his men improve, by the example of foreigners and under
their command, in the art of war. . . . His fleets will
soon considerably outnumber the Swedish and the Danish
ones joined together. He need not fear their being a
hindrance from his giving a finishing stroke to this great
and glorious undertaking. Which done, let us look to our-
selves ; he will then most certainly become our rival, and as
dangerous to us as he is now neglected. "We then may,
perhaps, though too late, call to mind what our own min
isters and merchants have told us of his designs of carry
ing on alone all the northern trade, and of getting all that
from Turkey and Persia into his hands through the rivers
which he is joining and making navigable from the Caspian,
or the Black Sea, to his Petersburg. We shall then wonder
at our blindness that we did not suspect his designs when we
hear.d the prodigious works he has done at Petersburg and
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 39
Revel ; of which last place, the Daily Courant, dated
November 23, says :
"HAGUE, Nov. 17.
" The captains of the men-of-war of the States, who have been at
Eevel, adyise that the Czar has put that port and the fortifications of
the place into such a condition of defence that it may pass for one of
the most considerable fortresses, not only of the Baltic, but even of
Europe."
Leave we him now, as to his sea affairs, commerce and
manufactures, and other works both of his policy and
power, and let us view him in regard to his proceedings in
this last campaign, especially as to that so much talked of
descent, he, in conjunction with his allies, was to make upon
Schonen, and we shall find that even therein he has acted
with his usual cunning. There is no doubt but the King
of Denmark was the first that proposed this descent. He
found that nothing but a speedy end to a war he had so
rashly and unjustly begun, could save his country from ruin
and from the bold attempts of the King of Sweden, either
against Norway, or against Zealand and Copenhagen. To
treat separately with that prince was a thing he could not
do, as foreseeing that he would not part with an inch of
ground to so unfair an enemy ; and he was afraid that a
Congress for a general place, supposing the King of Sweden
would consent to it upon the terms proposed by his enemies,
would draw the negotiations out beyond what the situation
of his affairs could bear. He invites, therefore, all his
confederates to make a home thrust at the King of Sweden,
by a descent into his country, where, having defeated him,
as by the superiority of the forces to be employed in that
design he hoped they should, they might force him to an
immediate peace on such terms as they themselves pleased.
I don t know how far the rest of his confederates came into
that project ; but neither the Prussian nor the Hanoverian
Court appeared openly in that project, and how far our
English fleet, under Sir John Norris, was to have forwarded it,
I have nothing to say, but leave others to judge out of the King
of Denmark s own declaration : but the Czar came readily
into it. He got thereby a new pretence to carry the war
40 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
one campaign more at other people s expense ; to march
his troops into the Empire again, and to have them
quartered and maintained, first in Mecklenburg and then
in Zealand. In the meantime he had his eyes upon Wismar,
and upon a Swedish island called Gotland. If, by sur
prise, he could get the first out of the hands of his con
federates, he then had a good seaport, whither to transport
his troops when he pleased into Germany, without asking
the King of Prussia s leave for a free passage through his
territories ; and if, by a sudden descent, he could dislodge
the Swedes out of the other, he then became master of the
best port ^ in the Baltic. He miscarried, however, in both
these projects ; for Wismar was too well guarded to be sur
prised ; and he found his confederates would not give him
a helping hand towards conquering Gotland. After this
he began to look with another eye upon the descent to be
made upon Schonen. He found it equally contrary to his
interest, whether it succeeded or not. For if he did, and
the King was thereby forced to a general peace, he knew
his interests therein would be least regarded ; having
already notice enough of his confederates being ready to
sacrifice them, provided they got their own terms. If he
did not succeed, then, besides the loss of the flower of an
army he had trained and disciplined with so much care, as
he very well foresaw that the English fleet would hinder
the King of Sweden from attempting anything against
Denmark ; so he justly feared the whole shock would fall
upon him, and he be thereby forced to surrender all he had
taken from Sweden. These considerations made him entirely
resolved not to make one of the descent ; but he did not
care to declare it till as late as possible : first, that he
might the longer have his troops maintained at the Danish
expense ; secondly, that it might be too late for the King
of Denmark to demand the necessary troops from his other
confederates, and to make the descent without him ; and,
lastly, that by putting the Dane to a vast expense in
making necessary preparations, he might still weaken him
more, and, therefore, make him now the more dependent
on him, and hereafter a more easy prey.
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 41
Thus he very carefully dissembles his real thoughts, till
just when the descent was to be made, and then he, all of a
sudden, refuses joining it, and defers it till next spring,
with this averment, that he will then be as good as his word.
But mark him, as some of our newspapers tell us, under
this restriction, unless he can get an advantageous peace of
Sweden. This passage, together with the common report
we now have of his treating a separate peace with the King
of Sweden, is a new instance of his cunning and policy.
He has there two strings to his bow, of which one must
serve his turn. There is no doubt but the Czar knows that
an accommodation between him and the King of Sweden
must be very difficult to bring about. For as he, on the
one side, should never consent to part with those seaports,
for the getting of which he began this war, and which are
absolutely necessary towards carrying on his great and vast
designs ; so the King of Sweden would look upon it as
directly contrary to his interest to yield up these same
seaports, if possibly he could hinder it. But then again,
the Czar is so well acquainted with the great and heroic
spirit of his Swedish Majesty, that he does not question his
yielding, rather in point of interest than nicety of honour.
From hence it is, he rightly judges, that his Swedish
Majesty must be less exasperated against him who, though
ha began an unjust war, has very often paid dearly for it,
and carried it on all along through various successes than
against some confederates ; that taking an opportunity of
his Swedish Majesty s misfortunes, fell upon him in an
ungenerous manner, and made a partition treaty of his
provinces. The Czar, still more to accommodate himself to
the genius of his great enemy, unlike his confederates, who,
upon all occasions, spared no reflections and even very un
becoming ones (bullying memorials and hectoring mani
festoes), spoke all along with the utmost civility of his
brother Charles as he calls him, maintains him to be the
greatest general in Europe, and even publicly avers, he will
more trust a word from him than the greatest assurances,
oaths, nay, even treaties with his confederates. These kind
of civilities may, perhaps, make a deeper impression upon
42 SEC RE T DIPLOMA TIC HIS TOR Y
the noble mind of the King of Sweden, and he be persuaded
rather to sacrifice a real interest to a generous enemy, than
to gratify, in things of less moment, those by whom he has
been ill, and even inhumanly used. But if this should not
succeed, the Czar is still a gainer by having made his con
federates uneasy at these his separate negotiations ; and as
we find by the newspapers, the more solicitous to keep him
ready to their confederacy, which must cost them very large
proffers and promises. In the meantime he leaves the Dane
and the Swede securely bound up together in war, and
weakening one another as fast as they can, and he turns
towards the Empire and views the Protestant Princes there ;
and, under many specious pretences, not only marches and
counter-marches about their several territories his troops
that came back from Denmark, but makes also slowly
advance towards Germany those whom he has kept this
great while in Poland, under pretence to help the King
against his dissatisfied subjects, whose commotions all the
while he was the greatest fomenter of. He considers the
Emperor is in war with the Turks, and therefore has found,
by too successful experience, how little his Imperial Majesty
is able to show his authority in protecting the members of
the Empire. His troops remain in Mecklenburg, notwith
standing their departure is highly insisted upon. His
replies to all the demands on that subject are filled with
such reasons as if he would give new laws to the Empire.
Now let us suppose that the King of Sweden should
think it more honourable to make a peace with the Czar,
and to carry the force of his resentment against his less
generous enemies, what a stand will then the princes of
the empire, even those that unadvisedly drew in 40,000
Muscovites, to secure the tranquillity of that empire against
10,000 or 12,000 Swedes, I say what stand will they be
able to make against him while the Emperor is already
engaged in war with the Turks ? and the Poles, when they
are once in peace among themselves (if after the miseries
of _so long a war they are in a condition to undertake any
thing) are by treaty obliged to join their aids against that
common enemy of Christianity.
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 43
Some will say I make great and sudden rises from very
small beginnings. My answer is, that I would have such
an objector look back and reflect why I show him, from
such a speck of entity, at his first origin, growing, through
more improbable and almost insuperable difficulties, to such
a bulk as he has already attained to, and whereby, as his
advocates, the Dutch themselves own, he is grown too formidable
for the repose, not only of his neighbours, but of Europe in
general
But then, again, they will say he has no pretence either
to make a peace with the Swede separately from the Dane
or to make war upon other princes, some of whom he is
bound in alliance with. Whoever thinks these objections
not answered must have considered the Czar neither as to
his nature or to his ends. The Dutch own further, that he
made war against Sweden without any specious pretence. He
that made war without any specious pretence may make a
peace without any specious pretence, and make a new war
without any specious pretence for it too. His Imperial
Majesty (of Austria), like a wise Prince, when he was
obliged to make war with the Ottomans, made it, as in
policy, he should, powerfully. But, in the meantime, may
not the Czar, who is a wise and potent Prince too, follow
the example upon the neighbouring Princes round him that
are Protestants ? If he should, I tremble to speak it, it is
not impossible,, but in this age of Christianity ike Protestant
religion should, in a great measure, be abolished ; and that
among the Christians, the Greeks and Romans may once
more come to be the only Pretenders for Universal Empire.
The pure possibility carries with it warning enough for the
Maritime Powers, and all the other Protestant Princes, to
mediate a peace for Sweden, and strengthen his arms again,
without which no preparations can put them sufficiently
upon their guard ; and this must be done early and betimes,
before the King of Sweden, either out of despair or revenge,
throws himself into the Czar s hands. For tis a certain
maxim (which all Princes ought, and the Czar seems at this
time to observe too much for the repose of Christendom)
that a wise man must not stand for ceremony, and only
44 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
turn with opportunities. No, he must even run with them.
For the Czar s part, I will venture to say so much in his
commendation, that he will hardly suffer himself to be
overtaken that way. He seems to act just as the tide
serves. There is nothing which contributes more to the
making our undertakings prosperous than the taking of
times and opportunities ; for time carrieth with it the
seasons of opportunities of business. If you let them slip,
all your designs are rendered unsuccessful.
In short, things seem now come to that crisis that peace
should as soon as possible be procured to the Swede, with
such advantageous articles as are consistent with the nicety
of his honour to accept, and with the safety of the Protes
tant interest, that he should have offered to him, which can
be scarce less than all the possessions which he formerly
had in the Empire. As in all other things, so in politics,
a long-tried certainty must be preferred before an uncer
tainty, tho grounded on ever so probable suppositions.
Now can there be anything more certain, than that the
provinces Sweden has had in the Empire, were given to it to
make it the nearer at hand and the better able to secure the
Protestant interest, which, together with the liberties of
the Empire it just then had saved ? Can there be anything
more certain than that that kingdom has, by those means,
upon all occasions, secured that said interest now near four
score years ? Can there be anything more certain than, as
to his present Swedish Majesty, that I may use the words
of a letter her late Majesty, Queen Anne, wrote to him
(Charles XII.), and in the time of a Whig Ministry too, viz. :
" That, as a true Prince, hero and Christian, the chief end
of his endeavours has been the promotion of the fear of
God among men : and that without insisting on his own
particular interest."
On the other hand, is it not very uncertain whether those
princes, who, by sharing among them the Swedish provinces
in the Empire, are now going to set up as protectors of the
Protestant interests there, exclusive of the Swedes, will be
able to do it ? Denmark is already so low, and will in all
appearance be so much lower still before the end of the war,
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 45
that very little assistance can be expected from it in a great
many years. In Saxony, the prospect is but too dismal
under a Popish prince, so that there remain only the two
illustrious houses of Hanover and Brandenburg of all the
Protestant princes, powerful enough to lead the rest. Let
us therefore only make a parallel between what now
happens in the Duchy of Mecklenburg, and what may
happen to the Protestant interest, and we shall soon find
how we may be mistaken in our reckoning. That said poor
Duchy has been most miserably ruined by the Muscovite
troops, and it is still so ; the Electors of Brandenburg and
Hanover are obliged, both as directors of the circle of Lower
Saxony, as neighbours, and Protestant Princes, to rescue a
fellow state of the Empire, and a Protestant country, from
so cruel an oppression of a foreign Power. But, pray, what
have they done ? The Elector of Brandenburg, cautious
lest the Muscovites might on one side invade his electorate,
and on the other side from Livonia and Poland, his kingdom
of Prussia ; and the Elector of Hanover having the same
wise caution as to his hereditary countries, have not upon
this, though very pressing occasion, thought it for their
interest, to use any other means than representations. But
pray with what success? The Muscovites are still in
Mecklenburg, and if at last they march out of it, it will
be when the country is so ruined that they cannot there
subsist any longer.
It seems the King of Sweden should be restored to all
that he has lost on the side of the Czar ; and this appears
the joint interest of both the Maritime Powers. This may
they please to undertake : Holland, because it is a maxim
there " that the Czar grows too great, and must not be
suffered to settle in the Baltic, and that Sweden must not
be abandoned ; Great Britain, because, if the Czar com
passes his vast and prodigious views, he will, by the ruin
and conquest of Sweden, become our nearer and more
dreadful neighbour. Besides, we are bound to it by a
treaty concluded in the year 1700, between King William
and the present King of Sweden, by virtue of which King
William assisted the King of Sweden, when in more power-
46 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
ful circumstances, with all that he desired, with great sums
of money, several hundred pieces of cloth, and considerable
quantities of gunpowder.
But some Politicians (whom nothing can make jealous of
the growing strength and abilities of the Czar] though they are
even foxes and vulpones in the art, either will not see or
pretend they cannot see how the Czar can ever be able to
make so great a progress in power as to hurt us here in our
island. To them it is easy to repeat the same answer a
hundred times over, if they would be so kind as to take
it at last, viz., that what has been may be again] and that
they did not see how he could reach the height of power,
which he has already arrived at, after, I must confess, a
very incredible manner. Let those incredulous people look
narrowly into the nature and the ends and the designs of
this great monarch ; they will find that they are laid very
deep, and that his plans carry in them a prodigious deal
of prudence and foresight, and his ends are at the long
run brought about by a kind of magic in policy ; and will
they not after that own that we ought to fear everything
from him ? As he desires that the designs with which
he labours may not prove abortive, so he does not assign
them a certain day of their birth, but leaves them to the
natural productions of fit times and occasions, like those
curious artists in China, who temper the mould this day
of which a vessel may be made a hundred years hence.
There is another sort of short-sighted politicians among
us, who have more of cunning court intrigue and immediate
statecraft in them than of true policy and concern for their
country s interest. These gentlemen pin entirely their
faith upon other people s sleeves ; ask as to everything that
is proposed to them, how it is liked at Court ? what the
opinion of their party is concerning it ? and if the contrary
party is for or against it ? Hereby they rule their judg
ment, and it is enough for their cunning leaders to brand
anything with Whiggism or Jacobitism, for to make these
people, without any further inquiry into the matter, blindly
espouse it or oppose it. This, it seems, is at present the
case of the subject we are upon. Anything said or written
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 47
in favour of Sweden and the King thereof, is immediately
said to come from a Jacobite pen, and thus reviled and
rejected, without being read or considered. Nay, I have
heard gentlemen go so far as to maintain publicly, and
with all the vehemence in the world, that the King of
Sweden was a Eoman Catholic, and that the Czar was a good
Protestant. This, indeed, is one of the greatest misfortunes
our country labours under, and till we begin to see with
our own eyes, and inquire ourselves into the truth of
things, we shall be led away, God knows whither, at last.
The serving of Sweden according to our treaties and real
interest has nothing to do with our party causes. Instead
of seeking for and taking hold of any pretence to undo
Sweden, we ought openly to assist it. Could our Protestant
succession have a better friend or a bolder champion ?
I shall conclude this by thus shortly recapitulating what
I have said. That since the Czar has not only replied to
the King of Denmark entreating the contrary, but also
answered our Admiral Norris, that he would persist in
his resolution to delay the descent upon Schonen^ and is
said by other newspapers to resolve not to make it then,
if he can have peace with Sweden ; every Prince, and
we more particularly, ought to be jealous of his having
some such design as I mention in view, and consult how
to prevent them, and to clip, in time, his too aspiring
wings, which cannot be effectually done, first, without
the Maritime Powers please to begin to keep him in some
check and awe, and tis to be hoped a certain potent nation,
that has helped him forward, can, in some measure, bring
him back, and may then speak to this great enterpriser
in the language of a countryman in Spain, who coming
to an image enshrined, the first making whereof he could
well remember, and not finding all the respectful usage
he expected," You need not," quoth he, " be so proud, for
we have known you from a plum-tree." The next only
way is to restore, by a peace, to the King of Sweden_ what
he has lost ; that checks his (the Czar s) power immediately,
and on that side nothing else can. I wish it may not at
last be found true, that those who have been fighting
48 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
against that King have, in the main, been fighting against
themselves. If the Swede ever has his dominions again,
and lowers the high spirit of the Czar, still he may say
by his neighbours, as an old Greek hero did, whom his
countrymen constantly sent into exile whenever he had
clone them a service, but were forced to call him back to
their aid, whenever they wanted success. " These people,"
quoth he, " are always using me like the palm-tree. They
will be breaking my branches continually, and yet, if there
comes a storm, they run to me, and can t find a better place
for shelter." But if he has them not, I shall only exclaim
a phrase out of Terence s " Andria " :
" Hoccine credibile est ant meinorabile
Tanta vecordia innata cuiquam ut siet,
Ut mails gaudeant ? "
4. POSTSCRIPT. I flatter myself that this little history
is of that curious nature, and on matters hitherto so
unobserved, that I consider it, with pride, as a valuable
New Year s gift to the present world ; and that posterity
will accept it, as the like, for many years after, and read
it over on that anniversary, and call it their Warning Piece.
I must have my Exegi-Monumentum as well as others.
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 49
CHAPTER III
To understand a limited historical epoch, we must step be
yond its limits, and compare it with other historical epochs.
To judge Governments and their acts, we must measure
them by their own times and the conscience of their con
temporaries. Nobody will condemn a British statesman of
the 17th century for acting on a belief in witchcraft, if he
find Bacon himself ranging demonology in the catalogue of
science. On the other hand, if the Stanhopes, the Wai-
poles, the Townshends, etc. ? were suspected, opposed, and
denounced in their own country by their own contempor
aries as tools or accomplices of Russia, it will no longer do
to shelter their policy behind the convenient screen of pre
judice and ignorance common to their time. At the head
of the historical evidence we have to sift, we place, there
fore, long-forgotten English pamphlets printed at the very
time of Peter I. These preliminary pieces des proces we
shall, however, limit to three pamphlets, which, from three
different points of view, illustrate the conduct of England
towards Sweden. The .first, the Northern Crisis (given in
Chapter II.), revealing the general system of Russia, and
the dangers accruing to England from the Russification
of Sweden; the second, called Ihe Defensive Treaty, judg
ing the acts of England by the Treaty of 1700 ; and the
third, entitled Truth is but Truth, however it is Timed, \1 \
proving that the new-fangled schemes which magnified
Russia into the paramount Power of the Baltic were in
flagrant opposition to the traditionary policy England had
pursued during the course of a whole century.
The pamphlet called The Defensive Treaty bears no
date of publication. Yet in one passage it states that,
So SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
for reinforcing the Danish fleet, eight English men-of-war
were left at Copenhagen " the year before the last" and in
another passage alludes to the assembling of the confeder
ate fleet for the Schonen expedition as having occurred
" last summer" As the former event took place in 1715,
and the latter towards the end of the summer of 1716, it is
evident that the pamphlet was written and published in
the earlier part of the year 1717. The Defensive Treaty
between England and Sweden, the single articles of which
the pamphlet comments upon in the form of queries, was
concluded in 1700 between William III. and Charles XII.,
and was not to expire before 1719. Yet, during almost the
whole of this period, we find England continually assisting
Russia and waging war against Sweden, either by secret
intrigue or open force, although the treaty was never re
scinded nor war ever declared. This fact is, perhaps, even
less strange than the conspiration de silence under which
modern historians have succeeded in burying it, and among
them historians by no means sparing of censure against the
British Government of that time, for having, without any
previous declaration of war, destroyed the Spanish fleet in
the Sicilian waters. But then, at least, England was not
bound to Spain by a defensive treaty. How, then, are we
to explain this contrary treatment of similar cases ? The
piracy committed against Spain was one of the weapons
which the Whig Ministers, seceding from the Cabinet in
1717, caught hold of to harass their remaining colleagues.
When the latter stepped forward in 1718, and urged Parlia
ment to declare war against Spain, Sir Robert Walpole rose
from his seat in the Commons, and in a most virulent
speech denounced the late ministerial acts " as contrary to
the laws of nations, and a breach of solemn treaties."
" Giving sanction to them in the manner proposed," he
said, " could have no other view than to screen ministers,
who were conscious of having done something amiss, and
who, having begun a war against Spain, would now make
it the Parliament s war." The treachery against Sweden
and the connivance at the plans of Russia, never happening
to afford the ostensible pretext for a family quarrel amongst
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 51
the Whig rulers (they being rather unanimous on these
points), never obtained the honours of historical criticism so
lavishly spent upon the Spanish incident.
How apt modern historians generally are to receive their
cue from the official tricksters themselves, is best shown by
their reflections on the commercial interests of England
with respect to Russia and Sweden. Nothing has been
more exaggerated than the dimensions of the trade opened
to Great Britain by the huge market o f the Russia of Peter
the Great, and his immediate successors. Statements bear
ing not the slightest touch of criticism have been allowed
to creep from one book-shelf to another, till they became at
last historical household furniture, to be inherited by every
successive historian, without even the beneficium invent arii.
Some incontrovertible statistical figures will suffice to blot
out these hoary common-places.
BRITISH COMMERCE FROM 1697-1700.
Export to Russia .... 58,884
Import from Russia . . . 112,252
Total . . . 171,136
Export to Sweden .... 57,555
Import from Sweden . . . 212,094
Total . . . 269,649
During the same period the total
Export of England amounted to . 3,525,906
Import 3,482,586
Total . . . 7,008,492
In 1716, after all the Swedish provinces in the Baltic,
and on the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia, had fallen into
the hands of Peter I., the
52 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
Export to Eussia was . . . 113,154
Import from Russia . . . 197/270
Total . . . 310,424
Export to Sweden . . . . 24,101
Import from Sweden . . . 136,959
Total . . . 161,060
At the same time, the total of English exports and im
ports together reached about 10,000,000. It will be seen
from these figures, when compared with those of 1697-1700,
that the increase in the Russian trade is balanced by the
decrease in the Swedish trade, and that what was added -to
the one was subtracted from the other.
In 1730, the
Export to Russia was . . . 46,275
Import from Russia . . . 258,802
Total . . . 305,077
Fifteen years, then, after the consolidation in the mean
while of the Muscovite settlement on the Baltic, the British
trade with Eussia had fallen off by 5,347. The general
trade of England reaching in 1730 the sum of 16,329,001,
the Eussian trade amounted not yet to ^rd of its total
value. Again, thirty years later, in 1760, the account be
tween Great Britain and Eussia stands thus :
Import from Russia (in 1760) . 536,504
Export to Russia .... 39,761
Total . . . 576,265
while the general trade of England amounted to 26,361,760.
Comparing these figures with those of 1706, we find that
the total of the Eussian commerce, after nearly half a cen
tury, has increased by the trifling sum of only 265,841.
That England suffered positive loss by her new commercial
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 53
relations with Eussia under Peter I. and Catherine I. be
comes evident on comparing, on the one side, the export
and import figures, and on the other, the sums expended on
the frequent naval expeditions to the Baltic which England
undertook during the .lifetime of Charles XII., in order to
break down his resistance to Eussia, and, after his death,
on the professed necessity of checking the maritime en
croachments of Eussia.
Another glance at the statistical data given for the
years 1697, 1700, 1716, 1730, and 1760, will show that the
British export trade to Eussia was.. continually falling off,
save in 1716/ when Eussia engrossed the whole Swedish
trade on the eastern coast of the Baltic and the Gulf of
Bothnia, and had not yet found the opportunity of subject
ing it to her own regulations. From 58,884, at which
the British exports to Eussia stood during 1697-1700,
when Eussia was still precluded from the Baltic, they had
sunk to 46,275 in 1730, and to 39,761 in 1760, showing
a decrease of 19,123, or about rd of their original amount
in 1700. If, then, since, the absorption of the Swedish
provinces by Eussia, the British market proved expanding
for Eussia raw produce, the Eussian market, 011 its side,
proved straitening for British manufacturers, a feature of
that trade which could hardly recommend it at a time
when the Balance of Trade doctrine ruled supreme. To
trace the circumstances which produced the increase of the
Anglo-Eussiaii trade under Catherine II. would lead us too
far from the period we are considering.
On the whole, then, we arrive at the following conclu
sions : During the first sixty years of the eighteenth cen
tury the total Anglo-Eussiaii trade formed but a very
diminutive fraction of the general trade of England, say
less than -^th. Its sudden increase during the earliest
years of Peter s sway over the Baltic did not at all affect
the general balance of British trade, as it was a simple
transfer from its Swedish account to its Eussian account.
In the later times of Peter L, as well as under his imme
diate successors, Catherine I. and Anne, the Anglo-Eussiaii
trade was positively declining ; during the whole" epoch,
54 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
dating from the final settlement of Russia in the Baltic
provinces, the export of British manufactures to Russia
was continually falling off, so that at its end it stood one-
third lower than at its beginning, when that trade was
still confined to the port of Archangel. Neither the con
temporaries of Peter I., nor ;the next British generation
reaped any benefit from the advancement of Russia to the
Baltic. In general the Baltic trade of Great Britain was
at that time trifling in regard of the capital involved, but
important in regard of its character. It afforded England
the raw produce for its maritime stores. That from the
latter point of view the Baltic was in safer keeping m the
hands of Sweden than in those of Russia, was not only
proved by the pamphlets we are reprinting, but fully
understood by the British Ministers themselves. Stanhope
writing, for instance, to Townshend on October 16th,
1716:
" It is certain that if the Czar be let alone three years, he will be
absolute master in those seas." 1
If, then, neither the navigation nor the general commerce
of England was interested in the treacherous support
given to Russia against Sweden, there existed, indeed, one
small fraction of British merchants whose interests were
identical with the Russian ones the Russian Trade Com
pany. It was this gentry that raised a cry against
Sweden. See, for instance :
" Several grievances of the English merchants in their trade into
the dominions of the King of Sweden, whereby it does appear how
dangerous it may be for the English nation to depend on Sweden only
for the supply of the naval stores, when they might be amply
furnished with the like stores from the dominions of the Emperor of
Russia."
" The case of the merchants trading to Russia " (a petition to Par
liament), etc.
1 In tbe year 1657, when the Courts of Denmark and Brandenburg intended
engaging the Muscovites to fall upon Sweden, they instructed their Minister so to
manage the affair that the Czar might by no means get any footing in the Baltic,
because " they did not know what to do with so troublesome a neighbour." (See
Puffendoi-fs History of Brandenburg.)
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 55
It was they who in the years 1714, 1715, and 1716, re
gularly assembled twice a week before the opening of Par
liament, to draw up in public meetings the complaints of
the British merchantmen against Sweden. On this small
fraction the Ministers relied ; they were even busy in get
ting up its demonstrations, as may be seen from the letters
addressed by Count G-yllenborg to Baron Gortz, dated 4th
of November and 4th of December, 1716, wanting, as they
did, but the shadow of a pretext to drive their " mercenary
Parliament," as Gyllenborg calls it, where they liked. The
influence of these British merchants trading to Russia was
again exhibited in the year 1765, and our own times have
witnessed the working for his interest, of a Russian mer
chant at the head of the Board of Trade, and of a Chan
cellor of the Exchequer in the interest of a cousin engaged
in the Archangel trade.
The oligarchy which, after the "glorious revolution,"
usurped wealth and power at the cost of the mass of the
British people, was, of course, forced to look out for allies,
not only abroad, but also at home. The latter they found
in what the French would call la "haute bourgeoisie, as re
presented by the Bank of England, the money-lenders,
State creditors, East India and other trading corporations,
the great manufacturers, etc. How tenderly they man
aged the material interests of that class may be learned
from the whole of their domestic legislation Bank Acts,
Protectionist enactments, Poor Regulations, etc. As to their
foreign policy, they wanted to give it the appearance at
least of being altogether regulated by the mercantile in
terest, an appearance the more easily to be produced, as the
exclusive interest of one or the other small fraction of that
class would, of course, be always identified with this or
that Ministerial measure. The interested fraction then
raised the commerce and navigation cry, which the nation
stupidly re-echoed.
At that time, then, there devolved on the Cabinet, at
least, the onus of inventing mercantile pretexts, however
futile, for their measures of foreign policy. In our own
epoch, British Ministers have thrown this burden on
56 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
foreign nations, leaving to the French, the Germans, etc.,
the irksome task of discovering the secret and hidden mercan
tile springs of their actions. Lord Palmerston, for instance,
takes a step apparently the most damaging to the material
interests of Great Britain. Up starts a State philosopher,
on the other side of the Atlantic, or of the Channel, or in
the heart of Germany, who puts his head to the rack to
dig out the mysteries of the mercantile Machiavelism of
"perfide Albion," of which Palmerston is supposed the un
scrupulous and unflinching executor. "We will, en passant,
show, by a few modern instances, what desperate shifts those
foreigners have been driven to, who feel themselves obliged
to interpret Palmerston s acts by what they imagine to
be^ the English commercial policy. In his valuable His-
toire Politique et Sociale des Principautes DanuUennes, M.
Elias Eegnault, startled by the Eussian conduct, before and
during the years 1848-49 of Mr. Colquhoun, the British
Consul at Bucharest, suspects that England has some secret
material interest in keeping down the trade of the Princi
palities. The late Dr. Cunibert, private physician of old
Milosh, in his most interesting account of the Eussian in
trigues in Servia, gives a curious relation of the manner in
which Lord Palmerston, through the instrumentality of
Colonel Hodges, betrayed Milosh to Eussia by feigning to
support him against her. Fully believing in the personal
integrity of Hodges, and the patriotic zeal of Palmerston,
Dr. Cunibert is found to go a step further than M. Elias
Eegnault. He suspects England of being interested in
putting down Turkish commerce generally. General
Mieroslawski, in his last work on Poland, is not very far
from intimating that mercantile Machiavelism instigated
England to sacrifice her own prestige in Asia Minor, by the
surrender of Kars. As a last instance may serve the pre
sent lucubrations of the Paris papers, hunting after the
secret springs of commercial jealousy, which induce Pal
merston to oppose the cutting of the Isthmus of Suez canal.
To return to our subject. The mercantile pretext hit
upon by the Townshends, Stanhopes, etc., for the hostile
demonstrations against Sweden, was the following. To-
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 57
wards the end of 1713, Peter I. had ordered all the hemp
and other produce of his dominions, destined for export, to
be carried to St. Petersburg instead of Archangel. Then
the Swedish Regency, during the absence of Charles XII.,
and Charles XII. himself, after his return from Bender, de
clared all the Baltic ports, occupied by the Russians, to be
blockaded. Consequently, English ships, breaking through
the blockade, were confiscated. The English Ministry then
asserted that British merchantmen had the right of trad
ing to those ports according to Article XVII. of the Defen
sive Treaty of 1700, by which English commerce, with the
exception of contraband of war, was allowed to go on with
ports of the enemy. The absurdity and falsehood of this
pretext being fully exposed in the pamphlet we are about
to reprint, we will only remark that the case had been
more than once decided against commercial nations, not
bound, like England, by treaty to defend the integrity of
the Swedish Empire. In the year 1561, when the Russians
took Narva, and laboured hard to establish their commerce
there, the Hanse towns, chiefly Liibeck, tried to possess
themselves of this traffic. Eric XIV., then King of Sweden,
resisted their pretensions. The city of Liibeck represented
this resistance as altogether new, as they had carried on
their commerce with the Russians time out of mind, and
pleaded the common right of nations to navigate in the
Baltic, provided their vessels carried no contraband of war.
The King replied that he did not dispute the Hanse towns
the liberty of trading with Russia, but only with Narva,
which was no Russian port. In the year 1579 again, the
Russians having broken the suspension of arms with
Sweden, the Danes likewise claimed the navigation to
Narva, by virtue of their treaty, but King John was as
firm in maintaining the contrary, as was his brother Eric.
In her open demonstrations of hostility against the King
of Sweden, as well as in the false pretence on which they
were founded, England seemed only to follow in the track
of Holland, which declaring the confiscation of its ships to
be piracy, had issued two proclamations against Sweden in
1714.
58 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
In one respect, the case of the States-General was the
same as that of England. King William had concluded
the Defensive Treaty as well for Holland as for England.
Besides, Article XVI., in the Treaty of Commerce, concluded
between Holland and Sweden in 1703, expressly stipulated
that no navigation ought to be allowed to the ports blocked
up by either of the confederates. The then common Dutch
cant that " there was no hindering traders from carrying
their merchandise where they will/ was the more impu
dent as, during the war, ending with the Peace of Ryswick,
the Dutch Republic had declared all France to be blocked
up, forbidden the neutral Powers all trade with that king
dom, and caused all their ships that went there or came
thence to be brought up without any regard to the nature
of their cargoes.
In another respect, the situation of Holland was different
from that of England. Fallen from its commercial and
maritime grandeur, Holland had then already entered
upon its epoch of decline. Like Genoa and Venice, when
new roads of commerce had dispossessed them of their old
mercantile supremacy, it was forced to lend out to other
nations its capital, grown too large for the vessels of its
own commerce. Its fatherland had begun to lie there
where the best interest for its capital was paid. Russia,
therefore, proved an immense market, less for the commerce
than for the outlay of capital and men. To this moment
Holland has remained the banker of Russia. At the time
of Peter they supplied Russia with ships, officers, arms, and
money, so that his fleet, as a contemporary writer remarks,
ought to have been called a Dutch rather than a Muscovite
one. They gloried in having sent the first European mer
chant ship to St. Petersburg, and returned the commercial
privileges they had obtained from Peter, or hoped to
obtain from him, by that fawning meanness which cha
racterizes their intercourse with Japan. Here, then, was
quite another solid foundation than in England for the
Russiaiiism of statesmen, whom Peter I. had entrapped
during his stay at Amsterdam, and the Hague in 1697,
whom he afterwards directed by his ambassadors, and with
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 59
whom he renewed his personal influence during his re
newed stay at Amsterdam in 1716-17. Yet, if the para
mount influence England exercised over Holland during
the first decennia of the 18th century be considered, there
can remain no doubt that the proclamations against
Sweden by the States-General would never have been
issued, if not with the previous consent and at the insti
gation of England. The intimate connection between the
English and Dutch Governments served more than once
the former to put up precedents in the name of Holland,
which they were resolved to act upon in the name of Eng
land. On the other hand, it is no less certain that the
Dutch statesmen were employed by the Czar to influence
the British ones. Thus Horace Walpole, the brother of the
" Father of Corruption," the brother-in-law of the Minister,
Townshend, and the British Ambassador at the Hague
during 1715-16, was evidently inveigled into the Russian
interest by his Dutch friends. Thus, as we shall see by-
and-by, Theyls, the Secretary to the Dutch Embassy at
Constantinople, at the most critical period of the deadly
struggle between Charles XII. and Peter I., managed
affairs at the same time for the Embassies of England and
Holland at the Sublime Porte. This Theylls, in a print of
his, openly claims it as a merit with his nation to have
been the devoted and rewarded agent of Russian intrigue.
60 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
CHAPTEE IV
" The Defensive Treaty concluded in the year 1700, between his
late Majesty, King William, of ever-glorious memory, and
his present Swedish Majesty, King Charles XII. Pub
lished at the earnest desire of several members of both
Houses of Parliament.
1 Nee rumpite fcedera pacis,
Nee regnis praeferte fidem.
SILIUS, Lip. II.
{ Article I. Establishes between the Kings of Sweden
and England a sincere and constant friendship for ever, a
league and good correspondence, so that they shall never
mutually or separately molest one another s kingdoms, pro
vinces, colonies, or subjects, wheresoever situated, nor shall
they suffer or agree that this should be done by others, etc." 1
u Article II. Moreover, each of the Allies, his heirs and
successors, shall be obliged to take care of, and promote, as
much as in him lies, the profit and honour of the other, to
detect and give notice to his other ally (as soon as it shall
come to his own knowledge) of all imminent dangers, con
spiracies, and hostile designs formed against him, to with
stand them as much as possible, and to prevent them both
by advice and assistance ; and therefore it shall not be lawful
for either of the Allies, either by themselves or any other what
soever, to act, treat, or endeavour anything to the prejudice or
loss of the other, his lands or dominions whatsoever or where
soever, whether by land or sea ; that one shall in no wise
favour the other s foes, either rebels or enemies, to the pre
judice of his Ally, etc.
" Query I. How the words marked in italics agree with
our present conduct, when our fleet acts in conjunction with
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 61
the enemies of Sweden, the Czar commands our fleet, our
Admiral enters into Councils of War, and is not only privy to
all their designs, but together with our own Minister at Copen
hagen (as the King of Denmark has himself owned it in a
public declaration), pushed on the Northern Confederates to
an enterprise entirely destructive to our Ally Sweden, I mean
the descent designed last summer upon Schonen f
11 Query II. In what manner we also must explain that
passage in the first article by which it is stipulated that
one Ally shall not either by themselves or any other what
soever, act, treat, or endeavour anything to the loss of the
other s lands and dominions ; to justify in particular our
leaving in the year 1715, even when the season was so far
advanced as no longer to admit of our usual pretence of
conveying and protecting our trade, which was then got
already safe home, eight men-of-war in the Baltic, with
orders to join in one line of battle with the Danes, whereby
we made them so much superior in number to the Swedish
fleet, that it could not come to the relief of Straelsund, and
whereby we chiefly occasioned Sweden s entirely losing its
German Provinces, and even the extreme danger his Swedish
Majesty ran in his own person, in crossing the sea, before the
surrender of the town.
" Article III. By a special defensive treaty, the Kings
of Sweden and England mutually oblige themselves, in a
strict alliance, to defend one another mutually, as well as
their kingdoms, territories, provinces, states, subjects,
possessions, as their rights and liberties of navigation and
commerce, as well in the Northern, Deucalidonian, Western,
and Britannic Sea, commonly called the Channel, the Baltic,
the Sound ; as also of the privileges and prerogatives of
each of the Allies belonging to them, by virtue of treaties
and agreements, as well as by received customs, the laws of
nations, hereditary right, against any aggressors or invaders
and molesters in Europe by sea or land, etc.
" Query. It being by the law of nations an indisputable
right and prerogative of any king or people, in case of a
great necessity or threatening ruin, to use all such means
they themselves shall judge most necessary for their pre-
63 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
servation ; it having moreover been a constant prerogative
and practice of the Swedes, for these several hundred years,
in case of a war with their most dreadful enemies the Mus
covites, to hinder all trade with them in the Baltic ; and
since it is also stipulated in this article that amongst other
things, one Ally ought to defend the prerogatives belonging to
the other, even by received customs, and the law of nations :
how come we now, the King of Sweden stands more than
ever in need of using that prerogative, not only to dispute
it, but also to take thereof a pretence for an open hostility
against him ?
" Articles IV., V., VI., and VII. fix the strength of the
auxiliary forces England and Sweden are to send each
other in case the territory of either of these powers should
be invaded, or its navigation l molested or hindered in one
of the seas enumerated in Article III. The invasion of the
German provinces of Sweden is expressly included as a casus
feeder is.
" Article VIII. stipulates that that Ally who is not
attacked shall first act the part of a pacific mediator ; but,
the mediation having proved a failure, * the aforesaid forces
shall be sent without delay ; nor shall the confederates
desist before the injured party shall be satisfied in all
things.
" Article IX. That Ally that requires the stipulated
1 help, has to choose whether he will have the above-named
army either all or any, either in soldiers, ships, ammunition,
or money.
" Article X. Ships and armies serve under the com
mand of him that required them.
" Article XI. l But if it should happen that the above-
mentioned forces should not be proportionable to the danger,
as supposing that perhaps the aggressor should be assisted
by the forces of some other confederates of his, then one of
the Allies, after previous request, shall be obliged to help
the other that is injured, with greater forces, such as he
shall be able to raise with safety and convenience, both by
sea and land. . . .
" Article XII. i It shall be lawful for either of the Allies
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 63
and tlieir subjects to bring their men-of-war into one
another s harbours, and to winter there. Peculiar negotia
tions about this point shall take place at Stockholm, but
1 in the meanwhile, the articles of treaty concluded at
London, 1661, relating to the navigation and commerce
shall remain, in their full force, as much as if they were
inserted here word for word.
"Article XIII. . . . The subjects of either of the
Allies . . . shall no way, either by sea or land, serve
them (the enemies of either of the Allies), either as mariners
or soldiers, and therefore it shall be forbid them upon severe
penalty.
" Article XI V. i If it happens that either of the con
federate kings . . . should be engaged in a war against
a common enemy, or ba molested by any other neighbouring
king ... in his own kingdoms or provinces . . .
to the hindering of which, he that requires help may by
the force of this treaty himself be obliged to send help :
then that Ally so molested shall not be obliged to send the
promised help. . . .
" Query I. Whether in our conscience we don t think the
King of Sweden most unjustly attacked by all his enemies ;
whether consequently we are not convinced that we owe
him the assistance stipulated in these Articles ; whether he
has not demanded the same from us, and why it has hitherto
been refused him ?
" Query II. These articles, setting forth in the most
expressing terms, in what manner Great Britain and Sweden
ought to assist one another, can either of these two Allies
take upon him to prescribe to the other who requires his
assistance a way of lending him it not expressed in the
treaty ; and if that other Ally does not think it for his
interest to accept of the same, but still insists upon the per
formance of the treaty, can he from thence take a pretence,
not only to withhold the stipulated assistance, but also to
use his Ally in a hostile way, and to join with his enemies
against him? If this is not justifiable, as even common
sense tells us it is not, how can the reason stand good, which
we allege amongst others, for using the King of Sweden as
64 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
we do, id est, that demanding a literal performance of his
alliance with us, Tie would not accept the treaty of neutrality
for Ms German provinces, which we proposed to him some
years ago, a treaty which, not to mention its partiality in
favour of the enemies of Sweden, and that it was calculated
only for our own interest, and for to prevent all disturbance
in the empire, whilst we were engaged in a war against
France, the King of Sweden had so much less reason to rely
upon, as he was to conclude it with those very enemies, that
had every one of them broken several treaties in beginning
the present war against him, and as it was to be guaranteed
by those powers, who were also every one of them guaran
tees of the broken treaties, without having performed their
guarantee ?
"Query III. How can we make the words in the 7th
Article, that in assisting our injured Ally we shall not desist
before he shall be satisfied in all things, agree with our en
deavouring, to the contrary, to help the enemies of that
Prince, though all unjust aggressors, not only to take one
province after the other from him, but also to remain undis
turbed possessors thereof, blaming all along the King of
Sweden for not tamely submitting thereunto ?
" Query IV. The treaty concluded in the year 1661,
between Great Britain and Sweden, being in the llth
Article confirmed, and the said treaty forbidding expressly
one of the confederates either himself or his subjects to lend or
to sell to the other s enemies, men-of-war or ships of defence ;
the 13th Article of this present treaty forbidding also
expressly the subjects of either of the Allies to help anyways
the enemies of the other, to the inconvenience and loss of such
an Ally ; should we not have accused the Swedes of the
most notorious breach of this treaty, had they, during our
late war with the French, lent them their own fleet, the
better to execute any design of theirs against us, or had
they, notwithstanding our representations to the contrary,
suffered their subjects to furnish the French with ships of
50, 60, and 70 guns ! Now, if we turn the tables, and re
member upon how many occasions our fleet has of late been
entirely subservient to the designs of the enemies of Sweden,
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 65
even in most critical times, and that the Czar of Muscovy has
actually above a dozen English-built ships in his fleet, will it
not be very difficult for us to excuse in ourselves what we
should most certainly have blamed, if done by others ? "
11 Article XVII. The obligation shall not be so far ex
tended as that all friendship and mutual commerce with the
enemies of that Ally (that requires the help) shall be taken
away ; for supposing that one of the confederates should
send his auxiliaries, and should not be engaged in the war
himself, it shall then be lawful for the subjects to trade and
commerce with that enemy of that Ally that is engaged in
the war, also directly and safely to merchandise with such
enemies, for all goods not expressly forbid and called contra
band, as in a special treaty of commerce hereafter shall be
appointed.
" Query I. This Article being the only one out of
twenty-two whose performance we have now occasion to
insist ^upon from the Swedes, the question will be whether
we ourselves, in regard to Sweden, have performed all the
other articles as it was our part to do, and whether in
demanding of the King of Sweden the executing of this
Article, we have promised that we would also do our duty
as to all the rest ; if not, may not the Swedes say that we
complain unjustly of the breach of one single Article, when
we ourselves may perhaps be found guilty of having in
the most material points either not executed or even acted
against the whole treaty ?
11 Query II. Whether the liberty of commerce one Ally is,
by virtue of this Article, to enjoy with the other s enemies,
ought to have no limitation at all, neither as to time nor
place ; in short, whether it ought even to be extended so
far as to destroy the very end of this Treaty, which is the
promoting the safety and security of one another s king
doms ?
" Query III. Whether in case the French had in the late
wars made themselves masters of Ireland or Scotland, and
either in new-made seaports, or the old ones, endeavoured
by trade still more firmly to establish themselves in their
new conquest, we, in such a case, should have thought the
66 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
Swedes our true allies and friends, had they insisted upon
this Article to trade with the French in the said seaports
taken from us, and to furnish them there with several
necessaries of war, nay, even with armed ships, whereby
the French might the easier have annoyed us here in Eng
land ?
" Query IV. Whether, if we had gone about to hinder a
trade so prejudicial to us, and in order thereunto brought
up all Swedish ships going to the said seaports, we should
not highly have exclaimed against the Swedes, had they
taken from thence a pretence to join their fleet with the
French, to occasion the losing of any of our dominions, and
even to encourage the invasion upon us, have their fleet at
hand to promote the same ?
" Query V. Whether upon an impartial examination this
would not have been a case exactly parallel to that we in
sist upon, as to a free Trade to the seaports the Czar has
taken from Sweden, and to our present behaviour, upon the
King of Sweden s hindering the same ?
" Query VI. Whether we have not ever since Oliver
Cromwell s time till 1710, in all our wars with France and
Holland, without any urgent necessity at all, brought up
and confiscated Swedish ships, though not going to any pro
hibited ports, and that to a far greater number and value,
than all those the Swedes have now taken from us, and
whether the Swedes have ever taken a pretence from thence
to join with our enemies, and to send whole squadrons of ships
to their assistance ?
" Query VII. Whether, if we inquire narrowly into the
state of commerce, as it has been carried on for these many
years, we shall not find^ that the trade of the above-men
tioned places was not so very necessary to us, at least not so
far as to be put into the balance with the preservation of a
Protestant confederate nation, much less to give us a just
reason to make war against that nation, which, though not
declared, has done it more harm than the united efforts of all its
enemies ?
" Query VIII. Whether, if it happened two years ago,
that this trade became something more necessary to us than
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 67
formerly, it is not easily proved, that it was occasioned only
by the Czar s forcing us out of our old channel of trade to
Archangel, and bringing us to Petersburg, and our com
plying therewith. So that all the inconveniences we
laboured under upon that account ought to have been laid
to the Czar s door, and not to the King of Sweden s ?
" Query IX. Whether the Czar did not in the very be
ginning of 1715 again permit us to trade our old way to
Archangel, and whether our Ministers had not notice there
of a great while before our fleet was sent that year to
protect our trade to Petersburg, which by this alteration in
the Czar s resolution was become as unnecessary for us as
before ?
" Query X. Whether the King of Sweden had not
declared, that if we would forbear trading to Petersburg,
etc., which he looked upon as ruinous to his kingdom, he
would in no manner disturb our trade, neither in the
Baltic nor anywhere else ; but that in case we would not
give him this slight proof of our friendship, he should be
excused if the innocent came to suffer with the guilty ?
" Query XI. Whether, by our insisting upon the trade
to the ports prohibited by the King of Sweden, which be
sides it being unnecessary to us, hardly makes one part in
ten of that we carry on in the Baltic, we have not drawn
upon us the hazards that our trade has run all this while,
been ourselves the occasion of our great expenses in fitting
out fleets for its protection, and by our joining with the
enemies of Sweden, fully justified his Swedish Majesty s
resentment ; had it ever gone so far as to seize and con
fiscate without distinction all our ships and effects, where
soever he found them, either within or without his
kingdoms ?
" Query XII. If we were so tender of our trade to the
northern ports in general, ought we not in policy rather to
have considered the hazard that trade runs by the approach
ing ruin of Sweden, and by the Czar s becoming the whole and
sole master of the Baltic, and all the naval stores we want
from thence ? Have we not also suffered greater hardships
and losses in the said trade from the Czar, than that
68 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
amounting only to sixty odd thousand pounds (whereof, by
the way, two parts in three may perhaps be disputable),
which provoked us first to send twenty men-of-war in the
Baltic with order to attack the Swedes wherever they met
them ? And yet, did not this very Czar, this very aspiring
and dangerous prince, last summer command the whole
confederate fleet, as it was called, of which our men-of-war
made the most considerable part ? The first instance that ever
was of a Foreign Potentate having the command given him of
the English fleet, the btdwark of our nation ; and did not our
said men-of-war afterwards convey his (the Czar s) trans
port ships and troops on board of them, in their return from
Zealand, protecting them from the Swedish fleet, which else
would have made a considerable havoc amongst them ?
" Query XIII. Suppose now, we had, on the contrary,
taken hold of the great and many complaints our merchants
have made of the ill-usage they meet from the Czar, to have
sent our fleet to show our resentment against that prince,
to prevent his great and pernicious designs even to us, to
assist Sweden pursuant to this Treaty, and effectually to
restore the peace in the North, would not that have been
more for our interest, more necessary, more honourable and
just, and more according to our Treaty ; and would not the
several 100,000 pounds these our Northern expeditions
have cost the nation, have been thus better employed ?
" Query XIV. If the preserving and securing our trade
against the Swedes has been the only and real object of all
our measures, as to the Northern affairs, how came we the
year before the last to leave eight men-of-war in the Baltic
and at Copenhagen, when we had no more trade there to
protect, and how came Admiral Norris last summer, al
though he and the Dutch together made up the number of
twenty-six men-of-war, and consequently were too strong for
the Swedes, to attempt anything against our trade under
their convoy ; yet to lay above two whole months of the best
season in the Sound, without convoying our and the Dutch
merchantmen to the several ports they were bound for,
whereby they were kept in the Baltic so late that their
return could not but be very hazardous, as it even proved,
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 69
both to them and our men-of-war themselves? Will not
the world be apt to think that the hopes of forcing the
King of Sweden to an inglorious and disadvantageous
peace, by which the Duchies of Bremen and Verden ought
to be added to the Hanover dominions, or that some other
such view, foreign, if not contrary, to the true and old
interest of Great Britain, had then a greater influence upon
all these our proceedings than the pretended care of our
trade ?
11 Article XVIII. For as much as it seems convenient for
the preservation of the liberty of navigation and commerce
in the Baltic Sea, that a firm and exact friendship should
be kept between the Kings of Sweden and Denmark ; and
whereas the former Kings of Sweden and Denmark did
oblige themselves mutually, not only by the public Articles
of Peace made in the camp of Copenhagen, on the 27th of
May, 1660, and by the ratifications of the agreement inter
changed on both sides, sacredly and inviolably to observe all
and every one of the clauses comprehended in the said
agreement, but also declared together to ... Charles
II., King of Great Britain ... a little before the
treaty concluded between England and Sweden in the year
1665, that they would stand sincerely ... to all
. . . of the Articles of the said peace . . . where
upon Charles II., with the approbation and consent of both
the forementioned Kings of Sweden and Denmark, took upon
himself a little after the Treaty concluded between England
and Sweden, 1st March, 1665, to wit 9th October, 1665,
guarantee of the same agreements. . . . Whereas an
instrument of peace between . . . the Kings of Sweden
and Denmark happened to be soon after these concluded at
Lunden in Schoiien, in 1679, which contains an express
transaction, and repetition and confirmation of the Treaties
concluded at Roskild, Copenhagen, and Westphalia ; there
fore . . . the King of Great Britain binds himself by
the force of this Treaty . . . that if either of the Kings
of Sweden and Denmark shall consent to the violation,
either of all the agreements, or of one or more articles com
prehended in them, and consequently if either of the Kings
70 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
shall to the prejudice of the person, provinces, territories,
islands, goods, dominions and rights of the other, which by
the force of the agreements so often repeated, and made in
the camp of Copenhagen, on the 27th of May, 1660, as also of
those made in the . . . peace at Lunden in Schonen in
1679, were attributed to every one that was interested and
comprehended in the words of the peace, should either by
himself or by others, presume, or secretly design or attempt,
or by open molestations, or by any injury, or by any
violence of arms, attempt anything ; that then the . . .
King of Great Britain . . . shall first of all, by his in
terposition, perform all the offices of a friend and princely
ally, which may serve towards the keeping inviolable all
the frequently mentioned agreements, and of every article
comprehended in them, and consequently towards the
preservation of peace between both kings ; that afterwards
if the King, who is the beginner of such prejudice, or any
molestation or injury, contrary to all agreements, and con
trary to any articles comprehended in them, shall refuse
after being admonished . . . then the King of Great
Britain . . . shall . . . assist him that is injured
as by the present agreements between the Kings of Great
Britain and Sweden in such cases is determined and agreed.
" Query. Does not this article expressly tell us how to
remedy the disturbances our trade in the Baltic might
suffer, in case of a misunderstanding betwixt the Kings of
Sweden and Denmark, by obliging both these Princes to
keep all the Treaties of Peace that have been concluded
between them from 1660-1670, and in case either of them
should in an hostile manner act against the said Treaties,
by assisting the other against the aggressor ? How comes it
then that we don t make use of so just a remedy against an
evil we are so great sufferers by ? Can anybody, though
ever so partial, deny but the King of Denmark, though
seemingly a sincere friend to the King of Sweden, from the
peace of Travendahl till he went out of Saxony against
the Muscovites, fell very unjustly upon him immediately
after, taking ungenerously advantage of the fatal battle of
Pultava ? Is not then the King of Denmark the violator of
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 71
all the above-mentioned Treaties, and consequently the true
author of the disturbances our trade meets with in the
Baltic ? Why in God s name don t we, according to this
article, assist Sweden against him, and why do we, on the
contrary, declare openly against the injured King of
Sweden, send hectoring and threatening memorials to
him, upon the least advantage he has over his enemies, as
we did last summer upon his entering Norway, and even
order our fleets to act openly against him in conjunction
with the Danes ?
" Article XIX. There shall be * stricter confederacy and
union between the above-mentioned Kings of Great Britain
and Sweden, for the future, for the defence and preservation
of the Protestant, Evangelic, and reformed religion.
u Query I. How do we, according to this article, join
with Sweden to assert, protect, and preserve the Protestant
religion ? Don t we suffer that nation, which has always
been a bulwark to the said religion, most unmercifully to be
torn to pieces? . . . Don t we ourselves give a helping
hand towards its destruction ? And why all this ? Because
our merchants have lost their ships to the value of sixty
odd thousand pounds. For this loss, and nothing else, was
the pretended reason why, in the year 1715, we sent our fleet in
the Baltic, at the expense of 200,000 ; and as to what our
merchants have suffered since, suppose we attribute it to
our threatening memorials as well as open hostilities against
the King of Sweden, must we not even then own that
that Prince s resentment has been very moderate ?
" Query II. How can other Princes, and especially our
fellow Protestants, think us sincere in what we have made
them believe as to our zeal in spending millions of lives and
money for to secure the Protestant interest only in one
single branch of it, / mean the Protestant succession here,
when they see that that succession has hardly taken place,
before we, only for sixty odd thousand pounds, (for let us
always remember that this paltry sum was the first pretence
for our quarrelling with Sweden) go about to undermine
the very foundation of that interest in general, by helping,
as we do, entirely to sacrifice Sweden, the old and sincere
72 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
protector of the Protestants, to its neighbours, of which
some are professed Papists, some worse, and some, at least,
but lukewarm Protestants ?
" Article XX. Therefore, that a reciprocal faith of the
Allies and their perseverance in this agreement may appear
. . . both the fore-mentioned kings mutually oblige
themselves, and declare that . . . they will not depart
a tittle from the genuine and common sense of all and every
article of this treaty under any pretences of friendship,
profit, former treaty, agreement, and promise, or upon any
colour whatsoever : but that they will most fully and readily,
either by themselves, or ministers, or subjects, put in execu
tion whatsoever they have promised in this treaty . . .
without any hesitation, exception, or excuse. . . .
" Query I. Inasmuch as this article sets forth that, at
the time of concluding of the treaty, we were under no
engagement contrary to it, and that it were highly unjust
should we afterwards, and while this treaty is in force,
which is eighteen years after the day it was signed, have
entered into any such engagements, how can we justify to
the world our late proceedings against the King of Sweden,
which naturally seem the consequences of a treaty either of
our own making with the enemies of that Prince, or of
some Court or other that at present influences our measures ?
"Query II. The words in this Y article . . . how in
the name of honour, faith, and justice, do they agree with
the little and pitiful pretences we now make use of, not only
for not assisting Sweden, pursuant to this treaty, hut even for
going about so heartily as we do to destroy it ?
" Article XXI. This defensive treaty shall last for
eighteen years, before the end of which the confederate
kings may . . . again treat.
" Ratification of the ahovesaid treaty. We, having seen
and considered this treaty, have approved and confirmed the
same in all and every particular article and clause as by the
present. We do approve the same for us, our heirs, and
successors ; assuring and promising our princely word that
we shall perform and observe sincerely and in good earnest
all those things that are therein contained, for the better
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 73
confirmation whereof we have ordered our great seal of
England to be put to these presents, which were given at
our palace of Kensington, 25th of February, in the year of
our Lord 1700, and in the llth year of our reign (Gulielmus
Eex). 1
" Query. How can any of us that declares himself for the
late happy revolution, and that is a true and grateful lover
of King William s for ever-glorious memory . . . yet
bear with the least patience, that the said treaty should
(that I may again use the words of the 20th article) be
departed from, under any pretence of profit, or upon any colour
whatsoever, especially so insignificant and trifling a one as
that which has been made use of for two years together to
employ our ships, our men, and our money, to accomplish
the ruin of Sweden, that same Sweden whose defence and
preservation this great and wise monarch of ours has so
solemnly promised, and which he always looked upon to be
of the utmost necessity for to secure the Protestant interest
in Europe?"
1 The treaty was concluded at the Hague on the 6th and 16th January, 1700, and
ratified by William III. on February 5th, 1700.
74 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
CHAPTER V
BEFOEE entering upon an analysis of the pamphlet headed,
Truth is but truth, as it is timed" with which we shall
conclude the Introduction to the Diplomatic Eevelations,
some preliminary remarks on the general history of Eussian
politics appear opportune.
The overwhelming influence of Eussia has taken Europe
at different epochs by surprise, startled the peoples of the
"West, and been submitted to as a fatality, or resisted only
by convulsions. But alongside the fascination exercised by
Eussia, there runs an ever-reviving scepticism, dogging her
like a shadow, growing with her growth, mingling shrill
notes of irony with the cries of agonising peoples, and mock
ing her very grandeur as a histrionic attitude taken up to
dazzle and to cheat. Other empires have met with similar
doubts in their infancy ; Eussia has become a colossus
without outliving them. She affords the only instance
in history of an immense empire, the very existence of
whose power, even after world- wide achievements, has never
ceased to be treated like a matter of faith rather than like a
matter of fact. From the outset of the eighteenth century
to our days, 110 author, whether he intended to exalt or
to check Eussia, thought it possible to dispense with first
proving her existence.
But whether we be spiritualists or materialists with
respect to Eussia whether we consider her power as a
palpable fact, or as the mere vision of the guilt-stricken
consciences of the European peoples the question remains
the same: "How did this power, or this phantom of a
power, contrive to assume such dimensions as to rouse 011
the one side the passionate assertion, and on the other the
angry denial of its threatening the world with a rehearsal of
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 75
Universal Monarchy ? " At the beginning of the eighteenth
century E/ussia was regarded as a mushroom creation
extemporised by the genius of Peter the Great. Schloezer
thought it a discovery to have found out that she possessed
a past ; and in modern times, writers, like Fallmerayer,
unconsciously following in the track beaten by Russian
historians, have deliberately asserted that the northern
spectre which frightens the Europe of the nineteenth
century already overshadowed the Europe of the ninth
century. "With them the policy of Russia begins with the
first Ruriks, and has, with some interruptions indeed, been
systematically continued to the present hour.
Ancient maps of Russia are unfolded before us, displaying
even larger European dimensions than she can boast of
now : her perpetual movement of aggrandizement from the
ninth to the eleventh century is anxiously pointed out ; we
are shown Oleg launching 88,000 men against Byzantium,
fixing his shield as a trophy on the gate of that capital,
and dictating an ignominious treaty to the Lower Empire ;
Igor making it tributary ; S via taslaff glorying, " the Greeks
supply me with gold, costly stuffs, rice, fruits and wine ;
Hungary furnishes cattle and horses ; from Russia I draw
honey, wax, furs, and men"; Vladimir conquering the
Crimea and Livonia, extorting a daughter from the Greek
Emperor, as Napoleon did from the German Emperor,
blending the military sway of a northern conqueror with
the theocratic despotism of the Porphyro-geniti, and be
coming at once the master of his subjects on earth, and
their protector in heaven.
Yet, in spite of the plausible parallelism suggested by
these reminiscences, the policy of the first Ruriks differs
fundamentally from that of modern Russia. It was nothing
more nor less than the policy of the German barbarians
inundating Europe the history of the modern nations
beginning only after the deluge has passed away. The
Gothic period of Russia in particular forms but a chapter
of the Norman conquests. As the empire of Charlemagne
precedes the foundation of modern France, Germany, and
Italy, so the empire of the Ruriks precedes the foundation
76 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
of Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic Settlements, Turkey, and
Muscovy itself. The rapid movement of aggrandizement
was not the result of deep-laid schemes, but the natural off
spring of the primitive organization of Norman conquest
vassalship without fiefs, or fiefs consisting only in tributes
the necessity of fresh conquests being kept alive by the
uninterrupted influx of new Varangian adventurers, panting
for glory and plunder. The chiefs, becoming anxious for
repose, were compelled by the Faithful Band to move on,
and in Russian, as in French Normandy, there arrived the
moment when the chiefs despatched on new predatory
excursions their uncontrollable and insatiable compaiiions-
in-arms with the single view to get rid of them. Warfare
and organization of conquest on the part of the first Ruriks
differ in no point from those of the Normans in the rest
of Europe. If Slavonian tribes were subjected not only by
the sword, but also by mutual convention, this singularity
is due to the exceptional position of those tribes, placed
between a northern and eastern invasion, and embracing the
former as a protection from the latter. The same magic
charm which attracted other northern barbarians to the
Rome of the West attracted the Varangians to the Rome of
the East. The very migration of the Russian capital
Rurik fixing it at Novgorod, Oleg removing it to Kiev, and
Sviataslaff attempting to establish it in Bulgaria proves
beyond doubt that the invader was only feeling his way,
and considered Russia as a mere halting-place from which
to wander on in search of an empire in the South. If
modern Russia covets the possession of Constantinople to
establish her dominion over the world, the Ruriks were, on
the contrary, forced by the resistance of Byzantium, under
Zimiskes, definitively to establish their dominion in Russia.
It may be objected that victors and vanquished amal
gamated more quickly in Russia than in any other
conquest of the northern barbarians, that the chiefs soon
commingled themselves with the Slavonians as shown by
their marriages and their names. But then, it should be
recollected that the Faithful Band, which formed at once
their guard and their privy council, remained exclusively
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 77
composed of Varangians ; that Vladimir, who marks the
summit, and Yaroslav, who marks the commencing decline
of Gothic Russia, were seated on her throne by the arms
of the Varangians. If any Slavonian influence is to be
acknowledged in this epoch, it is that of Novgorod, a
Slavonian State, the traditions, policy, and tendencies of
which were so antagonistic to those of modern Russia that
the one could found her existence only on the ruins of the
other. Under Yaroslav the supremacy of the Varangians
is broken, but simultaneously with it disappears the con
quering tendency of the first period, and the decline of
Gothic Russia begins. The history of that decline, more
still than that of the conquest and formation, proves the
exclusively Gothic character of the Empire of the Ruriks.
The incongruous, unwieldy, and precocious Empire heaped
together by the Ruriks, like the other empires of similar
growth, is broken up into appanages, divided and sub
divided among the descendants of the conquerors, dila-
cerated by feudal wars, rent to pieces by the intervention
of foreign peoples. The paramount authority of the Grand
Prince vanishes before the rival claims of seventy princes
of the blood. The attempt of Andrew of Susdal at recom-
posing some large limbs of the empire by the removal of the
capital from Kiev to Vladimir proves successful only in
propagating the decomposition from the South to the centre.
Andrew s third successor resigns even the last shadow of
supremacy, the title of Grand Prince, and the merely
nominal homage still offered him. The appanages to the
South and to the West become by turns Lithuanian, Polish,
Hungarian, Livonian, Swedish. Kiev itself, the ancient
capital, follows destinies of its own, after having dwindled
down from a seat of the Grand Princedom to the territory
of a city. Thus, the Russia of the Normans completely
disappears from the stage, and the few weak reminiscences
in which it still outlived itself , dissolve before the terrible
apparition of Genghis Khan. The bloody mire of Mongolian
slavery, not the rude glory of the Norman epoch, forms the
cradle of Muscovy, and modern Russia is but a metamor
phosis of Muscovy.
7 8 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
The Tartar yoke lasted from 1237 to 1462 more than
two centuries ; a yoke not only crushing, but dishonouring
and withering the very soul of the people that fell its prey.
The Mongol Tartars established a rule of systematic terror,
devastation and wholesale massacre forming its institutions.
Their numbers being scanty in proportion to their enormous
conquests, they wanted to magnify them by a halo of con
sternation, and to thin, by wholesale slaughter, the popula
tions which might rise in their rear. In their creations of
desert they were, besides, led by the same economical prin
ciple which has depopulated the Highlands of Scotland and
the Campagna di Roma the conversion of men into sheep,
and of fertile lands and populous abodes into pasturage.
The Tartar yoke had already lasted a hundred years
before Muscovy emerged from its obscurity. To entertain
discord among the Russian princes, and secure their servile
submission, the Mongols had restored the dignity of the
Grand Princedom. The strife among the Russian princes
for^this dignity was, as a modern author has it, "an abject
strife the strife of slaves, whose chief weapon was calumny,
and who were always ready to denounce each other to their
cruel rulers ; wrangling for a degraded throne, whence they
could not move but with plundering, parricidal hands-
hands filled with gold and stained with gore ; which they
dared not ascend without grovelling, nor retain but on their
knees, prostrate and trembling beneath the scimitar of a
Tartar, always ready to roll under his feet those servile
crowns, and the heads by which they were worn." It was
in this infamous strife that the Moscow branch won at last
the race. In 1328 the crown of the Grand Princedom,
wrested from the branch of Tver by dint of denunciation
and assassination, was picked up at the feet of Usbeck
Khan by Yury, the elder brother of Ivan Kalita. Ivan I.
Kalita, and Ivan III., surnamed the Great, personate Mus
covy rising by means of the Tartar yoke, and Muscovy
getting an independent power by the disappearance of the
Tartar rule. The whole policy of Muscovy, from its first
entrance into the historical arena, is resumed in the history
of these two individuals.
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 79
The policy of Ivan Kalita was simply this : to play the
abject tool of the Khan, thus to borrow his power, and then
to turn it round upon his princely rivals and his own sub
jects. To attain this end, he had to insinuate himself with
the Tartars by dint of cynical adulation, by frequent
journeys to the Golden Horde, by humble prayers for the
hand of Mongol princesses, by a display of unbounded zeal
for the Khan s interest, by the unscrupulous execution of
his orders, by atrocious calumnies against his own kinsfolk,
by blending in himself the characters of the Tartar s hang
man, sycophant, and slave-in-chief. He perplexed the Khan
by continuous revelations of secret plots. Whenever the
branch of Tver betrayed a velleite of national independ
ence, he hurried to the Horde to denounce it. Wherever he
met with resistance, he introduced the Tartar to trample it
down. But it was not sufficient to act a character; to
make it acceptable, gold was required. Perpetual bribery
of the Khan and his grandees was the only sure foundation
upon which to raise his fabric of deception and usurpation.
But how was the slave to get the money wherewith to bribe
the master ? He persuaded the Khan to instal him his tax-
gatherer throughout all the Russian appanages. Once
invested with this function, he extorted money under false
pretences. The wealth accumulated by the dread held out
of the Tartar name, he used to corrupt the Tartars them
selves. By a bribe he induced the primate to transfer his
episcopal seat from Vladimir to Moscow, thus making the
latter the capital of the empire, because the ^ religious capi
tal, and coupling the power of the Church with that of his
throne. By a bribe he allured the Boyards of the rival
princes into treason against their chiefs, and attracted them
to himself as their centre. By the joint influence of the
Mahometan Tartar, the Greek Church, and the Boyards,
he unites the princes holding appanages into a crusade
against the most dangerous of them the prince of Tver ;
and then having driven his recent allies by bold attempts
at usurpation into resistance against himself, into a war for
the public good, he draws not the sword but hurries to the
Khan. By bribes and delusion again, he seduces him into
So SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
assassinating his kindred rivals under the most cruel
torments. It was the traditional policy of the Tartar to
check the Russian princes the one by the other, to feed
their dissensions, to cause their forces to equiponderate, and
to allow none to consolidate himself. Ivan Kalita converts
the Khan into the tool by which he rids himself of his most
dangerous competitors, and weighs down every obstacle to
his own usurping march. He does not conquer the appan
ages, but surreptitiously turns the rights of the Tartar
conquest to his exclusive profit. He secures the succession
of his son through the same means by which he had raised
the Grand Princedom of Muscovy, that strange compound
of princedom and serfdom. During his whole reign he
swerves not once from the line of policy he had traced to
himself ; clinging to it with a tenacious firmness, and
executing it with methodical boldness. Thus he becomes
the founder of the Muscovite power, and characteristically
his people call him Kalita that is, the purse, because it
was the purse and not the sword with which he cut his
way. The very period of his reign witnesses the sudden
growth of the Lithuanian power which dismembers the
Russian appanages from the "West, while the Tartar
squeezes them into one mass from the East. Ivan, while
he dared not repulse the one disgrace, seemed anxious to
exaggerate the other. He was not to be seduced from fol
lowing up his ends by the allurements of glory, the pangs
of conscience, or the lassitude of humiliation. His whole
system may be expressed in a few words : the machiavelism
of the usurping slave. His own weakness his slavery he
turned into the mainspring of his strength.
The policy traced by Ivan I. Kalita is that of his successors ;
they had only to enlarge the circle of its application. They
followed it up laboriously, gradually, inflexibly. From
Ivan I. Kalita, we may, therefore, pass at once to Ivan III.,
surnamed the Great.
At the commencement of his reign (1462-1505) Ivan
III. was still a tributary to the Tartars ; his authority
was still contested by the princes holding appanages ; Nov
gorod, the head of the Russian republics, reigned over the
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 81
north of Russia ; Poland-Lithuania 1 was striving for the
conquest of Muscovy ; lastly, the Livonian knights were
not yet disarmed. At the end of his reign we behold
Ivan III. seated on an independent throne, at his side
the daughter of the last emperor of Byzantium, at his
feet Kasan, and the remnant of the Golden Horde flocking
to his court ; Novgorod and the other Russian republics en
slaved Lithuania diminished, and its king a tool in Ivan s
hands the Livonian knights vanquished. Astonished
Europe, at the commencement of Ivan s reign, hardly
aware of the existence of Muscovy, hemmed in between
the Tartar and the Lithuanian, was dazzled by the sudden
appearance of an immense empire on its eastern confines,
and Sultan Bajazet himself, before whom Europe trembled,
heard for the first time the haughty language of the
Muscovite. How, then, did Ivan accomplish these high
deeds ? Was he a hero ? The Russian historians them
selves show him up a confessed coward.
Let us shortly survey his principal contests, in the
sequence in which he undertook and concluded them his
contests with the Tartars, with Novgorod, with the princes
holding appanages, and lastly with Lithuania-Poland.
Ivan rescued Muscovy from the Tartar yoke, not by
one bold stroke, but by the patient labour of about twenty
years. He did not break the yoke, but disengaged himself
by stealth. Its overthrow, accordingly, has more the look
of the work of nature than the deed of man. When the
Tartar monster expired at last, Iwan appeared at its death
bed like a physician, who prognosticated and speculated on
death rather than like a warrior who imparted it. The
character of every people enlarges with its enfranchisement
from a foreign yoke ; that of Muscovy in the hands of
Ivan seems to diminish. Compare only Spain in its
struggles against the Arabs with Muscovy in its struggles
against the Tartars.
At the period of Ivan s accession to the throne, the
Golden Horde had long since been weakened, internally by
fierce feuds, externally by the separation from them of the
Nogay Tartars, the eruption of Timour Tamerlane, the rise
F
82 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
of the Cossacks, and the hostility of the Crimean Tartars.
Muscovy, on the contrary, by steadily pursuing the policy
traced by Ivan Kalita, had grown to a mighty mass,
crushed, but at the same time compactly united by the
Tartar chain. The Khans, as if struck by a charm, had
continued to remain instruments of Muscovite aggrandize
ment and concentration. By calculation they had added
to the power of the Greek Church, which, in the hand
of the Muscovite grand princes, proved the deadliest weapon
against them.
In rising against the Horde, the Muscovite had not to
invent but only to imitate the Tartars themselves. But
Ivan did not rise. He humbly acknowledged himself a
slave of the Golden Horde. By bribing a Tartar woman
he seduced the Khan into commanding the withdrawal
from Muscovy of the Mongol residents. By similar and
imperceptible and surreptitious steps he duped the Khan
into successive concessions, all ruinous to his sway. He
thus did not conquer, but filch strength. He does not
drive, but manoeuvre his enemy out of his strongholds.
Still continuing to prostrate himself before the Khan s
envoys, and to proclaim himself his tributary, he eludes
the payment of the tribute under false pretences, employing
all the stratagems of a fugitive slave who dare not front
his owner, but only steal out of his reach. At last the
Mongol awakes from his torpor, and the hour of battle
sounds. Ivan, trembling at the mere semblance of an
armed encounter, attempts to hide himself behind his own
fear, and to disarm the fury of his enemy by withdrawing
the object upon which to wreak his vengeance. He is only
saved by the intervention of the Crimean Tartars, his
allies. Against a second invasion of the Horde, he ostenta
tiously gathers together such disproportionate forces that
the mere rumour of their number parries the attack. At
the third invasion, from the midst of 200,000 men, he
absconds a disgraced deserter. Reluctantly dragged back,
he attempts to haggle for conditions of slavery, and at last,
pouring into his army his own servile fear, he involves
it in a general and disorderly flight. Muscovy was then
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 83
anxiously awaiting its irretrievable doom, when it suddenly
hears that by an attack on their capital made by the
Crimean Khan, the Golden Horde has been forced to with
draw, and has, on its retreat, been destroyed by the Cossacks
and Nogay Tartars. Thus defeat was turned into success,
and Ivan had overthrown the Golden Horde, not by
fighting it himself, but by challenging it through a feigned
desire of combat into offensive movements, which exhausted
its remnants of vitality and exposed it to the fatal blows
of the tribes of its own race whom he had managed to turn
into his allies. He caught one Tartar with another Tartar.
As the immense danger he had himself summoned proved
unable to betray him into one single trait of manhood, so
his miraculous triumph did not infatuate him even for one
moment. With cautious circumspection he dared not in
corporate Kasan with Muscovy, but made it over to
sovereigns belonging to the family of Menghi-Ghirei, his
Crimean ally, to hold it, as it were, in trust for Muscovy.
With the spoils of the vanquished Tartar, he enchained
the victorious Tartar. But if too prudent to assume, with
the eye-witnesses of his disgrace, the airs of a conqueror,
this impostor did fully understand how the downfall of the
Tartar empire must dazzle at a distance with what halo
of glory it would encircle him, and how it would facilitate
a magnificent entry among the European Powers. Accord
ingly he assumed abroad the theatrical attitude of the
conqueror, and, indeed, succeeded in hiding under a mask
of proud susceptibility and irritable haughtiness the obtru-
siveness of the Mongol serf, who still remembered kissing
the stirrup of the Khan s meanest envoy. He aped in
more subdued tone the voice of his old masters, which
terrified his soul. Some standing phrases of modern
Russian diplomacy, such as the magnanimity, the wounded
dignity of the master, are borrowed from the diplomatic
instructions of Ivan III.
After the surrender of Kasan, he set out on a long-planned
expedition against Novgorod, the head of the Russian re
publics. If the overthrow of the Tartar yoke was, in his
eyes, the first condition of Muscovite greatness, the over-
84 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
throw of Eussian freedom was the second. As the republic
of Viatka had declared itself neutral between Muscovy and
the Horde, and the republic of Tskof, with its twelve cities,
had shown symptoms of disaffection, Ivan flattered the
latter and affected to forget the former, meanwhile concen
trating all his forces against Novgorod the Great, with the
doom of which he knew the fate of the rest of the Russian
republics to be sealed. By the prospect of sharing in this
rich booty, he drew after him the princes holding appan
ages, while he inveigled the boyards by working upon their
blind hatred of Novgorodian democracy. Thus he con
trived to march three armies upon Novgorod and to over
whelm it by disproportionate force. But then, in order not
to keep his word to the princes, not to forfeit his immutable
" Vos non vobis," at the same time apprehensive, lest Nov
gorod should not yet have become digestible from the want
of preparatory treatment, he thought fit to exhibit a sudden
moderation ; to content himself with a ransom and the
acknowledgment of his suzerainty ; but into the act of sub
mission of the republic he smuggled some ambiguous words
which made him its supreme judge and legislator. Then
he fomented the dissensions between the patricians and
plebeians raging as well in Novgorod as at Florence. Of
some complaints of the plebeians he took occasion to intro
duce himself again into the city, to have its nobles, whom
he knew to be hostile to himself, sent to Moscow loaded
with chains, and to break the ancient law of the republic
that " none of its citizens should ever be tried or punished
out of the limits of its own territory." From that moment
he became supreme arbiter. "Never," say the annalists,
" never since Rurik had such an event happened ; never
had the grand princes of Kiev and Vladimir seen the
Novgorodians come and submit to them as their judges.
Ivan alone could reduce Novgorod to that degree of
humiliation." Seven years were employed by Ivan to
corrupt the republic by the exercise of his judicial authority.
Then, when he found its strength worn out, he thought the
moment ripe for declaring himself. To doff his own mask
of moderation, he wanted, on the part of Novgorod, a breach
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 85
of the peace. As he had simulated calm endurance, so he
simulated now a sudden burst of passion. Having bribed
an envoy of the republic to address him during a public
audience with the name of sovereign, he claimed, at once,
all the rights of a despot the self-annihilation of the re
public.
86 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
CHAPTER VI
ONE feature characteristic of the Slavonic race must strike
every observer. Almost everywhere it confined itself to an
inland country, leaving the sea-borders to non-Slavonic
tribes. Finno-Tartaric tribes held the shores of the Black
Sea, Lithuanians and Fins those of the Baltic and "White
Sea. Wherever they touched the sea-board, as in the
Adriatic and part of the Baltic, the Slavonians had soon to
submit to foreign rule. The Russian people shared this
common fate of the Slavonian race. Their home, at the
time they first appear in history, was the country about the
sources and upper course of the Volga and its tributaries,
the Dnieper, Don, and Northern Dwina. Nowhere did their
territory touch the sea except at the extremity of the Gulf
of Finland. Nor had they before Peter the Great proved
able to conquer any maritime outlet beside that of the
White Sea, which, during three-fourths of the year, is itself
enchained and immovable. The spot where Petersburg
now stands had been for a thousand years past contested
ground between Fins, Swedes, and Russians. All the re
maining extent of coast from Polangen, near Memel, to
Torrea, the whole coast of the Black Sea, from Akerman to
Redut Kaleh, has been conquered later on. And, as if to
witness the anti-maritime peculiarity of the Slavonic race,
of all this line of coast, no portion of the Baltic coast has
really adopted Russian nationality. Nor has the Circassian
and Mingrelian east coast of the Black Sea. It is only the
coast of the White Sea, as far as it was worth cultivating,
some portion of the northern coast of the Black Sea, and
part of the coast of the Sea of Azof, that have really been
peopled with Russian inhabitants, who, however, despite
the new circumstances in which they are placed, still refrain
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 87
from taking to the sea, and obstinately stick to the land
lopers traditions of their ancestors.
From the very outset, Peter the Great broke through all
the traditions of the Slavonic race. "It is water that Russia
wants." These words he addressed as a rebuke to Prince
Cantemir are inscribed on the title-page of his life. The
conquest of the Sea of Azof was aimed at in his first war
with Turkey, the conquest of the Baltic in his war against
Sweden, the conquest of the Black Sea in his second war
against the Porte, and the conquest of the Caspian Sea in
his fraudulent intervention in Persia. For a system of local
encroachment, land was sufficient ; for a system of universal
aggression, water had become indispensable. It was but by
the conversion of Muscovy from a country wholly of land
into a sea-bordering empire, that the traditional limits of
the Muscovite policy could be superseded and merged into
that bold synthesis which, blending the encroaching method
of the Mongol slave with the world-conquering tendencies
of the Mongol master, forms the life-spring of modern Rus
sian diplomacy.
It has been said that no great nation has ever existed, or
been able to exist, in such an inland position as that of the
original empire of Peter the Great ; that none has ever sub
mitted thus to see its coasts and the mouths of its rivers
torn away from it ; that Russia could no more leave the
mouth of the Neva, the natural outlet for the produce of
Northern Russia, in the hands of the Swedes, than the
mouths of the Don, Dnieper, and Bug, and the Straits of
Kertch, in the hands of nomadic and plundering Tartars ;
that the Baltic provinces, from their very geographical con
figuration, are naturally a corollary to whichever nation
holds the country behind them ; that, in one word, Peter, in
this quarter, at least, but took hold of what was absolutely
necessary for the natural development of his country. From
this point of view, Peter the Great intended, by his war
against Sweden, only rearing a Russian Liverpool, and
endowing it with its indispensable strip of coast.
But then, one great fact is slighted over, the tour de force
by which he transferred the capital of the Empire from the
88 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
inland centre to the maritime extremity, the characteristic
boldness with which he erected the new capital on the first
strip of Baltic coast he conquered, almost within gunshot of
the frontier, thus deliberately giving his dominions an
eccentric centre. To transfer the throne of the Czars from
Moscow to Petersburg was to place it in a position where it
could not be safe, even from insult, until the whole coast
from Libau to Tornea was subdued a work not completed
till 1809, by the conquest of Finland. " St. Petersburg is
the window from which Russia can overlook Europe," said
Algarotti. It was from the first a defiance to the Euro
peans, an incentive to further conquest to the Russians.
The fortifications in our own days of Russian Poland are
only a further step in the execution of the same idea.
Modlin, Warsaw, Ivangorod, are more than citadels to keep
a rebellious country in check. They are the same menace
to the west which Petersburg, in its immediate bearing, was
a hundred years ago to the north. They are to transform
Russia into Panslavonia, as the Baltic provinces were to
transform Muscovy into Russia.
Petersburg, the eccentric centre of the empire, pointed at
once to a periphery still to be drawn.
It is, then, not the mere conquest of the Baltic provinces
which separates the policy of Peter the Great from that of
his ancestors, but it is the transfer of the capital which
reveals the true meaning of his Baltic conquests. Peters
burg was not like Muscovy, the centre of a race, but the
seat of a government ; not the slow work of a people, but
the instantaneous creation of a man ; not the medium from
which the peculiarities of an inland people radiate, but the
maritime extremity where they are lost ; not the tradi
tionary nucleus of a national development, but the deliber
ately chosen abode of a cosmopolitan intrigue. By the
transfer of the capital, Peter cut off the natural ligaments
which bound up the encroaching system of the old Musco
vite Czars with the natural abilities and aspirations of the
great Russian race. By planting his capital on the margin
of a sea, he put to open defiance the anti-maritime instincts
of that race, and degraded it to a mere weight in his politi-
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 89
cal mechanism. Since the 16th century Muscovy had made
no important acquisitions but on the side of Siberia, and to
the 16th century the dubious conquests made towards the
west and the south were only brought about by direct
agency on the east. By the transfer of the capital, Peter
proclaimed that he, on the contrary, intended working on
the east and the immediately neighbouring countries
through the agency of the west. If the agency through
the east was narrowly circumscribed by the stationary
character and the limited relations of Asiatic peoples, the
agency through the west became at once illimited and
universal from the movable character and the all-sided
relations of Western Europe. The transfer of the capital
denoted this intended change of agency, which the conquest
of the Baltic provinces afforded the means of achieving, by
securing at once to Russia the supremacy among the neigh
bouring Northern States ; by putting it into immediate and
constant contact with all points of Europe ; by laying the
basis of a material bond with the maritime Powers, which
by this conquest became dependent on Russia for their naval
stores ; a dependence not existing as long as Muscovy, the
country that produced the great bulk of the naval stores,
had got no outlets of its own ; while Sweden, the Power
that held these outlets, had not got the country lying be
hind them.
If the Muscovite Czars, who worked their encroachments
by the agency principally of the Tartar Khans, were obliged
to tartarize Muscovy, Peter the Great, who resolved upon
working through the agency of the west, was obliged to
civilize Russia. In grasping upon the Baltic provinces, he
seized at once the tools necessary for this process. They
afforded him not only the diplomatists and the generals, the
brains with which to execute his system of political and
military action on the west, they yielded him, at the
same time, a crop of bureaucrats, schoolmasters, and drill-
sergeants, who were to drill Russians into that varnish of
civilization that adapts them to the technical appliances of
the "Western peoples, without imbuing them with their
ideas.
90 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
Neither the Sea of Azof, nor the Black Sea, nor the
Caspian Sea, could open to Peter this direct passage to
Europe. Besides, during his lifetime still Taganrog,
Azof, the Black Sea, with its new-formed Russian fleets,
ports, and dockyards, were again abandoned or given up to
the Turk. The Persian conquest, too, proved a premature
enterprise. Of the four wars which fill the military life of
Peter the Great, his first war, that against Turkey, the
fruits of which were lost in a second Turkish war, con
tinued in one respect the traditionary struggle with the
Tartars. In another respect, it was but the prelude to the
war against Sweden, of which the second Turkish war
forms an episode and the Persian war an epilogue. Thus
the war against Sweden, lasting during twenty-one years,
almost absorbs the military life of Peter the Great.
Whether we consider its purpose, its results, or its endur
ance, we may justly call it the war of Peter the Great. His
whole creation hinges upon the conquest of the Baltic coast.
Now, suppose we were altogether ignorant of the details
of his operations, military and diplomatic. The mere fact
that the conversion of Muscovy into Russia was brought
about by its transformation from a half-Asiatic inland
country into the paramount maritime Power of the Baltic,
would it not enforce upon us the conclusion that England,
the greatest maritime Power of that epoch a maritime
Power lying, too, at the very gates of the Baltic, where,
since the middle of the 17th century, she had maintained
the attitude of supreme arbiter that England must have
had her hand in this great change, that she must have
proved the main prop or the main impediment of the plans
of Peter the Great, that during the long protracted and
deadly struggle between Sweden and Russia she must have
turned the balance, that if we do not find her straining
every nerve in order to save the Swede we may be sure of
her having employed all the means at her disposal for
furthering the Muscovite ? And yet, in what is commonly
called history, England does hardly appear on the plan of
this grand drama, and is represented as a spectator rather
than as an actor. Real history will show that the Khans
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURA 9*
of the Golden Horde were no more instrumental in realizing
the plans of Ivan III. and his predecessors than the rulers
of England were in realizing the plans of Peter I. and his
successors.
y. The pamphlets which we have reprinted, written as they
were by English contemporaries of Peter the Great, are far
from concurring in the common delusions of later historians.
They emphatically denounce England as the mightiest tool
of Russia. The same position is taken up by the pamphlet
of which we shall now give a short analysis, and with
which we shall conclude the introduction to the diplomatic
revelations. It is entitled, " Truth is but Truth as it is
timed; or, our Ministry s present measures against the Mus
covite vindicated, etc., etc. Humbly dedicated to the House
of C., London, 1719."
The former pamphlets we have reprinted, were written
at, or shortly after, the time when, to use the words of a
modern admirer of Russia, " Peter traversed the Baltic Sea
as master at the head of the combined squadrons of all the
northern Powers, England included, which gloried in sailing
under his orders." In 1719, however, when Truth is but
Truth was published, the face of affairs seemed altogether
changed. Charles XII. was dead, and the English Govern
ment now pretended to side with Sweden, and to wage war
against Russia. There are other circumstances connected
with this anonymous pamphlet which claim particular
notice. It purports to be an extract from a relation, which,
on his return from Muscovy, in August, 1715, its author,
by order of George I., drew up and handed over to Viscount
Townshend, then Secretary of State.
" It happens," says lie, " to be an advantage that at present I may
own to have been the first so happy to foresee, or honest to forewarn
our Court here, of the absolute necessity of our then breaking with
the Czar, and shutting him out again of the Baltic." " My relation dis
covered his aim as to other States, and even to the German Empire, to
which, although an inland Power, he had offered to annex Livonia as
an Electorate, so that ho could but be admitted as an elector. It drew
attention to the Czar s then contemplated assumption of the title of
Autocrator. Being head of the Greek Church he would be owned by
the other potentates as head of the Greek Empire. I am not to say
92 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
how reluctant we would be to acknowledge that title, since we have
already made an ambassador treat him with the title of Imperial
Majesty, which the Swede has never yet condescended to."
For some time attached to the British Embassy in Mus
covy, our author, as he states, was later on " dismissed the
service, because the Czar desired it" having made sure that
u I had given our Court such light into his affairs as is contained in this
paper ; for which I beg leave to appeal to the King, and to vouch the
Viscount Townshend, who heard his Majesty give that vindication."
"And yet, notwithstanding all this, I have been for these five years
past kept soliciting for a very long arrear still due, and whereof I
contracted the greatest part in executing a commission for her late
Majesty."
The anti-Muscovite attitude, suddenly assumed by the
Stanhope Cabinet, our author looks to in rather a sceptic
mood.
" I do not pretend to foreclose, by this paper, the Ministry of that
applause due to them from the public, when they shall satisfy us as to
what the motives were which made them, till but yesterday, straiten
the Swede in everything, although then our ally as much as now ; or
strengthen, by all the ways they could, the Czar, although under no
tie, but barely that of amity with Great Britain. ... At the
minute I write this I learn that the gentleman who brought the
Muscovites, not yet three years ago, as a ro3 7 al navy, not under our
protection, on their first appearance in the Baltic, is again authorized
by the persons now in power, to give the Czar a second meeting in
these seas. For what reason or to what good end? "
The gentleman hinted at is Admiral Norris, whose Baltic
campaign against Peter I. seems, indeed, to be the original
pattern upon which the recent naval campaigns of Admirals
Napier and Dundas were cut out.
The restoration to Sweden of the Baltic provinces is re
quired by the commercial as well as the political interest of
Great Britain. Such is the pith of our author s argument :
" Trade is become the very life of our State ; and what food is to life,
naval stores are to a fleet. The whole trade we drive with all the
other nations of the earth, at best, is but lucrative ; this, of the north,
is indispensably needful, and may not be improperly termed the sacra
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURA 93
embole of Great Britain, as being its chiefest foreign vent, for the
support of all our trade, and our safety at home. As woollen manu
factures and minerals are the staple commodities of Great Britain, so
are likewise naval stores those of Muscovy, as also of all those very
provinces in the Baltic which the Czar has so lately wrested from the
crown of Sweden. Since those provinces have been in the Czar s pos
session, Pernan is entirely waste. At Revel we have not one British
merchant left, and all the trade which was formerly at Narwa is now
brought to Petersburg. . . . The Swede could never possibly
engross the trade of our subjects, because those seaports in his hands
were but so many thoroughfares from whence these commodities were
uttered, the places of their produce or manufacture lying behind those
ports, in the dominions of the Czar. But, if left to the Czar, these
Baltic ports are no more thoroughfares, but peculiar magazines from
the inland countries of the Czar s own dominions. Having already
Archangel in the White Sea, to leave him but any seaport in the
Baltic were to put no less in his hands than the two keys of the
general magazines of all the naval stores of Europe ; it being known
that Danes, Swedes, Poles, and Prussians have but single and distinct
branches of those commodities in their several dominions. If the
Czar should thus engross the supply of what we cannot do without,
where then is our fleet ? Or, indeed, where is the security for all our
trade to any part of the earth besides?"
If, then, the interest of British commerce requires to ex
clude the Czar from the Baltic, the interest of our State
ought to be no less a spur to quicken us to that attempt.
By the interest of our State I would be understood to mean
neither the party measures of a Ministry, nor any foreign
motives of a Court, but precisely what is, and ever must^be,
the immediate concern, either for the safety, ease, dignity,
or emolument of the Crown, as well as the common weal of
Great Britain. With respect to the Baltic, it has " from
the earliest period of our naval power" always been con
sidered a fundamental interest of our State : first, to prevent
the rise there of any new maritime Power ; and, secondly,
to maintain the balance of power between Denmark and
Sweden.
" One instance of the wisdom and foresight of our then truly British
statesmen is the peace at Stalboa, in the year 1617. James the First
was the mediator of that treaty, by which the Muscovite was obliged
to give up all the provinces which he then was possessed of in the
Baltic, and to be barely an inland Power on this side of Europe,"
94 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
The same policy of preventing a new maritime Power
from starting in the Baltic was acted upon by Sweden and
Denmark.
a Who knows not that the Emperor s attempt to get a seaport in
Pomerania weighed no less with the great Gustavus than any other
motive for carrying his arms even into the bowels of the house of
Austria ? What befel, at the times of Charles Gustavus, the crown of
Poland itself, who, besides it being in those days by far the mightiest
of any of the northern Powers, had then a long stretch of coast on,
and some ports in, the Baltic? The Danes, though then in alliance
with Poland, would never allow them, even for their assistance against
the Swedes, to have a fleet in the Baltic, but destroyed the Polish ships
wherever they could meet them."
As to the maintenance of the balance of power between
the established maritime States of the Baltic, the tradition
of British policy is no less clear. " When the Swedish
power gave us some uneasiness there by threatening to
crush Denmark/ the honour of our country was kept up
by retrieving the then inequality of the balance of power.
The Commonwealth of England sent in a squadron to the
Baltic which brought on the treaty of E-oskild (1658), after
wards confirmed at Copenhagen (i860). The fire of straw
kindled by the Danes in the times of King William III.
was as speedily quenched by George Bock in the treaty of
Copenhagen.
Such was the hereditary British policy.
"It never entered into the mind of the politicians of those times
in order to bring the scale again to rights, to find out the happy
expedient of raising a third naval Power for framing a juster balance
in the Baltic. . . . Who has taken this counsel against Tyre, the
crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the
honourables of the earth ? Ego autem neminem nomino, quare irasci
mihi nemo poterit, nisi qui ante de se noluerit confiteri. Posterity
will be under some difficulty to believe that this could be the icork
of any of the persons now in power . . . that we have opened
St. Petersburg to the Czar solely at our own expense, and without
any risk to him. . . . "
The safest line of policy would be to return to the treaty
of Itolbowa, and to suffer the Muscovite no longer " to nestle
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 95
in the Baltic." Yet, it may be said, that in " the present
state of affairs" it would be "difficult to retrieve the ad
vantage we hava lost by not curbing, when it was more
easy, the growth of the Muscovite power." A middle course
may be thought more convenient.
" If we should find it consistent with the welfare of our State that
the Muscovite have an inlet into the Baltic, as having, of all the
princes of Europe, a country that can be made most beneficial to its
prince, by uttering its produce to foreign markets. In this case, it
were but reasonable to expect, on the other hand, that in return for
our complying so far with his interest, for the improvement of his
country, his Czarish Majesty, on his part, should demand nothing that
may tend to the disturbance of another ; and, therefore, contenting
himself with ships of trade, should demand none of war."
" "We should thus preclude his hopes of being ever more than an
inland Power," but " obviate every objection of using the Czar worse
than any Sovereign Prince may expect. I shall not for this give an
instance of a Republic of Genoa, or another in the Baltic itself, of the
Duke of Courland ; bat will assign Poland and Prussia, who, though
both now crowned heads, have ever contented themselves with the
freedom of an open traffic, without insisting on a fleet. Or the treaty
of Falczin, between the Turk and Muscovite, by which Peter was
forced not only to restore Asoph, and to part with all his men-of-war
in those parts, but also to content himself with the bare freedom of
traffic in the Black Sea. Even an inlet in the Baltic for trade is
much beyond what he could morally have promised himself not yet so
long ago on the issue of his war with Sweden."
If the Czar refuss to agre3 to such " a healing tempera
ment," we shall have "nothing to regret but the time we
lost to exert all the means that Heaven has made us master
of, to reduce him to a peace advantageous to Great Britain."
War would become inevitable. In that case
" it ought no less to animate our Ministry to pursue their present
measures, than fire with indignation the breast of every honest Briton
that a Czar of Muscovy, who owes his naval skill to our instructions,
and his grandeur to our forbearance, should so soon deny to Great
Britain the terms which so few years ago he was fain to take up with
from the Sublime Porte."
" Tis every way our interest to have the Swede restored to those
provinces which the Muscovite has wrested from that crown in the
Baltic. Great Britain can no longer hold the balance in that sea,"
96 SECRET DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
since she " has raised the Muscovite to be a maritime Power there.
. . ^ Had we performed the articles of our alliance made by King
William with the crown of Sweden, that gallant nation would ever
have been a bar strong enough against the Czar coining into the
Baltic. . . . Time must confirm us, that the Muscovite s expulsion
from the Baltic is now the principal end of our Ministry."
Butler & Tanner. The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
D
287
M35
Marx, Karl, 1818-1833
Secret diplomatic
h5story of the
eighteenth century,
S. Sonnenschein
(1899)
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