Kitabı oku: «The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia», sayfa 16

CHAP. XXVI

New travels of the czar.

Wismar was at this time besieged by the czar's allies. This town, which belonged of right to the duke of Mecklenburg, is situated on the Baltic, about seven leagues distant from Lubec, and might have rivalled that city in its extensive trade, being once one of the most considerable of the Hans Towns, and the duke of Mecklenburg exercised therein a full power of protection, rather than of sovereignty. This was one of the German territories yet remaining to the Swedes, in virtue of the peace of Westphalia: but it was now obliged to share the same fate with Stralsund. The allies of the czar pushed the siege with the greatest vigour, in order to make themselves masters of it before that prince's troops should arrive; but Peter himself coming before the place in person, after the capitulation, (Feb. 1716,) which had been made without his privacy, made the garrison prisoners of war. He was not a little incensed, that his allies should have left the king of Denmark in possession of a town which was the right of a prince, who had married his niece; and his resentment on this occasion (which that artful minister, de Gortz, soon after turned to his own advantage) laid the first foundation of the peace, which he meditated to bring about between the czar and Charles XII.

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

In the meantime, Peter was desirous to make a second tour through Europe. He had undertaken his first, as a person who travelled for instruction in the arts and sciences: but this second he made as a prince, who wanted to dive into the secrets of the several courts. He took the czarina with him to Copenhagen, Lubec, Schwerin, and Nystadt. He had an interview with the king of Prussia at the little town of Aversburg, from thence he and the empress went to Hamburg, and to Altena, which had been burned by the Swedes, and which they caused to be rebuilt. Descending the Elbe as far as Stade, they passed through Bremen, where the magistrates prepared a firework and illuminations for them, which formed, in a hundred different places, these words – 'Our deliverer is come amongst us.' At length he arrived once more at Amsterdam, (Dec. 17, 1716,) and visited the little hut at Saardam, where he had first learned the art of ship-building, about eighteen years before, and found his old dwelling converted into a handsome and commodious house, which is still to be seen, and goes by the name of the Prince's House.

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

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

The czarina had been left behind at Schwerin indisposed, being greatly advanced in her pregnancy; nevertheless, as soon as she was able to travel, she set out to join the czar in Holland, but was taken in labour at Wesel, and there delivered of a prince, (Jan. 14, 1717,) who lived but one day. It is not customary with us for a lying-in-woman to stir abroad for some time; but the czarina set out, and arrived at Amsterdam in ten days after her labour. She was very desirous to see the little cabin her husband had lived and worked in. Accordingly, she and the czar went together, without any state or attendance, excepting only two servants, and dined at the house of a rich ship-builder of Saardam, whose name was Kalf, and who was one of the first who had traded to Petersburg. His son had lately arrived from France, whither Peter was going. The czar and czarina took great pleasure in hearing an adventure of this young man, which I should not mention here, only as it may serve to shew the great difference between the manners of that country and ours.

Old Kalf, who had sent this son of his to Paris, to learn the French tongue, was desirous that he should live in a genteel manner during his stay there; and accordingly had ordered him to lay aside the plain garb which the inhabitants of Saardam are in general accustomed to wear, and to provide himself with fashionable clothes at Paris, and to live, in a manner, rather suitable to his fortune than his education; being sufficiently well acquainted with his son's disposition to know, that this indulgence would have no bad effect on his natural frugality and sobriety.

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

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

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

CHAP. XXVII

Continuation of the Travels of Peter the Great. – Conspiracy of baron Gortz. – Reception of the czar in France.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gortz, from the borders of the Baltic Sea, soon formed a connexion with Alberoni in Spain. The cardinal and he both held a correspondence with all the wandering English who were in the interest of the house of Stuart. Gortz made visits to every place where he thought he was likely to find any enemies of king George, and went successively to Germany, Holland, Flanders, and Lorrain, and at length came to Paris, about the end of the year 1716. Cardinal Alberoni began, by remitting to him in Paris a million of French livres, in order (to use the cardinal's expression) to set fire to the train.

Gortz proposed, that Charles XII. should yield up several places to the czar, in order to be in a condition to recover all the others from his enemies, and that he might be at liberty to make a descent in Scotland, while the partisans of the Stuart family should make an effectual rising in England: after their former vain attempts to effect these views, it was necessary to deprive the king of England of his chief support, which at that time was the regent of France. It was certainly very extraordinary, to see France in league with England, against the grandson of Lewis XIV., whom she herself had placed on the throne of Spain, at the expence of her blood and treasure, notwithstanding the strong confederacy formed to oppose him; but it must be considered, that every thing was now out of its natural order, and the interests of the regent not those of the kingdom. Alberoni, at that time, was carrying on a confederacy in France against this very regent.⁹⁷ And the foundations of this grand project were laid almost as soon as the plan itself had been formed. Gortz was the first who was let into the secret, and was to have made a journey into Italy in disguise, to hold a conference with the pretender, in the neighbourhood of Rome; from thence he was to have hastened to the Hague, to have an interview with the czar, and then to have settled every thing with the king of Sweden.

The author of this History is particularly well informed of every circumstance here advanced, for baron Gortz proposed to him to accompany him in these journies; and, notwithstanding he was very young at that time, he was one of the first witnesses to a great part of these intrigues.

Gortz returned from Holland in the latter part of 1716, furnished with bills of exchange from cardinal Alberoni, and letters plenipotentiary from Charles XII. It is incontestable that the Jacobite party were to have made a rising in England, while Charles, in his return from Norway, was to make a descent in the north of Scotland. This prince, who had not been able to preserve his own dominions on the continent, was now going to invade and overrun those of his neighbours, and just escaped from his prison in Turkey, and from amidst the ruins of his own city of Stralsund, Europe might have beheld him placing the crown of Great Britain on the head of James III. in London, as he had before done that of Poland on Stanislaus at Warsaw.

The czar, who was acquainted with a part of Gortz's projects, waited for the unfolding of the rest, without entering into any of his plans, or indeed knowing them all. He was as fond of great and extraordinary enterprises as Charles XII., Gortz, or Alberoni; but then it was as the founder of a state, a lawgiver, and a sound politician; and perhaps Alberoni, Gortz, and even Charles himself, were rather men of restless souls, who sought after great adventures, than persons of solid understanding, who took their measures with a just precaution; or perhaps, after all, their ill successes may have subjected them to the charge of rashness and imprudence.

During Gortz's stay at the Hague, the czar did not see him, as it would have given too much umbrage to his friends the states-general, who were in close alliance with, and attached to, the party of the king of England; and even his ministers visited him only in private, and with great precaution, having orders from their master to hear all he had to offer, and to flatter him with hopes, without entering into any engagement, or making use of his (the czar's) name in their conferences. But, notwithstanding all these precautions, those who understood the nature of affairs, plainly saw by his inactivity, when he might have made a descent upon Scania with the joint fleets of Russia and Denmark, by his visible coolness towards his allies, and the little regard he paid to their complaints, and lastly, by this journey of his, that there was a great change in affairs, which would very soon manifest itself.

In the month of January, 1717, a Swedish packet-boat, which was carrying letters over to Holland, being forced by a storm upon the coast of Norway, put into harbour there. The letters were seized, and those of baron de Gortz and some other public ministers being opened, furnished sufficient evidence of the projected revolution. The court of Denmark communicated these letters to the English ministry, who gave orders for arresting the Swedish minister, Gillembourg, then at the court of London, and seizing his papers; upon examining which they discovered part of his correspondence with the Jacobites.

Feb. 1717.] King George immediately wrote to the states-general, requiring them to cause the person of baron Gortz to be arrested, agreeable to the treaty of union subsisting between England and that republic for their mutual security. But this minister, who had his creatures and emissaries in every part, was quickly informed of this order; upon which he instantly quitted the Hague, and was got as far as Arnheim, a town on the frontiers, when the officers and guards, who were in pursuit of him, and who are seldom accustomed to use such diligence in that country, came up with and took him, together with all his papers: he was strictly confined and severely treated; the secretary Stank, the person who had counterfeited the sign manual of the young duke of Holstein, in the affair of Toningen, experienced still harsher usage. In fine, the count of Gillembourg, the Swedish envoy to the court of Great Britain, and the baron de Gortz, minister plenipotentiary from Charles XII. were examined like criminals, the one at London, and the other at Arnheim, while all the foreign ministers exclaimed against this violation of the law of nations.

This privilege, which is much more insisted upon than understood, and whose limits and extent have never yet been fixed, has, in almost every age, received violent attacks. Several ministers have been driven from the courts where they resided in a public character, and even their persons have been more than once seized upon, but this was the first instance of foreign ministers being interrogated at the bar of a court of justice, as if they were natives of the country. The court of London and the states-general laid aside all rules upon seeing the dangers which menaced the house of Hanover; but, in fact, this danger, when once discovered, ceased to be any longer danger, at least at that juncture.

The historian Norberg must have been very ill informed, and have had a very indifferent knowledge of men and things, or at least have been strangely blinded by partiality, or under severe restrictions from his own court, to endeavour to persuade his readers, that the king of Sweden had not a very great share in this plot.

The affront offered to his ministers fixed Charles more than ever in his resolution to try every means to dethrone the king of England. But here he found it necessary, once in his life time, to make use of dissimulation. He disowned his ministers and their proceedings, both to the regent of France and the states-general; from the former of whom he evicted a subsidy, and with the latter it was for his interest to keep fair. He did not, however, give the king of England so much satisfaction, and his ministers, Gortz and Gillembourg, were kept six months in confinement, and this repeated insult animated in him the desire of revenge.

Peter, in the midst of all these alarms and jealousies, kept himself quiet, waiting with patience the event of all from time; and having established such good order throughout his vast dominions, as that he had nothing to fear, either at home or from abroad, he resolved to make a journey to France. Unhappily he did not understand the French language, by which means he was deprived of the greatest advantage he might have reaped from his journey; but he thought there might be something there worthy observation, and he had a mind to be a nearer witness of the terms on which the regent stood with the king of England, and whether that prince was staunch to his alliance.

Peter the Great was received in France as such a monarch ought to be. Marshal Tessé was sent to meet him, with a number of the principal lords of the court, a company of guards and the king's coaches; but he, according to his usual custom, travelled with such expedition, that he was at Gournay when the equipages arrived at Elbeuf. Entertainments were made for him in every place on the road where he chose to partake of them. On his arrival he was received in the Louvre, where the royal apartments were prepared for him, and others for the princes Kourakin and Dolgorouki, the vice-chancellor Shaffiroff, the ambassador Tolstoy, the same who had suffered in his person that notorious violation of the laws of nations in Turkey, and for the rest of his retinue. Orders were given for lodging and entertaining him in the most splendid and sumptuous manner: but Peter, who was come only to see what might be of use to him, and not to suffer these ceremonious triflings, which were a restraint upon his natural plainness, and consumed a time that was precious to him, went the same night to take up his lodgings at the other end of the city in the hotel of Lesdiguiére, belonging to marshal Villeroi, where he was entertained at the king's expense in the same manner as he would have been at the Louvre. The next day (May 8, 1717.) the regent of France went to make him a visit in the before mentioned hotel, and the day afterwards the young king, then an infant, was sent to him under the care of his governor, the marshal de Villeroi, whose father had been governor to Lewis XIV. On this occasion, they, by a polite artifice, spared the czar the troublesome restraint of returning this visit immediately after receiving it, by allowing an interview of two days for him to receive the respects of the several corporations of the city; the second night he went to visit the king: the household were all under arms, and they brought the young king quite to the door of the czar's coach. Peter, surprised and uneasy at the prodigious concourse of people assembled about the infant monarch, took him in his arms, and carried him in that manner for some time.

Certain ministers, of more cunning than understanding, have pretended in their writings, that marshal de Villeroi wanted to make the young king of France take the upper hand on this occasion, and that the czar made use of this stratagem to overturn the ceremonial under the appearance of good nature and tenderness; but this notion is equally false and absurd. The natural good breeding of the French court, and the respect due to the person of Peter the Great, would not permit a thought of turning the honours intended him into an affront. The ceremonial consisted in doing every thing for a great monarch and a great man, that he himself could have desired, if he had given any attention to matters of this kind. The journeys of the emperor Charles IV. Sigismund, and Charles V. to France, were by no means comparable, in point of splendour, to this of Peter the Great. They visited this kingdom only from motives of political interest, and at a time when the arts and sciences, as yet in their infancy, could not render the era of their journey so memorable: but when Peter the Great, on his going to dine with the duke d'Antin, in the palace of Petitbourg, about three leagues out of Paris, saw his own picture, which had been drawn for the occasion, brought on a sudden, and placed in a room where he was, he then found that no people in the world knew so well how to receive such a guest as the French.

He was still more surprised, when, on going to see them strike the medals in the long gallery of the Louvre, where all the king's artists are so handsomely lodged; a medal, which they were then striking, happening to fall to the ground, the czar stooped hastily down to take it up, when he beheld his own head engraved thereon, and on the reverse a Fame standing with one foot upon a globe, and underneath these words from Virgil – 'Vires acquirit eundo;' an allusion equally delicate and noble, and elegantly adapted to his travels and his fame. Several of these medals in gold were presented to him, and to all those who attended him. Wherever he went to view the works of any artists, they laid the master-pieces of their performances at his feet, which they besought him to accept. In a word, when he visited the manufactories of the Gobelins, the workshop of the king's statuaries, painters, goldsmiths, jewellers, or mathematical instrument-makers, whatever seemed to strike his attention at any of those places, were always offered him in the king's name.

Peter, who was a mechanic, an artist, and a geometrician, went to visit the academy of sciences, who received him with an exhibition of every thing they had most valuable and curious; but they had nothing so curious as himself. He corrected, with his own hand, several geographical errors in the charts of his own dominions, and especially in those of the Caspian Sea. Lastly, he condescended to become one of the members of that academy, and afterwards continued a correspondence in experiments and discoveries with those among whom he had enrolled himself as a simple brother. If we would find examples of such travellers as Peter, we must go back to the times of a Pythagoras and an Anacharsis, and even they did not quit the command of a mighty empire, to go in search of instruction.

And here we cannot forbear recalling to the mind of the reader the transport with which Peter the Great was seized on viewing the monument of cardinal Richelieu. Regardless of the beauties of the sculpture, which is a master-piece of its kind, he only admired the image of a minister who had rendered himself so famous throughout Europe by disturbing its peace, and restored to France that glory which she had lost after the death of Henry IV. It is well known, that, embracing the statue with rapture, he burst forth into this exclamation – 'Great man! I would have bestowed one half of my empire on thee, to have taught me to govern the other.' And now, before he quitted France, he was desirous to see the famous madame de Maintenon, whom he knew to be, in fact, the widow of Lewis XIV. and who was now drawing very near her end; and his curiosity was the more excited by the kind of conformity he found between his own marriage and that of Lewis; though with this difference between the king of France and him, that he had publickly married an heroine, whereas Lewis XIV. had only privately enjoyed an amiable wife.

The czarina did not accompany her husband in this journey: he was apprehensive that the excess of ceremony would be troublesome to her, as well as the curiosity of a court little capable of distinguishing the true merit of a woman, who had braved death by the side of her husband both by sea and land, from the banks of the Pruth to the coast of Finland.