greater advantage, and to accept the inheritance. This naturally roused all the antipathies entertained by other nations against France, and England and Holland went over to the side of Austria. The opposition which these two powers had offered to the erection of a new throne was now silenced, and they beheld a common interest in the elevation of the house of Brandenburg.
Frederick had, moreover, already come to an understanding with the King of Poland, though not with the Republic; so that, thus supported, and with the consent of all his old allies, he could now celebrate the splendid coronation for which his heart had so long panted.
We will not describe here the ceremonial of January 18,1701; to our taste it seems overcharged when we read the account of it. But there is a certain grandeur in the idea of the sovereign’s grasping the crown with his own hand; and the performance of the ceremony of anointing after, instead of before, the crowning, by two priests promoted to bishoprics for the occasion, was a protest against the dependence of the temporal on the spiritual power, such as perhaps never was made at any other coronation either before or since. The spiritual element showed itself in the only attitude of authority left to it in Protestant states: that of teaching and exhortation. The provost of Berlin demonstrated, from the examples of Christ and of David, that the government of kings must be carried on to the glory of God and the good of their people. He lays down as the first principle that all rulers should bear in mind, they have come into the world for the sake of their subjects, and not their subjects for the sake of them. Finally, he exhorts all his hearers to pray to God that he will deeply impress this conviction upon the hearts of all sovereign princes.
The institution of the order of the Black Eagle, which immediately preceded the coronation, was likewise symbolical of the duties of royalty. The words “_Suum cuique_,” on the insignia of the order, according to Lamberty, who suggested them, contain the definition of a good government, under which all men alike, good as well as bad, are rewarded according to their several deserts. The laurel and the lightning denote reward and punishment. The conception at least is truly royal. Leibnitz, who was at that time closely connected with the court, and who busied himself very much with this affair, justly observes that nothing is complete without a name, and that, although the Elector did already possess every royal attribute, he became truly a king only by being called so.
Although the new dignity rested only on the possession of Prussia, all the other provinces were included in the rank and title; those belonging to the German empire were thus in a manner chosen out from among the other German states, and united into a new whole, though, at the same time, care was taken in other respects to keep up the ancient connection with the empire. Thus we see that the elevation of the Elector to a royal title was an important, nay, even a necessary, impulse to the progress of Prussia, which we cannot even in thought separate from the whole combination of events.
The name of Prussia now became inseparable from an idea of military power and glory, which was increased by splendid feats of arms, such as those which we have already enumerated.
%FOUNDING OF ST. PETERSBURG%
A.D. 1703
K. WALISZEWSKI[1]
[Footnote 1: Translated from the Russian by Lady Mary Loyd.]
So radical and so vigorous were the changes made by Peter the Great in Russia that they roused the opposition of almost the entire nation. Moscow, the ancient capital, was the chief seat of this protesting conservatism; and Peter, resolved to teach his opponents how determined he was in his course and how helpless they were against his absolute power, formed the tremendous project of building a wholly new capital, one where no voice could be raised against him, where no traditions should environ him. He chose an icy desert plain looking out toward the waters which led to that Western Europe which he meant to imitate, if not to conquer.
No other man–one is almost tempted to say, no sane man–would have ventured to erect a capital city in such an impossible place and on the very frontier of his dominions. That Peter not only dared, but succeeded, though at an almost immeasurable cost, makes the creation of the great metropolis, St. Petersburg, one of the most remarkable events of history.
It was the chances of the great northern war that led Peter to St. Petersburg. When he first threw down the gauntlet to Sweden he turned his eyes on Livonia–on Narva and Riga. But Livonia was so well defended that he was driven northward, toward Ingria. He moved thither grudgingly, sending, in the first instance, Apraxin, who turned the easily conquered province into a desert. It was not for some time, and gropingly, as it were, that the young sovereign began to see his way, and finally turned his attention and his longings to the mouth of the Neva. In former years Gustavus Adolphus had realized the strategical importance of a position which his successor, Charles XII, did not deem worthy of consideration, and had himself studied all its approaches. Peter not only took it to be valuable from the military and commercial point of view: he also found it most attractive, and would fain have never left it. He was more at home there than anywhere else, and the historical legends, according to which it was true Russian ground, filled him with emotion. No one knows what inspired this fondness on his part. It may have been the vague resemblance of the marshy flats to the lowlands of Holland; it may have been the stirring of some ancestral instinct. According to a legend, accepted by Nestor, it was by the mouth of the Neva that the earliest Norman conquerors of the country passed on their journeys across the Varegian Sea–_their own sea_–and so to Rome.
Peter would seem to have desired to take up the thread of that tradition, nine centuries old; and the story of his own foundation of the town has become legendary and epic. One popular description represents him as snatching a halberd from one of his soldiers, cutting two strips of turf, and laying them crosswise with the words “Here there shall be a town!” Foundation-stones were evidently lacking, and sods had to take their place. Then, dropping the halberd, he seized a spade, and began the first embankment. At that moment an eagle appeared, hovering over the Czar’s head. It was struck by a shot from a musket. Peter took the wounded bird, set it on his wrist, and departed in a boat to inspect the neighborhood. This occurred on May 16, 1703.
History adds that the Swedish prisoners employed on the work died in thousands. The most indispensable tools were lacking. There were no wheelbarrows, and the earth was carried in the corners of men’s clothing. A wooden fort was first built on the island bearing the Finnish name of Ianni-Saari (Hare Island). This was the future citadel of St. Peter and St. Paul. Then came a wooden church, and the modest cottage which was to be Peter’s first palace. Near these, the following year, there rose a Lutheran church, ultimately removed to the left bank of the river, into the Liteinaia quarter, and also a tavern, the famous inn of the Four Frigates, which did duty as a town hall for a long time before it became a place of diplomatic meeting. Then the cluster of modest buildings was augmented by the erection of a bazaar. The Czar’s collaborators gathered round him, in cottages much like his own, and the existence of St. Petersburg became an accomplished fact.
But, up to the time of the battle of Poltava, Peter never thought of making St. Petersburg his capital. It was enough for him to feel he had a fortress and a port. He was not sufficiently sure of his mastery over the neighboring countries, not certain enough of being able to retain his conquest, to desire to make it the centre of his government and his own permanent residence. This idea was not definitely accepted till after his great victory. His final decision has been bitterly criticised, especially by foreign historians; it has been severely judged and remorselessly condemned. Before expressing any opinion of my own on the subject, I should like to sum up the considerations which have been put forward to support this unfavorable verdict.
The great victory, we are told, diminished the strategic importance of St. Petersburg, and almost entirely extinguished its value as a port; while its erection into the capital city of the empire was never anything but madness. Peter, being now the indisputable master of the Baltic shores, had nothing to fear from any Swedish attack in the Gulf of Finland. Before any attempt in that direction, the Swedes were certain to try to recover Narva or Riga. If in later years they turned their eyes to St. Petersburg, it was only because that town had acquired undue and unmerited political importance. It was easy of attack and difficult to defend. There was no possibility of concentrating any large number of troops there, for the whole country, forty leagues round, was a barren desert. In 1788 Catharine II complained that her capital was too near the Swedish frontier, and too much exposed to sudden movements, such as that which Gustavus III very nearly succeeded in carrying out. Here we have the military side of the question.
From the commercial point of view St. Petersburg, we are assured, did command a valuable system of river communication; but that commanded by Riga was far superior. The Livonian, Esthonian, and Courland ports of Riga, Libau, and Revel, all at an equal distance from St. Petersburg and Moscow, and far less removed from the great German commercial centres, enjoyed a superior climate, and were, subsequent to the conquest of the above-mentioned provinces, the natural points of contact between Russia and the West. An eloquent proof of this fact may be observed nowadays in the constant increase of their commerce, and the corresponding decrease of that of St. Petersburg, which has been artificially developed and fostered.
Besides this, the port of St. Petersburg, during the lifetime of its founder, never was anything but a mere project. Peter’s ships were moved from Kronslot to Kronstadt. Between St. Petersburg and Kronstadt the Neva was not, in those days, more than eight feet deep, and Manstein tells us that all ships built at Petersburg had to be dragged, by means of machines fitted with cables, to Kronstadt, where they received their guns. Once these had been taken on board, the vessels could not get upstream again. The port of Kronstadt was closed by ice for six months out of the twelve, and lay in such a position that no sailing-ship could leave it unless the wind blew from the east. There was so little salt in its waters that the ship timbers rotted in a very short time, and, besides, there were no oaks in the surrounding forests, and all such timber had to be brought from Kasan. Peter was so well aware of all these drawbacks that he sought and found a more convenient spot for his shipbuilding yards at Rogerwick, in Esthonia, four leagues from Revel. But here he found difficulty in protecting the anchorage from the effects of hurricanes and from the insults of his enemies. He hoped to insure this by means of two piers, built on wooden caissons filled with stones. He thinned the forests of Livonia and Esthonia to construct it, and finally, the winds and the waves having carried everything away twice over, the work was utterly abandoned.
On the other hand, and from the very outset, the commercial activity of St. Petersburg was hampered by the fact that it was the Czar’s capital. The presence of the court made living dear, and the consequent expense of labor was a heavy drawback to the export trade, which, by its nature, called for a good deal of manual exertion. According to a Dutch resident of that period, a wooden cottage, very inferior to that inhabited by a peasant in the Low Countries, cost from eight hundred to one thousand florins a year at St. Petersburg. A shopkeeper at Archangel could live comfortably on a quarter of that sum. The cost of transport, which amounted to between nine and ten copecks a pood (36.07 pounds), between Moscow and Archangel, five to six between Yaroslaff and Archangel, and three or four between Vologda and Archangel, came to eighteen, twenty, and thirty copecks a pood in the case of merchandise sent from any of these places to St. Petersburg. This accounts for the opposition of the foreign merchants at Archangel to the request that they should remove to St. Petersburg. Peter settled the matter in characteristic fashion, by forbidding any trade in hemp, flax, leather, or corn to pass through Archangel. This rule, though somewhat slackened, in 1714, at the request of the States-General of Holland, remained in force during the great Czar’s reign. In 1718 hemp and some other articles of commerce were allowed free entrance into the port of Archangel, but only on condition that two-thirds of all exports should be sent to St. Petersburg. This puts the case from the maritime and commercial point of view.
As a capital city, St. Petersburg, we are told again, was ill-placed on the banks of the Neva, not only for the reasons already given, but for others, geographical, ethnical, and climatic, which exist even in the present day, and which make its selection an outrage on common-sense. Was it not, we are asked, a most extraordinary whim which induced a Russian to found the capital of his Slavonic empire among the Finns, against the Swedes–to centralize the administration of a huge extent of country in its remotest corner–to retire from Poland and Germany on the plea of drawing nearer to Europe, and to force everyone about him, officials, court, and diplomatic corps, to inhabit one of the most inhospitable spots, under one of the least clement skies, he could possibly have discovered? The whole place was a marsh–the Finnish word neva means “mud”; the sole inhabitants of the neighboring forests were packs of wolves. In 1714, during a winter night, two sentries, posted before the cannon-foundry, were devoured. Even nowadays, the traveller, once outside the town, plunges into a desert. Far away in every direction the great plain stretches; not a steeple, not a tree, not a head of cattle, not a sign of life, whether human or animal. There is no pasturage, no possibility of cultivation–fruit, vegetables, and even corn, are all brought from a distance. The ground is in a sort of intermediate condition between the sea and _terra firma_.
Up to Catharine’s reign inundations were chronic in their occurrence. On September 11, 1706, Peter drew from his pocket the measure he always carried about him, and convinced himself that there were twenty-one inches of water above the floors of his cottage. In all directions he saw men, women, and children clinging to the wreckage of buildings, which was being carried down the river. He described his impressions in a letter to Menshikoff, dated from “Paradise,” and declared it was “extremely amusing.” It may be doubted whether he found many persons to share his delight. Communications with the town, now rendered easy by railways, were in those days not only difficult, but dangerous. Campredon, when he went from Moscow to St. Petersburg, in April, 1723, spent twelve hundred rubles. He lost part of his luggage, eight of his horses were drowned, and after having travelled for four weeks he reached his destination, very ill. Peter himself, who arrived before the French diplomat, had been obliged to ride part of the way, and to swim his horse across the rivers!
But in spite of all these considerations, the importance of which I am far from denying, I am inclined to think Peter’s choice a wise one. Nobody can wonder that the idea of retaining Moscow as his capital was most repugnant to him. The existence of his work in those hostile surroundings–in a place which to this day has remained obstinately reactionary–could never have been anything but precarious and uncertain. It must, after his death at least, if not during his life, have been at the mercy of those popular insurrections before which the sovereign power, as established in the Kremlin, had already so frequently bowed. When Peter carried Muscovy out of her former existence, and beyond her ancient frontiers, he was logically forced to treat the seat of his government in the same manner. His new undertaking resembled, both in aspect and character, a marching and fighting formation, directed toward the west. The leader’s place, and that of his chief residence, was naturally indicated at the head of his column. This once granted, and the principle of the translation of the capital to the western extremity of the Czar’s newly acquired possessions admitted, the advantages offered by Ingria would appear to me to outweigh all the drawbacks previously referred to.
The province was, at that period, virgin soil sparsely inhabited by a Finnish population possessing neither cohesion nor historical consistency, and, consequently, docile and easily assimilated. Everywhere else–all along the Baltic coast, in Esthonia, in Carelia, and in Courland–though the Swedes might be driven out, the Germans still remained firmly settled; the neighborhood of their native country and of the springs of Teutonic culture enduing them with an invincible power of resistance. Riga in the present day, after nearly two centuries of Russian government, is a thoroughly German town. In St. Petersburg, Russia, as a country, became European and cosmopolitan, but the city itself is essentially Russian, and the Finnish element in its neighborhood counts for nothing.
In this matter, though Peter may not have clearly felt and thought it out, he was actuated by the mighty and unerring instinct of his genius. I am willing to admit that here, as in everything else, there was a certain amount of whim, and perhaps some childish desire to ape Amsterdam. I will even go further, and acknowledge that the manner in which he carried out his plan was anything but reasonable. Two hundred thousand laborers, we are told, died during the construction of the new city, and the Russian nobles ruined themselves to build palaces which soon fell out of occupation. But an abyss was opened between the past the reformer had doomed and the future on which he had set his heart, and the national life, thus violently forced into a new channel, was stamped, superficially at first, but more and more deeply by degrees, with the Western and European character he desired to impart.
Moscow, down to the present day, has preserved a religious, almost a monastic air; at every street corner chapels attract the passers-by, and the local population, even at its busiest, crosses itself and bends as it passes before the sacred pictures which rouse its devotion at every turn. St. Petersburg, from the very earliest days, presented a different and quite a secular appearance. At Moscow no public performance of profane music was permitted. At St. Petersburg the Czar’s German musicians played every day on the balcony of his tavern. Toward the middle of the eighteenth century the new city boasted a French theatre and an Italian opera, and Schloezer noted that divine service was performed in fourteen languages! Modern Russia, governed, educated to a certain extent, intellectually speaking emancipated, and relatively liberal, could not have come into existence nor grown in stature elsewhere.
And to conclude: Peter was able to effect this singular change without doing too great violence to the historical traditions of his country. From the earliest days of Russian history, the capital had been removed from place to place–from Novgorod to Kiev, from Kiev to Vladimir, from Vladimir to Moscow. This phenomenon was the consequence of the immense area of the national territory, and the want of consistency in the elements of the national life. From the beginning to the end of an evolution which lasted centuries the centre of gravity of the disjointed, scattered, and floating forces of ancient Russia perpetually changed its place. Thus the creation of St. Petersburg was nothing but the working out of a problem in dynamics. The struggle with Sweden, the conquest of the Baltic provinces, and the yet more important conquest of a position in the European world naturally turned the whole current of the national energies and life in that direction. Peter desired to perpetuate this course. I am inclined to think he acted wisely.
%BATTLE OF BLENHEIM%
CURBING OF LOUIS XIV
A.D. 1704
SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY
Among the decisive battles of the world, that of Blenheim is regarded by historians as one of the most far-reaching in results. “The decisive blow struck at Blenheim,” says Alison, “resounded through every part of Europe. It at once destroyed the vast fabric of power which it had taken Louis XIV so long to construct.” And Creasy himself elsewhere declares: “Had it not been for Blenheim, all Europe might at this day suffer under the effect of French conquests resembling those of Alexander in extent and those of the Romans in durability.”
It was the first great battle in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), which was carried on mainly in Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany. This war followed closely upon the War of the Palatinate, which ended with the Treaty of Ryswick, in 1697. To this peace Louis XIV of France–the most powerful monarch in Europe, who, in spite of his brutal conduct of the war, had really been a loser by it–gave his consent. Among the concessions made by him was his recognition–much against his own interest–of William III as the rightful King of England.
Louis gave his consent to the Treaty of Ryswick partly because of his interest in the question of the Spanish succession. Charles II of Spain–last of the Hapsburg line in that country–was childless, and there were three claimants for the throne; namely, Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV; the Electoral Prince of Bavaria; and Charles, son of Leopold I of Germany, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The real stake was the “balance of power” in Europe. At last, after much wrangling and intrigue among the courts, Charles II bequeathed his throne to the Bavarian Prince, whose death, in 1699, left Europe still divided over the succession.
Finally, Louis XIV completely won Charles II to his side, and Philip of Anjou was named in Charles’ will as his heir. Louis accepted for Philip, who was crowned at Madrid, in 1701, as Philip V, and Europe was stirred to wrath by the greed of the already too powerful French King. Turning now upon England, Louis, in violation of the Treaty of Ryswick, declared the son of the exiled James II rightful king of that country. The result of Louis’ acts was the Grand Alliance of The Hague against France, formed between England, Holland, Prussia, the Holy Roman Empire, Portugal, and Savoy.
On the side of the allies in the war that followed, the great generals were the English Duke of Marlborough, Prince Eugene of Savoy, and Hensius, Pensioner of Holland. France had lost her best generals by death, and Louis was compelled to rely upon inferior men as leaders of his army. War was formally declared against France by the allies May 4, 1702. The early operations were carried on in Flanders, in Germany–on the Upper Rhine–and in Northern Italy.
Marlborough headed the allied troops in Flanders during the first two years of the war, and took some towns from the enemy, but nothing decisive occurred. Nor did any actions of importance take place during this period between the rival armies in Italy. But in the centre of that line from north to south, from the mouth of the Schelde to the mouth of the Po, along which the war was carried on, the generals of Louis XIV acquired advantages in 1703 which threatened one chief member of the Grand Alliance with utter destruction.
France had obtained the important assistance of Bavaria as her confederate in the war. The Elector of this powerful German state made himself master of the strong fortress of Ulm, and opened a communication with the French armies on the Upper Rhine. By this junction the troops of Louis were enabled to assail the Emperor in the very heart of Germany. In the autumn of 1703 the combined armies of the Elector and French King completely defeated the Imperialists in Bavaria; and in the following winter they made themselves masters of the important cities of Augsburg and Passau. Meanwhile the French army of the Upper Rhine and Moselle had beaten the allied armies opposed to them, and taken Treves and Landau. At the same time the discontents in Hungary with Austria again broke out into open insurrection, so as to distract the attention and complete the terror of the Emperor and his council at Vienna.
Louis XIV ordered the next campaign to be commenced by his troops on a scale of grandeur and with a boldness of enterprise such as even Napoleon’s military schemes have seldom equalled. On the extreme left of the line of the war, in the Netherlands, the French armies were to act only on the defensive. The fortresses in the hands of the French there were so many and 30 strong that no serious impression seemed likely to be made by the allies on the French frontier in that quarter during one campaign, and that one campaign was to give France such triumphs elsewhere as would, it was hoped, determine the war. Large detachments were therefore to be made from the French force in Flanders, and they were to be led by Marshal Villeroy to the Moselle and Upper Rhine.
The French army already in the neighborhood of those rivers was to march under Marshal Tallard through the Black Forest, and join the Elector of Bavaria, and the French troops that were already with the Elector under Marshal Marsin. Meanwhile the French army of Italy was to advance through the Tyrol into Austria, and the whole forces were to combine between the Danube and the Inn. A strong body of troops was to be despatched into Hungary, to assist and organize the insurgents in that kingdom; and the French grand army of the Danube was then in collected and irresistible might to march upon Vienna and dictate terms of peace to the Emperor. High military genius was shown in the formation of this plan, but it was met and baffled by a genius higher still.
Marlborough had watched with the deepest anxiety the progress of the French arms on the Rhine and in Bavaria, and he saw the futility of carrying on a war of posts and sieges in Flanders, while death-blows to the empire were being dealt on the Danube. He resolved, therefore, to let the war in Flanders languish for a year, while he moved with all the disposable forces that he could collect to the central scenes of decisive operations. Such a march was in itself difficult; but Marlborough had, in the first instance, to overcome the still greater difficulty of obtaining the consent and cheerful cooperation of the allies, especially of the Dutch, whose frontier it was proposed thus to deprive of the larger part of the force which had hitherto been its protection.
Fortunately, among the many slothful, the many foolish, the many timid, and the not few treacherous rulers, statesmen, and generals of different nations with whom he had to deal, there were two men, eminent both in ability and integrity, who entered fully into Marlborough’s projects and who, from the stations which they occupied, were enabled materially to forward them. One of these was the Dutch statesman Heinsius, who had been the cordial supporter of King William, and who now, with equal zeal and good faith, supported Marlborough in the councils of the allies; the other was the celebrated general, Prince Eugene, whom the Austrian cabinet had recalled from the Italian frontier to take the command of one of the Emperor’s armies in Germany. To these two great men, and a few more, Marlborough communicated his plan freely and unreservedly; but to the general councils of his allies he only disclosed part of his daring scheme.
He proposed to the Dutch that he should march from Flanders to the Upper Rhine and Moselle with the British troops and part of the foreign auxiliaries, and commence vigorous operations against the French armies in that quarter, while General Auverquerque, with the Dutch and the remainder of the auxiliaries, maintained a defensive war in the Netherlands. Having with difficulty obtained the consent of the Dutch to this portion of his project, he exercised the same diplomatic zeal, with the same success, in urging the King of Prussia and other princes of the empire to increase the number of the troops which they supplied, and to post them in places convenient for his own intended movements.
Marlborough commenced his celebrated march on May 10th. The army which he was to lead had been assembled by his brother, General Churchill, at Bedburg, not far from Maestricht, on the Meuse; it included sixteen thousand English troops, and consisted of fifty-one battalions of foot, and ninety-two squadrons of horse. Marlborough was to collect and join with him on his march the troops of Prussia, Luneburg, and Hesse, quartered on the Rhine, and eleven Dutch battalions that were stationed at Rothweil. He had only marched a single day when the series of interruptions, complaints, and requisitions from the other leaders of the allies began, to which he seemed subjected throughout his enterprise, and which would have caused its failure in the hands of anyone not gifted with the firmness and the exquisite temper of Marlborough.
One specimen of these annoyances and of Marlborough’s mode of dealing with them may suffice. On his encamping at Kupen on the 20th, he received an express from Auverquerque pressing him to halt, because Villeroy, who commanded the French army in Flanders, had quitted the lines which he had been occupying, and crossed the Meuse at Namur with thirty-six battalions and forty-five squadrons, and was threatening the town of Huy. At the same time Marlborough received letters from the Margrave of Baden and Count Wratislaw, who commanded the Imperialist forces at Stollhoffen, near the left bank of the Rhine, stating that Tallard had made a movement, as if intending to cross the Rhine, and urging him to hasten his march toward the lines of Stollhoffen. Marlborough was not diverted by these applications from the prosecution of his grand design.
Conscious that the army of Villeroy would be too much reduced to undertake offensive operations, by the detachments which had already been made toward the Rhine, and those which must follow his own march, he halted only a day to quiet the alarms of Auverquerque. To satisfy also the Margrave, he ordered the troops of Hompesch and Buelow to draw toward Philippsburg, though with private injunctions not to proceed beyond a certain distance. He even exacted a promise to the same effect from Count Wratislaw, who at this juncture arrived at the camp to attend him during the whole campaign.
Marlborough reached the Rhine at Coblenz, where he crossed that river, and then marched along its left bank to Broubach and Mainz. His march, though rapid, was admirably conducted, so as to save the troops from all unnecessary fatigue; ample supplies of provisions were ready, and the most perfect discipline was maintained. By degrees Marlborough obtained more reinforcements from the Dutch and the other confederates, and he also was left more at liberty by them to follow his own course. Indeed, before even a blow was struck, his enterprise had paralyzed the enemy and had materially relieved Austria from the pressure of the war. Villeroy, with his detachments from the French Flemish army, was completely bewildered by Marlborough’s movements, and, unable to divine where it was that the English general meant to strike his blow, wasted away the early part of the summer between Flanders and the Moselle without effecting anything.[1]
[Footnote 1: “Marshal Villeroy,” says Voltaire, “who had wished to follow Marlborough on his first marches, suddenly lost sight of him altogether, and only learned where he really was on hearing of his victory at Donawert.”]
Marshal Tallard, who commanded forty-five thousand French at Strasburg, and who had been destined by Louis to march early in the year into Bavaria, thought that Marlborough’s march along the Rhine was preliminary to an attack upon Alsace; and the marshal therefore kept his forty-five thousand men back in order to protect France in that quarter. Marlborough skilfully encouraged his apprehensions by causing a bridge to be constructed across the Rhine at Philippsburg, and by making the Landgrave of Hesse advance his artillery at Mannheim, as if for a siege of Landau.
Meanwhile the Elector of Bavaria and Marshal Marsin, suspecting that Marlborough’s design might be what it really proved to be, forbore to press upon the Austrians opposed to them or to send troops into Hungary; and they kept back so as to secure their communications with France. Thus, when Marlborough, at the beginning of June, left the Rhine and marched for the Danube, the numerous hostile armies were uncombined and unable to check him.
“With such skill and science,” says Coxe, “had this enterprise been concerted that at the very moment when it assumed a specific direction the enemy was no longer enabled to render it abortive. As the march was now to be bent toward the Danube, notice was given for the Prussians, Palatines, and Hessians, who were stationed on the Rhine, to order their march so as to join the main body in its progress. At the same time directions were sent to accelerate the advance of the Danish auxiliaries, who were marching from the Netherlands.”
Crossing the river Neckar, Marlborough marched in a southeastern direction to Mundelshene, where he had his first personal interview with Prince Eugene, who was destined to be his colleague on so many glorious fields. Thence, through a difficult and dangerous country, Marlborough continued his march against the Bavarians, whom he encountered on July 2d on the heights of the Schullenberg, near Donauwoerth. Marlborough stormed their intrenched camp, crossed the Danube, took several strong places in Bavaria, and made himself completely master of the Elector’s dominions except the fortified cities of Munich and Augsburg. But the Elector’s army, though defeated at Donauwoerth, was still numerous and strong; and at last Marshal Tallard, when thoroughly apprised of the real nature of Marlborough’s movements, crossed the Rhine; and being suffered, through the supineness of the German general at Stollhoffen, to march without loss through the Black Forest, he united his powerful army at Biberach, near Augsburg, with that of the Elector and the French troops under Marshal Marsin, who had previously been cooperating with the Bavarians.
On the other hand, Marlborough recrossed the Danube, and on August 11th united his army with the Imperialist forces under Prince Eugene. The combined armies occupied a position near Hoechstaedt,[1] a little higher up the left bank of the Danube than Donauwoerth, the scene of Marlborough’s recent victory, and almost exactly on the ground where Marshal Villars and the Elector had defeated an Austrian army in the preceding year. The French marshals and the Elector were now in position a little further to the east, between Blenheim and Lützingen, and with the little stream of the Nebel between them and the troops of Marlborough and Eugene. The Gallo-Bavarian army consisted of about sixty thousand men, and they had sixty-one pieces of artillery. The army of the allies was about fifty-six thousand strong, with fifty-two guns.
[Footnote 1: The Battle of Blenheim is called by the Germans and the French the battle of Hoechstaedt.–ED.]
Although the French army of Italy had been unable to penetrate into Austria, and although the masterly strategy of Marlborough had hitherto warded off the destruction with which the cause of the allies seemed menaced at the beginning of the campaign, the peril was still most serious. It was absolutely necessary for Marlborough to attack the enemy before Villeroy should be roused into action. There was nothing to stop that general and his army from marching into Franconia, whence the allies drew their principal supplies; and besides thus distressing them, he might, by marching on and joining his army to those of Tallard and the Elector, form a mass which would overwhelm the force under Marlborough and Eugene. On the other hand, the chances of a battle seemed perilous, and the fatal consequences of a defeat were certain. The disadvantage of the allies in point of number was not very great, but still it was not to be disregarded; and the advantage which the enemy seemed to have in the composition of their troops was striking.
Tallard and Marsin had forty-five thousand Frenchmen under them, all veterans and all trained to act together; the Elector’s own troops also were good soldiers. Marlborough, like Wellington at Waterloo, headed an army of which the larger proportion consisted, not of English, but of men of many different nations and many different languages. He was also obliged to be the assailant in the action, and thus to expose his troops to comparatively heavy loss at the commencement of the battle, while the enemy would fight under the protection of the villages and lines which they were actively engaged in strengthening. The consequences of a defeat of the confederated army must have broken up the Grand Alliance, and realized the proudest hopes of the French King. Alison, in his admirable military history of the Duke of Marlborough, has truly stated the effects which would have taken place if France had been successful in the war; and when the position of the confederates at the time when Blenheim was fought is remembered–when we recollect the exhaustion of Austria, the menacing insurrection of Hungary, the feuds and jealousies of the German princes, the strength and activity of the Jacobite party in England, and the imbecility of nearly all the Dutch statesmen of the time, and the weakness of Holland if deprived of her allies–we may adopt his words in speculating on what would have ensued if France had been victorious in the battle, and “if a power, animated by the ambition, guided by the fanaticism, and directed by the ability of that of Louis XIV, had gained the ascendency in Europe.
“Beyond all question, a universal despotic dominion would have been established over the bodies, a cruel spiritual thraldom over the minds, of men. France and Spain, united under Bourbon princes and in a close family alliance–the empire of Charlemagne with that of Charles V–the power which revoked the Edict of Nantes and perpetrated the massacre of St. Bartholomew, with that which banished the Moriscoes and established the Inquisition, would have proved irresistible, and, beyond example, destructive to the best interests of mankind.
“The Protestants might have been driven, like the pagan heathens of old by the son of Pépin, beyond the Elbe; the Stuart race, and with them Romish ascendency, might have been reestablished in England; the fire lighted by Latimer and Ridley might have been extinguished in blood; and the energy breathed by religious freedom into the Anglo-Saxon race might have expired. The destinies of the world would have been changed. Europe, instead of a variety of independent states, whose mutual hostility kept alive courage, while their national rivalry stimulated talent, would have sunk into the slumber attendant on universal dominion. The colonial empire of England would have withered away and perished, as that of Spain has done in the grasp of the Inquisition. The Anglo-Saxon race would have been arrested in its mission to overspread the earth and subdue it. The centralized despotism of the Roman Empire would have been renewed on Continental Europe; the chains of Romish tyranny, and with them the general infidelity of France before the Revolution, would have extinguished or perverted thought in the British Islands.”
Marlborough’s words at the council of war, when a battle was resolved on, are remarkable, and they deserve recording. We know them on the authority of his chaplain, Mr. (afterward Bishop) Hare, who accompanied him throughout the campaign, and in whose journal the biographers of Marlborough have found many of their best materials. Marlborough’s words to the officers who remonstrated with him on the seeming temerity of attacking the enemy in their position were: “I know the danger, yet a battle is absolutely necessary, and I rely on the bravery and discipline of the troops, which will make amends for our disadvantages.” In the evening orders were issued for a general engagement, and were received by the army with an alacrity which justified his confidence.
The French and Bavarians were posted behind the little stream called the Nebel, which runs almost from north to south into the Danube immediately in front of the village of Blenheim. The Nebel flows along a little valley, and the French occupied the rising ground to the west of it. The village of Blenheim was the extreme right of their position, and the village of Luetzingen, about three miles north of Blenheim, formed their left. Beyond Luetzingen are the rugged high grounds of the Godd Berg and Eich Berg, on the skirts of which some detachments were posted, so as to secure the Gallo-Bavarian position from being turned on the left flank. The Danube secured their right flank; and it was only in front that they could be attacked. The villages of Blenheim and Luetzingen had been strongly palisaded and intrenched; Marshal Tallard, who held the chief command, took his station at Blenheim; the Elector and Marshal Marsin commanded on the left.
Tallard garrisoned Blenheim with twenty-six battalions of French infantry and twelve squadrons of French cavalry. Marsin and the Elector had twenty-two battalions of infantry and thirty-six squadrons of cavalry in front of the village of Luetzingen. The centre was occupied by fourteen battalions of infantry, including the celebrated Irish brigade. These were posted in the little hamlet of Oberglau, which lies somewhat nearer to Luetzingen than to Blenheim. Eighty squadrons of cavalry and seven battalions of foot were ranged between Oberglau and Blenheim. Thus the French position was very strong at each extremity, but was comparatively weak in the centre. Tallard seems to have relied on the swampy state of the part of the valley that reaches from below Oberglau to Blenheim for preventing any serious attack on this part of his line.
The army of the allies was formed into two great divisions, the largest being commanded by the Duke in person, and being destined to act against Tallard, while Prince Eugene led the other division, which consisted chiefly of cavalry, and was intended to oppose the enemy under Marsin and the Elector. As they approached the enemy, Marlborough’s troops formed the left and the centre, while Eugene’s formed the right of the entire army. Early in the morning of August 13th the allies left their own camp and marched toward the enemy. A thick haze covered the ground, and it was not until the allied right and centre had advanced nearly within cannon-shot of the enemy that Tallard was aware of their approach. He made his preparations with what haste he could, and about eight o’clock a heavy fire of artillery was opened from the French right on the advancing left wing of the British. Marlborough ordered up some of his batteries to reply to it, and while the columns that were to form the allied left and centre deployed, and took up their proper stations in the line, a warm cannonade was kept up by the guns on both sides.
The ground which Eugene’s columns Jiad to traverse was peculiarly difficult, especially for the passage of the artillery, and it was nearly mid-day before he could get his troops into line opposite to Luetzingen. During this interval Marlborough ordered divine service to be performed by the chaplains at the head of each regiment, and then rode along the lines, and found both officers and men in the highest spirits and waiting impatiently for the signal for the attack. At length an aide-de-camp galloped up from the right with the welcome news that Eugene was ready. Marlborough instantly sent Lord Cutts, with a strong brigade of infantry to assault the village of Blenheim, while he himself led the main body down the eastward slope of the valley of the Nebel, and prepared to effect the passage of the stream.
The assault on Blenheim, though bravely made, was repulsed with severe loss, and Marlborough, finding how strongly that village was garrisoned, desisted from any further attempts to carry it, and bent all his energies to breaking the enemy’s line between Blenheim and Oberglau. Some temporary bridges had been prepared, and planks and fascines had been collected; and by the aid of these, and a little stone bridge which crossed the Nebel near a hamlet called Unterglau, that lay in the centre of the valley, Marlborough succeeded in getting several squadrons across the Nebel, though it was divided into several branches, and the ground between them was soft, and, in places, little better than a mere marsh.
But the French artillery was not idle. The cannon-balls plunged incessantly among the advancing squadrons of the allies, and bodies of French cavalry rode frequently down from the western ridge, to charge them before they had time to form on the firm ground. It was only by supporting his men by fresh troops, and by bringing up infantry, who checked the advance of the enemy’s horse by their steady fire, that Marlborough was able to save his army in this quarter from a repulse, which, succeeding the failure of the attack upon Blenheim, would probably have been fatal to the allies. By degrees, his cavalry struggled over the bloodstained streams; the infantry were also now brought across, so as to keep in check the French troops who held Blenheim, and who, when no longer assailed in front, had begun to attack the allies on their left with considerable effect.
Marlborough had thus at length succeeded in drawing up the whole left wing of his army beyond the Nebel, and was about to press forward with it, when he was called away to another part of the field by a disaster that had befallen his centre. The Prince of Holstein Beck had, with eleven Hanoverian battalions, passed the Nebel opposite to Oberglau, when he was charged and utterly routed by the Irish brigade which held that village. The Irish drove the Hanoverians back with heavy slaughter, broke completely through the line of the allies, and nearly achieved a success as brilliant as that which the same brigade afterward gained at Fontenoy.
But at Blenheim their ardor in pursuit led them too far. Marlborough came up in person, and dashed in upon the exposed flank of the brigade with some squadrons of British cavalry. The Irish reeled back, and as they strove to regain the height of Oberglau their column was raked through and through by the fire of three battalions of the allies, which Marlborough had summoned up from the reserve. Marlborough having reestablished the order and communications of the allies in this quarter, now, as he returned to his own left wing, sent to learn how his colleague fared against Marsin and the Elector, and to inform Eugene of his own success.
Eugene had hitherto not been equally fortunate. He had made three attacks on the enemy opposed to him, and had been thrice driven back. It was only by his own desperate personal exertions, and the remarkable steadiness of the regiments of Prussian infantry, which were under him, that he was able to save his wing from being totally defeated. But it was on the southern part of the battle-field, on the ground which Marlborough had won beyond the Nebel with such difficulty, that the crisis of the battle was to be decided.
Like Hannibal, Marlborough relied principally on his cavalry for achieving his decisive successes, and it was by his cavalry that Blenheim, the greatest of his victories, was won. The battle had lasted till five in the afternoon. Marlborough had now eight thousand horsemen drawn up in two lines, and in the most perfect order for a general attack on the enemy’s line along the space between Blenheim and Oberglau. The infantry was drawn up in battalions in their rear, so as to support them if repulsed, and to keep in check the large masses of the French that still occupied the village of Blenheim. Tallard now interlaced his squadrons of cavalry with battalions of infantry, and Marlborough, by a corresponding movement, brought several regiments of infantry and some pieces of artillery to his front line at intervals between the bodies of horse.
A little after five Marlborough commenced the decisive movement, and the allied cavalry, strengthened and supported by foot and guns, advanced slowly from the lower ground near the Nebel up the slope to where the French cavalry, ten thousand strong, awaited them. On riding over the summit of the acclivity, the allies were received with so hot a fire from the French artillery and small arms that at first the cavalry recoiled, but without abandoning the high ground. The guns and the infantry which they had brought with them maintained the contest with spirit and effect. The French fire seemed to slacken. Marlborough instantly ordered a charge along the line. The allied cavalry galloped forward at the enemy’s squadrons, and the hearts of the French horsemen failed them. Discharging their carbines at an idle distance, they wheeled round and spurred from the field, leaving the nine infantry battalions of their comrades to be ridden down by the torrent of the allied cavalry.
The battle was now won. Tallard and Marsin, severed from each other, thought only of retreat. Tallard drew up the squadrons of horse that he had left, in a line extended toward Blenheim, and sent orders to the infantry in that village to leave it and join him without delay. But long ere his orders could be obeyed the conquering squadrons of Marlborough had wheeled to the left and thundered down on the feeble array of the French marshal. Part of the force which Tallard had drawn up for this last effort was driven into the Danube; part fled with their general to the village of Sonderheim, where they were soon surrounded by the victorious allies and compelled to surrender. Meanwhile Eugene had renewed his attack upon the Gallo-Bavarian left, and Marsin, finding his colleague utterly routed, and his own right flank uncovered, prepared to retreat. He and the Elector succeeded in withdrawing a considerable part of their troops in tolerable order to Dillingen; but the krge body of French who garrisoned Blenheim were left exposed to certain destruction.
Marlborough speedily occupied all the outlets from the village with his victorious troops, and then, collecting his artillery round it, he commenced a cannonade that speedily would have destroyed Blenheim itself and all who were in it. After several gallant but unsuccessful attempts to cut their way through the allies, the French in Blenheim were at length compelled to surrender at discretion; and twenty-four battalions and twelve squadrons, with all their officers, laid down their arms and became the captives of Marlborough.
“Such,” says Voltaire, “was the celebrated battle which the French called the battle of Hoechstaedt, the Germans Blindheim, and the English Blenheim. The conquerors had about five thousand killed and eight thousand wounded, the greater part being on the side of Prince Eugene. The French army was almost entirely destroyed: of sixty thousand men, so long victorious, there never reassembled more than twenty thousand effective. About twelve thousand killed, fourteen thousand prisoners, all the cannon, a prodigious number of colors and standards, all the tents and equipages, the general of the army, and one thousand two hundred officers of mark in the power of the conqueror, signalized that day!”
Ulm, Landau, Treves, and Traerbach surrendered to the allies before the close of the year. Bavaria submitted to the Emperor, and the Hungarians laid down their arms. Germany was completely delivered from France, and the military ascendency of the arms of the allies was completely established. Throughout the rest of the war Louis fought only in defence. Blenheim had dissipated forever his once proud visions of almost universal conquest.
%UNION OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND%
A.D. 1707
JOHN HILL BURTON
Although not one of the longest, the reign of Queen Anne was one of the most glorious, in English history. Not only was it signalized by the victorious deeds of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession, but also by the union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, one of the principal events in British annals.
Before the union England and Scotland had no political partnership save that derived through the person of the sovereign by inheritance of both crowns. From the completion of the union in 1707 both countries have been not only under one royal head, but also represented in a single Parliament. At the beginning of Anne’s reign the attitude of Scotland toward England was hostile, old antagonisms surviving in memory to intensify fresh irritations. Although William III, predecessor of Anne, had urged a union of the kingdoms, all negotiations to that end had failed. In 1703, and again in 1704, the Scottish Parliament had passed an act of security declaring in favor of the abrogation of the union of the crowns which had existed for a century. The English Parliament resorted to retaliatory measures.
By this time, however, the wiser statesmen in both countries saw that open hostilities could be averted only by a complete political union of the two kingdoms, and they used all their influence to bring it about. How this great historic reconciliation was accomplished, Burton, the eminent Scottish historian and jurist, shows with equal learning and impartiality.
The English statute, responding by precautions and threats to the Scots Act of Security, contained clauses for furthering an incorporating union as the only conclusive settlement of accumulating difficulties. It provided that commissioners for England appointed by the Queen under the great seal shall have power “to treat and consult” with commissioners for the same purpose “authorized by authority of the Parliament of Scotland.” The statute of the Parliament of Scotland completing the adjustment, with the short title “Act for a treaty with England,” authorizes such persons “as shall be nominated and appointed by her majesty under the great seal of this kingdom” to treat and consult with “the commissioners for England.”
The next great step was the appointment of the two commissions, thirty-one on either side. On the English were the two archbishops; for Scotland there was no clerical element. It was noticed that for England all the members not official were from the peerage, while in Scotland there seemed to be a desire to represent the peerage, the landed commoners, and the burgesses or city interest, in just proportions. At an early stage in the daily business, the English brought up a proposition about the reception of which they had considerable apprehension: that there should be “the same customs, excise, and all other taxes” throughout the United Kingdom–virtually a resolution that Scotland should be taxed on the English scale. This was easily passed by means of a solvent–due, no doubt, to the financial genius of Godolphin–that, on an accounting and proof of local or personal hardships arising from the adoption of uniformity, compensation in money should be made from the English treasury. But a more critical point was reached when, on April 24th, the chancellor of Scotland brought forward, among certain preliminary articles, one “that there be free communication, and intercourse of trade and navigation, between the two kingdoms and plantations thereunto belonging, under such regulations as in the progress of this treaty shall be found most for the advantage of both kingdoms.” This was frankly accepted on the part of England, and faithfully adjusted in detail. It was felt to be a mighty sacrifice made to exercise indefinite but formidable calamities in another shape.
At this point in the progress of the union all interest resting on the excitements of political victory and defeat, or the chances of a bitter war, came to an end. There were a few small incidents in Scotland; but England was placidly indifferent. She had cheerfully paid a heavy stake as loser in the great game, and it would trouble her no more. The statesmen of the two countries knew that the union must pass unless the Jacobites of Scotland were joined by an invading French army; and that was not a likely casualty while Marlborough was hovering on the frontiers of France. There was a touch of the native haughtiness in this placid indifference of England. No doubt it helped in clearing the way to the great conclusion; but for many years after the fusing of the two nations into one, disturbing events showed that it had been better had the English known something about the national institutions and the temper of the people who had now a right to call themselves their fellow-countrymen.
It was expected that Scotland would be quietly absorbed into England–absorptions much more difficult in the first aspect were in continuous progress in Asia and America. The Englishman had great difficulty in reconciling himself to political and social conditions not his own, and his pride prompted him to demand that, if he left England, any part of the world honored by his presence should make an England for his reception. When expecting this on the other side of the border, he forgot that the Scot had too much of his own independence and obstinacy. True, the Scot, among the sweet uses of adversity, had imbibed more of the vagrant, and could adapt himself more easily to the usages and temper of other nations. But on the question of yielding up his own national usages and prejudices in his own country he was as obstinate as his mighty partner.
There was stills world of business to be transacted in details of the unattractive kind that belong to accountants’ reports. These may be objects of vital and intense interest–as in the realizing of the assets in bankruptcies, where persons immediately interested in frantic excitement hunt out the array of small figures–two, three, four, or five–that tells them whether they are safe or ruined. But the interest is not of a kind to hold its intensity through after generations. On some items of the present accounting, however, there was, in the principle adopted, a fund of personal and political interest. The heavy debts of England had to be considered–and here, as in all pecuniary arrangements, England was freehanded. The Scots made an effort to retain their African Company, but they fortunately offered the alternative of purchasing the stock from the holders. On the alternative of retention the English commissioners were resolute in refusal and resistance, but they were ready to entertain the other; and they accepted it in a literal shape. To have bought the stock at its market value would have been a farce, after the ruin that had overcome the company. But if it could not be even said that England had ruined the company, the sacrifice had been made in the prevalence of English interests, and while there was yet a hold on England it should be kept. There was no difficulty in coming to a settlement satisfactory to the Scots, and willingly offered by the English. It was substantially payment of the loss on each share, as calculated from an examination of the company’s books.
The adjustment of the several pecuniary claims thus created in favor of Scotland was simply the collective summation of the losses incurred by all the stockholders; and when the summation was completed the total was passed into a capital sum, called the “Equivalent.” This sum total of the various items, with all their fractions, making up a fractional sum less than four hundred thousand pounds, might be otherwise described as a capital stock held by the shareholders of the old company trading to Africa and the Indies, each to the extent of his loss. Odious suspicions were, down to the present generation, propagated about an item or group of items in the Equivalent. A sum amounting to twenty thousand five hundred forty pounds seventeen shillings sevenpence had been made over by the English treasury, to be paid to influential Scotsmen as the price of their votes or influence in favor of England.
Fortunately this affair was closely investigated by the celebrated committee of inquiry that brought on Marlborough’s dismissal and Walpole’s imprisonment. It was found that the Scots treasury had been drained; and the crisis of the union was not a suitable time either for levying money or for leaving debts–the salaries of public offices especially–unpaid. England, therefore, lent money to clear away this difficulty. The transaction was irregular, and had not passed through the proper treasury forms. It was ascertained, however, that the money so lent had been repaid. In discussions of the affair, before those concerned were fully cleared of the odium of bribery, taunting remarks had been made on the oddity and sordid specialties of the items of payment. Thus the allowance to the Lord Banff was, in sterling money, eleven pounds two shillings. It would have had a richer sound, and perhaps resolved itself into round numbers, in Scots money; but as it is, there is no more to be said against it than that, as a debt in some way due to the Lord Banff, the exact English book-keeper had entered it down to its fraction.
There remained a few matters of adjustment of uniformities between the two countries for the advantage of both–such as a fixed standard for rating money in account. The Scots grumbled, rather than complained, about the English standard being always made the rule, and no reciprocity being offered. But the Scots were left considerable facilities for the use of their own customs for home purposes in pecuniary matters, and in weights and measures. If, for the general convenience of commerce and taxation, any uniformity was necessary, and the practice of the greater nation was a suitable standard for the other, it was the smaller sacrifice, and to both parties the easier arrangement, that those who were only an eighth part of the inhabitants of the island should yield to the overwhelming majority.
It was in keeping with the wisdom and tolerance prevailing throughout on the English side of the treaty that it should be first discussed in the Parliament of Scotland. If this was felt as a courtesy to Scotland it was an expediency for England. All opposition would be in Scotland, and it was well to know it at once, that disputes might be cleared off and a simple affirmative or negative presented to the Parliament of Scotland.
The Parliament of England has ever restrained vague oratory by a rule that there must always be a question of yes or no, fitted for a division as the text of a debate. In Scotland on this occasion, as on many others, there was at first a discussion of the general question; and when this, along with other sources of information, had given the servants of the Crown some assurance of the fate of the measure, there was a separate debate and division on the first article, understood on all hands to be a final decision. The debate was decorated by a work of oratorical art long admired in Scotland, and indeed worthy of admiration anywhere for its brilliancy and power. It was a great philippic–taking that term in its usual acceptation–as expressing a vehement torrent of bitter epigram and denunciatory climax.
The speech of John Hamilton, Lord Belhaven, “On the subject-matter of a union betwixt the two kingdoms of England and Scotland,” was so amply dispersed in its day that if a collector of pamphlets on the union buys them in volumes he will generally find this speech in each volume. It is, no doubt, an effort of genius; but what will confer more interest on the following specimens selected from it is that it was an attempt to rouse the nation to action at this perilous and momentous crisis, and succeeded only in drawing attention and admiration as a fine specimen of rhetorical art:
“I think I see the present peers of Scotland, whose noble ancestors conquered provinces, overran countries, reduced and subjected towns and fortified places, exacted tribute through the greater part of England, now walking in the court of requests like so many English attorneys, laying aside their walking-swords when in company with the English peers, lest their self-defence should be found murder.
“I think I see the royal state of boroughs walking their desolate streets, hanging down their heads under disappointments, wormed out of all the branches of their old trade, uncertain what hand to turn to, necessitate to become ‘prentices to their unkind neighbors, and yet after all finding their trade so fortified by companies and secured by prescriptions that they despair of any success therein. But above all, my lord, I think I see our ancient mother, Caledonia, like Caesar, sitting in the midst of our senate, ruefully looking round her, covering herself with her royal garment, attending the fatal blow, and breathing out her last with a _’et tu quoque mi fili,’_”
The great remedy for all is an end of rancorous feuds and hatreds dividing Scotland; and this calls from him a glowing picture of the land that by union and industry has made itself too powerful to be a safe partner for humiliated Scotland:
“They are not under the afflicting hand of Providence as we are; their circumstances are great and glorious; their treaties are prudently managed both at home and abroad; their generals brave and valorous; their armies successful and victorious; their trophies and laurels memorable and surprising; their enemies subdued and routed. Their royal navy is the terror of Europe; their trade and commerce extended through the universe, encircling the whole world, and rendering their own capital city the emporium for the whole inhabitants of the earth.”
The speech was for the country, not for the House. The great points about trade and virtual independence had been conceded by England, and a union was looked to rather as a refuge and a gain than as oppression and plunder. It has even been said that there was some inclination to receive the speech with irony; and Defoe, who seems to have been present on the occasion, gives this account of what followed:
“Mr. Seton, who made the first speech, stood up to answer the Lord Belhaven; but as he had already spoken, the order of the House–viz., ‘that the same member could not speak twice in the same cause’–was urged against his speaking, and the Earl of Marchmont standing up at the same time, the lord chancellor gave place to him, who indeed made a short return to so long a speech, and which answer occasioned some laughter in the House. The Earl of Marchmont’s speech was to this purpose, viz.: He had heard a long speech, and a very terrible one; but he was of opinion it required a short answer, which he gave in these terms: ‘Behold he dreamed, but, lo! when he awoke, he found it was a dream.’ This answer, some said, was as satisfactory to the members, who understood the design of that speech as if it had been answered vision by vision.”
In the debates on the union, some Scots statesmen found a tactic, infinitely valuable to them in the united Parliament, of voting in a group. They were called the “New party,” and nicknamed the “_Squadrone volante_.” In the correspondence already referred to, it was good news at St. Stephen’s when it was announced that the New party had adopted the union. On the critical division the numbers stood one hundred eighteen for the article and eighty-three against it. The remainder of the clauses passed without division, a ready acceptance being given to amendments, that were virtually improvements, in giving effect to the spirit of details in the treaty; as where it was adjusted that, for trading purposes, vessels bought abroad for trade from the Scots harbors should be counted equivalent to vessels of Scottish build.
There was a considerable noisy excitement through the country, the Jacobites ever striving to rouse the people in the great towns to riot and sedition, and, when they found that impossible, spreading exaggerated accounts of the effects of their efforts. A mob was raised in Edinburgh, but it was appeased without the loss of life and with no other casualty save the frightening of the provost’s wife. There were some eccentric movements among the Cameronians, rendered all the more grotesque by the Jacobites taking the leadership in them; and some of the more vehement clergy betook themselves to their own special weapons in the holding of a day of humiliation and prayer.
Ere the whole came to a conclusion, a point was yielded to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. It was passed as a separate act before the Act of Union was passed–the separate act stipulating its repetition in any act adopting the Treaty of Union. It provided for the preservation of the discipline, worship, and ecclesiastical government of the establishment. It was further provided that every sovereign of the United Kingdom, on accession to the throne, should make oath in terms of this act. Hence it happens that this oath is taken immediately on the accession, the other oaths, including that for the protection of the Church of England, being postponed till the ceremony of the coronation. On October 16, 1706, there came a vote on the passing of the “Act ratifying and approving the Treaty of Union.” This was carried in the Scots Parliament by one hundred ten to sixty-nine.
It was the determination of the Queen’s ministers for England to carry the treaty as it came from Scotland, word for word; and they employed all their strength to do so. It was the policy of the English government and their supporters in the matter of the union, to avoid a Parliamentary debate upon it clause by clause at St. Stephen’s.
To this end there was an endeavor to give it, as much as in the peculiar conditions could be given, the character of a treaty between two independent powers, each acting through its executive, that executive acknowledging the full power of Parliament to examine, criticise, and virtually judge the act done as a whole, but not admitting Parliamentary interference with the progress of the details. If there were an illogicality in the essence of a treaty where the executive–the Queen–was the common sovereign of both realms, the difficulty could be discarded as a pedantry, in a constitutional community where the sovereign acts through responsible advisers. Some slight touches of apprehension were felt in England when it was seen that the Scots Estates were not only voting the separate articles, but in some measure remodelling them.
The Estates were taking the privilege naturally claimed by the weaker party to a bargain in protecting themselves while it was yet time. When all was adjusted, England, as the vast majority, could correct whatever had been done amiss in the preliminary adjustment of her interests, but poor Scotland would be entirely helpless. There was another reason for tolerating the alterations, in their being directed to the safety and completeness of the legal institutions left in the hands of Scotland untouched, as matters of entire indifference to England; still it weakened the hands of those who desired to evade a Parliamentary discussion on the several articles in England that this had been permitted in Scotland, and had become effective in the shape of amendments. John Johnston, who had been for some time secretary of state for Scotland–a son of the celebrated covenanting hero Archibald Johnston of Warriston–was then in London carefully looking at the signs of the times. He wrote to Scotland, saying: “You may, I think, depend on it that the alterations you have hitherto made will not break the union; but if you go on altering, it’s like your alterations will be altered here, which will make a new session with you necessary, and in that case no man knows what may happen.” All is well as yet (January 4th), and if there be no more serious alterations the English ministers will be able to give effect to their resolution “to pass the union here without making any alterations at all.”
By what had been usually called a message from the throne, the attention of Parliament was directed to the treaty as it had come from Scotland, but the matter being of supreme importance the Queen was her own messenger. From the Commons she had to ask for a supply to meet the equivalent. To both Houses she said: “You have now an opportunity before you of putting the last hand to a happy union of the two kingdoms, which I hope will be a lasting blessing to the whole island, a great addition to its wealth and power, and a firm security to the Protestant religion. The advantages that will accrue to us all from a union are so apparent that I will add no more, but that I shall look upon it as a particular happiness if this great work, which has been so often attempted without success, can be brought to perfection in my reign.”
The opportunity was taken to imitate the Scots in a separate preliminary act “for securing the Church of England as by law established.” There was a desultory discussion in both Houses, with a result showing the overwhelming strength of the supporters of the union. In the House of Lords there were some divisions, and among these the largest number of votes mustered by the opposition was twenty-three, bringing out a majority of forty-seven by seventy votes for the ministry. The conclusion of the discussion was a vote of approval by each House.
The opposition, however, did not adopt their defeat. They were preparing to fight the battle over again, clause by clause, when a bill was brought in to convert the Articles of Union into an act of Parliament. The English House of Commons has always been supremely tolerant to troublesome and even mischievous members, so long as they adhere to the forms of the House–forms to be zealously guarded, since they were framed for averting hasty legislation and the possible domination of an intolerant majority. It was determined, however, that the impracticals and impedimenters should not have their swing on this occasion, when the descent of a French army to gather to its centre the Jacobitism still lingering in the country darkened the political horizon. Both Houses had a full opportunity for discussing the merits of every word in the treaty, and the risk of national ruin was not to be encountered because they had not expended all their loquacity, having expected another opportunity.
The tactic for evading the danger was credited to the ingenuity of Sir Simon Harcourt, the attorney-general. The two acts of ecclesiastical security and the articles of the treaty were all recited in the preamble of the bill under the command of the mighty “Whereas,” the enacting part of the act was dropped into a single sentence, shorter than statutory sentences usually are. The opposition might throw out the measure, and the ministry with it, if they had strength to do so; but there had been sufficient discussion on the clauses, and there should be no more. In the descriptive words of Burnet: “This put those in great difficulties who had resolved to object to several articles, and to insist on demanding several alterations in them, for they could not come at any debate about them; they could not object to the recital, it being mere matter of fact; and they had not strength enough to oppose the general enacting clause; nor was it easy to come at particulars and offer provisos relating to them. The matter was carried on with such zeal that it passed through the House of Commons before those who intended to oppose it had recovered out of the surprise under which the form it was drawn in had put them.”
There was thus but one question, that the bill do pass, and the opposition had not reaped encouragement to resist so great an issue. The Lords had, in their usual manner of dignified repose, managed to discuss the clauses, but it was rather a conversation, to see that all was in right order, and that no accident had happened to a measure of so vital moment, than a debate.
On March 6, 1707, the Queen came to the House of Lords, and in a graceful speech gave the royal assent to the act.
%DOWNFALL OF CHARLES XII AT POLTAVA%
TRIUMPH OF RUSSIA
A.D. 1709
K. WALISZEWSKI[1]
[Footnote 1: Translated from the Russian by Lady Mary Loyd.]
The battle of Poltava was selected by Sir Edward Creasy as one of the fifteen great decisive contests which have altered the fate of nations. His able narrative of the battle has been superseded in scholars’ eyes by the more modern work of the great Russian authority, Waliszewski; but the importance of the event remains. It reversed the positions of Sweden and Russia in European politics, and placed Russia among the great countries of the modern world; Sweden among the little ones.
Before 1709 Sweden still held the rank to which Gustavus Adolphus had raised her in the Thirty Years’ War. Her prestige had been a little dimmed by the victories of the “Great Elector” of Prussia; but her ally Louis XIV had saved her from any considerable diminution of the extensive territories which she held on the mainland to the south and east of the Baltic Sea. About 1700 the young and gallant warrior, Charles XII, the “Madman of the North,” reasserted her prowess, made her once more the dictator of Northern Europe, one of the five great powers of the world.
Meanwhile Peter the Great was progressing but slowly with his transformation of Russia. His people had little confidence in him; his armies were half-barbaric hordes. When he ventured into war against Sweden Europe conceived but one possible result: these undisciplined barbarians would be annihilated. At first the expected occurred. Again and again large Russian armies were defeated by small bodies of Swedes; but with splendid tenacity Peter persisted in the face of revolt at home and defeat abroad. “The Swedes shall teach us to beat them” was his famous saying, and at Poltava he achieved his aim. From that time forward Russia’s antagonism to her leader disappeared. His people followed him eagerly along the path to power.
It would appear that it was not till Peter’s visit to Vienna, in 1698, that he conceived the idea of attacking Sweden. Up till that time his warlike impulse had rather been directed southward, and the Turk had been the sole object of his enmity. But at Vienna he perceived that the Emperor, whose help he had counted on, had failed him, and forthwith the mobile mind of the young Czar turned to the right-about. A war he must have of some kind, it little mattered where, to give work to his young army. The warlike instincts and the greed of his predecessors, tempted sometimes by the Black Sea, sometimes by the Baltic and the border provinces of Poland, had, indeed, always swung and turned back and forward between the south and the north. These alternate impulses, natural enough in a nation so full of youth and strength, have, since those days, been most unnecessarily idealized, erected into a doctrine, and dignified as a work of unification. It must be acknowledged that every nation has at one time or the other thus claimed the right to resume the national patrimony at the expense of neighboring peoples, and Peter, by some lucky fate, remained in this respect within certain bounds of justice, of logic, and of truth. Absorbed and almost exhausted, as he soon became, by the desperate effort demanded by his war in the North, he forgot or imperilled much that the conquering ambition of his predecessors had left him in the South and West. He clung to the territory already acquired on the Polish side, retired from the Turkish border, and claimed what he had most right, relatively speaking, to claim in the matter of resumption, on his northwestern frontier.
On that frontier the coast country between the mouth of the Narva, or Narova, and that of the Siestra, watered by the Voksa, the Neva, the Igora, and the Louga, was really an integral part of the original Russian patrimony. It was one of the five districts (_piatiny_) of the Novgorod territory, and was still full of towns bearing Slavonic names, such as Korela, Ojeshek, Ladoga, Koporie, Iamy, and Ivangrod. It was not till 1616 that the Czar Michael Feodorovitch, during his struggle with Gustavus Adolphus, finally abandoned the seacoast for the sake of keeping his hold on Novgorod. But so strong was the hope of recovering the lost territory, in the hearts of his descendants, that, after the failure of an attempt on Livonia, in Alexis’ reign, a boyar named Ordin-Nashtchokin set to work to build a number of warships at Kokenhausen, on the Dvina, which vessels were intended for the conquest of Riga. Peter had an impression, confused it may be, but yet powerful, of these historic traditions. This is proved by the direction in which he caused his armies to march after he had thrown down the gauntlet to Sweden. He strayed off the path, swayed, as he often was, by sudden impulses, but he always came back to the traditional aim of his forefathers–access to the sea, a Baltic port, “a window open upon Europe.”
His interview with Augustus II at Rawa definitely settled his wavering mind. The _pacta conventa_, signed by the King of Poland when he ascended his throne, bound him to claim from the King of Sweden the territories which had formerly belonged to the republic of Poland. For this end the help of Denmark could be reckoned on. The Treaty of Roeskilde (1658), which had been forced on Frederick III, weighed heavily on his successors, and the eager glances fixed by the neighboring states on Holstein, after the death of Christian Albert, in 1694, threatened to end in quarrel. There were fair hopes, too, of the help of Brandenburg. When Sweden made alliance with Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon, that country abandoned its historic position in Germany to Prussia. But Sweden still kept some footing, and was looked on as a rival.
Further, Augustus had a personal charm for Peter sufficient in itself to prove how much simplicity, inexperience, and boyish thoughtlessness still existed in that half-polished mind. The Polish Sovereign, tall, strong, and handsome, an adept in all physical exercises, a great hunter, a hard drinker, and an indefatigable admirer of the fair sex, in whose person debauch of every kind took royal proportions, delighted the Czar and somewhat overawed him. He was more than inclined to think him a genius, and was quite ready to bind up his fortunes with his friend’s. At the end of four days of uninterrupted feasting, they had agreed on the division of the spoils of Sweden, and had made a preliminary exchange of arms and clothing. The Czar appeared at Moscow a few weeks later wearing the King of Poland’s waistcoat and belted with his sword.
In the beginning of 1700 Augustus and Frederick of Denmark attacked Sweden; but Peter, though bound by treaty to follow their example, neither moved nor stirred. Frederick was beaten, his very capital was threatened. So much the worse for him! Augustus seized on Dunamunde, but utterly failed before Riga. All the better for the Russians; Riga was left for them! Another envoy came hurrying to Moscow. The Czar listened coolly to his reproaches, and replied that he would act as soon as news from Constantinople permitted it. Negotiations there were proceeding satisfactorily, and he hoped shortly to fulfil his promise, and to attack the Swedes in the neighborhood of Pskof. This was a point on which the allies had laid great stress, and Peter had studiously avoided contradicting them. It was quite understood between them that the Czar was not to lay a finger on Livonia. At last on August 8, 1700, a courier arrived with the longed-for dispatch. Peace with Turkey was signed at last, and that very day the Russian troops received their marching orders. But they were not sent toward Pskof. They marched on Narva, in the very heart of the Livonian country.
The army destined to lay siege to Narva consisted of three divisions of novel formation, under the orders of three generals–Golovin, Weyde, and Repnin–with 10,500 Cossacks, and some irregular troops–63,520 men in all. Repnin’s division, numbering 10,834 men, and the Little Russian Cossacks, stopped on the way, so that the actual force at disposal was reduced to about 40,000 men. But Charles XII, the new King of Sweden, could not bring more than 5300 infantry and 3130 cavalry to the relief of the town. And, being obliged, when he neared Wesemburg, to throw himself in flying column across a country which was already completely devastated, and, consequently, to carry all his supplies with him, his troops arrived in presence of an enemy five times as numerous as themselves, worn out, and completely exhausted by a succession of forced marches.
Peter never dreamed that he would find the King of Sweden in Livonia. He believed his hands were more than full enough elsewhere with the King of Denmark; he was quite unaware that the Peace of Travendal, which had been signed on the very day of the departure of the Russian troops, had been already forced upon his ally. He started off gayly at the head of his bombardier company, full of expectation of an easy victory. When he arrived before the town, on September 23d, he was astounded to find any preparations for serious defence. A regular siege had to be undertaken, and when, after a month of preparations, the Russian batteries at last opened fire, they made no impression whatever. The artillery was bad, and yet more badly served. A second month passed, during which Peter waited and hoped for some piece of luck, either for an offer to capitulate or for the arrival of Repnin’s force. What did happen was that on the night of November 17th news came that within twenty-four hours the King of Sweden would be at Narva. That very night Peter fled from his camp, leaving the command to the Prince de Croy.
None of the arguments brought forward by the sovereign and his apologists in justification of this step appears to me to hold water. The necessity pleaded for an interview with the Duke of Poland, the Czar’s desire to hasten on Repnin’s march, are mere pitiful excuses. Langen and Hallart, the generals sent by Augustus to observe the military operations in Livonia, gravely reported that the Czar had been obliged to go to Moscow to receive a Turkish envoy–who was not expected for four months! The Emperor’s envoy, Pleyer, is nearer the mark when he says the sovereign obeyed the entreaties of his advisers, who considered the danger too great for him to be permitted to remain. And Hallart himself, speaking of these same counsellors, whether ministers or generals, does not hesitate to declare, in his rough soldierly language, that “they have about as much courage as a frog has hair on his belly.” The Russian army, disconcerted by the unexpected resistance of the Swedes, ill-prepared for resistance, ill-commanded, ill-lodged, and ill-fed, was already demoralized to the last extent. The arrival of Charles caused a panic, and from that panic Peter, the most impressionable of men, was the first to suffer.
The startling rapidity with which Charles had rid himself of the weakest of his three adversaries, under the very walls of Copenhagen, would have been less astonishing to Peter if the young sovereign had better realized the conditions under which he and his allies had begun a struggle in which, at first sight, their superiority appeared so disproportionate. King Frederick had reckoned without the powers which had guaranteed the recent Treaty of Altona, by which the safety of Holstein was insured; without the Hanoverian troops, and those of Luneburg, which at once brought succor to Toeningen; without the Anglo-Dutch fleet, which forced his to seek shelter under the walls of Copenhagen, and thus permitted the King of Sweden to cross the Sound unmolested, and land quietly in Zealand; and finally, he reckoned–and for this he may well be excused–without that which was soon to fill all Europe with terror and amazement: the lucky star and the military genius of Charles XII.
This monarch, born in 1682, who had slain bears when he was sixteen, and at eighteen was a finished soldier, greedy for glory and battle and blood, was the last representative of that race of men who, between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, held all Central Europe in their iron grip; fierce warriors who steeped Germany and Italy in fire and blood, fought their way from town to town, and hamlet to hamlet; giving no truce and showing no mercy; who lived for war and by war; grew old and died in harness in a very atmosphere of carnage, with bodies riddled with wounds, with hands stained with abominable crimes, but with spirits calm and unflinching to the last. Standing on the threshold of the new period he was the superb and colossal incarnation of that former one, which, happily for mankind, was to disappear in his person.
Count Guiscard, who as envoy from the King of France accompanied him on his first campaign, describes him thus: “The King of Sweden is of tall stature; taller than myself by almost a head; he is very handsome, he has fine eyes and a good complexion, his face is long, his speech a little thick. He wears a small wig tied behind in a bag, a plain stock, without cravat, a very tight jerkin of plain cloth, with sleeves as narrow as our waistcoat sleeves, a narrow belt above his jerkin, with a sword of extraordinary length and thickness, and almost perfectly flat-soled shoes–a very strange style of dress for a prince of his age.”
In order to reach Narva with his eight thousand men, Charles, after having crossed a tract of desert country, was obliged, at a place called Pyhaioggi, to cross a narrow valley divided by a stream, which, if it had been fortified, must have stopped him short. The idea occurred to Gordon, but Peter would not listen to him, and it was not till the very last moment that he sent Sheremetief, who found the Swedes just debouching into the valley, received several volleys of grape-shot and retired in disorder. The mad venture had succeeded. But Charles’ farther advance involved the playing of a risky game. His men were worn out, his horses had not been fed for two whole days. Still he went on; he reached Narva, formed his Swedes into several attacking columns, led one himself, and favored by a sudden hurricane which drove showers of blinding snow into his adversaries’ faces, threw himself into their camp and mastered the place in half an hour. The only resistance he met was offered by the two regiments of the guard. All the rest fled or surrendered. A few Russians were drowned in the Narva. “If the river had been frozen,” said Charles discontentedly, “I do not know that we should have contrived to kill a single man.”
It was a total breakdown; the army had disappeared, and the artillery. The very sovereign was gone, and with him the country’s honor. That had sunk out of sight amid the scornful laughter with which Europe hailed this undignified defeat. The Czar was in full flight. All Peter’s plans of conquest, his dreams of European expansion and of navigating the northern seas, his hopes of glory, his faith in his civilizing mission, had utterly faded. And he himself had collapsed upon their heaped-up ruins. Onward he fled, feeling the Swedish soldiers on his heels. He wept, he sued for peace, vowing he would treat at once and submit to any sacrifice; he sent imploring appeals to the States-General of Holland, to England and to the Emperor, praying for mediation.
But swiftly he recovered possession of his faculties. Then, raising his head–through the golden haze with which his insufficient education, the infatuation inherent to his semi-oriental origin, and his inexperience, had filled his eyes, through the rent of that mighty catastrophe and that cruel lesson–he saw and touched the truth at last! He realized what he must set himself to do if he was to become that which he fain would be. There must be no more playing at soldiers and sailors; no more of that farce of power and glory, in which, till now, he had been the chief actor; no more aimless adventure, undertaken in utter scorn of time and place. He must toil now in downright earnest; he must go forward, step by step; measure each day’s effort, calculate each morrow’s task, let each fruit ripen ere he essayed to pluck it; learn patience and dogged perseverance. He did it all. He found means within him and about him to carry out his task. The strong, long-enduring, long-suffering race of which he came endowed him with the necessary qualities, and gave him its own inexhaustible and never-changing devotion and self-sacrifice.
Ten armies may be destroyed, he will bring up ten others to replace them, no matter what the price. His people will follow him and die beside him to the last man, to the last morsel of bread snatched from its starving jaws. A month hence, the fugitive from Narva will belong to a vanished, forgotten, almost improbable past; the future victor of Poltava will have taken his place.
Of the Russian army, as it had originally taken the field, about twenty-three thousand men remained–a certain number of troops–the cavalry under Sheremetief’s command, and Repnin’s division. The Czar ordered fresh levies. He melted the church-bells into cannon. In vain the clergy raised the cry of sacrilege; he never faltered for a moment. He went hither and thither giving orders and active help; rating some, encouraging others, inspiring everyone with some of his own energy–that energy which his misfortune had spurred and strengthened. Yet, Byzantine as he was by nature, he could not resist the temptation to endeavor to mislead public opinion. Matvieief was given orders to draw up his own special description of the battle of Narva and its consequences, for the benefit of the readers of the _Gazette de Hollande_ and of the memoranda which he himself addressed to the States-General.
The Swedes, according to this account, had been surrounded by a superior force within the Russian camp, and had there been forced to capitulate; after which event, certain Russian officers, who had desired to pay their respects to the King of Sweden, had been treacherously seized by his orders. Europe only laughed, but in later years this pretended capitulation, and the supposed Swedish violation of it, were to serve Peter as a pretext for violating others, to which he himself had willingly consented. At Vienna, too, Count Kaunitz listened with a smile while Prince Galitzin explained that the Czar “needed no victories to prove his military glory.” Yet, when the vice-chancellor inquired what conditions the Czar hoped to obtain from his victorious adversary, the Russian diplomat calmly claimed the greater part of Livonia, with Narva, Ivangrod, Kolyvan, Koporie, and Derpt–and future events were to prove that he had not asked too much.
Before long this boldness began to reap its own reward. To begin with, Charles XII made no immediate attempt to pursue his advantage on Russian soil; Peter had the joy of seeing him plunge into the depths of the Polish plains. The King of Sweden’s decision, which, we are told, did not tally with his generals’ opinion, has been severely criticised. Guiscard thought it perfectly justifiable, so long as the King had not rid himself of Augustus, by means of the peace which this Prince appeared more than willing to negotiate, through the mediation of Guiscard himself. But Charles turned a deaf ear to the French diplomat’s prayers and remonstrances. He feared, declared Guiscard, “he might run short of enemies,” and as he could not advance on Russia and leave the Saxons and Poles in his rear, he desired–and here doubtless he was right–first of all to insure his line of communication, and of possible retreat. Thus, by his own deed, he strengthened and cemented an alliance which had already been shaken by common defeat.
Augustus, repulsed by the Swedish King, threw himself into Peter’s arms, and in February, 1701, the common destinies of the Czar and the King of Poland were once more bound together. A fresh treaty was signed at the Castle of Birze, close to Dunaburg.
The year 1701 was a hard one for Peter. The junction between the army, which he had contrived after some fashion to put on a war footing, and the Saxon troops of Augustus, only resulted in the complete defeat of the allied forces under the walls of Riga, on July 3d. In the month of June the Moscow Kremlin caught fire; the state offices (_prikaz_) with their archives, the provision-stores, and palaces, were all devoured by the flames. The bells fell from the tower of Ivan the Great, and the heaviest, which weighed over a hundred tons, was broken in the fall. But in midwinter Sheremetief contrived to surprise Schlippenbach with a superior force, and defeated him at Erestfer, December 29th.
Peter’s delight, and his wild manifestations of triumph, may easily be imagined. He did not content himself with exhibiting the few Swedish prisoners who had fallen into his hands at Moscow, in a sort of imitation Roman triumph; his practical mind incited him to make use of them in another way, and Cornelius von Bruyn, who had lived long enough in the country to be thoroughly acquainted with its customs, calmly reports that the price of war captives, which had originally been three or four florins a head, rose as high as twenty and thirty florins. Even foreigners now ventured to purchase them, and entered into competition in the open market.
On July 18, 1702, Sheremetief won a fresh victory over Schlippenbach–30,000 Russians defeated 8000 Swedes. According to Peter’s official account of the battle, 5000 of his enemies were left dead on the field, while Sheremetief lost only 400 men. This report made Europe smile, but the Livonians found it no laughing matter. Volmar and Marienburg fell into the hands of the victor, who ravaged the country in the most frightful fashion. The Russians had not as yet learned any other form of warfare, and, as we may suppose, the idea that he might ever possess these territories had not yet occurred to Peter. His mind, indeed, was absorbed elsewhere. His old fancies and whims were strong upon him, and he left Apraxin to rage on the banks of the Neva, in Ingria, on the very spot where his future capital was to stand, while he himself gave all his time and strength to the building of a few wretched ships at Archangel. It was not till September, when the ice had driven him out of the northern port, that he returned to the west and took up his former course. He reached the Lake of Ladoga, sent for Sheremetief, and the end he was to pursue for many a long year seems at last to have taken firm root in his hitherto unstable mind. He laid siege to Noteburg, where he found a garrison of only four hundred fifty men, and on December 11, 1702, he rechristened the little fortress he had captured, by a new and symbolic name, “Schluesselburg” (Key of the Sea).
Next came the capture of Nienschantz, at the very mouth of the Neva, in April, 1703, a personal success for the captain of Bombardiers, Peter Mikhailoff, who there brought his batteries into play. A month later the artilleryman had become a sailor, and had won Russia’s first naval victory. Two regiments of the guard manned thirty boats, surrounded two small Swedish vessels, which, in their ignorance of the capture of Nienschantz, had ventured close to the town, took possession of them, and murdered their crews. The victor’s letters to his friends are full of the wildest and most childish delight, and there was, we must admit, some reason for this joy. He had reconquered the historic estuary, through which, in the ninth century, the first Varegs had passed southward, toward Grecian skies. On the 16th of the following May wooden houses began to rise on one of the neighboring islets. These houses were to multiply, to grow into palaces, and finally to be known as St. Petersburg.
Peter’s conquests and newly founded cities disturbed Charles XII but little. “Let him build towns; there will be all the more for us to take!” Peter and his army had so far, where Charles was concerned, had to do only with small detachments of troops, scattered apart and thus foredoomed to destruction. The Russians took advantage of this fact to pursue their successes, strengthening and intrenching themselves both in Ingria and Livonia. In July, 1704, Peter was present at the taking of Derpt. In August he had his revenge for his disaster at Narva, and carried the town after a murderous assault. Already in November, 1703, a longed-for guest had appeared in the mouth of the Neva, a foreign trading-vessel laden with brandy and salt. Menshikoff, the Governor of _Piterburg_, entertained the captain at a banquet, and presented him with five hundred florins for himself, and thirty crowns for each of his sailors.
Meanwhile Charles XII tarried in Poland, where Augustus’ affairs were going from bad to worse. A diet convened at Warsaw in February, 1704, proclaimed his downfall. After the disappearance of James Sobieski, whose candidature was put a stop to by an ambuscade, into which the dethroned King lured the son of the deliverer of Vienna, Charles, who was all-powerful, put forward that of Stanislaus Lesczynski. Though he gave little thought just then to Russia and to the Russian sovereign, the Czar was beginning to be alarmed as to the consequences which the Swedish King’s position in Poland and in Saxony might entail on himself. Charles was sure to end by retracing his steps, and an encounter between Sheremetief and Loewenhaupt, at Hemauerthorf in Courland (July 15, 1705), clearly proved that the Russian army, unless in the case of disproportionate numerical superiority over the enemy, was not yet capable of resisting well-commanded Swedish troops. On this occasion Sheremetief lost all his infantry and was himself severely wounded.
What then was Peter to do? He must work on, increase his resources, and add to his experience. If Sheremetief and his likes proved unequal to their task, he must find foreign generals and instructors, technical and other; he must keep patience, he must avoid all perilous encounters, he must negotiate, and try to obtain peace, even at the price of parting with some of the territory he had conquered. The years between 1705 and 1707 were busy ones for him.
A treaty of peace among his enemies took him by surprise and found him quite unprepared. He soon made good his mistakes, took a swift decision, and adopted the course which was infallibly to bring him final victory. He evacuated Poland, retired backward, and, pushing forward the preparations which Charles’ long stay in Saxony had permitted him to carry on with great activity, he resolved that the battle should be fought on his ground, and at his chosen time. He took fresh patience, he resolved to wait, to wear out his adversary, to draw back steadily and leave nothing but a void behind him. Thus he would force the enemy to advance across the desert plains he had deliberately devastated, and run the terrible risk, which had always driven back the ancient foes of his country, whether Turks, Tartars, or Poles–a winter sojourn in the heart of Russia. This was to be the final round of the great fight. The Czar, as he expressed it, was to set ten Russians against every Swede, and time and space and cold and hunger were to be his backers.
Charles, the most taciturn general who ever lived, never revealed the secret inspiration which drove him to play his adversary’s game, by marching afresh on Grodno. During 1707 he seemed to give the law to Europe, from his camp in Saxony. France, which had been vanquished at Blenheim and Ramillies, turned a pleading glance toward him, and the leader of the victorious allies, Marlborough himself, solicited his help.
Charles may have had an idea of making Grodno his base for a spring attack on the Czar’s new conquests in the North. This supposition would seem to have been the one accepted by Peter, if we may judge by the orders given, just at this time, to insure the safety of Livonia and Ingria, by completing their devastation; and these very orders may have induced the King of Sweden to abandon his original design, in favor of another, the wisdom of which is still contested by experts, but which, it cannot be denied, was of noble proportions. Charles, too, had found an ally to set against those natural ones with which Russia had furnished the Czar, and he had found him within the borders of the Czar’s country. The name of this ally was Mazeppa.
The stormy career of the famous hetman, so dramatic, both from the historic and domestic point of view–from that adventure with the _pan_ Falbowski, so naively related by Pasek, down to the romance with Matrena Kotchoubey, which colored the last and tragic incidents of his existence–is so well known that I will not narrate it here, even in the concisest form. Little Russia was then passing through a painful crisis–the consequence of Shmielnicki’s efforts at emancipation, which had been warped and perverted by Russian intervention. The Polish lords, who formerly oppressed the country, had been replaced by the Cossacks, who not only ground down the native population, but railed at and quarrelled with their own chief. The hetmans and the irregular troops were at open war, the first striving to increase their authority and make their power hereditary, the others defending their ancient democratic constitution.
The Swedish war increased Mazeppa’s difficulties. He found himself taken at a disadvantage between the claims of the Czar, who would fain have his Cossacks on every battle-field in Poland, Russia, and Livonia, and the resistance of the Cossacks themselves, who desired to remain in their own country. Being himself of noble Polish birth, brought up by the Jesuits, having served King John Casimir of Poland, and sworn allegiance to the Sultan, he saw no reason for sacrificing his interests, much less his life, for Peter’s benefit. The approach of Charles XII made him fear he might, like his predecessor Nalevaiko, be deserted by his own followers, and given up to the Poles.
The appearance of Charles on the Russian frontier forced him to a definite resolution, and, in the spring of 1708, his emissaries appeared at Radoshkovitse, southeast of Grodno, where Charles had established his head-quarters. The King of Sweden’s idea, at that decisive moment, would seem to have been to take advantage of the hetman’s friendly inclination, to find his way into the heart of Russia, using the rich Southern Provinces as his base, to stir up, with Mazeppa’s help, the Don Cossacks, the Astrakhan Tartars, and, it may have been, the Turks themselves, and thus attack the Muscovite power in the rear. Then Peter would have been forced back upon his last intrenchments, at Moscow or elsewhere, while General Luebecker, who was in Finland with fourteen thousand men, fell on Ingria and on St. Petersburg, and Leszcynski’s Polish partisans, with General Krassow’s Swedes, held Poland.
It was a mighty plan, indeed, but at the very outset it was sharply checked. Mazeppa insisted on certain conditions, and these conditions Charles thought too heavy. The hetman agreed that Poland should take the Ukraine and White Russia, and that the Swedes should have the fortresses of Mglin, Starodoub, and Novgorod-Sievierski, but he himself insisted on being apportioned Polotsk, Vitebsk, and the whole of Courland, to be held in fief. Thus the negotiations were delayed. Meanwhile Charles, perceiving that he was not strong enough to make a forward movement, made up his mind to send for Loewenhaupt, who was in Livonia, and who was to bring him sixteen thousand men and various stores. But the Swedish hero had not reckoned fairly with distance and with time. Many precious days, the best of the season, fled by before his orders could be obeyed. And, for the first time, he showed signs of uncertainty and irresolution which were all too quickly communicated to those under his command. Loewenhaupt grew slower than usual. Luebecker slackened his activity, and Mazeppa began to play his double game again: prudently preparing his Cossacks to revolt, in the name of the ancient customs, national privileges, and church laws, which Peter’s reforms had infringed; fortifying his own residence at Batourin, and accumulating immense stores there, but still continuing to pay court to the Czar, wearing the German dress, flattering the sovereign’s despotic taste by suggesting plans which would have annihilated the last vestiges of local independence, and accepting gifts sent him by Menshikoff.
And so the summer passed away. A winter campaign became inevitable, and the abyss which Peter’s unerring eye had scanned began to gape.
It was not till June that Charles XII left Radoshkovitse, and marched eastward to Borisov, where he crossed the Berezina. Menshikoff and Sheremetief made an attempt to stop him, on July 3d, as he was crossing a small river called the Bibitch, near Holovtchin. A night manoeuvre, and a wild bayonet charge, led by the King himself, carried him once more to victory. The town of Mohilef opened its gates to the Swedes, but there Charles was forced to stay, and lose more time yet waiting for Loewenhaupt. He marched again, early in August, in a southerly direction, and his soldiers soon found themselves in the grip of one of Peter’s allies. They were driven to support themselves by gathering ears of corn, which they ground between two stones. Sickness began to thin their ranks. Their three doctors, so the fierce troopers said, were “brandy, garlic, and death”! Loewenhaupt had reached Shklof, and was separated from the invading army by two streams, the Soja and the Dnieper, between which Peter had taken up his position. The Swedish general, after having successfully passed the Dnieper, was met at Liesna, on October 9th, by a force three times as large as his own, and Peter was able, on the following day, to report a complete victory to his friends: “8500 men dead on the field, without mentioning those the Kalmucks have hunted into the forest, and 700 prisoners!” According to this reckoning, Loewenhaupt, who could not have brought more than 11,000 troops into action, should have been left without a man; as a matter of fact, he reached Charles with 6700, after a flank march which all military experts consider a marvel. But, not being able to find a bridge across the Soja, he was forced to abandon his artillery and all his baggage, and he led his starving troops into a famine-stricken camp.
There was bad news, too, from Ingria, where Luebecker had also been defeated, losing all his baggage and three thousand first-class troops. Charles grew so disconcerted that he is reported to have confessed to Gyllenkrook, his quartermaster-general, that he was all at sea, and no longer had any definite plan. On October 22d he reached Mokoshin on the Desna, on the borders of the Ukraine, where he had expected to meet Mazeppa. But the old leader broke his appointment. He still desired to temporize and was loath to take any decisive resolution. He was driven to take one at last, by the Cossacks about him, who were alarmed at the idea of the Russians following the Swedes into the Ukraine. It would be far better, so they thought, to join the latter against the former. One of these Cossacks, Voinarovski, who had been sent by the hetman to Menshikoff, had returned with most terrifying news. He had overheard the German officers on the favorite’s staff, speaking of Mazeppa and his followers, say: “God pity those poor wretches; to-morrow they will all be in chains!” Mazeppa, when he heard this report, “raged like a whirlwind,” hurried to Batourin to give the alarm, and then crossed the Desna and joined the Swedish army.
It was too late. The popular sentiment, on which both he and Charles had reckoned to promote an insurrectionary movement, confused by the tergiversations and the ambiguous actions of the hetman, had quite gone astray and lost all consistency. All Mazeppa could reckon upon was a body of two thousand faithful troops; not enough even to defend Batourin, which Menshikoff snatched from him a few days later–thus depriving the Swedish army of its last chance of revictualling. When the fortresses of Starodoub and Novgorod-Sievierski closed their gates against him, the whole of the Ukraine slipped from the grasp of the turncoat chief and his new allies. His effigy was first hung and then dragged through the streets of Glouhof in Peter’s presence; another hetman, Skoropadski, was appointed in his place, and then came winter–a cruel winter, during which the very birds died of cold.
By the beginning of 1709 Charles’ effective strength had dwindled to nearly twenty thousand men. The Russians did not dare to attack him as yet, but they gathered round him in an ever-narrowing circle. They carried his advanced posts, they cut his lines of communication. The King of Sweden, to get himself mere elbow-room, was driven to begin his campaign in the month of January. He lost one thousand men and forty-eight officers in taking the paltry town of Wespjik (January 6th). By this time the game, in Mazeppa’s view, was already lost, and he made an attempt to turn his coat again; offering to betray Charles into Peter’s hands if Peter would restore him his office. The bargain was struck, but a letter from the old traitor, addressed to Leszcynski, chanced to fall into the Czar’s hands, and made him draw back, in the conviction that Mazeppa was utterly unreliable.
In March, the near approach of the Swedish army, then advancing on Poltava, induced the Zaporoje Cossacks to join it. But the movement was a very partial one, and Peter soon put it down, by means of a series of military executions, mercilessly carried out by Menshikoff, and of various manifestoes against the foreign heretics, “who deny the doctrines of the true religion, and spit on the picture of the Blessed Virgin.” The capture of Poltava thus became the last hope of Charles and his army. If they could not seize the town, they must all die of hunger.
The fortifications of the place were weak, but the besieging army was sorely changed from that which had fought under the walls of Narva. It had spent too long a time in fat quarters, in Saxony and Poland, to be fit to endure this terrible campaign. Like the Russian army at Narva, it was sapped by demoralization before it was called on to do any serious fighting. Even among the Swedish staff, and in the King’s intimate circle, all confidence in his genius and his lucky star had disappeared.
His best generals, Rehnskold and Gyllenkrook, his chancellor Piper, and Mazeppa himself were against any prolongation of the siege, which promised to be a long one. “If God were to send down one of his angels,” he said, “to induce me to follow your advice, I would not listen to him!” An ineradicable illusion, the fruit of the too easy victories of his early career, prompted him to undervalue the forces opposed to him. He knew, and would acknowledge, nothing of that new Russia, the mighty upstanding colossus, which Peter had at last succeeded in raising up in his path. According to some authorities, Mazeppa, in his desire to replace Batourin by Poltava, as his own personal appanage, encouraged him in this fatal resolution. But it may well have been that retreat had already become impossible.
It was long before Peter made up his mind to intervene; he was still distrustful of himself, desperately eager to increase his own resources, and with them his chances of victory. On his enemy’s side, everything contributed to this result. By the end of June all the Swedish ammunition was exhausted, the invaders could use none of their artillery and hardly any of their fire-arms, and were reduced to fighting with cold steel. On the very eve of the decisive struggle, they were left without a leader. During a reconnaissance on the banks of the Vorskla, which ran between the hostile armies, Charles, always rash and apt to expose himself unnecessarily, was struck by a bullet. “It is only in the foot,” he said, smiling, and continued his examination of the ground. But, when he returned to camp he fainted, and Peter, reckoning on the moral effect of the accident, at once resolved to cross the river. A report, as a matter of fact, ran through the Swedish camp that the King, convinced of the hopelessness of the situation, had deliberately sought death.
Yet ten more days passed by, in the expectation of an attack which the Russians did not dare to make. It was Charles who took action at last, informing his generals, on June 26th (July 7th) that he would give battle on the following morning. He himself was still in a very suffering condition, and made over the command to Rehnskold, a valiant soldier but a doubtful leader, for he did not possess the army’s confidence, and, according to Lundblad, “hid his lack of knowledge and strategical powers under gloomy looks and a fierce expression.” After the event, as was so commonly the case with vanquished generals, he was accused of treachery.
The truth would seem to be that Charles’ obstinate reserve, and habit of never confiding his plans and military arrangements to any third person, had ended by gradually depriving his lieutenants of all power of independent action. In his presence they were bereft of speech and almost of ideas. All Rehnskold did was to rage and swear at everyone. Peter, meanwhile, neglected nothing likely to insure success. He even went so far as to dress the Novgorod regiment–one of his best–in the coarse cloth _(siermiaga)_ generally reserved for newly joined recruits, in the hope of thus deceiving the enemy. This stratagem, however, completely failed. In the very beginning of the battle, Rehnskold fell on the regiment, and cut it to pieces.
The Russian centre was confided to Sheremetief, the right wing to General Ronne, the left to Menshikoff. Bruce commanded the artillery, and the Czar, as usual, retired modestly to the head of a single regiment. But this was a mere disguise; in real fact, he was everywhere, going hither and thither, in the forefront of the battle, and lavishing effort in every direction. A bullet passed through his hat, another is said to have struck him full on the breast. It was miraculously stopped by a golden cross, set with precious stones, given by the monks on Mount Athos to the Czar Feodor, and which his successor habitually wore. This cross, which certainly bears the mark of some projectile, is still preserved in the Ouspienski monastery, at Moscow.
The heroism and sovereign contempt of death betrayed by Charles were worthy of himself. Unable to sit a horse, he caused himself to be carried on a litter, which, when it was shattered by bullets, was replaced by another made of crossed lances. But he was nothing but a living standard, useless, though sublime. The once mighty military leader had utterly disappeared. The battle was but a wild conflict, in which the glorious remnants of one of the most splendid armies that had ever been brought together; unable to use its arms, leaderless, hopeless of victory, and soon overwhelmed and crushed by superior numbers, struggled for a space, with the sole object of remaining faithful to its king. At the end of two hours Charles himself left the field of battle. He had been lifted onto the back of an old horse which his father had formerly ridden, and which was called _Brandklepper_ (“Run to the Fire”), because he was always saddled when a fire broke out in the city.
This charger followed the vanquished hero into Turkey, was taken by the Turks at Bender, sent back to the King, taken again at Stralsund in 1715, returned to its owner once more, and died in 1718–the same year as his master–at the age of forty-two. Poniatowski, the father of the future King of Poland, who was following the campaign as a volunteer–Charles had refused to take any Polish troops with him on account of their want of discipline–rallied one of Colonel Horn’s squadrons to escort the King, and received seventeen bullets through his leather kaftan while covering the royal retreat. Field Marshal Rehnskold, Piper the chancellor, with all his subordinates, over one hundred fifty officers, and two thousand soldiers fell into the victor’s hands.
The Russians’ joy was so extreme that they forgot to pursue the retreating enemy. Their first impulse was to sit down and banquet. Peter invited the more important prisoners to his own table, and toasted the health of his “masters in the art of war.” The Swedes, who still numbered thirteen thousand men, had time to pause for a moment in their own camp, where Charles summoned Loewenhaupt, and, for the first time in his life, was heard to ask for advice–“What was to be done?” The general counselled him to burn all wagons, mount his infantry soldiers on the draught-horses and beat a retreat toward the Dnieper. On June 30th the Russians came up with the Swedish army at Perevolotchna, on the banks of the river, and, the soldiers refusing to fight again, Loewenhaupt capitulated; but the King had time to cross to the other side. Two boats lashed together carried his carriage, a few officers, and the war-chests which he had filled in Saxony. Mazeppa contrived to find a boat for himself, and loaded it with two barrels of gold.
At Kiev, whither Peter proceeded from Poltava, a solemn thanksgiving was offered up in the church of St. Sophia, and a Little Russia monk, Feofan Prokopovitch, celebrated the recent victory in a fine flight of eloquence: “When our neighbors hear of what has happened, they will say it was not into a foreign country that the Swedish army and the Swedish power ventured, but rather into some mighty sea! They have fallen in and disappeared, even as lead is swallowed up in water!”
The Sweden of Gustavus Adolphus had indeed disappeared. Charles XII was ere long to be a mere knight-errant at Bender. The Cossack independence, too, was a thing of the past. Its last and all too untrustworthy representative was to die in Turkey before many months were out–of despair, according to Russian testimony–of poison voluntarily swallowed, according to Swedish historians. The poison story has a touch of likelihood about it, for Peter certainly proposed to exchange Mazeppa’s person for that of the chancellor Piper. The cause of the Leszcynski, too, was dead. It was to be put forward again by France, but for the benefit of France alone; and with the Leszcynski cause, Poland itself had passed away and lay a lifeless corpse on which the vultures were soon to settle.
Out of all these ruins rose the Russian power, its northern hegemony, and its new European position, which henceforth were daily to increase and reach immense, immoderate proportions. Europe played a special part in the festivities which graced the return of the victors to Moscow, a few months later. European ideas, traditions, and forms appeared in the triumphal procession, and served as trappings for the trophies of victory. Peter, playing the part of Hercules, and conquering a Swedish Juno, in a _cortège_ in which Mars figured, attended by furies and by fauns, was a fit symbol of the alliance of Russia with the Graeco-Latin civilization of the West. Old Muscovy–Eastern and Asiatic–was numbered with the dead.
%CAPTURE OF PORT ROYAL[1]%
FRANCE SURRENDERS NOVA SCOTIA TO ENGLAND
A.D. 1710
DUNCAN CAMPBELL
[Footnote 1: From Duncan Campbell’s _History of Canada_.]
Each time that England and France quarrelled in Europe their colonies became engaged in strife. In 1690, when William III fought Louis XIV the able Governor of Canada, Frontenac, despatched his Indian allies to ravage New England, while with rare military skill he defended himself and his province. He could not, however, prevent the capture of Port Royal (now Annapolis) in Nova Scotia. This great fortress, the pride of Louis XIV, was attacked by the New England colonists under Sir William Phips, the Governor of Massachusetts, and was captured by a most dashing attack. When England and France made peace, Port Royal was restored to the French, much to the dissatisfaction of the English colonists, who saw clearly that as soon as another war arose they would have to make the assault again.
During the era of Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713) French and Indian forays and incursions were frequent on the borders of Acadia and New England. Britain, meanwhile, was desirous of limiting the growth of France in the New World, and, with the provocation that had been given the New England colonies by the murderous raids of the French and Abenaquis Indians on her towns and border settlements, the English colonists retaliated by attempting, in 1704 and 1707, to recapture Acadia. They finally succeeded in 1710 under General Nicholson. The story of this expedition will be found appended in Campbell’s narrative, as well as the account given of the disastrous