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610 Hanoverian project. Charles at Stralsund [17145

to bring about a general pacification at the Congress of Brunswick. Peter was willing to make peace with Sweden if all the territory ceded to her by Russia at the Peace of Stolbova were now retroceded. In case of emergency, he was even willing to restore Livonia provided that all its fortresses were previously demolished. But his principal object was to bind Denmark more closely to him. Now that the tide of victory had carried the Russian arms in triumph up to the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, while the Swedes were driven back to their native peninsula, any future operations against them would largely depend upon the possession of sea-power. But the Russian navy consisted, for the most part, of galleys, and consequently in any attack upon the great arsenal of Karlskrona, where the military and naval forces of Sweden were now concentrated, the co-operation of the Danish navy was indispensable. Peter therefore offered Denmark 150,000 roubles a year in subsidies and an auxiliary army of 15,000 men, maintained at his own expense, for a descent upon Scania, which Denmark now hoped to regain. But the Danes considered the proffered assistance inadequate, and they also imposed as a precedent condition the active co-operation of Prussia, who was to guarantee them the possession of Bremen and Verden, in return for a Danish guarantee of Stettin to Prussia.

In April, 1714, the Elector of Hanover came forward with a fresh scheme of partition. According to this project, Prussia was to have Stettin, while Bremen and Verden were to be assigned to Hanover, and Schleswig-Holstein to Denmark, who with Prussia should undertake to capture Stralsund, Hanover occupying Wismar, which was to be transferred to Mecklenburg. Peter warmly approved of the Hanoverian scheme; but it foundered on the hostility of Denmark, who naturally refused to part with her own conquests, Bremen and Verden. A simultaneous attempt by the Marquis de Châteauneuf, the French Minister at the Hague, to bring about an understanding between Peter and Charles failed because of the Tsar's profound distrust of France. At this juncture, an event occurred which profoundly affected northern politics - the death of Queen Anne (August 1, 1714). The Suedophil Tory Ministry disappeared; and the most unscrupulous of Charles XII's despoilers ascended the English throne as George I. Three months later Charles XII reappeared upon the scene. On September 20 he had quitted Turkey, and, after traversing Austria, and making a long détour by Nürnberg and Cassel, to avoid the domains of the Saxon Elector, arrived unexpectedly, at midnight, November 11 (O.S.), at Stralsund, which, besides Wismar, was all that now remained to him on German soil.

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The year 1715 was memorable for the conclusion of the so-called English affair," which resulted in the formation of a third coalition against Charles XII. The author of this league of spoliation was the new King of England; and the preliminaries were arranged in February at Copenhagen. Prussia had all along been playing a waiting

1715-6]

The third coalition against Sweden

611

game. Her final accession to the league was extorted by the categorical question of George I's Minister at Berlin, whether she was going to join the league, or not. In England the Whig Ministry felt obliged to support the monarch of its choice; and a British fleet was sent to the Baltic to co-operate, to a limited extent, with the Danes and Russians against Sweden. The treaties signed on May 2 and June 7, 1715, between Hanover and Denmark, and on May 17, at Copenhagen, between Denmark and Prussia, arranged all the details of the projected partitions. Wolgast and Stettin were to fall to the share of Prussia; Rügen and Pomerania north of the Peene to Denmark, which was also to have the absolute control of Holstein-Gottorp; and the duchies of Bremen and Verden to Hanover, which was to purchase them from Denmark for 600,000 rix-dollars. Charles formally protested against this traffic in property of which he was the real owner, and refused to have any dealings with his plunderers; and ultimately Hanover declared war against him (October, 1715). Thus, at the end of 1715, Sweden, now fast approaching the last stage of exhaustion, was at open war with Great Britain (Hanover), Russia, Prussia, Saxony and Denmark. For twelve months Charles XII defended Stralsund with almost superhuman heroism. Again and again, at the head of his "blue boys,” he drove the allies from the isle of Usedom, and when, at length, it was captured at a heavy cost, the delight of the Kings of Denmark and Prussia at their hard-won triumph knew no bounds. But the hostile forces proved overwhelming, and on December 23, 1715, Stralsund, now little more than a rubbish-heap, surrendered, Charles having effected his escape to Sweden, after evading the Danish cruisers, two days before.

It had become evident to all the members of the anti-Swedish league that, till Charles had been attacked in the heart of his own realm, the war might drag on indefinitely. But when it came to the execution of the plan of invasion, insuperable obstacles presented themselves. Saxony and Hanover were jealous of Denmark; and all three were incurably suspicious of the Tsar; yet, without Peter's active co-operation, Charles was practically unassailable. At the beginning of 1716, Peter justified their suspicions by his high-handed interference in German affairs. At the end of January, he punished the independent city of Danzig for trading with Sweden, even going the length of seizing all the Swedish vessels in the harbour, and compelling the Danzigers to build him privateers for nothing; but when, on May 11, by the Treaty of Danzig, he guaranteed Wismar and Warnemünde to Duke Charles Leopold of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, on his marriage with Peter's niece, the Tsarevna Catharine Ivanovna, the prospect of seeing Mecklenburg a Russian outpost infuriated George I and Frederick IV.

There can be no doubt that the Mecklenburg compact was a blunder. The most capable and experienced of Peter's own diplomatists, Prince Boris Kurakin, now at the Hague, had strongly dissuaded him from it.

612 Collapse of the projected Scanian expedition [1716

The Duke was of notoriously bad character; and he was not even divorced from his first wife. Kurakin counselled his master at least not to imperil the profitable British alliance by aggrandising Charles Leopold at the expense of Peter's own allies. The Tsar disregarded this advice; and complications immediately ensued. Prince Repnin, sent by Peter with an army-corps to help Hanover and Denmark to reduce Wismar, was informed that his services were not required; and when the fortress capitulated (April 15) the Russian contingent was refused admittance. Peter was deeply offended. But his necessities compelled him to dissemble his wrath; and, at a meeting between the Tsar and Frederick of Denmark, at Altona, on June 14, the invasion of Scania, where Charles XII had established himself in an entrenched camp defended by 20,000 men, was definitely arranged. On July 28, Peter arrived at Copenhagen with his squadron; and 30,000 Russians and 23,000 Danes began to assemble in Zealand, in order to make the descent under cover of the English, Danish, and Russian fleets. But July passed by, and still the Danes held back. In mid-August, Peter cruised off the Scanian coast to examine the lie of the land, and discovered that the Swedes were very strongly entrenched. Peter was naturally cautious; and his caution had been intensified by the terrible punishment with which his one act of temerity had so severely been visited, five years before, on the banks of the Pruth. Charles XII, he argued, always formidable, would be doubly so at bay in the midst of his own people. Moreover Peter was growing more and more suspicious of his allies; and their prolonged delay in striking at the common foe seemed to point to negotiations, or, at least, some understanding with Sweden. He submitted his doubts to two councils of Russian Ministers and generals on September 23 and 27 (O.S.); and they unanimously advised him to postpone the descent to the following year. Such was the real cause of the sudden and mysterious abandonment of the Scanian expedition.

Peter's resolution was duly communicated to the Danish and Hanoverian Governments, and produced a storm of indignation which nearly blew the league of spoliation to pieces. In October the Russian troops quitted Denmark, and went into winter-quarters at Mecklenburg. The same month Peter concluded a fresh defensive alliance with Frederick William of Prussia at Havelberg, whence he proceeded to Amsterdam, where he was joined by his six most eminent diplomatists, including Shafiroff, Tolstoi, and Kurakin, and where he received tidings from London of the arrest of the Swedish Minister, Count Carl Gyllenborg, for alleged participation in a Jacobite conspiracy engineered by Charles XII, who was said to have sent, or to be sending, a fleet with an army of 17,000 men to Scotland. Such an escapade seemed to Peter just the sort of thing to which Charles XII was likely to put his hand. He anticipated a war between Sweden and England at the

very

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1717-8]

The Peace Negotiations of Baron Görtz 613

"Am I not right in always drinking to the health of this enterprising hero?" he wrote to Apraksin; "Why, he gives us for nothing what we never could buy at any price!" But the Tsar was wrong. The whole scheme originated in the fertile brain of Baron von Görtz, who in 1715 had passed out of the Holstein-Gottorp into the Swedish service; but it was sternly discountenanced by Charles. Indeed Peter's relations with George I now became worse instead of better, for George refused to have any dealings with Peter personally till Mecklenburg had been evacuated by the Muscovites.

Unable to obtain anything from England, Peter now turned to France, since the death of Louis XIV less hostile to Russia. The political outcome of Peter's visit there (May 7—June 20, 1717) was the Treaty of Amsterdam (August 15), between France, Russia, and the United Provinces, guaranteeing each other's possessions. But this treaty meant very little so long as Sweden continued to show a bold front against the divided league of partition; and after a fresh coldness had arisen between Peter and George, owing to the curt refusal of the latter to place fifteen British line-of-battle ships at the former's disposal “to bring the King of Sweden to reason," Peter resolved, at last, to treat directly with Sweden. The chief intermediary was Görtz, who, gifted with uncommon astuteness and audacity, seems to have been fascinated by the heroic element in Charles' nature. He owed his extraordinary influence over the King to the fact that he was the only one of Charles' advisers who believed, or pretended to believe, that the strength of Sweden was still far from being exhausted, or, at any rate, that she had a sufficient reserve of force to give impetus to a high-spirited diplomacy. This was Charles' own opinion. Charles was now willing to relinquish a portion of the duchies of Bremen and Verden, in exchange for a commensurate part of Norway, due regard being had to differences of soil and climate. Thus, his invasions of Norway in 1716 and 1718, so far from being mere adventurous escapades, were mainly due to political speculation. It was obvious that, with large districts of Norway actually in his hands, he could make better terms with the provisional holders of his ultramarine domains. But the exchange of a small portion of Bremen and Verden for something much larger elsewhere was the utmost concession he would make; and this was an altogether inadequate basis for negotiation. Anyone but Görtz would have retired from the affair altogether. But he trusted in his ability to persuade Charles into treating, and thus bring him over gradually to his own plans.

Görtz first felt the pulse of the English Ministry, who rejected the Swedish terms as excessive; whereupon he turned to Russia. Formal negotiations were opened at Lofö, one of the Åland Islands (May 23, 1718), Görtz being the principal Swedish, and Osterman, Peter's most astute diplomatist, since the disgrace of Shafiroff, the principal Russian,

commissioner.

614

Death of Charles XII

[1718-9

In view of the increasing instability of the league of partition, Peter sincerely desired peace with Sweden; but he was resolved to retain the bulk of his conquests. Finland he would retrocede, but Ingria, Livonia, Esthonia, and Carelia, with Viborg, must be surrendered by Sweden. If Charles consented, Peter undertook to compensate him in whatever direction he might choose. It was not only peace, but an alliance with the King of Sweden, that the Tsar wanted. "When all ancient grudges and sorenesses are over between us," wrote Peter privately, "we two between us will preserve the balance of Europe." Görtz was promised a gratuity of 100,000 roubles if peace were concluded.

Two things were soon plain to the keen-witted Osterman-that Görtz was hiding the Russian conditions from Charles, and that the Swedish feeling was altogether opposed to the Russian negotiations, rightly judging that nothing obtained elsewhere could compensate for the loss of the Baltic provinces. Twice the negotiations were interrupted in order that Görtz and Osterman might consult their principals. In October, Osterman, in a private report to the Tsar, accurately summed up the whole situation. The negotiations, he said, were entirely Görtz' work. Charles seemed to care little for his own interests, so long as he could fight. In the circumstances, it might fairly be argued that he was not quite sane. Sweden's power of resistance was nearly at breaking-point. Every artisan and one out of every two peasants had already been taken for soldiers. He strongly advised that additional pressure should be brought to bear by a devastating raid on Swedish territory. There was, however, a chance that Charles might break his neck, or be shot in one of his adventures; "and such an ending, if it happened after peace had been signed, would relieve us from all our obligations."

Osterman's anticipations were realised in an extraordinary way. On December 12, 1718, Charles XII was shot dead in his trenches. while on the point of capturing the Norwegian fortress of Fredrikssten. The irresolution of the young Duke Charles Frederick of HolsteinGottorp, the legitimate heir to the throne, sealed the fate of a party already detested in Sweden because of its identification with Görtz, who was arrested the day after Charles' death and executed for alleged high-treason in February, 1719. In March, Charles' one surviving sister, Ulrica Leonora, was elected Queen of Sweden, and the negotiations at Lofö were resumed. But the Swedish plenipotentiaries now declared that they would rather resume the war than surrender the Baltic provinces; and, in July, a Russian fleet proceeded to the Swedish coast and landed a raiding force which destroyed property to the value of 13 millions of roubles. The Swedish Government, far from being intimidated, hereupon broke off all negotiations with Russia (September 17); and pacific overtures were made instead to Hanover, Prussia, and Denmark. By the Treaties of Stockholm, November 20,

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