poured on the burning matches, oakum and wood, soon increased the flame.

"It is not a sure thing yet," said Paul, "we must have a barrel of tar."

They searched about until they found one: knocked out the head and bottom, and stood it like a martyr in the midst of the flames. They then retreated up the forward hatchway, while volumes of smoke were belched from the after one. Not till this moment did Paul hear the cries of his men, warning him that the inhabitants were not only actually astir, but crowds were on their way to the pier.

As he sprang out of the smoke towards the rail of the collier, he saw the sun risen, with thousands of the people. Individuals hurried close to the burning vessel. Leaping to the ground, Paul, bidding his men stand fast, ran to their front, and, advancing about thirty feet, presented his own pistol at now tumultuous Whitehaven.

Those who had rushed to extinguish what they had deemed but an accidental fire, were now paralyzed into idiotic inaction at the defiance of the incendiary; thinking him some sudden pirate or fiend dropped down from the moon.

While Paul thus stood guarding the incipient conflagration, Israel, without a weapon, dashed crazily towards the mob on the shore.

"Come back, come back," cried Paul. "Not till I start these sheep, as their own wolves many a time started me!"

As he rushed bare-headed, like a madman, towards the crowd, the panic spread. They fled from unarmed Israel, further than they had from the pistol of Paul.

The flames now catching the rigging and spiralling around the masts, the whole ship burned at one end of the harbor, while the sun, an hour high, burned at the other. Alarm and amazement, not sleep, now ruled the world. It was time to retreat.

They re-embarked without opposition, first releasing a few prisoners, as the boats could not carry them.

Just as Israel was leaping into the

boat, he saw the man at whose house he had procured the fire, staring like a simpleton at him.

"That was good seed you gave me," said Israel, 66 see what a yield;" pointing to the flames. He then dropped into the bout, leaving only Paul on the pier.

The men cried to their commander, conjuring him not to linger.

But Paul remained for several moments, confronting in silence the clamors of the mob beyond, and waving his solitary hand, like a disdainful tomahawk, towards the surrounding eminences, also covered with the affrighted inhabitants.

When the assailants had rowed pretty well off, the English rushed in great numbers to their forts, but only to find their cannon no better than so much iron in the ore. At length, however, they began to fire, having either brought down some ship's guns, or else mounted the rusty old dogs lying at the foot of the first fort.

In their eagerness they fired with no discretion. The shot fell short; they did not the slightest damage.

Paul's men laughed aloud, and fired their pistols in the air.

Not a splinter was made, not a drop of blood spilled throughout the affair. The intentional harmlessness of the result, as to human life, was only equalled by the desperate courage of the deed. It formed, doubtless, one feature of the compassionate contempt of Paul towards the town, that he took such paternal care of their lives and limbs.

Had it been possible to have landed a few hours earlier, not a ship nor a house could have escaped. But it was the lesson, not the loss, that told. As it was, enough damage had been done to demonstrate-as Paul had declared to the wise man in Paris-that the disasters caused by the wanton fires and assaults on the American coasts, could be easily brought home to the enemy's doors. Though, indeed, if the retaliators were headed by Paul Jones, the satisfaction would not be equal to the insult, being abated by the magnanimity of a chivalrous, however unprincipled a foe.

STEDI

TEDINGK remained at the French Court seven years after his return from 'America; seven years of almost uninterrupted luxury and charm, whose influence upon most men would have been effeminating. Moreover, he became as much a Frenchman as a Swede; and as we shall presently see, an unconquerable longing for France, although never tainting his loyalty, stood sometimes in the way of a graceful, ready decision in accepting Swedish honors and trusts, which the partiality of his sovereign heaped upon him. Gustavus well understood Stedingk's capacities. They were indeed of a high and brilliant order; but there had been a music in the parting words of Marie Antoinette, which remained long ringing in his ear, and he rose among the most prominent Swedes of the time, almost in spite of himself. Had he not possessed a nicer sense of honor and of loyal duty than some of his contemporaries, and had the Bourbons prospered in their legitimacy, we should have traced his career in a direction different from that in which we are now to follow him. Yielding at last to the wishes and to the counsel of Gustavus, he tore himself from the petit soupers of the queen, and from all those blandishments of her court, which, from his letters, must, indeed, have been seductive. Remember, Monsieur de Stedingk," said Marie Antoinette, bidding him farewell,-"remember to depend upon me, and that no misfortune shall befall you!"-Poor queen! Six years after uttering this omnipotent assurance, she was dragged to the scaffold, through every vilest degradation.

Stedingk left France in 1787; and did not again revisit the scenes he loved so well, until, in command of the Swedish army and ambassador of the Swedish king, he repaired to Paris, to sign the gene

War

ral peace of 1814. Meantime, however, his fortunes were to lead through scenes equally momentous; he was to achieve victories, and sign treaties, which have made marks of greater meaning in Swedish annals, although less conspicuous upon the page of Europe. We must therefore return to 1787, and to Gustavus the Third, who was meditating his dishonorable aggressions upon an unoffending, unsuspecting neighbor. Stedingk had left the king almost an idol of his countrymen. He returned to find him detested. was believed necessary to stimulate loyalty; and Russia, at war with the Porte, and her Polish frontier lined with troops (for Kosciusko was yet at large)-Russia, weak for the moment, was to be the victim. Without condescending to ordinary formalities, Gustavus secretly ordered his commanding-general in Finland to cross the frontier. The order was secret, because the constitution of Sweden forbade the king to make offensive war without the consent of the Diet. The bad faith of Gustavus was practised therefore no less against Russia than against his own people, and the immediate consequence was revolt in his army, and entire defection in the House of Nobles. Thirty of the latter were arrested, and the submission of the remainder was only restored by a powerful demonstration on the part of the burghers and peasants. A story was current that the king had stooped to a trick to deceive his subjects; -that in order to persuade them that the war was a defensive war, he caused a troop of his own cavalry to dress themselves in Cossack costumes (supplied from his own fatal opera house) and to make a false attack upon his advanced guard. The story is questionable, but it served the turn of the conspirators, and chimes in singularly with the theatrical destiny

of the king. Whatever may be the truth of the anecdote, it is beyond question that a stratagem of some sort was resorted to.*

Stedingk rode at the head of his dragoons, second in command of the northern division. His superior officer, Hastfer, fell into disgrace, and Stedingk saved the campaign from ruin. Gustavus found

himself beset with enemies from every quarter, and grateful for the trifling success achieved hy his favorite, we find him at various times writing ejaculations like these: A thousand thanks for your officers and their bravery. For yourself, my dear Stedingk, I embrace you with all my heart. You well know my friendship for you, and your glorious day at Porosalmi redoubles it. It is with extreme pleasure that I name you Grand Cross of the Sword;-you are the first of my soldiers to receive it. I add a pension warrant for a thousand dollars, but I pray you keep this a secret. I would give you more, "mais le Béarnais est pauvre, although he has a good heart.”

A little later again:-" Major Enchjelm arrived yesterday, my dear Stedingk, bringing your glorious news; news no longer of unlucky Stedingk, but of Stedingk the victorious, enriching my arsenal with trophies. To make you Major-General after such exploits is less to recompense you than to give you means to reap new glory. We have sung Te Deum for your victory, and all Sweden will sing it. But you are much too good and gallant, to give your prisoners their baggage. This is

not the way the Russians themselves behave. They burn down my people's houses; they fire upon my flags of truce; they wantonly lay waste our fields, and their empress refuses to call me king. It is time then to lay aside this knightly gallantry. But, after all, I should probably have done the like. If the Russians do not deserve it, it is none the less becoming in us."

*

*

Again, and yet later:-"You ask par

*Björnstierna, Tom. 1, p. 101.

+ Letter to Stedingk from the king (July, 14, 1790):

don for attacking the enemy with inferior forces; you know well, my dear Stedingk, that your actions render such apology extremely superfluous."

These were the current rewards of indefatigable and arduous exertion, as well as of consummate gallantry and skill; but the war was so faithless, and its results so little corresponding with its promise, that Gustavus wrote, as it were, in a penury of glory. His nobles revolted. Whole regiments went over to Catherine. The Danes invaded his southern shores; and a campaign, which no one doubted was to result in the fall of St. Petersburg, and the conquest of Livonia, was wellnigh confined to a few gallant, but profitless exploits of Stedingk.

At length, however, in the following year, Gustavus rallied; and, after three years of mortification, the contest was ended by a victory whose trophies were then unrivalled in the annals of war. The Swedish fleet had been driven from the gulf of Viborg, and the king, goaded to desperation, ordered his admiral (the brother of our Stedingk), to turn and face the pursuers. He declared his resolution to retreat no further. At Swensksund he exclaimed, "You shall give me a monument of victory or a tomb." The famous battle immediately followed. The Russians were much superior in force, but the trophies of the victorious Swedes were no less than fifty-three vessels of war, fourteen hundred guns, three hundred officers, and six thousand men, prisoners of war.t The best result of the victory, however, was peace. Gustavus, on leaving Stockholm, had publicly threatened to destroy every monument in Russia save one; he would spare, he said, the statue of Peter the Great, only to engrave his own name upon the pedestal. He returned, grateful that a lucky act of desperation enabled him again to look his people in the face.

The Empress Catherine, whom Stedingk was presently to know so well, confessed

8 ships of the line

74

592 guns. 1088 do.

cations, and which was in fact repugnant to him. Gustavus insisted, and the reluctant soldier was persuaded into the career which led him ultimately to the very highest dignities a Swedish subject can attain. Stedingk was singularly unaware of his own capacities, and almost trembling at the threshold, declared to the king that a battle required but half the amount of courage.

Bidding his army farewell early in September 1790, and, accompanied by two secretaries and a troop of Swedish attendants, he travelled from his headquarters direct to St. Petersburg by land. The journey was marked by the most signal and courteous hospitality on the part of his late enemies, the commandants of the different Russian stations through which he passed; and his reception by the empress gave immediate promise of the influence he was soon after to obtain over this extraordinary woman. One of his most distinguished living countrymen, the one who is perhaps best acquainted with Swedish diplomatic history, assured the writer that for a long time his control of her judgment and caprices was something quite extraordinary.

This official correspondence, according to Swedish custom, was often addressed directly to the king. His narratives, familiarly written for the amusement of an accomplished mind like that of Gustavus, are extremely agreeable, and if it were possible to impart their full spirit to an English version, I should run no risk of making too large selections.

The following are extracts from his first letter, announcing his arrival, and describing his reception, together with the fêtes and rejoicings consequent upon the peace.

"St. Petersburg, September 22, 1790.
*
*

*

"I had nearly reached the hotel, when my carriage was stopped by an equipage, in which I presently recognized the Prince of Nassau. He professed enchantment at seeing me; offered a thousand services; and said he would call as soon as he could return from the empress, to whom he was at that moment going. He came in an hour, and entreated me to dine with him next day, to see the princess, who was in the country, and about to set off for Switzerland. I told him roundly that it was quite impossible; that not only as an ambassador, but as a simple Swede, I had been shocked by the manner in which he had written to

your majesty. He replied, with characteristic nobleness and frankness, that his love and respect for your majesty would never have allowed his serving against Sweden, but that he had become a Russian sailor before the war, and what alternative, therefore, had he?-that, as for his letter, it was ordered and dictated by the empress. I said it was an order fit to be disobeyed. But this is a word unknown in Russia; and, indeed, from confidential particulars and assurances which he gave me, and in which I could but confide, he had no choice but obedience during the perfect rage the empress was in at the time. They say she wrote a farce against your majesty, which was played at the theatres. If possible, I will send a copy."

In justice to Gustavus, let us pause here to read an anecdote which, perhaps, fortified Stedingk in writing so frankly. A short time before the beginning of the war, a Swedish, and rather unsparing satire against the king, had been published in Stockholm. The author was detected and summoned to the palace. The poor man naturally looked for condign punishment. "I see," said Gustavus, after some little questioning,— "I see you have much talent and much wit; but, poor fellow, I fear you have not much bread. I am desirous that you shall not be so hungry again, and I therefore appoint you inspector of my library." Similar traits are often discovered in his story, and Stedingk's allusion to the comedy, written by Catherine, might be accepted as a compliment. The imperial wit, however, unsharpened by hunger, was passing dull. Gustavus was represented in travesty-a northern Quixote, under the guidance of a wicked fairy. The poor king is ambitious to wear the armor of a famous giant. giant. Accordingly he repairs to the giant's castle and steals the coveted trophies. He puts on the helmet, which reaches below his shoulders, and the jackboots mount above his waist. Thus armed, he attacks a dismantled and deserted redoubt, from which, however, there suddenly emerges a limping, superannuated soldier, who brandishes a crutch, and the Swedish paladin takes to flight. The piece, of course, obtained for the empress the applause of the audience, but the compliments were awkward.

Gustavus's quarrel with the Prince of of Nassau was a newspaper war, with inken broadsides, delivered regularly as