244

DANGEROUS POSITION OF THE CZAR.

[Book V. his distress and agitation, which he cared not to betray, he shut himself up in his tent, and gave strict orders that nobody should be admitted to his presence.

In these circumstances, a council of the principal Russian officers determined that the only chance of escape was to come to terms with the Grand Vizier, Mohammed Baltadschi, who commanded the Turkish army. None, however, was bold enough to communicate this decision to the Czar, except Catherine his wife. Catherine, who, before her capture at Marienburg, had been betrothed to a Swedish corporal, had subsequently been the mistress of Scheremeteff and Menschikoff. In this last capacity she attracted the notice and love of Peter, who secretly married her in 1707, and before setting out on this expedition against the Turks, in which she accompanied him, he had publicly proclaimed her to be his lawful consort. Catherine, besides a handsome person, had been endowed by nature with an excellent understanding and the most engaging manners. Although so ignorant that she could not even read or write, she had great skill in penetrating the characters of those with whom she was connected, and of adapting her self to their views and dispositions. She had gained complete empire over Peter by entering warmly into all his plans, and while she seemed to humour him in all his caprices, she entirely governed him. She alone undertook an office which might have cost another his life; she entered Peter's tent, soothed him by her caresses, and persuaded him to send a messenger to the Vizier with offers of peace. She obtained from the principal officers what money they had to make up the customary present on such occasions, to which she added her own jewels. Fortunately for the Russians, Mohammed Baltadschi was anything but a hero. An intimation on the part of the Czar, supported by a slight demonstration in the Russian camp, that, if his proposals were not accepted, he meant to force his way through at the point of the bayonet, induced the Vizier to come to terms. In this moment of awful suspense, Peter displayed the great qualities which he really possessed, though they were sometimes obscured by the peculiarities of his temperament. He addressed a letter to his Senate, in which he directed them that, in the event of his being made a prisoner, they should no longer regard him as their sovereign nor

53

5 Some authors represent the sum collected as large enough to bribe the Grand Vizier to betray his duty and grant a peace. It seems, however, more probable that it represented only the usual gift on such occasions, according to eastern cus

tom. See Zinkeisen, Gesch, des osm. Reichs, B. v. S. 424. See for these events De La Motraye, Voyages, t. i. ch. 19, t. ii. ch. 1 and 2; Fabrice, Anecdotes du Séjour du Roi de Suède à Bender; Poniatowski, Remarques, &c.

obey any instructions they might receive in his name, even though signed with his own hand; while, if he should be killed, they were immediately to elect another Czar.54 The Vizier, however, consented to receive the Russian plenipotentiaries, and on July 21st was signed the Capitulation of the Pruth.55 By this Convention the Czar agreed to restore Asov to the Porte, to destroy the fortifications of Taganrog, Kamenska, and Samara, to recall his army from Poland, and to forbear from all interference in the affairs of the Cossacks subject to the Khan of Tartary. No stipulation was made respecting the King of Sweden, except that he should be permitted to return unmolested to his own dominions.

When the Russian army was first surrounded in a situation from which it seemed impossible to escape, Poniatowski, who had accompanied the Grand Vizier, despatched a messenger in all haste to Charles XII. at Bender, begging him to come without delay and behold the consummation of his adversary's ruin. Charles instantly obeyed the summons, but, to his unspeakable mortification and rage, arrived only in time to see in the distance the last retreating ranks of the Russian rear-guard. Loud and bitter were the reproaches which Charles addressed to Baltadschi for his conduct. He besought the Vizier to lend him 20,000 or 30,000 men, wherewith he promised to bring back the Czar and his whole army prisoners; but Baltadschi, with a mortifying apathy, pleaded the faith of treaties, and Charles, rushing from the Vizier's tent with a loud and contemptuous laugh, mounted his horse and rode back at full gallop to Bender. Here he and Poniatowski, in conjunction with the Khan of Tartary, employed themselves in effecting the ruin of the Grand Vizier. He was accused of having taken bribes to grant the peace; and though the news of the Capitulation had at first been received at Constantinople with every demonstration of joy, these accusations, supported by the enemies of Baltadschi in the Seraglio, procured his banishment to Lemnos, where he died the following year.

The Sultan now endeavoured to hasten the departure of the King of Sweden from his dominions, who was both a troublesome and an expensive guest. But Charles was not disposed to quit except on the most exorbitant terms. He demanded a payment of 600,000 dollars and an escort of 30,000 men, while the Porte was inclined to grant only 6000 men and no money. After a for

De La Motraye, t. ii. p. 19; Stählin, Anecdotes orig. de Pierre le Grand, p. 45 (Strasburg, 1787).

The terms of this treaty, which is

also called the Capitulation of HoesteGuesty, will be found in De La Motraye, t. ii. p. 20.

246

CHARLES XII. RETURNS TO GERMANY.

[Book V. bearance of many months, the Sultan at length prepared to use force. Charles's daily allowance was withdrawn, and the Janissaries were commanded to seize his person, dead or alive. Charles betrayed on this occasion a characteristic obstinacy and recklessness. Although surrounded by a force that left no hope of successful resistance, he resolved, with a few hundred followers, to defend to the last extremity his little camp at Varnitza,56 which he had fortified with a barricade composed of chairs, tables, casks, bedding, and whatever came to hand; and it was not till after a desperate handto-hand conflict, in which he was more than once wounded, that he was at length secured (February 1713). Charles was now carried to Adrianople, and thence to Demotica, where a residence was assigned to him, but with a very reduced allowance. Shortly after his departure from Bender, King Stanislaus arrived at that place with the view, it is said, of mediating a peace between Charles and Augustus by resigning the crown of Poland. But Charles would not hear of such an arrangement. He still entertained the hope that the Porte might be induced to take up his own cause as well as that of Stanislaus. But these expectations were frustrated by a treaty concluded in April 1714, between the Porte and Augustus II., by which the Peace of Carlowicz was confirmed.57 Augustus undertook that Russian troops should no longer be suffered in Poland, while, on the other hand, the Pasha of Bender received orders to dismiss from that place all Polish "malcontents." Stanislaus, who seemed to be tacitly included in this designation, set off in the autumn for the King of Sweden's duchy of Deux-Ponts, with the hope of finding in a private station that quiet and contentment which had been denied to him during his insecure and stormy reign.

About the same time, Charles XII., at length abandoning all hope of inducing the Porte to take up his cause against the Czar, was persuaded by General Lieven to return to his kingdom, or rather to his army in the north of Germany. The Emperor promised him a safe passage through his dominions; the Sultan provided him with an escort to the frontiers; but Charles, impatient of the slow progress of the Turks, set off with only two companions from the Wallachian town of Pitescht, and crossing the Hungarian frontier at the Rothenturm Pass, proceeded through Hermannstadt, Buda,

56 A village within a mile or two of Bender. This extraordinary fight, which lasted seven hours, is known by the name of the Kalabalike. That Charles should have escaped with his life can only be accounted

for by the circumstance that the Janissaries endeavoured to capture him alive. Lundblad, Th. ii. Kap. xviii.

57 Zinkeisen, B. v. S. 454 f.

Vienna, Ratisbon, Hanau, Cassel, Gustrow, and Tribsen, to Stralsund. This extraordinary journey, which was lengthened by a considerable détour, and must have been at least 1100 miles in length, was performed for the most part on horseback, and was accomplished in seventeen days.58

One of the first steps of Charles, after his arrival in the North, was to demand from the King of Prussia the restitution of the places which he held in Pomerania; and as Frederick William demurred to comply with this demand, Charles proceeded to occupy the Isle of Usedom with 3000 Swedes (April 1715). This was the signal for war. The King of Prussia immediately caused the troops of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, which, along with the Prussians, formed the garrisons of Stettin and Wollin, to be disarmed; and he despatched 20,000 of his troops to join the Danes and Saxons in the siege of Stralsund. Both he and the King of Denmark appeared in person before that place in the summer; and although Stralsund was defended and victualled on the sea side by the Swedish fleet, and on the land side was protected by an entrenched camp of 12,000 men, animated by the presence of their warlike king, yet the operations of the allies were gradually successful. Charles, foreseeing the fall of Stralsund to be inevitable, endeavoured to avert it by offers of peace; and on their rejection, he embarked for Sweden, and landed at Trelleborg, on the coast of Schonen. In the same year the Czar appeared with a large fleet on the coasts of Gothland, while Prince Golitzyn marched to the Gulf of Bothnia and threatened the northern boundaries of Sweden. In 1715, the allies were assisted in the siege of Wismar by George I., King of England and Elector of Hanover, who had entered into an alliance with the King of Denmark, and obtained from him, for a large sum of money, the Duchies of Bremen and Verden.59 Wismar, the last place held by the Swedes in Germany, surrendered April 19th 1716.

After this event the war languished, and a mutual jealousy began to sow dissension among the allies. The Czar perceived that it

38 Charles left Pitescht on November 5th and arrived at Stralsund on the 21st. See a detailed account of the journey in Lundblad, Th. ii. S. 422 Anm. His companion, Captain Düring, was almost killed with fatigue, and the King himself had got a bad sore in the leg, not having taken off his boots for eight days. The royal suite, left behind at Pitescht, did not arrive at Stralsund till the summer of 1715.

Cf. De La Motraye, t. ii. ch. 9; Fabrice, p. 337 sq.

59 As a pretext for declaring war against Sweden and to veil his real motive, George alleged the obligations imposed upon him, as director of the Circle of Lower Saxony, to maintain the tranquillity of that district. Koch et Schöll, Hist. abr. des Traités, t. xiii. p. 257.

248

POLICY OF THE CZAR.

[Book V. would not be advantageous for him that Denmark should conquer Sweden, nor that Augustus should establish absolute monarchy in Poland; but rather that the two Scandinavian kingdoms should remain in a state of mutual weakness, and that the Poles, under the name of liberty, should be plunged in perpetual anarchy. These political motives were strengthened by his disgust at the conduct of the allies after the taking of Wismar. He had hoped to obtain that city for his nephew-in-law, the Duke of Mecklenburg; but after its capture, the allied army had forcibly prevented a Russian corps from entering it and forming part of the garrison. Of the other allies, the King of Prussia was satisfied with having obtained possession of Stettin and the mouth of the Oder, and all the country between that river and the Peene, which had been relinquished to him by the allies after the capture of Stralsund; while Augustus II. was precluded from taking any further part in the war by the events which had taken place in Poland. Although all the differences between the Polish Republic and the Ottoman Porte had been arranged in April 1714, by the treaty already mentioned, the Saxon troops had been still retained in Poland, to the great jealousy of the Polish nobles. In the autumn of 1715, two Confederations were formed, one by the army of the Crown at Gorzyca, the other by the troops of Little Poland at Tarnogrod, to expel the Saxons; and hostilities broke out, which were at length. pacified by the mediation of the Czar. By a perpetual peace proclaimed at Warsaw, November 3rd 1716, Augustus engaged to dismiss all his troops from Poland, except 1200 guards; never to declare war without consulting the Diet, nor to absent himself from Poland more than three months in the year.60 These conditions established him on the throne, but precluded him from taking any part in the Northern War.

Charles XII., however, still counted among his adversaries the Czar, the King of Denmark, George I. of England, as Elector of Hanover, and the Dutch. But the Czar, as we have before remarked, was not inclined to prosecute the war with any vigour. He had already wrested from Sweden nearly all that he could expect or desire. In 1713, almost all Finland had been reduced under his dominion, he himself commanding the van of the fleet under Apraxin. His cares were henceforth directed chiefly to the preservation of his conquests and to the creation of a powerful navy, by purchasing ships in England and Holland, and building them at St. Petersburg-an operation which he often personally

60 Koch et Schöll, Hist. abr. des Traités, t. xiii. p. 260.