254 PEACE OF NYSTAD. [BOOK V. ance of the Czar, whose troops excited great discontent and suspicion by their continued presence in Poland. On February 1st a peace was concluded with Prussia under the mediation of France and Great Britain. The principal articles of this treaty were that Sweden ceded to Prussia, Stettin, the Islands of Wollin and Usedom, and all the tract between the Oder and Peene, together with the towns of Damm and Golnau beyond the Oder. The King of Prussia, on his side, engaged not to assist the Czar, and to pay two million rix-dollars to the Queen of Sweden.70 The terms of a peace between Sweden and Denmark were more difficult of arrangement. Frederick IV. had conquered Stralsund, the Isle of Rügen, part of Pomerania, &c., and the example of Hanover and Prussia seemed to justify his pretensions to retain what he had gained. The allies, however, did not deem it advisable that the Swedes should be entirely expelled from Germany, and Denmark, as the weakest among them, was compelled to abandon her claims. By the Treaty of Stockholm, June 12th 1720, the King of Denmark restored to Sweden, Wismar, Stralsund, Rügen, and all that he held in Pomerania; Sweden, paying 600,000 rix-dollars and renouncing the freedom of the Sound. Thus the only territorial acquisition that Denmark made by the war was the greater part of the Duchy of Schleswig, the possession of which was guaranteed to her by England and France."1 Sweden and Russia were now the only Powers that remained at war. During the years 1719, 1720, and 1721, the Russians gained many advantages both by sea and land, and committed the most frightful devastations on the Swedish coasts.72 These calamities, as well as the fear of being deprived by the Czar of his new kingdom, induced Frederick I., to whom, with the consent of the States, the Swedish crown had been transferred by his consort, Ulrica Eleanora, in the spring of 1720, to use every endeavour to procure a peace with Russia. As a means of intimidation, the Czar had pretended to adopt the cause of the young Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, with whom he had an interview at Riga in March 1721. That prince was seeking to assure himself of the Czar's protection by a marriage with his daughter, Anna Petrowna. At length, through the mediation of France, conferences were opened in May 1721, and the PEACE OF NYSTAD was signed, September 10th. Peter would not relax any of the conditions agreed upon with Görtz. The 70 Dumont, t. viii. pt. ii. "Dumont, Ibid. p. 29; Allen, Gesch. des Königreichs Dänemark, S. 308 (Kiel, 1846). Frederick IV. obtained the whole of Schleswig except the territories belonging to the House of Glücksburg. 72 For these events see Bacmeister, B. ii. S. 172 ff. CHAP. VII.] 66 PETER THE GREAT." 255 only portion of his conquests that he relinquished was Finnland, with the exception of a part of Carelia; but as, by his treaty with Augustus II., at the beginning of the war, he had promised to restore Livonia to Poland if he conquered it, he paid the Crown of Sweden two million dollars in order to evade this engagement by alleging that he had purchased that province. The Czar engaged not to interfere in the domestic affairs of Sweden.73 Thus was at length terminated the Great Northern War, which had lasted upwards of twenty years. In a letter to Dolgoruki, his ambassador at Paris, written a few days after the conclusion of the Treaty of Nystad, Peter observes: "Apprenticeships commonly end in seven years; ours has lasted thrice as long; but, thank God, it is at last brought to the desired termination, as you will perceive from the copy of the treaty."7 The apprenticeship was indeed long and arduous, but the results were in proportion. Having to contend with a state formidable both by sea and land, Peter found it necessary to remodel his army and to create a navy; and it was from the Swedes themselves, then the most warlike nation of Europe, that he at length learnt how to beat them-a fact which he was always ready to acknowledge. His triple apprenticeship could not have been spent in a better school; but it required qualities like his to reap the full advantage of it: a mind acute and large enough to perceive his own deficiencies and those of his people; modest enough to learn how to remedy them; energetic enough to submit to any privations and dangers for that purpose. After this peace, the Senate and Synod conferred upon him the title of "Emperor of all the Russias ;" and, on his return to St. Petersburg in October, he was saluted by his nobles and people as "the Father of his country, PETER THE GREAT." Never, perhaps, have these titles been more fairly earned. Peter had risen, not by right of birth, but by his own abilities and perseverance, from the voluntary condition of a mechanic and the rank of a subaltern to be one of the first potentates of Europe. 73 Dumont, t. viii. pt. ii. p. 36. "Bergmann, Peter der Grosse, Th. v. S. 89. 256 CHARACTER OF THE EPOCH. [Book V. CHAPTER VIII. Ar this epoch we pause a moment to cast a glance on some of the characteristics of the period comprised in the present volume, extending from the Peace of Westphalia to the first French Revolution. The wars that sprang out of the Reformation were closed by the Thirty Years War—a crime too gigantic to be repeated. So long a strife, if it did not extinguish, at least mitigated religious animosity; above all, Rome saw that she had no longer the power to excite and nourish it. The results, both of the war and the peace, must have convinced the most sanguine Pope that no reasonable hope could any longer be entertained of subjugating the Protestants by force. Nearly all Europe had been engaged in the struggle, and the cause of Rome had been vanquished. Nay, the Papal Court had been even foiled in the more congenial field of negociation and diplomacy. The influence exercised by the Papal Nuncios at the Congress of Münster had been quite insignificant. A peace entirely adverse to the Pope's views had been concluded, against which, instead of those terrible anathemas which had once. made Europe tremble, Innocent X. had contented himself with launching a feeble protest, which nobody, not even the Catholic princes, regarded. The Peace of Westphalia may therefore be considered as inaugurating a new era, whose character was essentially political. It is true that the religious element is not altogether eliminated in the intercourse of nations. The Catholic and the Protestant Powers have still, in some degree, different interests, and still more different views and sentiments; and in the great struggle, for instance, between Louis XIV. and William III., the former monarch may in some measure be regarded as the representative of the Papacy, the latter of the Reformation. Yet in these contests political interests were altogether so predominant that what little of religion seems mixed up with them was only subservient to the former, and served rather as a means than an end. These changes were not without their effect on the intellectual condition of Europe. The same causes which produced the Reformation had set all the elements of thought in motion, had given rise CHAP. VIII.] AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 257 to bold and original geniuses and great discoveries. The human mind had seemed all at once to burst its shackles and to march forth to new conquests. It was the age which showed the way. Columbus discovered a new hemisphere, Copernicus a new system of the universe, Bacon a new method of all sciences. Boldness and originality also characterised literature, and the age of the Reformation produced Shakspeare and Rabelais. The period which followed, and of which we are here to treat, employed itself in working on the materials which the previous era had provided for it, and in setting them in order. It was the age of criticism and analysis. Intellectual efforts, if no longer so daring, were more correct. Science made less gigantic, but surer, steps; literature, if less original, no longer offended by glaring blemishes at the side of inimitable beauties. The spirit of the age was best exhibited in France. French modes of thinking, French literature, French taste, French manners, became the standard of all Europe, and caused the period to be called the AGE OF LOUIS XIV. Its influence survived the reign of that monarch, and gave a moral weight to France, even after her political preponderance had begun to decline. When we talk of the "Age of Pericles," the "Age of Augustus," the "Age of Louis XIV.," we naturally imply that the persons from whom those periods took their names exercised a considerable influence on the spirit by which they were characterised. In reality, however, this influence extended no further than to give a conventional tone and fashion. We have already expressed our opinion that the intellectual condition which prevailed from about the middle of the seventeenth century till towards the close of the eighteenth was the natural result of the period which preceded it; and it might, perhaps, not be difficult to show that the same was the case with the two celebrated eras of Athens and Rome. It would be absurd to suppose that the patronage of the great can call works of genius into existence. Such patronage, however, especially where there is no general public to whom the authors of works of art and literature may address themselves, is capable of giving such works their form and colour-in short, of influencing the taste of their producers; and this is precisely what the Courts of Augustus and Louis XIV. effected. The literature and art of the Athenian commonwealth were subject to somewhat different conditions. The appeal was made more directly to the public, but a public that has not been found elsewhere-a body of judges of the most critical taste and discernment. Hence Attic literature and art present an unrivalled combination of excellences; all the 258 THE FRENCH COURT. [Book V. vigour and fire of originality, subdued by the taste of a grand jury of critics. We mean not, however, to assert that the writers of the age of Augustus and Louis possessed no original genius, but only that it was kept more in check. It cannot be doubted, for instance, that Virgil and Horace, Racine and Molière, possessed great original powers, which, in another state of society, they might probably have displayed in a different, and, perhaps, more vigorous fashion, but at the sacrifice of that propriety and elegance which distinguish their writings. If Louis XIV. claimed to represent the State in his own person, still more did he comprise in it the Court, which set the fashion in literature, as well as in dress and manners. There was much, fortunately, in Louis's character that was really refined and elegant, and which left an unmistakeable impress on the nation. Although unrestrained in his earlier days by any notions of morality, he was far removed from coarseness and indecency. His manner towards women was marked by a noble and refined gallantry; towards men, by a dignified and courteous affability. There was no doubt a great deal of acting in all this; but it was good acting. He had made it his study to support the character of a great king with a becoming dignity and splendour, for he felt himself to be the centre of Europe as well as of France. His fine person was also of much service to him. Hence, as regards merely external manner, his court has perhaps never been surpassed, and it is not surprising that it should have become a model to all Europe. There was at that time nothing that could be compared to it. The courts of Austria and Spain were shackled by a cold and formal etiquette, destructive of all wit, taste, and fancy. The only court that approached the French was that of England under Charles II. Essentially, perhaps, Charles was not more immoral than Louis; but he wanted that refinement which deprives immorality of its grossness. The result is manifest in the contemporary literature of the two nations, and especially the drama, the best test of the manners of a people. The English dramatists of that age, tragedians as well as comedians, with quite as much fire and genius as their French contemporaries, were grossly indecent. In patronising literature and art, Louis XIV. only followed the example given by Richelieu, with whom it was a part of policy. He knew that literature glorifies a country and gives it a moral strength; that it makes the prince who patronises it popular at home, respected and influential abroad. The benefits which Louis bestowed on literary men were not confined to those of his own |